Living word of spiritual wisdom

Contents Preface About God, glorified in the Trinity, our Creator and Provider, and about the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior About the Church and about truly Christian life, as life in the depths of the church About the true causes of modern disorders Spiritual wisdom is a gift of holiness: it, like a crown, is bestowed only on those who are in living union with God, who live a virtuous, truly Christian life - a life of prayer, love and work for God. Let the following excerpt from the address presented by the Society for Religious and Moral Education to the righteous Father John of Kronstadt on the day of the fiftieth anniversary of his pastoral ministry (December 12, 1905) serve as an explanation of why we have given this and not another title to this collection of edifying writings of the dear priest, who tirelessly labored among other feats and laborious feats spiritual teaching. “The history of the spiritual life of peoples is created not by the masses, but by a few exceptional individuals, conscious bearers and bright exponents of ideas, around whom the masses gather, like around banners. There can be no doubt that the impartial court of your descendants will classify you as such historical figures, for even now the people already see you as an exceptional person and pronounce your name with reverence, and “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” What word is written on the banner with which you pastor, Father, our most worthy and beloved representative, a living example of modern all-Russian shepherding? There is one word written on this banner: “Holiness,” and it is this that has gathered around you millions of Russian, Orthodox people, who carry the ideal of holiness in the recesses of their souls, always ready to bow to the one in whom they see the embodiment of this ideal. Your fifty years of pastoral activity were truly a continuous feat, serving the salvation of others. The Chief Shepherd Christ has revealed you as a chosen vessel of grace. Your strong and strong faith, fiery prayer reaching to God, confidently penetrating words, innumerable, unparalleled in our days deeds of mercy and love - everyone knows the fruits of this grace living in you and a bright manifestation of your service to the ideal of holiness. Believing Russia sees this and strives to enter into fellowship with you. Thousands of pilgrims continuously travel to Kronstadt from everywhere to ask you to pray for them, to hear a word of consolation, to receive your blessing. Millions are edified by your inspired printed works, which clearly reflect the fire of faith and zeal for God that burns in your soul. Let some people of late, who in the unbridled passions of theirs do not spare anything sacred, try to discredit your good name, transferring onto you the evil deeds of those with whom you can have nothing in common. All your bright and pure, crystal-like fifty years of pastoral activity loudly denounces these unworthy slander, and the people who love you reward you even more, for they understand that the words of Christ are coming true on you: Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and slander you in every possible way unrighteously for My sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven: so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11–12).” All the material included in this collection “The Living Word of Spiritual Wisdom” is taken from the last diaries of the righteous father John of Kronstadt and from his words spoken in 1905–1906, and will be interesting and edifying (especially its last section “On the true causes of modern disorders”) for our time. About God, glorified in the Trinity, our Creator and Provider, and about the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior Brief but significant are the words proclaiming the glory and splendor of the Most Holy Trinity. These exclamations preach about the eternity of Her being and about the terrible and unapproachable splendor of the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These various short exclamations and doxologies serve as defeat and shame on behalf of the Church to all senseless heretics who dare to rebel against the Holy Trinity and blaspheme It or reject It, for throughout the space of all centuries the Church throughout the entire universe has always confessed Orthodoxy, savingly, victoriously, loudly, in the hearing of all people, the eternal glory of the Holy Trinity and has defeated with its confession all persecutors, tormentors, kings, philosophers, rhetoricians, all the power of hell, which rebelled against the true confession of the Life-Giving Trinity. I rejoice in the perfection of the Divinity, in His unity in essence and trinity of Persons, and joyfully glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the indivisible, uncreated nature, the Trinity of the same essence, reigning forever and ever. I rejoice that God is love: the Father is love, the Son of God is love and the Holy Spirit is love; Three and One Love. The Father is holy and true, as are the Son and the Holy Spirit. Autocrat - Father, Autocrat and Son, also the Holy Spirit, not Three Autocrats, but One Autocratic God, unmerged, inseparable, inseparable God in Three Persons. God alone is all-perfect and unchangeable forever and ever, and creatures, as having received all powers and all gifts from God, each in its own measure, are subject to change, illness and death, except for the holy Angels, who by the grace of God were established in the likeness and holiness of their Creator. People are subject to changes, good or evil, as fallen beings and restored from the fall through faith and repentance and their own labors, with the help of God. Therefore, almost all human affairs bear the stamp of imperfection and changeability: all human laws and regulations, all sciences, arts, all affairs in the sphere of everyday life. Some of God's works bear the stamp of perfection, unless due to human sins they are subject to change for the worse, for example, crop failures of bread and various fruits, wormholes and rottenness of fruits, or babies born with deformities. With heartfelt reverence and love, do you always pronounce the name, which is more than any name, the most holy, the most sweet, the great and the greatest, the wonderful, the terrible, before which countless angelic hosts reverence the saints, strong in strength, bright as lightning, terrible and most magnificent in appearance, whose height is not comparable with any earthly beauties, since they have preserved and They preserve within themselves the exact and indestructible image of God, according to which they were created by God! Oh, reverence, man, and constantly carry in your mind and heart the great and sweet name of God and do all righteousness every day. “All creation sings to Thee forever,” that is, the Angels, all their countless cathedrals, heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth and all its intelligent creatures, that is, faithful people, all birds, fish, everything living in the waters, all livestock, animals, insects, seas, lakes, rivers, mountains, valleys, rocks, gorges, air, dew, snow, rain, frost, all plants, all species precious stones, the entire fossil kingdom, all metals, minerals, all microscopic animals with their organisms, wisely constructed and constituting their lives - everything, everything silently or loudly praises the Lord as the all-wise, all-good and all-powerful Creator and Provider, and the atheists, in spite of this universal harmonious chorus, boldly refuse to confess and praise the Lord. Holy Soul, Life-Giving One, One of the Trinity, You are the life and beauty, the beauty of all living and inanimate creatures, You are the color and fragrance of plants, You are the variety and sweetness of all earthly fruits, You are the breath of all organic and inorganic beings, for You produce fruitfulness and nutrition in plants, trees and shrubs. You fill the fruits and bring them to maturity through the sun's rays, You shine in the sun, the moon and the stars, You produce winds in the air and waves on rivers, seas and lakes, You tame them, You produce thunder and lightning in the circle of heaven. You form and plant the human seed and develop and form it into a beautiful organism, like all animal embryos. You gave bees the ability to make honeycombs, spiders to weave webs, and silkworms to make cocoons. You endlessly decorate the types of human faces, male and female, according to the variety of peoples and nations (races) and different climates of the earth. You make all nations and individuals wise in their affairs in different ways to satisfy the needs and pleasures of life together. You enlightened and are enlightening with the light of reason, you made wise the prophets and apostles, hierarchs, priests, martyrs, the saints and the righteous, Christ for the sake of the holy fools and all the saints. You make architects, sculptors, painters and carvers able to work on wood, metal, granite and marble and craftsmen who produce various metal and glass works - from You all knowledge and art. You bow down to the mercy of sinners and for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, you cleanse the sins of believers and repentants. You pacify and console souls, you regenerate a person in Baptism, You impart sanctification and confirmation in Confirmation, You absolve from sins in Repentance through faith in Jesus Christ, You transform bread and wine into the most pure Body and Blood of the Lord, You make priests, You bless marriage and conception and bring about birth, You absolve sins and the body in the Blessing of Anointing. you heal. Countless are Thy, Holy Soul, life-giving actions both in nature and in the gracious Kingdom of Christ. Glory to You together with the Father and the Son! If creation is indescribably majestic and immensely beautiful, then what is the Creator Himself like? How great, how strong, how beautiful, how good, how perfect! And if man, the rational creation of the all-wise Creator, represents so much beauty, so much intelligence and does so much wonderful in the field of knowledge, arts, arts, especially in the field of virtue, like all our saints, then what should the Creator of man, the Lord, be like?! By the Word of God everything was created: all rational, spiritual creatures - the angelic ranks, and all spiritual-sensual and free creatures - the human race, and all animate and inanimate creatures, all the heavenly bodies, all the planets, the globe with everything that is on it and in it, and, as those created by the Word, they are held in goodness only by the Word, obeying only the Word and the Holy Spirit. Without obedience to the Word of God there can be no true life in rational creatures, but only death, darkness, confusion, chaos, rebellion, strife and destruction. Evil spirits brought rebellion and the ugliness of death into God's beautiful world. Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool (Acts 7:49). By Heaven we mainly mean the Heavenly Minds, or Angelic Powers, especially the highest ones - Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, Archangels and all Heavenly Powers. God rests and moves on them, as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah saw. The throne of God is also called the heart of man, or the soul of a righteous man, into which the Lord dwells according to Scripture: ... let us come to him and make our abode with him (John 14:23). Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? (1 Cor. 3:16). Let us avoid all sin and be filled with every virtue. What controls and reigns in the visible and invisible world: is it visible, material or invisible spiritual personal Principle, good or evil? The invisible controls the visible. The invisible good principle directs humanity towards good and promotes it, and the evil principle directs towards all evil and attracts and spreads it. The Good Beginning leads to all virtue and to eternal life; the evil inclination, on the contrary, leads to all lies and sins, to the deprivation of all grace of God and to eternal death. Now let’s put the question on the line: who governs the visible, beautiful, immeasurably great, immeasurably beneficial world for all creatures - heaven and earth and everything that is in them and on them? The invisible, omnipotent and All-Holy Creator, who has manifested and is manifesting His Divine properties and perfections in all His deeds. Who leads the invisible world or the Angelic army of good Angels who protect the universe from hostile forces? All-good, invisible, all-powerful God. But where do the hostile, evil forces in the world come from, striving or directing people towards unrest, sedition, disobedience, destruction and destruction of communities, gatherings, entire cities and states? From the evil invisible power of demons with God's permission for the sins of people. And who rules and reigns in each of us? Either the Lord, the King of creation, or, by His permission, the devil for our sins, as in Judas the traitor. Who do we want to reign in us? God or the devil? Of course, the Lord God, His all-good, most peaceful Creator. Our Father... Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth... lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one (cf. Matthew 6:9, 10, 13). Calling the Lord Almighty, remember that His almighty directly concerns you, your soul and body. Remember every minute and every hour by Whom all the internal and external organs of your body are controlled and act, live and thrive; all your senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; all components: heart, respiratory, circulatory and digestive organs, all parts of your body. Remember how wise the internal and external structure of your body is, what a wonderful mechanism it is, designed by the wise Architect and preserved by Him in its improvement and activity, unless we ourselves upset it with our sins and passions! Love and always give fervent thanks to your Creator, the Almighty and the Lord, your light-giver, nourisher, preserver, giver of your breath. Oh, how wonderfully and graciously the Lord contains the life of our souls, with what wonderful laws he has protected it, what grace he always bestows, enlightening, merciful, cleansing all the impurities of the soul that arise from our sins, sanctifying, strengthening, pacifying! What a Church has arranged for us, who have fallen into sin and death, His goodness and wisdom, what a purification, what a clinic, what Sacraments, what a wonderful word of the Gospel has given for guidance! This is the kind of almighty and wonderful providence the Lord has for us, by whom we live and are preserved and are led to eternal life. Lord, endlessly, immeasurably I owe You for every breath of air You poured out for our breath, every sip of drink and every crumb of bread, every tree or bush fruit or other countless fruits of the earth, every good, pure, holy thought, elevating from earth to Heaven, every feeling, every good aspiration of my will, every good deed - and for everything, for everything I thank You, indecent slave Yours! God created countless verbal spiritual creatures - Angels, moved solely by the goodness of His being, created for Himself, like all material and spiritual-sensual creation - man, so that they (Angels and men) would fulfill His only holy, good, wise, omnipotent, perfect, blessed will and would thereby be eternally blessed. And three parts of intelligent creatures remained faithful and eternally blessed through devotion to God, and a third of the angels fell away through pride and self-will and for unrepentance and remaining in their endless malice were condemned by the righteous Creator to eternal torment in eternal fire. The human race, deceived by the devil, is also condemned to eternal torment unless it believes in its Redeemer and repents. This is how insane, disastrous, and terrible it is to violate the one, righteous and perfect will of God and create your own, unrighteous, insane one. All centuries of this world, all people of all centuries have proven and are proving their madness, not coordinating their will with the will of God, and they suffer, are tormented by disobedience to it, and only complete obedience by the mercy and grace of the Son of God can reconcile them again with God, Who has ordained repentance for sinners for salvation. Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth. The fulfillment of the holy will of God - all-good, all-wise, all-blessed, eternal, all-powerful - leads rational creatures to all good and bliss, to light, to peace, to success in all virtue, to achieving the ultimate goal of salvation of the soul, and the fulfillment of our sinful, corrupt, blind will leads to all evil, confusion, darkness, illness, sorrow, misfortunes and all kinds of disasters and, ultimately, to the curse of God and eternal torment: ...depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). To what extent do the drunkard, the adulterer, the thief, the atheist, the proud, the envious and others reach the point where they do their own will? It’s scary to imagine the picture of various human sins and their consequences! We all see this disgusting picture every day in one form or another. How diligently we must all fulfill the will of God! How earnestly to ask the Lord for this! The Lord, having created every intelligent creature (Angels), and rational-sensual (humans), and irrational (animals), and inanimate (stones, metals and minerals, planets), gave it the laws of existence, and everything created by Him, following these laws, is in well-being and solid standing, containing life, movement, benefit and beauty. Man, a rational-sensual animal, must especially keep the commandments of the Creator in order to preserve the ability to live according to God. Without fulfilling the law, a person will perish. The way of the wicked will perish (Ps. 1:6). All who remove themselves from You will perish (cf. Ps. 72:27), says the prophet-king. Be a master, architect and painter for your soul. Your real Creator, Architect, Painter is the Lord, who painted you at the beginning in His image and likeness. He is your Architect, who wisely created your soul and gave it a suitable home - the body. You upset and distorted God’s work in you, God’s truth and beauty, and He Himself came to restore you, renew you, paint you again, recreate you. Just add your work, hate your distortion, your madness and correct yourself! One Beginningless Being in Three Persons - Father, Son and Spirit, who created everything wisely, blissfully, beautifully, purposefully, has life and infinite wisdom, creating and life-giving everything. And how wisely He created all creatures with good goals that should be realized by them! For example, an apple tree, a vineyard, lemon or orange and other trees must bear fruit according to their type and kind, a spider weaves a web, sea and river shells or turtles are wisely equipped with armor to protect them from other sea animals. Likewise, the human race was created with a good, beautiful, wise purpose - to fulfill wisely, diligently and accurately the commandments of the Creator and, through fulfilling them, achieve Him and one’s goal and bliss and glorify the Creator forever and ever. But man, created with reason and free will, through deception from the tempter, did not want to fulfill the will of the Creator of his all-good, all-wise Source of life, he deviated and is deviating into wickedness, self-love, rebellion and malice, falls away from his own and common Beginning and will inherit all sin and destruction. Only one God-man, who fulfilled with a completely human nature all the will of God, which humanity had to fulfill and could not fulfill without God, could redeem him from sin and all its consequences and give him again the blessing of God with all its good consequences - peace, righteousness, holiness and eternal life, which all who obeyed the Gospel of the Son of God, who took upon themselves the sins of the world, inherited and will inherit. For all this, glory to You, O God, worshiped and glorified in the Trinity. Amen. The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until the whole dough was leavened (Matthew 13:33). In all of us there is a sinful leaven, inherited from our first forefathers and penetrating deeply into our entire being: into our soul and body, into our mind, into the depths of our hearts, into all our activities, into all our voluntary aspirations. As Scripture says, every person has an evil thought from youth (cf. Gen. 8:21). In order to throw out this sinful leaven and put in a new leaven of good in its place, for this it is necessary for a person to be reborn or to regenerate a person through water and the Holy Spirit; for this it was necessary for God Himself to become human and to instill, so to speak, human nature into His pure nature (from sin) and plant in it, develop and root all Christian virtue; it was necessary to allow humanity to partake of the most pure Body and the most pure Blood of the God-Man and become one spirit and body with God. For this reason, the Lord gave the power to the earthly Church to perform the Sacrament of Communion of the Most Pure Body and Blood of Christ and through this to communicate to our nature His Divine leaven, so that everything permeated and defiled by the leaven of sin would be leavened. The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman (the Church) took and put into three measures of flour (the trinity of the soul - mind, heart and will), until everything was leavened (became holy). The human race was so deeply, strongly, destructively corrupted and defiled through universal sin that to cleanse and renew it, an extraordinary means of salvation was required, possible only in the good, righteous and wise destinies of God - the embassy to earth of the Creator of creation Himself, the Only Begotten Son of God, His incarnation and incarnation and life on earth in the inseparable combination of two natures: Divine and human - personal teaching of people, the Baptism of Him, sinless, in the Jordan for the purification and sanctification of the very nature of the waters, defiled by evil spirits and human passions, and for the granting to people of the mysterious bath of restoration, personal denunciation of human vices (scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod and others), the performance of countless miracles, demonstrating His Divine and omnipotent power over all creature. It was necessary for human nature to fulfill all righteousness and through this satisfy the eternal and perfect righteousness of the Heavenly Father; His innocent sufferings were needed for the immeasurably guilty human race; it was necessary to establish the Divine Supper: Communion of the most pure and life-giving Mysteries of His Body and Blood, by which impurity and corruption of our nature are removed and the holiness of the Divine is introduced into our nature; What was needed was His all-redeeming death for us and victory over death, to which all humanity was captive; What was needed was His victorious Resurrection from the dead and the gift of resurrection to the entire corrupted and consumed by death human race and, finally, what was needed was the Ascension into Heaven with our soul and flesh and the acceptance by humanity of power from the Father over the whole world, over heaven and earth, as He Himself said: ... all power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me (Matthew 28:18). This is what an extraordinary means was required by the mercy and truth of God to restore the fallen human race! It remains for us to thank God for such mercy and with faith and reverence to use the Gospel and all the grace-filled means for our salvation, given by God to His Church. So what? There are people, countless in number, who reject these wonderful, beneficent, wise, all-saving means of salvation and entice others to reject them and reject them for this from the face of God. What will be the end for these people? It's scary to fall into the hands of the living God! ( Heb. 10:31 ) Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord ( Rom. 12:19 ). To what unimaginably high rank is the human race called, firstly, through creation in the image and likeness of God, and secondly, through restoration and redemption from the fall by the Son of God, through the bath of rebirth, or Baptism, sealing with the Holy Spirit, and through Repentance and Communion of the Divine Mysteries - the Body and Blood of the Lord? And the majority of humanity does not appreciate this greatest gift of God, and many, through unbelief, insult this condescension of God and this gift of God! Oh my God! How crafty and unfaithful we are to You, how partial we are to the earth, to decay, to our flesh, to the world that lies in evil! Why are the days of Holy Week called great days? They are called great because on these days the greatest events took place - the suffering and death of the God-man for the human race. These events are so great and significant that if they had not happened, the world and the human race would have perished, like Sodom and Gomorrah or like the first world destroyed by the flood. The world stands because there is a Holy Seed. The Holy Seed is the standing of the world. The world stands because there are elect and saints in the world who pray for the world. The world stands because the number of the elect in Heaven has not been replenished. Yes, these days are great. In these days, the reconciliation of Heaven with earth took place, the curse was lifted from people and blessing was given to believers, death was defeated, resurrection and immortality, or rebirth, were given, the grace of Baptism, Repentance, forgiveness of sins was given, grace upon grace was given. In these great days, through the truth and mercy of God, such events took place that Heaven was horrified and from which the earth trembled like a tree leaf, the mountain rocks cracked, the sun darkened and the bodies of the dead rose and came out of their graves, appearing to many inhabitants in Jerusalem. This is why the days of Holy Week are called great and this is why extraordinary, beneficial events took place during them! Oh, if only the petrified hearts of unbelieving intellectuals, Tolstoyans, Pashkovites, Stundists and schismatics would crack like rocks! So, the elemental and human world still stands and carries out its beneficent course thanks to the fact that in the Church of Christ the cross is firmly erected and the God-Man crucified on it is revered by faith and love, Who, having given Himself up to suffering and death for us, gave His Divine Body and life-giving Blood to renew corrupt human nature, therefore, to this day, the seasons alternate: spring, summer, autumn, winter - and the changes of days and nights do not stop, people and all kinds of animals and the earth do not stop growing all kinds of fruits for human food and enjoyment. O ineffable mercy of God! O long-suffering! O wisdom and infinite truth of God! The Lord has given us so much infinitely, but what have we brought or are we bringing to Him in gratitude? Your accursed, insensitive, insane, multi-passionate, evil life! The Lord exhausted Himself entirely for the salvation of the human race, humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant... and being found in the likeness of a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, death on the cross (Phil. 2:7–8), in order to redeem the human race with His innocent suffering from eternal torment. How much immeasurable goodness and truth of God is here! Angelic, lofty, bright, all-encompassing minds cannot marvel at such condescension of God, mercy, truth and holiness of the Divine, Who cannot allow even the momentary impurity of sin to come into contact with Himself and uses all the power of grace to completely expel it from human nature, from the human soul, created in the image and likeness of God. What humility, what condescension of the beginningless King of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, before Whom the Heavenly Powers revere, from whose gaze Heaven and earth tremble. What an exact fulfillment of the law for us who live in all lawlessness, for He teaches us with all His deeds and words the exact fulfillment of God’s commandments. How He approached us, the unworthy, the Righteous - to the unrighteous, the Sinless - to the wicked and evil, the Most Pure - to those defiled by all kinds of impurities of sins, the Good and Meek - to the rebellious, disobedient, the Impassive - to the multi-passionate! For what? In order to reconcile us with the Father, who were torn from Him by the breath of the serpent of the abyss, to unite sinners with Him and give forgiveness of sins, to bring to life those who were put to death, to teach the proud humility, to the disobedient - obedience, because He Himself was obedient to the Heavenly Father for our sake until death, death on the cross. All the sufferings and immeasurable sorrows of the Lord for us were crowned with His glorious Resurrection from the dead. Death fled from Christ, life reigned and reigns forever and ever. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end... The First and the Last... I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever, Amen; and the imam is the key of hell and death (Rev. 1:8, 17, 18). Where are the scribes, Pharisees, high priests who crucified Christ? They have disappeared, they are no more with all their intrigues and malice, hypocrisy, pride, envy, and the Truth - Christ - reigns forever. Thus truth triumphs and will triumph forever. Through the Resurrection of Christ, humanity is called to a new, incorruptible, heavenly life, Christ destroyed the oath and gave a blessing, destroying death, opened paradise, reconciled us with God the Father, scented the human race with the peace of His Divinity and gave all the necessary strength for life and piety. And reasonable, meaningful people appreciate this gift and try to live up to it and live a new, heavenly life. If you are risen with Christ, seek those on high... philosophize on things above, not on earth (Col. 3:1-2). Why did the Lord Jesus Christ ascend to Heaven and not remain on earth? Firstly, in order to send down to earth to His faithful another Comforter, equal to Him and equally loving, the all-wise, omnipotent Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father (and not from the Son), so that He would dwell forever in the Church of Christ, guide believers to all truth and truth, reflect all lies and untruths in faith and life, confirm in faith and suffering for faith and create signs and wonders in confirmation of true faith in Christ and its salvation for all. Secondly, for this purpose Christ ascended to Heaven, and did not remain on earth, in order to fill with Himself all of heaven, and earth, and the underworld, in order to look from on high at all Christians, His children and followers, in order to see their whole hidden and open life, their works and exploits, to encourage, strengthen, encourage and console them, and thus spread and establish His faith and the Kingdom of God on earth. Just as the leaders of earthly armies during battle ascend to an elevated place and from there vigilantly watch the disposition and actions of the enemy’s and their own troops and make the necessary orders, so the Lord, our Leader and King, in order to see from the heights of heaven the exploits of all those who struggle for His faith on earth, ascended to Heaven to see the secret and obvious exploits for the faith of all those who believe in Him, to help them unceasingly, strengthen and conquer with them and crown them with crowns of victory. What is this strange and wondrous image and method of God’s providence for the salvation of the human race? Beginningless, omnipotent, infinitely wise and righteous, Who could in an instant consign to eternal torment the proud, and the most crafty, and the most evil apostate - Satan and deliver from his destructive temptations the human race, seduced by him and deceived incessantly, still allows him and gives him freedom to tempt and seduce people, and destroy foolish people, passionate for the flesh and the world, and produce countless disasters in the world, and sometimes throw nature itself into confusion through storms, fires, volcanic and destructive eruptions. And what is most amazing of all, This beginningless, omnipotent Creator Himself deigned to humiliate Himself to the utmost in order to save a perishing man, to take the form of a slave and be a man, without ceasing to be God, to suffer and die the most blasphemous, painful death, in order to redeem us with His sufferings from damnation and eternal torment; He deigned to enlighten the human race darkened by sin with His creative words and conversations with people and countless miracles; He deigned to give us the bath of rebirth, or Baptism, the gift of Repentance and Communion of His most pure Body and Blood, and founded the Church on earth as a heavenly school and clinic for weak humanity, where everyone who wants can learn, and be healed, and be renewed, and strengthened, and deified. And what is very surprising, he chose people as educators and doctors of mankind not strong, not wise and not noble, but simple, ignorant, unlearned, simple fishermen, wiser than all the wise men of the world, for the simple and unlearned defeated the nobles, philosophers, kings and kingdoms by the grace of God. And how He, the Creator, worked the grace of the Holy Spirit in all the saints, starting with the apostles! These were earthly angels, trumpets of the Holy Spirit, broadcasting words of life and salvation, enlightenment and renewal. What a wondrous way of saving the human race! The Lord strengthens the weak, enlightens the darkened, renews the corrupt, makes the stinking fragrant, adores the devilish; however, it gives the reason and opportunity for the person himself to achieve, through his own efforts, with the help of grace, the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is acquired by effort, says the Lord, and strong seekers acquire it (cf. Matthew 11:12). Man has been given strength and abilities, given grace, so that he himself can work on cleansing and renewing himself, pray, cry, do alms, and thus deserve God’s mercy and the cleansing of sins and salvation. Marvelous is the struggle between the almighty and righteous Creator, who loves His creation, and between an insignificant, limited, sinful creature, gifted with reason and disobedient to its Creator. Example: the mad king Nebuchadnezzar in a rage throws three pious young men - Ananias, Azariah and Mishael - into a furnace fired seven times - for not worshiping their idol at the sound of symphonies and all kinds of musical instruments and the general senseless and godless worship of the peoples to the golden idol. But the divine desire resists the insane rage of the king and the power of fire - and contrary to the laws of nature, the fire does not burn or turn to ashes the pious admirers of the true God, but irrigates and cools, and, countering the thunder of musical instruments, a song of praise to the one Creator and God is heard among the terrible flames, in which all creatures are called to unanimously praise Him. The king came to his senses at such a terrible obvious miracle and came to know the true God and, by decree, commanded his entire kingdom to honor Him to everyone, although he himself did not cease to be an idolater. Modern God-fighters, Tolstoyans and others! You blaspheme and do not believe in the Creator and Provider, but if you do not want to believe in His existence, goodness, truth, wisdom and power, then you will soon learn in practice His justice and His terrible, unbearable wrath. His wrath will soon kindle (Ps. 2:12), says the psalmist. From the beginning of the creation of the globe, intended for the human race, and starting with the first people, Adam and Eve, a great struggle began on earth against evil, between man and Satan, or the human race against the kingdom of evil spirits. In this struggle between the weak side and the strong, seduced and seducing side, God Himself, the Creator of spirits and all flesh (the human race), takes a fair and humane part. This great struggle has been going on for eight thousand years and must end in the victory of the weak side over the strong, for it is fitting for the Son of God to reign until He places all enemies under His feet; the last enemy, death, will be abolished (cf. 1 Cor. 15:25–26), and a glorious beginning has already been made for this - the descent of the Life-Giver into hell, its destruction and the removal of all prisoners from it with their resurrection from the dead. To fight against God and people, fallen evil spirits use people themselves, although they themselves directly cause a lot of mischief among unbelievers, careless people, addicted to earthly things, and cause a lot of evil in the world. Sometimes people, like ears of corn in a huge field, are reaped by a cruel and long war, sometimes by a pestilence, or a flood, or a hurricane and an earthquake, or a fiery element, countless types of diseases, sorrows, torments, and so on. It would seem, in human terms, why should the Creator fight with an insignificant creature, with the devil and wicked man, such as the pharaohs, Nebuchadnezzars, Herods, Pilates, scribes, Pharisees and high priests, or bring people into the fight against evil spirits or wicked people? But this short-sighted human judgment is extremely erroneous. How much Divine goodness, wisdom, strength, long-suffering, and magnificence of God’s deeds was and is still being manifested in this struggle! This struggle leads to the complete triumph of truth and holiness of the entire Divine economy, to the admonition of lost people, to the return of lost holiness to man, to the confirmation of his will in good, from which he fell away and which he hated, to the march along the right path of God’s commandments, to communion with God and eternal bliss. In this great struggle of man against evil and evil spirits, God Himself helps, and how many people He has revealed as glorious victors in this struggle and spiritual warfare! Let us remember the Old Testament and New Testament righteous people and all the saints who, with God’s help, defeated the primordial enemy - the fighter-devil and his army. What a glorious victory they won over their enemies! What bright crowns you have been awarded in the eternal Kingdom of Glory! And how much patience the Lord showed towards the wicked and towards the demons themselves, who commit various dirty tricks in the human race! How long-suffering the Lord was to all the wicked kings, His tormentors, iconoclasts, and heretics! How much meekness and long-suffering of God showed itself to these wicked people! And after the struggle and victory, everyone shone like the sun, and those who fought were put to shame and inherited a fate worthy of their wickedness, their pride and malice. So, fight, Christian, in this common great struggle, with the help of God, and conquer every sin and its perpetrators, and you will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father! The goal of the struggle is to renew humanity, corrupted by sins, to cleanse the defiled, to bring the unrighteous and sinful to repentance, to renew and strengthen the weak, to scatter the darkened, to heal the sick, to revive the lost, to deify the satanic, to make it godlike. What great deeds worthy of God, His goodness, wisdom, strength and patience! O earthly people, know the works of God in the world and in the Church of God! The Church is the bearer and proclaimer of truth and holiness, the forbearance and long-suffering of God. Outside the Church there is darkness, countless errors, destruction and torment here and in eternity. Amen. About the Church and about truly Christian life, as life in the depths of the church In the Church I am with God, with the saints, and in the world I am with the world in vanity, with sin. Our soul is like a musical instrument: no matter how you tune it, it will produce sounds in accordance with your mood, harmonious or discordant, spiritual or carnal, Godly or demonic. Tune your instrument spiritually, holy, in a Divine way, so that it produces spiritual, divine, holy sounds and echoes. And this is how the Church attunes the soul. We must never forget that all of us, Russian people, and all Orthodox Christians throughout the entire earth constitute one spiritual Body, the Head of which is Jesus Christ, and His soul is the Holy Spirit, Life-giving, sanctifying, strengthening and uniting everyone into one Body with faith and love. And therefore we must feel and recognize ourselves as a single Body, as members of a single Body, and in joy, and in grief, and in sorrow and in illness, sympathize with each other and help, and pray for each other. O Church of God, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic! How majestic, wise, right and saving you are! How great and wonderful and wonderfully exalted is your composition, how great is your articulation: Its head is Christ Himself, He is the head of the body of the Church (Col. 1:18), the helmsman is the Holy Spirit, the head of the mental building of the church is the Most Holy Theotokos, then the whole countless assembly of Angels and all the righteous. What a wonderful host! What a venerable cathedral! Lord, Head of the Church, look down from Heaven and see - here the enemies of Russia, the atheists Tolstoyans, Pashkovites, proud blind intellectuals, Stundists, schismatics, revolutionaries, Finns, Germans, Poles, Japanese and others are building hellish intrigues over Your Church! Hell itself is rushing towards Your Church in the face of all these enemies. Arise to our help, O all-powerful, all-good and all-powerful Head of the Church - Lord Jesus, and soon put to shame all our enemies, internal and external. Yes, Lord, for the sake of Your usual goodness, hear us praying to You, O Almighty King, overthrow the insolence of all our enemies. I write these lines before Your face. You see my faith, hear my prayer, and you will soon do a sign for good with us. Wake up! The Mother of God is completely imbued with the spirit of Christ, Whom She carried in Her womb as the God-man, imbued with the spirit of meekness, humility, goodness, mercy, compassion, holiness of truth, and is always ready to save those who come running to Her with faith and zeal. Therefore, one must always pray to Her diligently, with hope. Lady Theotokos, in You rested the whole being of God’s goodness, holiness, wisdom, mercy, God’s long-suffering towards sinners, all the power of intercession for the Christian race that honors You. You will pray to Your Son, our God, for all those who diligently come to You with prayers of repentance, petition, glorification and thanksgiving. Rejoice, O Blessed One! The Most Holy Virgin Mary is full of grace: both Her conception and birth are a work of grace and mercy of God, for She was asked by a barren mother, and Her conception and birth were predicted by an Angel, and Her entire upbringing was a work of grace, and Her motherhood was a special work of grace, and She Herself thanks God for the greatest grace given to Her from Him, and thereby denounces Catholics who, instead of praising, inflict blasphemy against the Most Holy Theotokos, considering Her perfect and immaculate in conception, birth and life, not subject to redemption from the Lord, while the Archangel-Broadcaster himself called Her Graceful, that is, cleansed from sin and adorned by the grace of God. And She Herself calls the Lord Her Savior: ... My spirit rejoiced in God, My Savior (Luke 1:47). How to reconcile this passage of the Gospel: and the power of your head shall not perish (Luke 21:18) with the present bloody internecine war? These words speak of the apostles, martyrs and martyrs for the name of Christ, for confessing Him before the persecutors, for indeed the Lord preserves all the bones of the apostles and martyrs and not one of them will perish. They live, and their reward is in the Lord. However, these words: the power of your head will not perish - must be understood as a parable and a similarity, not in its own simple sense. A tree is known by its fruits. The Holy Church, planted by the Lord Jesus Christ, has long been known by its fruits. These fruits of it are the holy apostles, martyrs, saints, unmercenaries, fools for Christ's sake, all the righteous, glorified by all sorts of virtues. These are the fruits of the Church. Our atheist Tolstoyans do not want to know these saints of God, who labored on earth for Heaven and brought God the fruit of all virtues. In Heaven, everyone knows what we think, feel, imagine, remember, undertake, intend, write, say and do. The judgments against us are hidden there and will be revealed in due time. Christian and Christian woman, do you feel in your soul an affinity with the Lord, the Mother of God, with the holy Guardian Angel and with the angelic world, with the holy saints of God and do you try to imitate them in strength and live a grace-filled life in faith, love, repentance and virtue? The Orthodox Church helps us to remember this spiritual kinship, to feel it, to rejoice in it and to thank the Lord that from the very birth He Himself included us in His Church and in the community of saints, so that we can say to our fellow members, Orthodox Christians: you are not strangers and aliens, but fellow-fellows of the saints and close to God, having been established on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, having Jesus Christ Himself as the cornerstone (cf.: Eph. 2:19–20). We should especially feel this spiritual affinity during home or public church prayer. Many, through negligence, ignorance, or for various other reasons and vanity, have become so cold towards God, towards faith and towards the Church of God, prayer, that they completely forget that they are members of the Church of God, this great and divine kingdom founded by God, that they have become completely alien to it and many even hate the Church and blaspheme it. By the invisible judgment of God they are cut off from the Church like dead members. There are so many of them lately: Tolstoyans, newspaper scribblers, the majority of the intelligentsia, all carried away by the passion for profit - all are dead to God. The Holy Church daily on weekdays, on Sundays and holidays and on Lenten days offers us readings from the Gospel of all the evangelists, so that we listen and delve into their content and thus learn all sorts of truths - dogmatic and moral, which we need for information and salvation, and do not remain ignorant of saving truths. It has a sweet, enlightening and life-giving effect on the hearts that listen to it with faith. Let us not stand absent-mindedly during worship and ignore the word of God that is offered to us. To add to the essence of revealed faith or to subtract it by human arbitrariness is disastrous. The holy apostle and evangelist John the Theologian at the end of his book “Apocalypse” adds: I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds anything to them, God will put on him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away anything from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the book of life and from the holy city and from what is written in this book. He who testifies to this says: Hey, I am coming quickly! ( Rev. 22:18–20 ). What the Apostle John said about his book, the Orthodox Church can say about its Creed, because the Creed, like the book “Apocalypse,” is a saying of the Holy Spirit and any addition to the Creed, no matter how it is done without any need and contrary to the teaching of the Creed, entails separation from God and from eternal life. The Apostle Paul says: if we or an angel from heaven tell you anything other than what we preached, let him be accursed (cf. Gal. 1:8). This is how firmly we must adhere to the truth of God, handed down to us by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, His Apostles and the holy God-bearing Fathers of the Ecumenical and Local Councils! No pope and no papal rank or Catholic council can, without depriving themselves and their followers of the aspirations of eternal life, change the Creed, based entirely on the Gospel and on the exact words of the Savior Himself, and if Catholics changed the Creed in its eighth member, adding about the Holy Spirit that He also proceeds from the Son, then they deprive themselves and all Catholics of agreement with the Gospel and communion with Christ and the Spirit To the saints about whom lies were spoken, contrary to the clear words of the Gospel, and the pope blasphemously and falsely appropriated to himself the title of infallible, as if to cover up any religious lie. Is there at least one pope among the saints since the 8th century? There is none. Just as in the teaching of faith one must firmly adhere to the truth according to the Gospel, even to the iota, even to a single word, so in life one must adhere to the law of God even to the iota, even to a single thought, for even a single unrighteous thought is an abomination to the Lord. Until heaven and earth pass away, one jot, or one tittle will not pass from the law, until they all will be (Matthew 5:18). This is what Orthodoxy is all about! What faith on earth contains such a firm, wise and saving truth as our Orthodox Christian faith, which is constantly and daily manifested in practice? What faith preaches such an approach of God to man through the incarnation of the Son of God and His life on earth with His wonderful, all-enlightening teaching, with such life-giving worship and Sacraments as rebirth through Baptism with water and the Holy Spirit, Confirmation, Communion of the most pure Body and Blood of Christ for purification, renewal, enlightenment, confirmation, deification and eternal life? In which of the countless faiths on earth does the Lord deign to unite so deeply, so closely with man, as in the Orthodox faith at the Divine Liturgy, giving Himself, His most pure Body and Blood, as the food and drink of eternal life and in the perfect renewal of a human being corrupted to the marrow of the bones? He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I am in him!.. and I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:56, 54). In the Catholic faith, which claims truth and infallibility, glaring inconsistencies and deviations from the truth have appeared: the laity is not given the most pure Blood of Christ and is considered unnecessary in a separate form; instead of the primacy of Christ, they preach the absurd viceroy of the pope and completely obscure Christ; The proskomedia in the liturgy was destroyed, instead of leavened bread they give unleavened bread as a sign of their Catholic enmity towards Orthodoxy, faithful to the covenants of the Savior; the laity are not allowed to read the Bible and the Gospel for fear that the laity will expose the pope and his bishops of heresy; they recognize the supererogatory virtues of the saints, as if the pope could impute them to Catholics who are meager in good deeds; They wrongly believe in the purgatory of souls, which is not recognized by the Universal Church. It is not worth talking about the insufficiency of salvation and the falsity of Protestantism and Reformation, as special faiths: everything there is perverted, the entire system of faith and worship. What can we say about Mohammedanism, Judaism and paganism? This is not faith, but fanaticism, not the truth, but a destructive satanic lie. Oh, how we, Orthodox Christians, must value our faith and firmly live by it and be saved, accepting the end of faith, the salvation of souls (1 Pet. 1:9), according to the word of the Apostle Peter. Catholics fell into a great error by establishing a new dogma about the immaculate conception of the Ever-Virgin. Having allowed the virgin conception by Her parents, Joachim and Anna, and the virgin birth, they thereby refute the teaching about the universality of sin and its inheritance by the entire human race and, thus, consider the Blessed Virgin not subject to redemption and salvation, for from what can one redeem, from what can one save one who has no sin, conceived immaculately! Meanwhile, the Mother of God Herself says: My spirit rejoiced in God, My Savior (Luke 1:47). A little leaven leavens the whole lump (1 Cor. 5:6). The Catholic leaven of pride, predominance and supremacy in the Church of the Pope has fermented all Catholicism with pride, lies, hypocrisy, untruth, double-mindedness, fanaticism, anger, bitterness towards Orthodoxy and the Orthodox, intransigence, false dogmas, invented not for glorification, but for the desecration of the Church of God, for desecration of its truth and for greater and greater alienation from Christ and from His Church. Who will know and describe this destructive, devilish leaven placed by the proud popes in the heavenly immaculate faith of Christ, and the misfortune of all Catholicism from the wrongness of faith! Righteous God, cleanse Your faith from the wisdom of the unrighteous, from this leaven of the evil one! What kind of faith in the world is imbued with such truth, justice, love, wisdom, omnipotence, such vitality as the Christian, Orthodox faith, preaching the incarnation of the Son of God Himself for the sake of the salvation of perishing humanity and the foundation by Christ of a society of those saved - the Church, in which His Flesh and Blood are taught as food and drink to the faithful for the sake of purification, sanctification, renewal and bliss fallen man and the dissolution of the rational creature with the Divine. Add to this the establishment of the grace of the Priesthood, Baptism, or rebirth from the Holy Spirit, Confirmation, Marriage, Blessing of Anointing, the establishment of daily, Sunday, holiday and Lenten services, teaching fasts for the sinful flesh, all kinds of prayers, public and private, for various occasions in civil and family life, the performance of countless miracles of God through holy relics, miraculous icons, apparitions God Himself, the Mother of God and the saints at different times - and you will see the immeasurable superiority of our faith over all faiths in the world and you will never want to leave such a faith or move to another, because there is only one saving faith, as God is one and there is one truth. What a precious asset is our Orthodox faith! How many and how conveniently good-minded people of all ages were saved in it! How destructive heresies the holy fathers of all the Ecumenical and Local Councils stopped and cut off, and how many holy and godly fathers labored in defense of the right-saving faith! How we should love them, thank them, revere them, honor them with all our souls, how we should thank the Lord! Our fathers founded the light on the earth, and guided us all to the true faith, Most gracious, glory to Thee (troparion of the fathers on the 7th Sunday after Easter, tone 8)! How firmly we must hold on to our faith and not, for any reason, fall away from it and not be seduced into heresies and sects! How worthily we must behave as Orthodox Christians and heirs of the future heavenly title! The Lord knows His own beings, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness (2 Tim. 2:19). The Most Holy Lady Theotokos lived with a heavenly spirit, was entirely in God, in His law, learning and always abiding in Him, and was completely alien to all worldly attachments. Likewise, all the saints were alien to worldly passions, living solely by God and in God; everything in them was God: thought, desire, faith, hope, lust and fiery love, vision and contemplation, and deep self-knowledge, peace, joy and cheerfulness. Do we try to think, speak, and act in such a way that God, our life, our treasure, our wisdom, our beauty and splendor, will be in us in every way and everything? Read the works of the holy fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephraim the Syrian and other saints. What a spirit they had, what a heavenly flight, what contempt for all the delights of the world - for what values ​​the world so highly, what is seduced by it, what makes it delirious, what hurts and why it rages! They were heavenly on earth, they walked only with their feet on the earth, but with their hearts they were in Heaven. After the truth of the existence of God, there is no stronger truth than the truth of the immortality of the human soul. I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:32), that is, the souls of the dead Abraham, Isaac and Jacob after their release from the body are not dead, but alive, for all are alive for Him. Thus, the Lord Himself testifies to the immortality of human souls after death. In this life, few, few people know themselves - they live, as it were, in the dreams of dreams and practice in vain affairs. The terrible hour of death will show them at once their terrible dream, but it will be too late, there will be no return, the exposure of all life’s falsehood and true deeds of truth and light will come. The wise Solomon, who became vanity like all mortals, was given the opportunity to know in what constant vanity all people are immersed, and he loudly proclaimed to the human world: Vanity of vanities... all is vanity (Eccl. 12:8), all sons of men are naturally vanity. He finally learned the following truth: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is everything for man (cf. Eccl. 12:13), the whole task of life, all his good. All the saints lived and turned in the truth of God, these true philosophers, true Christian heroes, fighters against vanity and all sin, followers of truth and virtue, true knowers of themselves and God, His true lovers. Many Christians do not believe that, in addition to time, there is an imperishable eternity and, in addition to this visible and transitory world, there is an invisible, imperishable, infinite, that this life is given to satisfy the highest needs of man, spiritual, to prepare for eternity, to fight evil and defeat it, to cultivate in oneself all virtue and to strengthen the union with God, for the triumph over sinful corruption, for the acquisition of an incorruptible crown through love and loyalty to the righteous and all-good Creator, through the fulfillment of His commandments. How pitifully unbelievers and insane freethinkers perish! Let them come to their senses while there is still time for them to come to their senses. We need to do things... while it is day; the night comes when no one can work (John 9:4). Test yourself and ask yourself whether you loved the truth and hated lawlessness with all your soul, as absurd, senseless, ungodly and disastrous. Two centuries are determined by the Creator for every person: the present - short, preparatory and the future - eternal, spiritual, blissful or painful. Do not slumber or sleep, O man, in this century, but constantly prepare for the future with prayer, repentance and good deeds. Believe firmly in God the Creator, Father and righteous Judge and in His Church, created on earth for our preparation, for teaching, purification, healing, sanctification and confirmation. Thank God for everything prepared for you, use all the gifts of God for your good and bliss. Amen. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass by (Matthew 24:35). A wonderful change will happen to heaven and earth: there will be a new heaven and a new earth, incorruptible, spiritual, just as the bodies of people resurrected and changed will be spiritual and incorruptible. There is a spiritual body and there is a spiritual body (cf.: 1 Cor. 15:44). Glory to the goodness, wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator! What kind of people should we be, Christians, who are promised by God to be spectators and heirs of this new heaven and earth! How we must despise the corruptible and ascend to the incorruptible and heavenly! After all, everything visible is temporary, but everything invisible is eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). Meanwhile, our hearts are sick with corruption, addiction to perishable things and negligence towards incorruptible things. All humanity, fallen and subject to corruption, suffers from earthly corruption, addiction to bodily beauty, to gold and silver, to various jewelry, and how little do Christians, called to the incorruptible, eternal Kingdom, care about decorating the soul with immortal virtue! What is the most solid, infallible, and sure hope of a true Christian? The hope of eternal life and eternal reward. Its fulfillment was achieved by all who truly labored in the spirit of the Church and all the saints. What is the most false, deceptive, disappearing, dreamy hope? The hope of earthly happiness, earthly blessings: health, longevity, wealth, earthly glory, honors, entertainment, earthly victories, various benefits. Were the saints deceived in their hope, in their exploits until the end of their lives? No. Those who collected earthly wealth, who sought earthly glory and honors, were not cruelly and forever mistaken? Isn't everything earthly smoke disappearing? There is nothing more holy and truer than the Church of God, its teachings, worship, Sacraments and hierarchy, and there is nothing more deceptive than the world and pleasing it. Everyone wants to live! What is more valuable than life? Life is sweet to everyone. And life from Who? From one God! Do you want to die, do you want to suffer forever or not? Oh, no, no, and one hour of torment is sometimes unbearable! What is it like to suffer forever! And faith, truth, repentance, virtue, self-denial, and mortification of passions lead to eternal life. Do you want to live, and live forever? How can you not want to! So repent immediately and correct yourself, call on the Lord God for help - He is near us, like a mother near her infant. There is an endless primary hypostatic life, from which the life of all intelligent, verbal and dumb creatures originated. Intelligent and verbal creatures received existence in the image and likeness of God, in the image of His wisdom, goodness, truth, peace, bliss, freedom, strength, immortality. Purely intelligent Forces, or incorporeal Angels, for the most part maintained their rank, goodness and obedience to the Creator, and many, led by the Lucifer, or Satan, did not resist and fell in a terrible fall, an eternal fall, they attracted sensual-verbal creatures, the human race, to sin, through the first couple - Adam and Eve, and together with sin - to damnation and eternal destruction, making them participants in all kinds of deadly passions, sorrows, illnesses and countless different deaths. Fallen evil spirits, led by their king, Satan, with all their strength, intelligence and cunning, persistence and importunity, strive to forever separate man from God, from His endless life, truth, peace, bliss, beauty and unite him with himself, putting into him their wickedness, their malice, hostility, impurity, envy, disobedience to God, rebellion and complete alienation from Him. What is required on the part of every Christian is a constant struggle against militant all-armed sin, faith in God, the Savior, in His Church, unceasing prayer, God’s help, for without God we cannot do anything good, but can only sin incessantly. And so our life on earth is a constant war with sin, with the world and with our many-passionate flesh. Yes, there is an infinite personal Life, which gave us life in His image and from which we fell away of our own free will, and to which we must strive through faith, attention to ourselves, zeal for doing the commandments of God and unceasing repentance. There is infinite Beauty, which created us in the image of Its beauty, which we have lost, having disfigured ourselves with sin. There is an infinite sweetness of God's being, which we have lost, having been seduced by the sweetness of sin. There is an infinite hypostatic Reason, from Which we fell away and fell into the madness of all kinds of sins and passions. There is infinite freedom, which we have lost by enslaving ourselves to wordless passions, for everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (Jn. 8:34), according to the word of the Lord, and therefore we must all strive for spiritual freedom through sincere repentance and virtue, especially through love for God and mutual love for each other. So, our whole life must be spent in the struggle against sins and in the pursuit of holiness and truth. One lawyer asked Jesus Christ: Teacher! What must I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, “What is written in the law?” how do you read? He answered and said: You shall love the Lord your God... and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:25–27). What a simple and firm word about the most important matter of our temporary, preparatory and educational life: just love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, and you will live and reign forever. How simply the most important question of life is solved! But do we necessarily solve it by doing it ourselves? It is this question that we must resolve briefly and clearly with all firmness. Hypostatic, eternal life is love. God is love, and life consists in the love of rational creatures for God. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16); Death lies in enmity: if you hate your brother, you are a murderer (1 John 3:15), says the teacher of love, the beloved disciple of Christ. He who does not love has not known God, because God is love (1 John 4:8). The first and main commandment in the law of God: love the Lord your God with all your heart (Matthew 22:37) and so on, but the fulfillment of this commandment encounters many obstacles from our many-passionate flesh, the adulterous and sinful world, or from wicked people and the devil, who has placed his destructive nets everywhere. We must constantly fight and defeat all these enemies and stand firmly in the love of God. If any person stands in the way of our path to God, there is an addiction to him - away with this person, leave him, even if they are father, mother, brothers, sisters - in general, relatives, or friends, or loved ones with unclean love. If wealth and the pleasures of the belly hinder the love of God, let us squander wealth, let us love fasting. Another commandment: love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39). If worldly love for any persons, for honor and glory, for money, for luxury, for the belly, for the flesh, poses an obstacle to this love, let us reject all worldly love and love our neighbor with all our hearts, caring for him as for ourselves, for our flesh, for our soul. The saints serve as excellent examples and models of active love for us. Let us imitate them in strength, with the help of God. Everyone who strives will abstain from everyone else, so that he may receive the imperishable crown of life (cf. 1 Cor. 9:25). An obstacle to the love of God and neighbor is our addiction to our flesh and to the satisfaction of whims and passions - our so-called friendship with the ungodly flesh - carnal delights (enjoyment of sleep, food and drink, sexual pleasures), and therefore, according to the Apostle, we need to crucify our flesh with passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24), conquering all delusion as a dream harmful. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37). Why with all my heart? Because the Lord created the whole heart for Himself in order to live in it, and not just in part, and also because our heart is simple and cannot serve two masters - God and Belial, or wealth (see: Matt. 6:24), it is indivisible. And if you retreat even one iota in your heart from God, then the enemy, the devil, who is constantly seeking to devour us, will not hesitate to take it all over (see: 1 Pet. 5:8). This is a psychological law! Having a double heart is extremely dangerous and harmful. Glory to You, God, who simply created human hearts and commanded us to think, desire and do everything in simplicity and avoid in every possible way the wickedness of sin and the devil. The source and culprit of all wickedness is the devil. Deliver us, Lord, from the evil one (cf. Matthew 6:13). Raise me from aphids, O God (irmos, tone 2, song 6). We all suffer in different ways from corruption, from choking passions, but we are negligent of God’s love, cold towards our Creator and Benefactor. We strive to get rich materially with all our might, but we are not rich in God, we are begging. Some people have a lot, a lot of money and all kinds of wealth, but there is no God in their heart at all. There is a lot of envy of other people's goods and possessions, but there is no sincere goodwill. The Lord gives you all of Himself as your inheritance, man, His entire being, Divine and human, most pure, incorruptible, immortal, all-righteous, all-blessed, all-wise. Why don’t you accept such inexhaustible, imperishable wealth, why do you run from it, chasing after the perishable, after the dust, after the soapy disappearing bubbles? Why do you impose cruel bonds on yourself? Come into yourself, look around, look around! Humanity, especially Christian peoples, is in a struggle with the primordial enemy of God and man, according to the justice and mercy of God, and in this struggle the good qualities of souls created in the image of God are developed, as if in a vice, and come out of them pure (purified) and firm in faith and virtue. Through this struggle of temptations, the all-wise and all-good Creator tests souls, like gold in a crucible. The struggle of Christians with the ancient serpent, Satan, was allowed by the righteous, holy, wise, omniscient God in order to evoke the innermost impulses and aspirations and feelings of gratitude and love for God, patience and devotion lying in the depths of the human being, and on the other hand, to reveal the passions of the human heart. Remember with what joy, with triumph, with complete devotion to God and gratitude, Christians went to all kinds of torments, infinitely fierce and varied, all the saints went and what crowns they were honored to receive from God! How rich in virtue is human nature - truly godlike! But how crafty and evil it is sometimes! All these feelings, aspirations, impulses and forces would remain undisclosed in the depths of the human being if temptations, persecutions, misfortunes and troubles were not allowed. Thanks be to God, who has so provided and provides for the human race, which He knows better than all of us, as its Creator. May God be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). The Lord, as the Creator and Spirit, all-filling, infinite, wants to be all in all (all in all): light, and strength, and grace, and wisdom, and beauty, and extreme desire, and all-powerful desire, and the devil, fallen by pride and disobedience, also wants to be all in all fallen spirits of the same mind with him: hellish darkness and power evil, all the vices and the desire for everything evil. From here comes a constant struggle against evil in people, and a Christian man, who has been given all the strength for life and piety, must emerge victorious by the grace of God from this persistent and cruel struggle, sometimes to the point of death, as was the case with the martyrs. All are destined for disgrace, but only one receives honor. So you (and you Christians) may comprehend (1 Cor. 9:24). For our struggle against sin for the sake of the eternal life, God has allowed the disembodied enemies the will to seduce us, so that by fighting them we can regain that state of fidelity, obedience and devotion that we lost in paradise, and through the struggle with sin, illness and various misfortunes (as Job strengthened his soul in virtue) to be worthy of our Lord, to whom we turned out to be unfaithful and traitors in paradise. Tempt them and find them worthy of yourself... and like sacrificial fruitfulness you will accept them (cf.: Wis. 3, 5-6). The world is an arena, or a place of exploits, in which everyone strives or tries to appear to struggle, but not everyone receives a reward, but only the one who wins. The world is a place of asceticism of people of every kind, rank and status in their various deeds, good or bad, a place of development of the strengths and abilities of everyone: priest, bishop, deacon, warrior, merchant, artisan, writer, king and subject, official or teacher and educator and others. Our sinful body, like a dark and rough cloud, prevents us from seeing God, His goodness and ineffable beauty and enjoying Him, drawing us to rough, earthly, transitory pleasures. Our Christian duty is to penetrate with all our might through this dark veil, this cloud of passions and go out to the mental Sun of Truth - Christ through contemplation, prayer, abstinence, purity, love, patience. O adulterous and sinful world, hostile to God and human salvation! You are trying with all your might to tear away the children of God, children of Christian parents, from water and the Spirit, from God and from eternal life, for you are raising them in your seditious apostate spirit - in the spirit of secular passionate writers who dream only of so-called earthly blessings, of pleasures and successes, tearing them away from God, from Heaven, from the Church, from her heavenly, holy, blessed and eternal verbs. It is little merit of man before God to give birth to one like himself or to be born himself. This is the work of God, the work of nature or nature, characteristic of all animals. There are many born who would rather not have been born - such are all the villains, unrepentant apostates, heretics, murderers, suicides, drunkards, adulterers, as King Herod was, money lovers, covetous people, traitors to the right faith, regicides, haters and scolders of their parents, and others. There is no merit in giving birth or being born. And a merit before God is to raise a child and make him or the person himself become a good member of the family, a devoted member of the state and a good, believing Christian. How unworthy of the human soul, created in the image of God, is every earthly passion that humiliates it and chains it to the earth and decay, instead of allowing it to ascend to its own God, the First Source and Eternal Life, and separating it from God and making it alien to Him! How envious is the human eye, wanting to take possession of the whole world and envying those who own earthly goods, although he already has enough of them! What a desecration of one’s spiritual nature, which must strive for spiritual, eternal blessings! Whoever values ​​corruptible things excessively and incorrectly devalues ​​God Himself and his immortal soul, created for God, for Heaven, for immortality, for the eternal contemplation of the glory of God and eternal bliss. Do not hide for yourself treasures on earth, where worms and aphids smolder, and where people (visible and invisible) dig and steal; hide for yourself a treasure in heaven, where neither worms nor aphids smolder, and where people do not dig up or steal (Matthew 6:19-20) - wise and all-joyful words that should always be remembered, and about which to think, and which to carry out. We are all guilty of being accustomed to seeking, and acquiring, and hiding our treasures on earth, and not in Heaven. The construction of magnificent, sometimes unnecessary houses, the accumulation of wealth and addiction to them, greed, stinginess, cruelty towards the poor, addiction to the female sex, to decorations, earthly distinctions, advantages, ranks often occupy all our thoughts and tie us exclusively to the earth, to decay, and we forget about the honor of a high title and about heavenly gifts and blessings, which the eye cannot see and the ear cannot Hearing, and not sighing in a person’s heart (1 Cor. 2:9), we forget that we are included in the number of heavenly citizens by Baptism and the seal of the Holy Spirit and for residence in Heaven. Humanity is in a disastrous, deplorable state of sinful storm and unrest. We must always tearfully pray to God for people - that He may quench the demonic storm of sins and passions and direct humanity to the quiet haven of His holy will. People, like a barren fig tree, dress in a deceptive appearance without inner fruit, without good deeds, since in order to bear fruit, one needs the work of self-examination, self-deepening, constant repentance and prayer, and few people are diligent in such work. How few are truly humble, merciful, hungry and thirsty for the truth, pure in heart, seeking peace and holding on to it, loving the truth and enduring persecution for it! Why? Because they don’t want to delve deeper into themselves and know themselves. Because their own emptiness and impurity frighten them, and they voluntarily turn their eyes away from it in order to live in a constant mirage and self-deception. At the Second Last Judgment of God, the majority of those who call themselves Christians, and, moreover, Orthodox, will turn out to be a thousand times worse than pagans, Mohammedans, Jews due to their negligence, spiritual hibernation and ignorance of themselves, and will be sent into total darkness and into fiery Gehenna - these are pigs who have trampled the priceless pearls of Christ, faith in Christ and His Church, His teachings and Sacraments; dogs returning to their vomit, a washed pig wallowing in the mud again (cf. 2 Pet. 2:22). The Kingdom of Heaven is like a hidden treasure in a village, which a person found in secret, and goes out of joy over it, and sells everything he has, and buys that field (village) (cf. Matthew 13:44). What kind of treasure is this? The human soul, created in the image and likeness of God, is hidden and suppressed by countless passions. What is a field? This is an adulterous and sinful world, oppressing the soul, or our sinful flesh is like a great field overgrown with thorns of passions. Few find this treasure, few care about the soul and its salvation, everyone is almost occupied with everyday passions for their flesh, about pleasing the belly, about acquiring wealth, honor, and earthly glory. Remember the parable of those called to supper: many are called, but few are chosen (Matthew 20:16). The saints found this treasure and, rejoicing in it, followed Christ, abandoned all worldly addictions, sold their possessions and, through rejecting addiction to the flesh and the world, acquired this field, this treasure - their immortal soul and inherited eternal life. Remember the words of the Lord: ... there is no one who would leave home... or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land... and would not have received now... a hundred times more... but in the age to come eternal life (Mark 10:29–30) Do not hide for yourselves treasures on earth, where worms and aphids smolder, and where they dig up and steal (Matthew 6:19). We all sin, each in our own measure, in that we hide treasures for ourselves not in Heaven, but on earth, in corruption, and not in incorruptibility. We are all often slaves of the passionate and corruptible flesh, slaves of an adulterous and sinful world, and not of the spirit, not of Christ, the King of Heaven and earth, who came to deliver us from slavery to corruption and sin. What are our daily worries and sorrows, our pursuits and searches? Their objects are vanity of vanities, the pleasures of the womb, the increase of wealth, consolation with games, songs, dances, shows, and costumes. Who cares about repentance, correction, unceasing contemplation of God, striving for Heaven and immortality or for blissful eternity? Few, few. By God's truth and mercy, Christian, you have been granted the honor of a glorious struggle for the truth of God, for faith and the cross, Divine help in the struggle and a glorious victory with an eternal crown. To him who overcomes I will give to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also conquered and sat with My Father on His throne (Rev. 3:21). The Sabbath is also reserved for the people of God, said the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews (cf. Heb. 4:9). “Sabbath” means “rest” in Hebrew. By Sabbath, granted to the people of God, we mean eternal rest, prepared for the righteous and sinners who repented and worked here for the glory of God. Let us also work so that in the next century we will be rewarded with the peace of the righteous. Everyone flows to the lists, but only one receives honor. Teach this, that you may comprehend (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24). Therefore, here, in the short time of existence on earth, everyone must work in repentance and all virtue. Let us remember the eternal Sabbath prepared for those who labor legally. Glory to Thee, Lord, who is the Sabbath-keeper for our sake and prepares for us an eternal Sabbath. In My Father's house there are many abodes... I go to prepare a place for you, and if I prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself, so that where I am, you also may be (John 14:2-3). What fatherly love is visible in these words, what consolation of the Father to his children before separation from them! Glory to Thee, Jesus, King of the ages! And when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face (Matthew 6:17). I wash my face daily with clean water and wash my body in a bathhouse; I wash my underwear and don’t like to walk around in dirty or sweaty clothes; We repair a dilapidated house, fix it, or build a new one; wash plates, cups, all utensils; we clean metal or wooden and stone things; the floors in our houses, in my churches - in general, we try to keep all things clean. All the more so, it is necessary to cleanse the soul - it is extremely soiled, desecrated, corrupted by sins, covered with mold and sinful rust, penetrating deep into the soul. It makes the soul incommunicable with God, for what communication is there between light and darkness, righteousness and lawlessness? (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14). The Lord called with a loud voice: Lazarus! get out. And the dead man came out, wrapped hand and foot in graveclothes, and his face was bound with a scarf (John 11:43–44). Lord, our Creator! How powerful is Your word, destroying death and calling the dead Lazarus to life! So You daily call my soul to life, dying every day by sins, for the sake of Your name, for the sake of Your goodness, through the repentance granted to me by You. Thank you, my Belly! In this evil time, many are ashamed to repent, and even justify themselves in sins and do not consider sin as sin, but the more strictly the Righteous Judge will judge them. Repentance is the greatest gift to a sinner who believes in Him who alone has the power to justify the repentant wicked. And only Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, has the power to forgive sins (cf. John 1:29). All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me (Matthew 28:18). The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6). He gave us the power from the Heavenly Father to forgive sins and bring into paradise those who repented with all their souls, just as He brought in the prudent thief who believed and proclaimed: ... remember me, Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom (cf. Luke 23:42). Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5). Unless you have borne the Flesh of the Son of Man or drunk His Blood, you have no life within you (John 6:53) - the perfect, immutable truth in the mouth of the perfect Teacher-Christ. Man himself is so deeply damaged, corrupted by sin, that he must certainly be reborn or born again in order to receive being again, as if resurrected from the dead. Without eating the Flesh of the Life-Giver and drinking His Blood, man cannot have true life, which he lost through sin in Adam. Horrible molestation! Extraordinary measures for restoration and renewal - the incarnation of the Son of God, His life in the flesh, His personal teaching, miracles, suffering, the Cross, death, descent into hell, victory over hell, Resurrection, Ascension. Think about this and fear sin like fire! Hate him, he is madness, senselessness, absurdity, separation from the Source of Life, the perception of death and combination with the chief of death - the devil. What woman, having ten drachmas, if she loses one drachma, does not light a candle and sweep the room and search carefully until she finds it, and when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors and says: rejoice with me: I have found the lost drachma. So, I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:8-10). A very significant and touching parable! The Savior likens the soul of a sinful man to a coin lost by a woman (Church). On this coin the royal image is the immortal image of God. A woman lights a candle (light is the word of God) and with its help sweeps the room (the soul, closed and suppressed by worldly addictions and the darkness of passions, like rubbish), and searches carefully (we must look for the sinner in order to save him with conviction and love), and finds, returning him to the path of repentance. From this parable it is clear how dear the human soul is to the Lord, having in itself the image of the immortal King God, and how He carefully searches for it, lost and perishing in countless passions or worldly addictions, enlightening it with His word and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. It is also clear from the parable how man himself little or does not value his soul, this royal drachma, and sweeps it into the mud and into the corruption of passions, often ruining it irrevocably. The Church, or the shepherds of the Church, must carefully seek out the lost and save them by the grace and power given to them by God. “Peace be with you,” the Lord proclaimed to His disciples, appearing to them after the Resurrection from the dead (Luke 24:36; John 20:19). As the most precious good for their souls, the Lord gave them His Divine peace - peace with God, peace with themselves and their neighbors. This peace is communicated to believers for their love of God and keeping His commandments. This world cannot dwell in a soul that is partial to the world and its imaginary blessings, to earthly decorations, to one’s own or someone else’s flesh. In fact, how can God dwell in a person who is guilty or partial, for example, to money, when this vile addiction possesses his heart and turns him away from God? The lover of money becomes alien to God, humiliates Him, regards Him as nothing, drives Him out of his thoughts and from his heart. In the soul of a money lover there is no place for God, Who is the Source of all goods, from Whom our existence and all blessings come: breath, food, drink, clothing, housing, health, forgiveness of sins, enlightenment of the soul, peace, light, joy, every success in good deeds. Peace is given by God to a soul freed from passions. Why is there no peace in the state, in the Church? Because people have turned away from God, the Source and King of the world, from the Church, the guardian and bearer of God’s peace; everyone went by God’s side, which is why He went by side to them and gave gifts of peace to the pagan Japanese; That is why in all classes of Russian people there is confusion, disorder, disobedience and disobedience. How did the holy saints of God reach the world? By putting off the old man with his deeds, by crucifying the flesh with passions and lusts, and by various deeds of virtue. A damp tree does not quickly succumb to fire and be engulfed by it, but gradually, and when the fire takes power over it, it soon ignites and becomes all fiery - this is what happens with a sinful soul. The longer she stays away from God, the more she becomes coarse, stout and does not easily succumb to the power of God’s grace due to her laziness, earthiness, coldness, and impurity. As a person exerts effort over himself, diligence, and diligence in prayer, it becomes refined, spiritualized, warmed, purified and made accessible to grace and, finally, everything becomes as if on fire. Examples are countless saints of God. A person is capable of changing every day and even minute. Yes, a person can change, if he wants, for good or bad, he can acquire the wealth of faith, repentance, tears (like Mary of Egypt or David and others), he can become poor and stripped of all virtue and put on all malice and various passions (Judas and all unrepentant sinners). Blessed Augustine says that everyone can become either a holy seed or the opposite. But we all, with open face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). The Transfiguration of the Lord on Tabor raises our thoughts and hearts to spiritual, internal transformation in the image and likeness of God. The devil has transformed, or distorted, us in his absurd and nasty image and likeness, seeding in our souls countless passions and lusts that corrupt and defile and separate our souls from God. We must throw off this nasty aphid of passions and be completely transformed into the image and likeness of God. If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come after Me (Matthew 16:24). If your hand causes temptation, cut it off and throw it away from you; if the eye offends, pluck it out and throw it away from you; if a foot offends you, cut it off (cf. Matthew 18:8–9) and so on. This is a parable. Under the hand, foot (and not the arms and legs), the eye, or the eye of the gums (and not the eyes), of course, is our active soul, the instruments of which are all the organs of the body. This means that if your soul, created in the image and likeness of God in truth and the likeness of truth, is tempted by sins, passions, and the delights of the world, then uproot these passions or objects from your heart, although they have turned through repetition into your nature, they have become, as it were, your hand, your foot, your eye. Why is the word added: your right hand, your right eye (cf. Matthew 5:29–30)? In order to indicate by this that we were created at the beginning in righteousness, without any admixture of sin and wickedness, but we fell away from righteousness and accepted various wickednesses into our souls and therefore must in every possible way achieve righteousness of spirit: renew the spirit of righteousness in my womb (Ps. 50:12). When pronouncing these parables, the Lord often used the expressions: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not your whole body should be cast into Gehenna (Matthew 5:29), where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:44). With these words: Gehenna, the fire does not go out, the worm does not die - He means the reality of eternal torment prepared for unrepentant sinners. We will be unrequited if, forewarned of such terrible justice of God, we remain unrepentant and do not correct ourselves. Rather, let us quickly correct ourselves and immediately crucify our fates and passions and cast them away from ourselves. The church of the Lord is holy, and this church is you (cf. 1 Cor. 3:17). One unrighteous thought separates a sinful person from God (even more so sins), if we do not immediately repent in word and deed. Let us remember the words of the Savior: if your eye offends you, pluck it out, cut it off: it is better for you that one of your members perish, and not that your whole body is cast into Gehenna (cf. Matt. 18:9, 5:29). Passions are like limbs and the more they intensify, the more they take root in the heart and the more they move away from God. Finally, how will this separation end? Eternal damnation and consignment to eternal fire. Fear sin, beware of it with all your might. Put on the whole armor of God. The Lord gave everyone a pointer to see His path and not sin; this pointer is conscience and His commandments. Know God and your little world, man, Christian, have Christ in your heart, cleave to Him alone, lust for Him alone, love, and consider everything in the material world as rubbish and do not cleave to anything, so that you do not lose the one thing you need. Consider everything earthly as dust and a beautiful soap bubble. Let us leave earthly and corruptible things to the earth, and all that is beautiful and sweet, like dust and ashes, let us yield to dust and to those who, through foolishness and addiction, cling their hearts to the dust, not respecting the high nobility of their soul, created in the image of God; Let us ourselves raise our spiritual gaze to the heights - to God and His incorruptible, holy, beautiful Kingdom, which has no end, and thus we will live more with our minds and hearts. Everyone who leaves home, or father, or mother, or wife for the sake of the Kingdom will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life (cf. Matthew 19:29), says the Lord. Try to be impartial and not hypocritically loving people of every condition and quality, regardless of person, title, wealth and poverty. Strictly control your thoughts and heartfelt feelings and do not for a minute allow your heart to be cunning and submit to its whims; Be a servant of God, and not a slave of your passions and the whims of the evil one. Have we acquired the taste of prayer, repentance and praise of God? Do we feel the need for unceasing prayer, repentance, have we learned to despise and hate the absurd, ugly and deadly sin that separates us from God, and to love, respect, highly value virtue and succeed in it, ascending from strength to strength, from virtue to virtue, despising all sinful charms as destructive? Until the heart and mind have acquired the taste of prayer, a person prays reluctantly, lazily, forcedly and absent-mindedly, but when the soul has entered into the taste of prayer and tastes peace, sweetness and consolation from the Lord, then it will not want to lag behind the contemplation of the Lord and from conversation with Him. The Lord gives so much consolation to those who are diligent in prayer! Thus He changes the soul, the very face of the person praying becomes bright and pleasant, just as the Lord’s face was illuminated on Tabor. Prayer is needed not for God, but for you, lazy prayer-book or not praying at all; she is strength, light, food and drink for your soul, your protection, your guard, your safety. Sitting inside you, deeply wrapped in every kind of sin, is your stupid, capricious, wayward and evil sick child and together an old, decrepit man, inherited from the first ancestor, who succumbed to the flattery of the devil - the father of lies, of all evil. For him, constant prayer is extremely necessary, as medicine, as light and food, as guidance; as a sinner, he needs constant repentance. When you pray in church or at home, try to imagine all the words and faces in prayer - the face of the Mother of God, the Angels and the saints or earthly persons for whom you are praying - imagine ideally, that is, how they are in essence or should be (bishops, priests, deacons and others) - holy according to the Divine principle, and not carnal, or material, or sinful - and your prayer will be a joy to you. Prayer at home or in public, evening and morning, performed privately by someone, liturgy or the performance of any Sacrament by a sacred person in public is a living and enlivening deed if it is performed by a priest or bishop with living faith, sincerely, passionately, or a deed that is dead and does not affect anyone, does not animate, does not delight grief, to God, to Heaven, if the person praying performs the prayer without faith, without comprehension, without heartfelt feeling. Therefore, one often hears from the lips of lay people attending services that such and such a clergyman serves in a vital, awakening way, and such and such a priest serves in a dead, lifeless, boring, inanimate, unnutritious, unenlightening way. And indeed it is. For example, imagine that an employee - a priest or a deacon - is drunk, or has come to serve in church from the gambling table, or after reading a book of a romantic nature, or some worldly magazine or book article that has captivated his mind and heart. Tell me, can he serve Matins or the All-Night Vigil or the Liturgy of Chrysostom or St. Basil the Great with enthusiasm? Don't think. With his body he is in the church, but with his soul he is where the romance or action takes place, with those persons who form the subject of speech and with whom he is carried away! He is not with God, not with the Mother of God, not with the saints, in his heart it is not God, but the vanity of life, the enemy. Recognize, O priest, when performing the Liturgy every day or alternately, all its holiness, the greatness and Divine truth revealed, the wisdom, the height, the extreme need for the human race, the extreme condescension and exhaustion of God the Word, which appear in it incessantly; simplicity, propriety and expediency of the substance of the Eucharist, designated for the offering, transubstantiation and consumption of food and drink of the Divine Brush, and always perform it with the utmost preparation of yourself for its celebration, with the contemplation of the infinite holiness, goodness, wisdom, truth, righteousness and omnipotence of the Divine. Remember the miracles of transformation from God of things in the Old and New Testaments: the rod of Moses into the serpent, the waters of Egypt into blood, fire into dew (for Ananias, Azariah and Mishael), water miraculously brought out from a rock, the transformation of water into wine, Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt - and glorify God’s extreme condescension towards us, adaptation to our fallen nature, for what is simpler and more adaptable to ours? weak nature, if not the consumption of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ under the form of wheat bread and grape wine, sweet, pleasant to the taste and at the same time invigorating and cheerful, in which He Himself completely dwells in Divinity and humanity, life-giving with faith to those who partake and taking away their sins, pacifying, cheering and creating new things, immortalizing and adoring! Glory, Lord, to Your goodness and ineffable wisdom, Your omnipotence, Your condescension, the depletion of us for the sake of the past. O our damnation and poverty, poverty, blindness and nakedness, for the sake of which You teach us Yourself, Your Divine wealth of holiness, truth, mercy, life, covering our nakedness, taking away our absurdity, decorating with Your Divinity. Do our intellectuals comprehend and feel this? A spiritual person does not accept the Spirit of God, for he has foolishness and cannot understand; he strives for spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). While performing the Proskomedia, the preparatory part of the liturgy, and preparing the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world for our sins, cutting and perforating Him in a cross shape, remember with reverence and fear a grateful heart the condescension of the Son of God to us, His depletion, that He might enrich us with the blessing of the Heavenly Father and the Trinitarian Divinity, with all His holiness and truth and eternal bliss. Remember the suffering and death of the God-man according to humanity and be convinced of the need to crucify and put to death the old man within you with his passions, remembering that Christ is the Head of His Church, Heavenly, earthly and underworld, and that you are a member of the body of the Church. Remember your dignity and be worthy of your title. Then, taking out triangular parts in honor of the Mother of God, the Forerunner, the apostles, saints, martyrs, saints, unmercenaries and all the saints, remember them and your divine articulation and copulation with them and their intercession for us, your earthly brothers (as they themselves are from the earthly), glorify the mercy of God, which made them conquerors of sin, enriching them with eternal holiness and deification and making them our intercessors to God and prayer books for us. Taking portions for bishops, presbyters, deacons and for the entire earthly hierarchy, remember to what high educational and saving service the Lord called the priesthood, teaching and performing divine services and the Sacraments established by God for the salvation of the human race and guiding it to truth, holiness and eternal life, and honor them as servants of Christ and builders of the mysteries of God, and primarily love them for their work of their infinitely great importance, as the apostle exhorts us. When taking portions for the departed, believe in the intercessory power of Christ’s sacrifice and in the power of the prayers of the clergy for them, and pray for them diligently and with hope in God’s mercy towards them. Be completely imbued with the Divine greatness of the liturgy, this angelic saving service on earth, and marvel at the extent to which the love of God and the generosity of the Only Begotten Son of God, who sacrificed Himself to the justice of the Heavenly Father and together to the Holy Trinity, Consubstantial and Indivisible, have extended to us. Such great words in the liturgy: “Thine from Thine, what is offered to Thee for all and for all”! How great and high in spirit (exalted) must be the priest or bishop who brings this Sacrifice of reconciliation to the Heavenly Father. “Offering to You,” that is, to You, the righteous Father, beginningless, ever-present, all-simple, unparticipated, inaccessible to any sin, hating sin, so contrary to the nature of God. “Offering to You”, Yours from Your servants: Your gifts (wheat bread and wine) for everyone and for everything (as a sacrifice for all people), for the Church of Heaven, earthly and underworld, especially for the Most Holy Theotokos (in gratitude for the supernatural, highest, most saving Sacrament of the Incarnation of the Son of God from Her and the salvation of the human race), for all those who have fallen asleep in faith and love, for everything episcopacy, presbytery, deaconry and the entire priestly rank, for the entire Church and for those who live in purity and honest life, for the king and the entire royal house, for the synclite and the army. Oh, how great and strong in spirit a priest must be, bringing such a great, supernatural, miraculous, righteous Sacrifice of God’s love and goodness to the human race! Tell me, priest, do you realize all the greatness and holiness of your ministry entrusted to you by God, and are you trying to be worthy of it? The Lord, who turned the rod of Moses into a serpent, transforms bread and wine during the Liturgy into the most pure Body and Blood by His Divine power. He who transformed dust into midges transforms (I repeat) bread and wine into His most pure Body and Blood, or the dust of decayed human bodies into new spiritual bodies at the general resurrection. For salvation from the corruption of the human race, for its purification, sanctification and salvation, such an extraordinary, loving, all-merciful, wise means was required, that is, the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ to people for food and drink. Amazing is the love, condescension and wisdom of God in giving the human race Heavenly Bread, that is, the most pure Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In order to make His Flesh and Blood acceptable to all of us, He teaches them to us under the guise and taste of bread and wine. O goodness and amazing wisdom! God gives Himself to creatures for food and drink. O condescension that astonishes all angelic minds! But how does a person himself accept this wonderful Gift of God? Is it with faith, with gratitude, with sincerity, with fear and love? Does he often accept it as a daily essential need, or rarely, reluctantly, lazily, unfaithfully and ungratefully? Oh laziness, oh indifference, oh unbelief! Who is there a man of you whose master will set over his servants to give food to them for their good in time? Amen, I tell you, he will set him over all his possessions (cf. Matt. 24:45, 47). When, with a fierce north wind, the sun disappears even for a minute behind a cloud, it becomes dark and cold. This is what happens to the Christian soul after the grace of the Holy Spirit moves away from it. Because of her negligence and because of her hiding the Sun of the righteous Christ, because of her laziness and non-communion of the most pure Body and Blood of Christ, her soul becomes cold and gloomy. Thus, everything in the visible and spiritual world is connected by the law of causes and consequences, and therefore verbal creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, must stay firmly close to the mental Sun of Truth - Christ and be illuminated by Him constantly through faith and fervent prayer and through the Communion of His Divine Mysteries. And what happens to those who completely move away from this vital Sun, from this eternal Light - Christ through conceit, deceit, pride, unclean life, unbelief and do not pray and do not partake of the Holy Mysteries? Oh, they are in the darkness of the devil and do not have life in themselves, according to the immutable word of the Savior, and their fate in life, in death and after death will be deplorable forever and ever. Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life; He who comes to Me... will never thirst. But I told you that you have seen Me and do not believe. Whatever the Father gives Me will come to Me; and him who comes to Me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:35–37). From the above words of the Savior, it is obvious that He commands believers and those who are zealous for the Christian desire to partake of His most pure Body and Blood, daily, if anyone, according to the conditions of his life, can be ready to begin the Cup of Life. If we daily strive for perishable, earthly food and drink, then all the more must we hunger and thirst for incorruptible food and incorruptible drink, which are the Body and Blood of the Author of our life, the Lord Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, there are many ignorant people among educated and unlearned and even learned monks and priests, those who consider it inappropriate and even sinful for pious laity to receive communion every week and even every day. This is contrary to the commandment of the loving Lord, Who wants the faithful to take care of the frequent communion of His most pure Body and Blood. Amen. Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18:3). Christians are required to have childlike simplicity and complete trust in the works of God - gracious, wise, incomprehensible and saving, for example, in the Mystery of Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, transformed by the Holy Spirit from bread and wine. Meanwhile, the evil, proud human mind and the evil heart do not believe this, saying, like the unfaithful Jews: how can He give us His flesh to eat? (John 6:52). So today, many scientists do not believe the Mystery of Communion, led by Leo Tolstoy. Let us remember the words of the Savior: I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes (Matthew 11:25). How can a priest boldly appear before the throne of God and face to face with God Himself and make intercessory prayers, petitions, supplications, thanksgivings for all people, for kings and for all those in authority (1 Tim. 2:1–2); to perform the saving Terrible Mysteries, during which the Angels stand with trepidation, especially during the Mystery of the Most Pure Body and Blood of the Son of God? How can one dare to raise one’s hands in prayer to the Heavenly Father and ask for such terrible things as the transformation of bread and wine into the most pure Body and Blood of Christ? How can one dare to do such things without the grace and help of the Holy Spirit? How can one dare to resolve the sins of people bound by them, who come running to them with pleas for acceptance of their confession? How to perform the Mystery of Rebirth, or Baptism, without the grace of the Holy Spirit? Unfortunately, there are many graceless impostors who deceive the ignorant but gullible people, who are not afraid of the all-seeing One, who will punish not only in the next century, but also in this life, the blasphemers of the Holy Spirit. Who are these impudent fools? Heretics, schismatics and sectarians. Thus, let man honor us as servants of Christ and builders of the mysteries of God (cf. 1 Cor. 4:1). Honor your superiors in the Lord and have them in abundance in love for their work (cf. Heb. 13:7, 17), says the apostle. Tolstoy and the Tolstoyans reproach us with golden miters and vestments. Was it not the Lord Himself who, through Moses, established magnificent priestly and Levitical robes and adorned His servants? Should we, the ministers of the New Testament of God, who have a greater and more brilliant ministry than the Old Testament priests, completely avoid external splendor? 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 for a bridegroom put a crown on me, and as a bride adorn me with beauty (Isaiah 61:10), prophesies Isaiah. The external beauty of the sacred robes reminds us of the lordship of the priestly rank and the extreme importance of its work! If we are reproached by the splendor of our vestments, will they not condemn the various ranks of the military and civil departments, especially those close to the royal throne and decorated with all sorts of glitter, all sorts of gold and silver woven decorations or multi-colored ribbon? Are these decorations meaningless, aimless, don’t they indicate the nobility and splendor of their rank and the importance of their service to the king and homeland? And we, priests, are brought by the grace of God to the Throne of the King of Kings and portray the brightest angelic ranks and dress in rags? No. The earth is the Lord's and what fills it (Ps. 23:1); all earthly treasures are God's. My silver and my gold, says the Lord (Hag. 2:8), and He adorns His servants - of course, according to the abundance of local church funds and lovers of the spiritual order of the laity, who lovingly donate to churches and their servants. Pious people rejoice when they see the clergy dressed splendidly, but unbelievers look with envy and embitterment and, like Judas, say: “It would be better to give the money spent on vestments and icons to the poor,” although they do not think about the poor. But look and understand what a great work the priests do! They are the mediators between God and you, they do things of the greatest importance for you, they lead you to God and eternal bliss. Through the priesthood, sinful people are reconciled with God, with whom they are constantly at enmity through sin, and become brothers of Christ Himself and sons of God through diligent repentance. That’s how important and necessary the priesthood is! Without it there can be no reconciliation of sinful people with God. God gave some priests the power and word of reconciliation with God. God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself, says the apostle, without imputing their crimes to people, and gave us (the apostles and priests) the word of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19). Only Christ alone, the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world and redeemed it from sin, curse and death, could and does give His servants the word and power to reconcile people with God, the power to resolve sins or bind them, to open and close Heaven to people. Therefore, no layman without a priest can be reconciled with God and gain justification or access to God. This is the righteous will of God. Therefore, those who have apostatized from the Church and call themselves Christians cannot be saved from eternal condemnation unless they are reconciled with it and are not participants in its worship and Sacraments. Thus, the priesthood of the Orthodox Church, by its nature, is the greatest service on earth - most heavenly, most holy, cheerful and all-sanctifying; Priestly service is mediation between the Creator and creation, the service of incorruptibility for humanity corrupted by sins, the service of reconciliation of criminal creatures with the Creator, the service of sanctification and elevation to holiness and incorruptibility, bringing from death to life, from earth to Heaven. Worldly people reproach us with gold-embroidered robes and miters, reproaching us for luxury. Was it not the Lord God Himself who clothed His priests in special splendid clothes, commanding Moses to make for them clothes of splendor and beauty? The king dresses his servants in gold-woven uniforms and distinguishes and rewards them in every possible way. Does the King of Heaven and earth not have the power to distinguish His servants, who stand before His terrible and glorious throne, with shining robes, like earthly angels? God only grant that we try to live up to our great calling and care about the salvation of human souls, so that our souls may be bright. Glory to God, who has given His Church the grace of the Priesthood, through which it is convenient for every believer and humbly submissive child of the Church to be reconciled with God and become a beloved child of God and inherit eternal life. Amen. The Holy Church teaches us in all our everyday circumstances to place all our trust in God: in prosperity and deprivation, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and joy - and to never lose heart, not to be embittered towards anyone or anything, to endure everyone with love. Let us surrender ourselves and our whole life to Christ our God. By You, Lord, I live, I breathe by You, I see, I hear, I touch, I smell. Through you I think, I speak, I feel, I imagine, I rejoice, I remember, I rest, I repent, I am cleansed, I am strengthened, I am healed, I am enlightened, I get rid of enemies visible and invisible, I triumph in victory over flattering and destructive passions; I confess You, I glorify You, I thank You, I love You; With you I fight against all-corrupting sin; By You I still live and do not die, I walk and act, I serve Your sacredness and truth, Your incomprehensible greatness; By You I despise all lies, unbelief, and madness of the proud, who reject You, who blaspheme You boldly, senselessly, although they claim about themselves that they are sensible and supposedly intelligent and reasonable. With You I will die and with You I hope to rise from the dead and live with You and in You forever and ever. Amen. About the true causes of modern unrest I compare the lives of the holy saints of God with the lives of the people of this century, especially with the lives of people contemporary to us, and I see the complete opposite of both: there is peace and life, unwavering light in souls, quiet contemplation, repentance, unceasing prayer, peaceful spiritual and physical work, goodwill and love for everyone, while among worldly people there is constant anxiety of passion, confusion, resentment, sedition, mutual ill will, pride, disobedience to authorities, disbelief, arrogance, in others - denial of all laws of Divine and human, disorderly self-government (autonomy), encroachment on other people's property, freedom and life, complete denial of the immortality of the human soul, resurrection and Eternal Judgment. Such must be the fruits of unbelief. Today's seditious people are ready to destroy the entire structure of church, civil and family life and lead human society into a state of anarchy and savagery. From whom is this war of extermination declared on God and people? From the one who was the first seditious person in Heaven and there declared war on God and the Angels and was himself deposed to earth. I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning (Luke 10:18), says the Lord. It is he, by God’s permission and to test people, to discover their thoughts, inclinations and passions, who produces all sorts of unrest, sedition and murder here in Russia, and all over the world, making his instruments of people who have violated their conscience. Poor fatherland, tormented by the sedition of adversaries! Turn sincerely to the faith of your fathers and pluck out from yourself the seeds of the tares that choke the wheat, bring forward, reveal His people devoted to God and the Church and arise, arise by the power of God and firmly hold on to the cornerstone of the Church - Christ, the almighty God and Savior. He who falls on this stone will be crushed, and he who falls on this stone will be destroyed (Matthew 21:44). Amen. At the present difficult time that Russia is going through, we especially need the consolation and help of the Mother of God, the exalted and invincible Voivode, Queen of Heaven and Earth. But where is Her wondrous help and intercession, which our ancestors, our ancient noble princes, kings, saints, such as John of Novgorod and other reverend miracle workers and the Russian people, so quickly received? The scythe of God mows down like grass, the sickle of God reaps the Russian army like countless ears of grain. Villainous gangs with instant shots from deadly weapons everywhere take the lives of the faithful servants of the tsar and the fatherland or set fire to all sorts of government and private institutions, houses of civilians, factories, factories, commercial ships, commit crimes on land and sea throughout the state, everywhere spread the spirit of rebellion, disobedience, strike, and we remain as if helpless, and Heaven itself seemed to have abandoned us with its help, and the Lady the all-powerful and all-good One has, as it were, turned Her face away from us, and we remain like abandoned orphans, without intercession. What does this mean? Is it not within us that lies the reason for all these outrages, disasters, misfortunes that strike us one after another? Yes, this reason is in us. Russia has forgotten the God who saves, lost faith in Him, abandoned the law of God, enslaved itself to all sorts of passions, deified the blind human mind; Instead of the will of God - wise, holy, righteous - she has placed the ghost of sinful freedom, has opened the doors wide to all arbitrariness and therefore suffers immeasurably in misery, suffers the shame of the whole world - a worthy retribution for her pride, for her hibernation, inaction, corruption, coldness towards the Church of God. God punishes us for our sins. The Lady does not send us a helping hand. Only the Church of God on earth has everlasting peace and will have it until the end of time, and the adulterous and sinful world, which has departed from God and His righteous laws, is troubled and will be troubled until the end by its errors, by its all-contagious and destructive passions, by inhuman warfare and internal sedition, by its madness. In this madness, he rebels against the infinite and perfect mind of God and in all his thoughts and actions boldly resists it, dreaming that he himself, this senseless human mind, will arrange the good of humanity in the best possible way and achieve perfection. Will it achieve it and when will it achieve it? Never. A tree is known by its fruits. Look at these fruits of the current civilization - to whom are they pleasant and useful? Why is Russia in turmoil now? Why do we have no leadership? Why did the student youth lose the fear of God and abandon their direct responsibilities and occupations, why did proud intellectuals strive to become guardians and rulers of the people, not understanding this people and their real needs and not loving them, why did all power in Russia weaken? Why did everyone’s morals become corrupted and there were almost no families, no schools, no ranks sincerely devoted to the Church and the Fatherland? Because all of them have lost faith in God, in His righteous, eternal words; because they fell away from the Church of God - the only guide to the holy Christian life, the only one, which walks in the light of God and guides everyone to the light, to truth, to God, to eternity, to solid and indestructible life, which alone firmly protects the legal rights of both the Tsar and his subjects, and orders everyone and everyone to strictly fulfill their duties. Loss of faith in God, in the Gospel, in the Church, rejection of its leadership is the reason for all sorts of outrages in Russia. Let us return to where we left - to God, to the Church, to the Gospel, to his holy covenants, and God will turn to us, and help us in everything, and protect us from our enemies, and direct our feet, our life, onto the path of peace (Luke 1:79), and will stop the war, and will show everyone their place. Amen. You are strangers and strangers, but fellow saints and friends with God, who was created on the foundation of the apostle and prophet, who is the cornerstone of Jesus Christ Himself (Eph. 2:19–20). In the present time of alienation from the Church, our intelligentsia, who have become spiritually distraught, must be taught what a crazy, disastrous step they have taken through their apostasy, what an abyss they are striving for! Right into the abyss. Understand, you wicked ones: it was not in vain that Christ came to earth, lived for more than thirty years, taught, worked miracles, suffered, died and rose again, founded the Church on earth and ascended to Heaven. Do not forget that you are members of the Body of Christ, that you are members of God and not strangers. And you behave like strangers to God. We, as members of the Church of Christ, are ours to Christ, ours to the Mother of God, ours to all the saints and, as members, we must call on them in needs, troubles, sorrows and illnesses, as well as in joys and must imitate their lives according to our strength. Our modern atheists, led by Leo Tolstoy, consider the Gospel to be fables and do not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, as well as in His Divine Messenger, the Divine Word and miracles, and with their unbelief and slander against the Lord and His Church, they have confused all modern Russian student youth, shaken the faith of half-educated and overeducated people, undermined with their lies and daring freethinking all the foundations of faith and morality, produced immorality, anarchy, disobedience of children to parents, students and subordinates to superiors, subjects of the supreme power, illegal, insane strikes, made correct civil life impossible under the present conditions and the connivance of the authorities. This is the endless harm of Tolstoy’s disbelief! These are the fruits of godlessness! The ill-fated war was allowed upon us as a righteous punishment from a righteous God. What do we need in this chaos? First of all, strict action by all authorities is needed, general repentance of all classes of the population of Russia is needed, a common fast is needed, a public fervent prayer to God for the conversion of the lost, for the correction of morals, the fear of God is required, the fear of the Righteous Judgment, the terrible punishment of God. The monarch, our sovereign, appointed by God to govern the people according to the commandments of God and state laws, calls everyone to this. And we call on all compatriots to fervent and deep repentance, fervent prayer and almsgiving. We must be transformed, immediately change in everything. What does the glory of Leo Tolstoy mean, an atheist, although talented, who surprised many readers with his apt analysis of the human soul? This glory is false, momentary and all the more preparing for him in the next century and at the Final Court of the Righteous Judge, dishonor and torment, if he does not sincerely repent and does not publicly renounce his thoughts and their general publicity. As soon as you are glorified and fierce, you will only give him wounds and torment (cf. Rev. 18:7), says God through the prophet. His death will be the denouement of that novel, which he wrote in hours of laziness and leisure, not without talent. For people of truth and truth, his memory will perish with noise. What can a person, this earth and ashes be proud of? Why do you, an imaginary and liberal sage of this age who has forgotten God, raise your eyebrow high and are proud of your intelligence, your writing talent, freedom of speech and blaspheme everything that is holy and venerable? What did all this serve and serve? Is this why our fatherland is terribly poor now? To unbelief, blasphemy, to anarchy or anarchy, to the destruction of all the foundations of Christian and state life, to general disobedience to authorities, to self-will, to internecine war, to countless murders, to the burning of houses, to the theft of property acquired by labor and energy, to general immorality? These are the fruits and deeds of your pride, your godlessness. You are only capable of destroying, and not creating, of killing everything around, and not of reviving, of turning everything into chaos, and not into order, of which all the pogroms that took place in Russia serve as sad proof. The flattering spirit has caught modern scientists on trust in human reason, on its deification, on trust in human sinful freedom, understood as freedom to do all evil, as freedom not to know and not to honor God, as freedom from any subordination to the law of God, as freedom to any strike, as freedom from teaching. All the intellectuals who seduced the common people working in the cities were caught by these baits. Russia is perishing from lawlessness, from lack of will! Proud scientists, professors and teachers, turned the natural sciences not to praise God, but to blaspheme His holy name. They learned that the earth is the smallest of all the planets, and from this they concluded and teach the youth that people are not worth it for the Creator Himself to come down to it and live on earth and, having suffered, die for people, that this is a utopia, that is, they do not believe in the goodness of God, in the truth of God, the most wondrous, joyful and saving, and they perish for unbelief and all depravity that comes from there. Our modern atheists preach that we don’t need churches, we don’t need God’s law in schools, we don’t need prayer, we don’t need priests. How? You want people to become dumb animals, beasts, so that the earth becomes an arena of slaughter, bloodshed, so that people, like animals, rush at each other and torment each other, as, unfortunately, it has already come to this because of the unbelief of many, and Russia has already represented in different cities a real massacre and, as it were, an enemy invasion and a sea of ​​flames. Is this not what our atheists are leading us to? Let this not happen in primordially Orthodox Russia! Leave us churches - this is heaven on earth, this kingdom of God on earth, where the most honorable and magnificent name of God is constantly glorified, where we are sanctified through prayer and the Sacraments, where we sincerely talk with God, like children with the Father, where we become living churches of God, where we are most closely united with God, partake of God’s incorruption and become divine ourselves through the communion of the Divine Tain. Glory to God, who has established churches of His name everywhere and is educating in them reverent, faithful Christians into living churches of Himself, as it is written: Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? (1 Cor. 3:16). Only in the church of God do we learn to sincerely believe in God, to know ourselves, to love both God and each other, only in the church do we learn that we have a common Father in Heaven, who founded there an eternal, imperishable City for His faithful and loving children, and that from the foundation of the world He inscribed those devoted to Him among the citizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Amen. Look, what do secular, and also spiritual, youth eat in their free time from school hours, what do they read, what do they absorb with their mind, memory, and heart? Dreamy novels, like Tolstoy's, Gorky's maxims, or seductive stories, chatter, dramas and comedies, and in none of them you will find truly Christian creations in the hands, as was the case at the beginning of the last century, when both Russian literature itself and literature translated from foreign languages ​​was the most well-intentioned in the Christian sense and educated the minds and hearts of young men and educated citizens in the Christian spirit. Now everything has changed, and the younger generation, like chewing gum, chews various immoral novels and all sorts of little books. But such is belching - look what our youth has become, what kind of spirit they have gained? The spirit of denial of everything Divine, the spirit of freedom, disobedience, violence, pride, the destruction of the good old order, the spirit of intemperance, revelry, theft, liberalism, socialism, cosmopolitanism, disrespect for parents and strike idleness. What will happen next if things go like this? Guess! We must quickly direct the work of education, we must give good reading to young people and remove immoral, free, rotten reading from their hands and educate them in the spirit of the Church and our good old times without its ignorance and one-sidedness. If Christians firmly believed in those eternal rewards that are promised to those who truly strive in this temporary life and which those who have already fought the good fight have received - oh, how they would try to strive here with all their might, each in his own rank and condition - spiritual, civil, military, agricultural, student, craft, merchant, etc. All men and women would vied with each other to try to seize the heavenly crowns from God and move into eternal life, where there is eternal bliss, eternal joy, eternal holiness, eternal truth, eternal peace! But this is where the stumbling block lies for countless multitudes - namely, doubt in eternal life or disbelief in the resurrection and future bliss, or even disbelief in God the Rewarder. Everyone gives up, everyone is inactive or lazy to strive, clings tightly to temporary life, clings to various worldly passions and pleasures and does not bear the fruit of good deeds, constant repentance, and life is wasted. Man, the rational creation of God, the king of earthly creatures, was given by the Creator firm and immutable laws, deeply laid in the depths of his being, in his conscience and heart, and he is obliged to fulfill them reasonably and urgently, as a rule of life, as a sacred and immutable duty of the creature towards its Creator. The good of his life depended and depends on the fulfillment of these laws: closeness to the Creator, union with Him, peace, joy, immortality, and their violation entailed all sorts of disasters: destruction of the union with the Creator, confusion in soul and body, darkness, sorrow and cramped conditions, curse, illness and death. For a short time the first people were faithful to God through the fulfillment of this commandment and were blessed by their union with Him. The union was treacherously broken, man sinned and upset the wondrous harmony of his god-like nature, corrupting the mind, heart and will, desecrating his conscience, fell into unpayable debts to his Creator and subjected himself to the terrible judgment of God's truth. The judgments of God soon began to be fulfilled over the human race: Adam and Eve were the first to hear from the Creator Himself the terrible judgment of curse and death and were expelled from the paradise of sweets for cultivating the earth, and then the Lord condemned the first world of people for all kinds of lawlessness and impenitence to destruction by a flood, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by fire and brimstone rain. Then civil strife and bloody wars of peoples, crop failures, pestilences, earthquakes opened as punishment for sins, and through all times, even before our ill-fated time, the Lord reveals His terrible judgments over nations, as well as over individuals. At present, all kinds of untruths cover the earth like the sea, there is no end to human self-will, the doors are wide open to all kinds of errors and vices. The laws of God have been trampled upon, creatures have forgotten their Creator, sinful people in their pride imagine themselves innocent, defiled by all kinds of impurities, they have forgotten their impurities. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey knows its master’s manger (Isa. 1:3), and Christians have rejected Christ their Savior, who redeemed them with His Blood from curse and death. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no healthy place in society: ulcers, spots, festering wounds, uncleansed and unbandaged and not softened with oil... If the Lord of hosts had not left us a small remnant, then we would have been the same as Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah (Is. 1:6, 9). But these words of the prophet go directly to our time: among the people, one will be oppressed by another, and each by his neighbor; the young man will brazenly exalt himself over the old man, and the common man over the noble (Isa. 3:5). Our young intellectuals perverted every social and educational order: they took upon themselves the work of politics and justice, without being called to this by anyone, they undertook to judge their teachers, bosses and the government and almost the kings themselves, they tried and condemned with their head - Leo Tolstoy the Most Universal and Terrible Judge - Christ God, who would come with glory to judge the living and the dead, they boldly condemned the Holy Church of Christ, who has no filthiness, or vice, or something from such (Eph. 5:27), its teaching, the saving Sacraments and the servants of Christ. Truly the day of the coming of the Terrible Judge for the Judgment of all people has already arrived, because the predicted apostasy from God has already arrived and the forerunner of the Antichrist, the son of destruction, has already been revealed, opposing and exalting himself above everything called God or the shrine... the mystery of lawlessness is already in action, only it will not be accomplished until the one who is now holding back is taken from the environment. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the spirit of His mouth and destroy by the revelation of His coming, the one whose coming, according to the work of Satan, will be with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception of those who are perishing, because they did not receive the love of the truth for their salvation. And for this God will send them the influence of delusion, so that they will believe lies (and believe the liar Tolstoy), so that all who did not believe the truth, but loved unrighteousness, will be condemned (2 Thess. 2:3-4, 7-12). Everyone was now overcome by fever and a thirst for freedom. But freedom is misunderstood by the majority - not according to God’s reason, but according to human, blind reason; it is precisely understood as a reason to please the flesh, in which goodness does not live. For everything in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:16), it is not from the Heavenly Father, but from this world, it is enmity against God. Let's take, for example, freedom of the press, whose representatives, jokingly or seriously, call it the “sixth great power.” They sought this freedom from the government with all their might and achieved it. But what kind of freedom is this? The freedom of other cursive writers to write and print whatever catches their eye, whatever comes to mind, or whatever could be used to harm a hated person or society, and above all, the freedom to throw literary mud at their own writing brethren - a conscientious, believing, reasonable, sincere, patriotic brethren - the true salt, the light of literature. What kind of freedom is this? This is an uprising, an ink campaign against true freedom, an attempt to destroy in the press everything that is true, reasonable, ideal, beautiful, firm in faith, politics, community life, in the family, in education, in domestic and public work, in government. It is disgusting to read in some small newspapers, and sometimes large ones, abusive antics against serious newspapers, in which much of what is printed is like oil, like a balm for the upright, right, and unwise heart. Let us also take political freedom, religious freedom. The press waited for this freedom from the government. What happened? All the newspapers and magazines started talking about politics in hundreds of ways, who is good at what and who is rich in what, in what way of thinking. All higher educational institutions, even other secondary educational institutions, rushed into politics, the concept of which they were not mature enough to understand, and, having become involved in politics, forgot that they were students, forgot their books, their specialties, criticized and teased their professors and, perhaps, rectors, demanded autonomy for themselves, like men of mature age, eliminated their superiors, as befits supposedly independent people, and proclaimed anarchy; or they wouldn’t mind getting into the State Duma. What will they do there? It’s not difficult for anyone to guess. What if the common people, from the plow and the scythe, start to engage only in politics? Who will plow and mow? What is freedom of faith, which is allowed even by the government? Freedom to profess whatever faith one wants; Moreover, even the Orthodox are not forbidden to leave their faith and go even to Mohammedanism and idolatry. Freedom in faith allows, today, anyone who wants to blaspheme their own Orthodox faith in every possible way, because confessors of other faiths respect and praise their faith or other faiths, and ill-intentioned writers, Orthodox by Baptism, really freely, without a twinge of conscience, speak ill of the Orthodox faith, and of the Orthodox Church, and of its shepherd. In particular, Count Leo Tolstoy surpassed everyone in blaspheming the Orthodox faith - a complete apostate from God, a worshiper of his own self, a worshiper of the blind human mind. Due to the falsely understood freedom of thought and worship of the human mind, he rejected God, and the creation of the world, and the fall of man, and his re-creation, and in general all of Sacred history, all faith, every good, righteous hope given to people by God - he rejected everything holy and left humanity with nothing, only with its sins, sorrows, troubles, illnesses, deaths, without any enlightenment, without any hope for a better, eternal world. Isn’t this also the freedom of the present age and the present apostate humanity?! Is this freedom to completely kill the faith and hope of the people?! Our ancestors sinned, but they called sin a sin, and today’s liberals, when they sin, try to justify the sin, as if it were a legitimate matter. Take the sins of carnal lust - all this, according to their teaching, is not only the simple weaknesses of human nature, but also the laws of nature, its requirements. Among them are those who idolize carnal passion itself, like the worshipers of Aphrodite in ancient times. And all this abomination is printed, and they read it, and they talk about it without disgust, without disgust, as if it were something worthy of attention! Is this freedom? No, this is not freedom, but terrible slavery to sin and passions, which results in the terrible execution of God, the extermination of the race and eternal torment. Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. But a servant does not remain in the house forever; the son (of true freedom) abides forever (John 8:34–35). True Christians must crucify and eradicate passions. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24). When a strong, wise, correct and all-directing power is awake and active, encouraging some and righteously punishing others in their deeds, then everything in society goes on as usual. Spiritual and material life, educational, political, economic, social, military - everything carries out its usual course and development, bringing every benefit to the entire state. And when, as a result of general disobedience to the authorities and the inaction of the subordinate members of society, as well as the inaction of the authorities, activity ceases, as blood circulation in an organic body stops, then everything in society freezes, falls, collapses, and public security disappears, and members of society go one against the other, theft, embezzlement, enmity and murder are given full rein. This is what happened in Russia, when everything stopped working everywhere - educational institutions, workshops with workers, railways, printing houses, post offices and telegraphs. Russia has truly fallen into a state of chaos. This is the destruction of anarchy. The ancient pagan peoples were safer and happier in their civil and family life than the Russian people enlightened (if they can be called such) by the teachings of Christ, who loudly call themselves educated and intellectuals. Truly, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God (1 Cor. 3:19), and this is exactly what she showed herself to be. In the demonic kingdom there is order and the subordination of some evil spirits to others, lower ones to higher ones, less powerful ones to stronger ones, and in the Christian state all subordination, all power has disappeared: children do not recognize the authority of their parents, subordinates do not recognize the authority of their superiors, pupils do not recognize the authority of teachers, students do not recognize the authority of professors and rectors, everyone took their conductor’s batons in their hands, and everyone began to command, instead of calmly and without pretension, as was the case before, obeying and study. Something mysterious and absurd emerges. Spiritual leadership, the sacred power of the Church are trampled upon, worship is neglected, preaching is powerless, Christian morality is falling more and more, anarchy is growing - boys and girls have taken their will. But where is the power that is strong, authoritative, self-aware, responsible, established by God and receiving its strength and its fear from Him? Take the power, the right given to you by God, and with a firm hand hold the scepter and power given to you by God, and be fearful of all the enemies of God and yours. Then, seeing your scepter and orb in strong hands, all the evil will righteously fear you, and the good will rejoice. Do you want to not be afraid of power? Do good and you will have praise from her... but if you do evil, be afraid, for it is not the mind that carries the sword (cf. Rom. 13:3, 4). So, Russia, fear God as before, and honor the king (cf. 1 Pet. 2:17) and let every soul be submissive to the higher authorities (Rom. 13:1). Amen. The Lord gave the apostles the gift of knowledge and wisdom, the gift of miracles and spiritual authority to perform prayers and sacred rites of the Sacraments for the creation of human salvation and the fulfillment of the life-giving commandments of Christ, and not for the destruction of the moral and civil order, as the uncalled reformers of human morality and mental knowledge and order are doing today. Look at what our intellectuals are doing or what they intend to do: they are trying with all their might to destroy moral, ecclesiastical principles, crippling the lives of Christians, preaching some new ways and new laws that lead to the corruption of morals, to the overthrow of the family Christian and state principles or to anarchy, they teach children self-will, disobedience to parental authority, young men - to authorities, working people - to owners and managers of work, they put life on top feet. If this continues, the consequences will correspond to the harmful principles. Firm authority is needed, all power must be given to the laws, and the shepherds appointed by God must be armed with word and example and spiritual authority and the power of spiritual judgment and handed over to the Righteous Court of God. The judgment of God does not sleep and does not touch, and a terrible punishment awaits the disobedient, such as being handed over to the power of Satan for the destruction of the flesh (1 Cor. 5:5), as the Apostle Paul did with the Corinthian incest. Let us remember God's judgment on the rebellious Dathan, Korah and Abiron. The Lord, the King of the universe, inflicted His examination and strict test on Russia, especially on our naval and land troops and their leaders: the admiral general, generals, officers and all our ranks - a righteous test, in which they do not pay attention to faces and ranks, but to the inner content and state of every mind, heart and will. What is the moral preparation of these minds, hearts, dispositions, aspirations, first of all, are they faithful to their God, His holy commandments and their vows given at Baptism, are they faithful to their Christian title, the divinely appointed monarch, their fatherland, scientific qualifications, do they have a readiness to serve the Tsar and the fatherland to the last drop of blood with courage and bravery, do they firmly hope for reward from the eternal and Righteous Judge and the King of Glory, preparing crowns of incorruption and eternal bliss for all who lay down their souls for the faith, king and fatherland? Many, many were unprepared for this exam, especially with regard to faith and behavior. And the real lawless world, almost half bearing the name of Christ, for its iniquities and unbelief should have been destroyed by water or fire, or an earthquake, or a bloody war, or civil strife, as it was and is happening in the world in places, but the suffering on the cross and the death of the God-man intercede incessantly before the justice of God for the continuation of the existence of the world and long-suffering towards the race human, so that sensible people will come to their senses, repent and be saved. The parable of the fig tree in the garden clearly shows us God's long-suffering towards us and the expectation of our repentance. In addition, Providence provides in the coming times many righteous people, like our Seraphim of Sarov, who with their lives will adorn the Church Heaven, serve as a good example for people and will be worthy of the Kingdom of God. And so the world stands both for the sake of the present few chosen ones, for many are called, but few are chosen (Matthew 20:16), and for the sake of the future chosen ones of God, whom He foresees who calls things that do not exist as if they exist (cf. Rom. 4:17) and Who chooses other people to serve Himself before conception and birth, like the prophet Jeremiah. So, the world stands and does not collapse and is not yet engulfed in an all-destroying flame for the sake of Christ, who suffered for the sinful world, and His Cross. Do not raise your heads high, intellectuals and scribblers, and stop despising Christ with His Cross, do not destroy the Holy Church, which is His Body and of which He is the eternal Head, and do not mock us, His servants. You constantly denounce in your diaries (newspapers) your Mother, the Church, which gave you a name, a birth, and a glorious Christian title. Oh, if only you did not bear this name! We are familiar with your antichrist spirit and are surprised at you and your blasphemy, but we do not want to fight you, leaving you to the judgment of God. Who gave you the power to so shrewdly judge and condemn us and our church affairs - you, who understand so little about church affairs? You have a lot to do in your worldly garden - work in it, but don’t meddle in our sacred fence with your worldly evil spirit. By the grace of God we will cope with ourselves and with people, although they are from the world, but believers in God, peaceful and well-intentioned, and not with you, saturated with malice, pride and deceit. The Lord abides forever, His throne is prepared for judgment, and He will judge the universe in righteousness, judge people in righteousness (Ps. 9:8-9). Today's intellectuals have perverted both their minds and their lives: they took the matter of judgment, without being called to it, into their own sacrilegious hands, they began to judge their parents, their bosses, the government, and almost the kings themselves, and even more so they condemned the most eternal and all-righteous Judge - Christ, who will come with glory to judge the living and the dead; They also condemned the Holy Church of Christ, which has no filth or vice, its teachings and Sacraments, the faithful servants of Christ. But the hour will come when the terrible Judge will come from Heaven and show His terrible glory, from which heaven and earth will flee. Oh, what an inscrutable trembling will then fall on these uninvited judges, led by our wise judge of Christ and the Gospel Leo Tolstoy and his admirers, who led our youth to unbelief and anarchy and pushed them to unheard of audacity to judge everyone and everything and to determine themselves in their young, still undecided life and to the closure of the sanctuaries of science for an indefinite time and destruction golden, irredeemable time! From whom did they learn such judgments and who gave them the power to be judges and commit lynching? God's word jealously says: Let every soul obey the powers that be, for there is no authority except from God; The existing authorities were established by God (cf. Rom. 13:1). Paying attention to the present evil time - a time of unbelief, freethinking, frivolity, aimlessness of life, complete loosening of morals, rejection of sacred, eternal life authorities, the word of God, the writings of the prophets, apostles, Holy Councils, Ecumenical and Local, trampling on all righteous laws on which human life, temporal and eternal, is based, rigidity in lawlessness - you involuntarily think: oh, how the world and the entire fatherland, society, home, family would be happy if some pernicious sons were not born into the world and were not members of them! How many societies, houses, families would be freed from tears, grief and despair for their members who are perishing and stagnating in atheism, disobedience, drunkenness and debauchery! But, according to the righteous destinies of God, in this world it is determined for the manifestation of patience and struggle that wheat and tares grow together and sometimes coexist side by side with virtue and villainy, labor and immovable laziness, and this should continue until the General Harvest, when the Planter of the creation will say to His faithful servants - the Angels: first gather the tares and bind them into sheaves to burn them, and put away the wheat in My granary (cf. Matthew 13:30). The Righteous Judge of all determined that virtue should grow and reach perfection, and evil would reach its development and its fruits to a certain limit, so that good would receive perfect retribution and bliss, and evil would receive greater punishment and torment for all eternity. Oh, if only the good and the bad would always remember this and keep this in mind! The Holy Scripture says: do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book; for the time is near. Let the unrighteous still do injustice; let the unclean one still become unclean; let the righteous still do righteousness, and let the holy one still be sanctified. Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to everyone according to his deeds (Rev. 22:10–12). So, born of women, destined for eternal inheritance and bliss by birth from Christian parents and then by rebirth in the font of Baptism, choose here on earth your share - good or evil and the reward corresponding to both - or strive with zeal in the faith and virtue of Christian, civil and family, and you will be granted by God eternal life. Or, if you turn out to be stubbornly unfaithful, disobedient to the word of God and the Church, the grace of Baptism, if you are not a new creature in Christ, do not accept God’s mind, the new spirit and the new heart that God wants from us, and do not submit your will to the will of the all-powerful, righteous Creator, then wait for His righteous and terrible saying: Depart from Me, cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). Amen.