Глава 2. Человек падший

I. The Historical Fact of the Fall of Man Man, created in the image and likeness of God, with an immortal, rational and free soul - and immeasurably exalted above all unreasonable creatures, at the same time destined for eternal bliss, for keeping the commandments of God and subordinating his imperfect, limited will - the infinitely perfect, wise and heavenly will of God - through inattention, self-love and ingratitude fell into the sin of disobedience, pride, self-will, seduced by the forbidden fruit. Since that time, humanity fell into captivity of the first apostate - the devil, who diverted the thoughts and hearts of people from the One Creator of existence and all blessings - from God, turned their thoughts and hearts to earthly, corruptible goods, created by God for the benefit and pleasure of man, and instilled in their hearts guile, unbelief, ingratitude, malice, envy, the desire for earthly and corruptible things. The human soul is spiritual and simple. She cannot work for two masters: God and the world, incorruption and corruption, good and evil; if he loves the world, then he is enmity against God: for love for this world is enmity against God (James 4:4). In order to turn a person away from the love of God, sacredness and truth, the enemy insidiously and violently directs the thoughts and hearts of a person who has little understanding and passion for the world - for earthly, impure love, for earthly splendor, for earthly, especially female, sweetness, for earthly beauty. Therefore, those who wish to sincerely serve and please God must despise worldly pleasures, worldly wealth, worldly decorations and turn their whole heart to heavenly, heavenly pleasures, to heavenly incorruptible beauty, to the non-evening light. The human soul is immensely precious, as created in the image and likeness of God, with the inalienable gift of reason, freedom and immortality, which was supposed to achieve a free, firm desire for good and the Source of all good, truth and righteousness - God, perfect devotion to Him and endless bliss. But she did not keep the image of God intact, distorted it and lost the likeness of God through the delusion of sin, self-will and disobedience to God, and surrendered to the seducing serpent, who disfigured her and likened her to himself. Man fell deeply and became alien to God - his Creator, fell into idolatry and into all sorts of passions of the flesh and spirit, merged with the world, became a slave of corruption and sin, turning his eyes away from heaven, for which he was destined, brought upon himself a curse, all sorts of illnesses, troubles, sorrows and, in the end, temporary and eternal death. The Lord, who created man in the image and like His saints, sinless, wanted him, by his obedience to the Creator and fidelity in small things, to strengthen himself in good will, and to achieve perfection and unshakable firmness, and to become inflexible to sin. But the devil, who became proud against God and dreamed against his Creator, made the human race a participant in his pride and malice, and tries to embitter him and make him nasty in thoughts, feelings, words and deeds, to tear him away from God forever. 1) The devil as the main cause of the fall. The relationship between the devil and man: the temptations of the enemy and his desecration of all human nature The devil pursues us with persistence, constancy, with violence - with every kind of sin and thoughts of nasty, crafty and blasphemous - and pride, and arrogance, and bitterness, and hatred of one's neighbor, or contempt and disgust, wickedness, gloating, envy, hard-heartedness, stinginess and love of money, intemperance, drunkenness and theft, servility, indulgence and indulgence in sins, laziness, despondency, unbelief, lack of faith, murmuring, despair, infidelity, perfidy, treason, slander and false witness, slander and cursing, foul language, blasphemy, mockery. How much must a Christian struggle with all sins, hate them and try to love God, to whom he has become alien through the repetition of sins - and love virtue, which he previously neglected, despised and ridiculed of those who do good. - Avoid evil and do good. All the intentions of the adversary of the enemy tend to corrupt human nature with various lusts and passions, to defile, to remove from God - the Source of life, to kill and make him an eternal prey of hell, just as he himself became its first inhabitant. So, notice, the enemy corrupted humanity at the beginning, before the flood, all fornication, all kinds of sins, and God brought the flood to the earth in order to save future offspring from a greater spread of fornication and all sin. So now the devil corrupts people mainly through fornication of all kinds. The holy people of God, having rejected the world and all partiality, thereby scolded the world and the world ruler, the devil, who reigns in the hearts of people devoted to the many-passionate flesh and the adulterous and sinful world; for people have turned away from the path leading to the eternal kingdom - through passions. “If anyone desires to be a friend of the world, he becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4), says the apostle. During our prayer itself, the enemy often overthrows people with thoughts and desires for money, sweets, or the honors of this world, breaks the prayer and swears at man and God. The devil constantly tries to blaspheme in our thoughts and sinful lusts all the works of God, to pervert our whole life, to overthrow, to put, so to speak, upside down - and not to allow all the saving intentions of God regarding us to be fulfilled, and in general to corrupt, degrade and make our whole life idle, filthy, worthy not of the Creator God, but of the devil. What diligence a person must make about himself and about the commandments of God every day and hour, in order to overthrow the tricks of the murderous serpent, in order to diligently do the will of God and achieve his great destination - union with God through truth and holiness, and eternal bliss! Therefore, the path that leads to the stomach is narrow, and there are few who find it; and on the contrary, the path is wide and the gate is wide, leading into destruction (Matt. 7: 13-14). And who among the reasonable and meaningful will not weep and waste his life? – How much untruth, hard-heartedness, unmercifulness, greed, pride, ambition, luxury, vanity, contempt, lack of sympathy for grief, need, illness, misfortune on earth; how much cunning, looking for one's neighbor in order to erase him, destroy him and take his place; how much intemperance, drunkenness, family betrayal, fornication, extortion, wickedness, unbelief, lack of faith, murmuring, despair, extreme poverty and destitution, suicide, murder, theft, theft, civil strife and all kinds of sin! Life on earth sometimes seems like hell. This is what sin has done and does; How the devil and those who obey him are causing mischief in the world! The Kingdom of God is taken by force, and strong seekers only acquire it (Matthew 11:12). Look for these powerful seekers! How few of them there are, how few! Our evil adversary has terribly perverted our nature through sin, giving man his unclean mind, unclean heart and unclean desires, and a wicked, evil will, and wicked eyes, and wicked hearing, and all his feelings, and his whole soul, clothed with his unclean, stinking clothing of sin. How much work a person needs on himself, constant attention to himself, unceasing prayer, the most sincere tears and sobs, and sighs from the depths of the soul, and fiery cries, in order to get rid of such a state of mind! Meanwhile, the enemy is trying in every possible way to darken, to blind the apple of a person’s soul, so that he does not see his terrible, deplorable state, and continues to blithely commit all kinds of lawlessness, in which a sinful person often dies without repentance, thus becoming the prey of the enemy and eternal fire. The property of sin (according to the devil’s intention) is to pervert everything, to understand, imagine, imagine, undertake, speak and do in a wrong way, to generally pervert, if possible, the moral order, or the laws established by God and the All-Creator. Thus, the devil distorted people’s concept of God and taught them absurd idolatry, which still exists among many nations; so he managed, through crafty and proud people, to pervert the God-revealed faith of Christ, giving rise to many heresies and schisms, dividing Christians into many dissenting camps that hate the true Christian faith in the world, the Orthodox, and among the Orthodox themselves he created and is producing little faith, unbelief, schisms and absurd teachings, such as Tolstoyism, Pashkovism, Shtunda, or coldness to faith and the Church. He, the devil, perverted the concept of the purpose and purpose of life, turned the eyes of many Christians away from heaven and eternal life, and riveted their eyes and hearts only to a temporary, testing, preparatory life, which many consider the only one, and the future as if non-existent; and from here he tied the eyes and hearts of people to temporary goods - perishable and quickly passing - to food, drink, clothing, to earthly differences, to perishable wealth, to material, physical beauty; perverted in man the purpose and purpose of the five bodily senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; taught to look seductively at the organs and members of the body and at feelings: perverted vision - to look seductively and adulterously at many things; taste taught excessive delicacy and drunkenness or senseless, harmful smoking of tobacco; made the sense of touch passionate, unclean; the ear has learned to bask in light secular musical sounds that relax the soul; perverted people's relationships with each other, making many stingy in relation to their neighbors, selfish, hard-hearted, prodigal, evil, crafty, unkind, malicious. And hence the duty of every Christian saint to constantly listen to his thoughts, feelings, or to constantly curb his vain and sinful thoughts, desires, intentions, to curb his hearing, touch, taste, sight, smell, his passions, and to use all his feelings for the glory of God and for his own good. With whatever creature our and God’s bodiless enemy does not try to seduce us and present all of God’s creatures – pure and beautiful – in a perverted, unclean and absurd form! Even the clear, all-joyful, all-life-giving sun swears; St. He blasphemes God who are in heaven, as they say in the Apocalypse - and often distorts human thoughts to the point of ugliness and disgrace - as, for example, in Leo Tolstoy, who completely distorted the meaning of the Gospel; swears at every animal: birds, fish, four-legged animals, insects, reptiles, all kinds of plants, heaven and earth; But how does he curse the animated church of God - man, his soul and body, in countless lusts and whims, especially those that happen in secret, about which it is shameful to speak? How he swears in thoughts, in feelings, in lusts, in memories, in imagination, in absurd utterances and all sorts of absurd and stupid actions, in all kinds of corruption, in murder and suicide! And after all this you sin, you joke with sin, you love sin, you indulge in it with your whole being! See how sin has perverted the entire meaning of our life, the purpose of all things in the world, turning means into ends, natural impulses and aspirations into ends! What a sin! How ugly, absurd, deadly; How can one not hate and loathe him, and not turn away from him with all the strength of one’s soul and body? How can one not love and fulfill with all one’s heart the law of God, all the word of God, and try to fulfill it to the last iota in all its accuracy and die for it in case of need, just as the martyrs and all the saints did! Bodiless enemies constantly teach people the corruption of sin in order to constantly defile the soul and body - they do everything that removes us from God, from heaven, from heavenly blessings and eternal life. The holy saints, being wise, perspicacious and attentive to the teaching of the Lord, despised the passions of their flesh, and all carnal earthly wisdom, all carnal passions - and directed all attention and contemplation to God and to heavenly, eternal blessings - and made their mind and heart and will heavenly, and forced their body to serve completely the rational and immortal soul and God the Creator. In order to take the human soul captive to sin, the devil uses delusion, seduction, sinful daydreaming, strong attraction, and violence towards sin. A person must look to God, the Savior, repent, pray and overcome desires, from the very first attack of sin on the heart. There is no absurdity, abomination, vile disgrace, madness, obscenity, blasphemy, perversion of the natural order, which Satan could not put into the mind and heart of a person in order to confuse, defile, frighten, strike him with despondency and despair, or induce him to commit any sin, the most absurd and murderous. Many are forced to cry because of his blasphemies, annoyingly creeping into their minds and hearts. He who understands what is going on will blow and spit on the evil spirits who inspire him with absurdities, and will defeat them in the name of Jesus and the power of the Cross. There is nothing in human thought, in the heart and in the will or discretion of a person - so unclean, nasty, crafty, ugly, senseless, stupid, evil, envious, proud, impudent, murderous for the soul, which the devil, maddened with anger, pride, wickedness, could not instill or instill; there is nothing most sacred that he would not blaspheme, there is not a single member in the human body that he would not mock, nor would he instill the most absurd, nasty, blasphemous thoughts about it; There is no object, animal, plant, fabric, metal or mineral for which it would not give rise to an addiction, the most absurd, only to distract, alienate, remove the thought and heart of a person from God and attract to itself - to defile, corrupt the soul and body of a person! An example of this is ancient and new idolatry and variously idolatrous modern Christianity, with its spectacles, fine arts, in which human nudity, especially female, plastic, plays the first role - and the richer, higher, more noble a person stands in civil terms, the more he puts before his eyes and his comrades, friends and household servants - these idols of the graceful and worships them. Oh, prodigal humanity, using the grace, beauty and perfection of God's creation as an excuse to satisfy their passions, and not for the glory of God! Alas, human myopia, which sees nothing beyond its nose! For what will happen not today, but tomorrow with this beauty of the human body? She becomes a stinking, ugly corpse and food for worms, earth and dust. And where is the soul that served delusion, defiled by delusion? “Nothing foul and unclean will enter the Kingdom of God.” By what sins has the enemy corrupted, dishonored, or desecrated our nature, created in the image of God, holy, beautiful, purposeful, pure, unblemished, worthy of all wonder? - And so, he continues to this day to corrupt, disfigure, distort her with all sorts of sins, bad thoughts, intemperance, drunkenness, fornication, infect her with countless diseases, and make our souls and bodies instruments of his uncleanness, abomination, malice, envy, mockery! Blessed is he who has recognized the machinations of the enemy over himself and resists him in every possible way, fighting all passions and defeating them with the grace of God! Instead of mutual love, the enemy sowed in people hostility, hatred, malice, envy, gloating, rancor, or instead of pure love, he planted in people unclean, carnal love, passionate, corrupt, ungodly; He made all feelings an instrument of sin, and not truth, of evil, and not of good, of wickedness, and not of simplicity and truth, and therefore we should all try to become like the good God, and not His and our evil enemy. The disembodied enemy, in his harmful actions on people, tries to slyly imitate the Lord and replace His actions and benefits with his own imaginary ones; So, instead of the sweetness of God's grace, he invented his own sweets - carnal sweets in the most intensified form, or - satiety with worldly sweets; instead of divine, sweetest, incorruptible, spiritual love, he invented carnal, unclean, corrupting soul and body and separating from God, cooling towards God, such as prodigal passion - so he perverted everything into infinity in order to resist God in everything and keep people in his constant delusion and darkness. The destroying enemy, having captivated man with carnal lust, the lust of the womb and divine knowledge, planted countless seeds of passions in his soul and body, captivating man’s heart with an addiction to the visible world, turning his heart’s eyes away from God and from contemplating the beauty of the invisible world and various virtues, so that man is, as it were, tied to this world by thousands of strong ropes, or chains, which he cannot break without special assistance from the grace of God, which is acquired through repentance, prayer of faith and many tears. The disembodied villain, the most crafty, foul and evil-smelling Satan, tries to present all things in the world - man, all animals, birds, fish, insects and reptiles - in a perverted form, blissful, tempting, blasphemous, vile, disgusting, while the entire creation is perfect, pure, beautiful, purposeful, impeccable. The devil's malice is extremely cunning, picky and invents countless, false, meaningless pretexts for hating one's neighbor. Here everything serves as a pretext: the unsightliness of the face, and in particular the nose, cheeks or chin, or the crookedness of the eyes; or pronunciation of the tongue (burr), for example, incorrect pronunciation of some letters - “r”, “l” and others, or pronunciation through the nose; or poverty and frequent requests for help; incorrect tone of voice; or nationality, for example, Jewish; in general, the enemy invents many pretexts, which all cannot serve as a real reason for hatred, but only as an imaginary, dreamy one. Oh, how absurd and ungodly sin is, how outrageous and disastrous! Deliver me, Lord, from all demonic malice and grant me to love impartially, godly, non-passionately! How cunningly, unnoticed by many, constantly and violently, disastrously, the devil works in us, dragging us into various passions, covering his trunk and his tail with our pride, voluptuousness, self-pity, self-preservation, provision for the future, frugality for a rainy day, for the family, for old age, for infirmities and various accidents! So, we see an ugly, or sick, or roughly dressed person, and we turn away from him; or we see a well-dressed, handsome, young person with regular, graceful features, and we are carried away by him, we are attracted to him. What is this if not self-deception, if not our flagrant untruth regarding our neighbor, whose soul is equally equal in honor with our soul according to creation, redemption, according to the image of God inscribed in it by the Creator? Or do we see a poor, beggar, hungry, naked, in need of a place of service, and we pass by him, we treat his poverty, deprivation, sorrows and sorrows coldly, having the opportunity to help him financially, or arrange for a place of service - and we do not help him, we spare him money, and food, and clothing, and payment for the premises? Is this normal, is this fair? If we are one body of Christ, and separately members of the body of Christ, then how can we not sympathize with each other, but regret material means, which are nothing in comparison with the person himself! We all need to understand the intentions against us of our bodiless enemies, wise for evil and temptation to sin. These intentions and the whole purpose of the enemy’s incessant machinations over us are as follows: to defile a person, to corrupt the soul and body, to cool oneself towards God and one’s neighbor or to alienate one from God and from each other, to turn one away from holy love and all virtue, to disturb the soul, to bind it and take it captive; to rebel against God and the Church, to liken him to himself and to be cast into hell forever, to the eternal torment prepared for him and his angels. – Do Christians know and remember this? The machinations of the all-destructive spirits of malice and deceit are extremely cunning and subtle. With all their might and cunning, first of all, they try to destroy in us love and respect for our neighbors, instilling in us crafty and unworthy, contemptuous and blasphemous thoughts regarding our neighbors with whom we have one way or another communication, they imagine in our neighbor some external or internal, spiritual, shortcoming, and on the basis of this they instill a feeling of dislike or disgust towards him, and if the person with whom we have a conversation or business - feminine, young, beautiful, then they arouse carnal lust for him and reduce him to the level of a delicacy that can be enjoyed, they inspire him to notice in his fellow inferiors - colleagues - all sorts of faults and extreme severity and pickiness towards them; and to the higher and stronger - they inspire caressing and groveling. Deliver us, Lord, all of us from the charms of the enemy and teach us to defeat all the machinations of our ethereal enemies. There are no number of reasons, imaginary or real, that the disembodied enemy presents in our thoughts for hostility against our neighbor, and in every possible way, with impudent persistence, he forces us to chagrin, embitterment and hatred; He tries to present everything in a gloomy and hateful form in another neighbor - his voice, his gait, his facial expression, and his physical defects. Christian love covers everything, looks at everything condescendingly, with a good disposition of the heart, but enmity and pride find fault with everything, distorts everything in a person and presents it in a disgusting form. For sinners devoted to various passions, the effort and effort of the enemy - the devil - is very noticeable, to bring them down into the depths of evil so that later it would be extremely difficult for them to emerge from this depth into the light of God. And each of us, while sinning, noticed that the enemy was trying to plunge us into the very depths of evil; and the abyss of anger is infinitely great. The devil plunged Christ's apostle Judas, one of the 12, into the abyss of evil. What is the cunning, cunning and malice of the enemy! So now he plunges thousands of people in all classes into all kinds of evil. Be careful how dangerously you walk (Eph. 5:15). The devil does not attack anything like this, he does not blaspheme anything like this, he does not defile anything, he does not swear at anything like he does over the reproductive members of a man and a woman; For this purpose, there are special, nasty, obscene, unprintable names in the human language with which these members are reviled; for this purpose all sorts of nasty, crafty, unclean thoughts, lusts, arrogant, crafty, unclean views; for this, novels and all sorts of light reading; for this purpose, seductive paintings of statues representing naked women; for this theater, ballet, for this dancing with low-cut breasts. O most holy law of childbearing, demonstrating the immeasurable wisdom and goodness of God! How venerable and worthy you are of reverence, wonder, thanksgiving and strict treatment of yourself! Meanwhile, the enemy, who initially corrupted the human race through eating the forbidden fruit, intensifies from our very youth, almost from infancy, to corrupt us precisely through the members of our children, and how many unfortunate people who tasted this sin in their earliest youth and suffer throughout their lives perish from it! A small tree is easy to pull out of the ground, but a large one is difficult. The devil in one demoniac, when he was expelled, shouted: I can’t get out, I have grown, I have become big, but with intense prayers I came out. – You see, the evil spirits that have taken possession of a person grow and strengthen with time and skill. 2) The world and the flesh as the devil’s tools to seduce and enslave man A. Peace: addiction to the vain and corruptible world In order to eradicate from the human heart love for God and the hope of a future blessed and endless life, the enemy constantly tries to wound our hearts with love for the world and its delights, especially for the sweetness of the loins, for the sweets of the belly, for earthly treasures, for earthly splendor, or lovingly for one’s flesh, for self-pity, self-sparing, self-indulgence - this is how people trample on the love of God in every possible way, Who alone is worthy of all our love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength... So the holy saints loved Him, rejecting all worldly, sinful, material, carnal, fleeting, corrupting soul and body love. God draws our souls to grief, and the enemy - down to the earth; all human pleasures and passions, all sinful attractions are directed towards the earth; and by the passionate aspirations of the soul for earthly so-called goods, or by indifference to them, it is easy to recognize: our soul is attached to God or to the earth, to good or to evil. So, for example, the theater, with all its praise by secular people, is an earthly and sinful pleasure, pagan, because its object and goal are purely earthly pleasures, and it does not lead anyone to God, perhaps negatively, through the consciousness of all the vanity of theatrical performances and acting. – The Holy Church is an institution of God on earth, for heaven and heavenly. All secular writers have as their subject only the satisfaction of earthly feelings and desires, and rarely have Christian morality as their subject; Christian teaching is an alien area for them; they, like actors and actresses, speak from the world and the world listens to them. The whole charm of sin, the charm of the devil, lies in distracting the minds and hearts of Christians from heaven and the heavenly fatherland, from the holiness and incorruptibility of the blessings prepared for us, and tying, chaining to the earth and earthly joys and entertainment, to earthly love, to earthly corruption. About the reckless and blind attachment of people to temporary life and disregard for the eternal. The passionate attachment of the soul to this life violates the integrity, peace, freedom, health of the soul, which naturally strives for its Original – God; sorrows, sorrows, wounds are caused, the soul falls into endless vanity and falls away from God. The love of this world is enmity against God. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love is not in him. All my years are the essence, but let me not be possessed from what (1 Cor. 6:12). Firmly remember that the love of this world is enmity, strong enmity against God: for this love is unclean, adulterous, passionate, false, devilish, separating from God and appropriating it to the enemy - the evil spirit. One moment of worldly attachment to someone or something - and the soul is captured and separated from God. This is how dangerous it is to become passionately attached to anyone or anything, even for a minute. How careful a Christian man should be! And rightly so: for what does a Christian owe to Christ God? To everyone, all the blessings, greatest, priceless, eternal and temporary; eternal redemption from sin, damnation and death, eternal bliss. Solomon, having experienced all the earthly pleasures of health, beauty, power, wealth, luxury, earthly splendor, voluptuousness, finally came to the conviction that everything on earth is vanity: youth, beauty, wealth, greatness and glory, and that all the good of man lies in the fear of God and keeping the commandments of God. As soon as the soul begins to become addicted to earthly goods, or, more accurately, to shiny or beautiful corruption - be it a beautiful woman’s face, shiny metal, mineral, shiny clothing or a head adornment - a secret falling away from God, the Source of life, begins, cooling, indifference to Him, humiliation and insult begin, and the soul begins to feel confusion, sorrow, oppression, death; and as soon as she sincerely and deeply realizes her madness in this passion and the corruption of all earthly beauty, all splendor, all earthly glory, and is convinced that our life is in one God, that He is the only true good, that all heart desire and all love should be directed towards Him alone, as for eternal good, life, as for the first and unfading, eternal, holy beauty - then she will be revived, will feel peace, freedom, boldness and complete spiritual satisfaction. What do we have in heaven? and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh have disappeared: the God of my heart and my portion is God forever (Ps. 72:25-26). How many temptations there are due to addiction to female beauty, to money, to valuable clothes, head decorations, to all sorts of persons and things to which the heart is attached. But nothing perishable in the world gives peace and life to the heart! The Lord alone is our life and our peace, our blessedness, our freedom and space, our strength, our light, our boldness, our intercession and deliverance. Why are we often seduced by earthly things? Because we love the flesh and the world very much and are careless about the immortal soul; because we love to eat sweetly, drink, and dress elegantly, but do not engage in the thought of God and spiritual contemplation. He who is not with Me is against Me; and whoever does not gather with Me scatters (Luke 11:23). You read novels, newspapers and read a lot of empty speeches in them. Are you with God at this time or not? Of course, not with God, for God does not exist in earthly vanity; it means you are against God, and this is a sin. Do you gather the grace of God by reading empty rhetoric in books of easy reading? no - but you squander the grace that you acquired, if only you acquired it in prayer, in contemplation of God, or in reading the word of God and soul-saving books, or in pious conversation, or in good deeds. And this is a sin. For every idle word that men speak, they will repay it on the day of judgment (Matthew 12:36). A person’s heart energy should be directed entirely towards God, towards His love, towards the fulfillment of the Holy Spirit. commandments, to fight against evil or sins of all kinds, to preserve spiritual peace, meekness, humility, freedom of spirit, sympathy for humanity in its weaknesses, errors, losses, failures, sorrows and illnesses, and not to pride, not to love of money and voluptuousness, to gluttony and immoderate pleasures, to games, performances, to horse lists, for cycling. Meanwhile, the enemy intensifies to direct all the energy of our heart and will towards vanity, towards the passions of the flesh and spirit, towards the love of the world and everything in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16), and thus constantly steals the most precious good of man - the salvation of the soul. God alone is worthy of all our love, complete obedience to His holy and life-giving commandments. Sin deceives us a thousand times, without number, plunging us into absurd sins and destruction, and we, like powerless captives, constantly work for it through carnal voluptuousness and addiction to the world. Look at the saints, how they lived and pleased God and saved souls! It is not good, I act unreasonably, looking for a long time for some thing that was put somewhere and forgotten, and grieving in my heart over its loss or not finding it in person, and at the same time leaving the Lord in thought and heart. A lost and unfound thing becomes for a time an idol of the heart, an object of passion and pity. Everything in the world is vanity and ruin of the spirit; There is only one need: God and all that is holy. The Lord alone is life, our giving; To him is glory and honor and power. Nowadays we need strong and fiery in spirit Chrysostom, Gregory, Vasily, otherwise the word of the world, the tares, has taken on great power in the press, for who now neither writes, nor prints, nor reads. Everyone is literate, educated, literally - a whole sea of ​​words is poured onto paper, and in addition, they are illustrated with pictures, and sometimes - what kind? Some readers will look at it, but others will turn away, or tear apart another sheet. B. Flesh: involuntary slavery of fallen man before the sinful law of the multi-passionate flesh Why don’t we correct ourselves, why do we lie to ourselves and to God? From sinful pride, and especially because of love for one’s multi-passionate flesh, from addiction to the visible, tangible, perishable, temporary and from disbelief in the invisible. Why does the enemy overcome people, making them slaves to insane lusts? From addiction to the same flesh, from lack of faith and inability to pray. Our multi-passionate flesh has its own sinful, absurd, disastrous, devilish law, it wants and tries to fulfill everything that is contrary to the spirit, God, truth, reason, truth - the spirit demands service to God and neighbors in the spirit of truth and righteousness, the flesh demands service to itself, its pride, its lusts, laziness, gluttony, greed, sensuality or fornication, pride, ambition, vanity, etc.; meanwhile, one must perform deeds of virtue, serve selflessly the sick, communicate them with God through communion of the Holy Mysteries or through prayer to God for them. We must become spiritual and please the flesh less, eat and drink less, do not skimp on wasting our property on charitable works, grow rich in God, and not gather for ourselves (Luke 12:21). All our sins come mainly from self-love, pride, self-pity, self-indulgence, carnality; the cause of all evil nests in the flesh, just as it happened in the first people. Therefore, in order to begin and continue self-education for God, you must first of all self-sacrifice, you need the crucifixion of the flesh with passions and lusts. This is what all our reverend fathers did; first of all, they taught themselves abstinence, vigil, prayer, obedience, labor, meekness, humility; the martyrs did not spare themselves even to the point of death for Christ. “My daughter is angry with evil” (Matt. 15:22). Our flesh is infuriated by countless passions: fornication, drunkenness, malice, envy, self-will, stubbornness, free-thinking, tyranny, laziness, self-interest, self-doubt, pride, servility, cowardice, hard-heartedness. The dogs are us, barking at Our Lord, at the Church of God with our murmurs, various blasphemies, like the schismatics, the Tolstoys, the Pashkovites and the like. I notice every day that the flesh or the old man in me is very strong and tenacious to the extreme detriment of my soul, which is enslaved by the flesh. Every day and every hour I am inclined to self-pity, self-caress, laziness, sleep, delicacy, gluttony and gluttony, guile, pride, contempt of neighbors, oppression of the sick and unbecoming, crooked, blind, lame, lichen and pimply, ugly, rude, insane; prone to grief, embitterment, irritation, anger, rancor, vindictiveness, gloating, malice, to secret and open fornication, to lustful thoughts and lusts, to absurd and blasphemous thoughts, blissful, evil, - to envy and ill will, to grumbling, impatience, disobedience, disobedience, self-will, greed, stinginess, despondency, cowardice, fear, despair, condemnation of others. We must daily crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts and exercise the soul, created in the image of God. How should it be restored, cleansed and beautified, enlightened, strengthened in virtue? The strongest obstacle for man to the love of God lies in our pride and in the voluptuousness and loveliness of our flesh, our old man; Therefore, the Gospel teaches us to crucify our flesh with passions and lusts and to despise the flesh as transitory, but to be diligent about the immortal soul. If people knew and remembered how eager and hastening our enemy the devil is to destroy us at all times, they would not slumber and be lazy and neglect their correction and salvation, but would watch every hour, pray, repent and hasten to do good deeds. The strongest obstacle for man to the love of God lies in our pride and in the voluptuousness and loveliness of our flesh, our old man; Therefore, the apostles teach us to crucify our flesh with passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24), to despise the flesh as transitory, and to be diligent about the soul is an immortal thing, as did the holy ascetics, for example, the Monk Alexis the man of God, John Kushchnik, Paul of Thebes, and all the martyrs, the venerable fools for Christ's sake. A person passionate about carnal pleasures seeks a reason to satisfy himself with them through sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste, memory, imagination; his whole soul, his whole heart is given over to earthly, carnal, coarse, corrupting pleasure, and he completely retreats from God, grows cold towards Him, despises, puts Him, His holiness, truth, peace, spaciousness and belly of the heart into nothing, completely surrendering to the charm of delusion, completely fulfilling the will of the enemy - the devil, intertwining with him, becoming one spirit with him. He then loses the character of a rational being - a human being - a Christian, and becomes bestial, unreasonable, inexpedient, wild, having perverted his nature from verbal to dumb, from rational to unreasonable. So harmful and contrary to God, common sense and Christian truth, and truth is addiction to earthly pleasures! Deliver, God, every person from such a way of life! Firstly, man, created in the image of God, humiliates himself and others extremely, making another person the target of voluptuousness, as a soulless thing, and himself as the same; secondly, this love is absurd, because it is passionate and idle, lifeless, perverted, contrary to the intentions of the Creator; thirdly, it is selfish, narrow and blind, for it concerns one well-known person, and then the lowest part of his being - the body, while the immortal soul is despised, and its true purpose of existence - to glorify the Lord in every possible way in truth and holiness - is perverted; it excludes all correct love - love for God and humanity, especially for people in need - sick, sorrowful, in need of our sympathy, our love, help. Further, it is always accompanied by sorrow and hardship, and often death. Through the addiction to visible carnal, material beauty and sweetness, aroused by the enemy in our minds and hearts, he daily intensifies to deprive us of the eternal, incorruptible holy beauty and sweetness of God and fellowship with all the saints in the future life. Therefore, let a person leave here carnal voluptuousness and even the sight with pleasure of carnal beauty, which has corrupted the hearts of many and driven them mad, turning their whole life upside down. Where carnal love begins, true spiritual love ends, and real enmity begins against God and people, even those closest to them; a husband who loves another woman becomes an enemy and enemy of his family, and he loves the criminal only in a bestial way, for the sake of vile pleasure. Gluttony and voluptuousness produce the bitter roots of hostility, pride and contempt for all those who do not contribute or oppose our voluptuousness, deprive it; from which there is no benefit, benefit, or which do not attract attention with good looks and beauty; who suffer from ulcers and wounds, or stink of them; who are crooked or lame, or who give us labor but do not give us reward; the glutton would like to turn everyone and everything into the tools, means and goal of his voluptuousness. Why did the antediluvian people and the inhabitants of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah become extremely corrupted and savage and forget God? From excess in food and drink. Why are today's people corrupted, morally savage and falling away from God and the Church? From excess in food and drink, from celiac and pancreatic rage. Do not get drunk with wine, for it contains fornication (Eph. 5:18). Any excess in food and drink is accompanied by a relaxation of the soul and a moral decline in its strength, a cooling towards God, towards prayer, towards every good deed, a decline in love for one’s neighbor, a deprivation of meekness, humility, sympathy for people, hard-heartedness, a rude attitude towards the poor, a tendency towards sleep, fornication, etc. A lot of prayer work, sighs, tears are needed to restore good relations towards God and neighbors, and again make the soul tender, sensitive to God and neighbor. This is how the soul falls from intemperance. Oh, how necessary is abstinence for a Christian at all times! How harmful is intemperance! The dominance of the belly, to which a person is accustomed to make daily fat sacrifices, is noticeable in all human actions, and everywhere the belly contradicts it, in good deeds, pious exercises, often in prayers, in visits to neighbors; everything and everyone who and what does not serve the womb is disgusting for a person devoted to the womb; and who and what satisfies him is pleasant. Such is the perversion of life that comes from the claims of an insatiable womb. Wine consumed immoderately and at the wrong time makes the soul powerless in the fight against internal temptations; the soul is easily susceptible to indignation and demonic fear - where there is no fear; is ashamed where there is no shame. II. The essence of the fall as perversion through the sin of human nature 1) Fallen human nature and its properties Our fallen nature is most often disposed to sin through pride, selfishness, gluttony, impatience, irritation, bitterness, disobedience, waywardness, pride, contempt, fornication, despondency, and cowardice. Everyone pay attention to yourself and constantly keep your thoughts, feelings, aspirations in check, and trust your inner and outer life with the Gospel of the Lord God. Do you know what you really are? You don't know. This is what the Lord, who searches our hearts and wombs, says about you and about all of us: “Do not think that you are wretched and poor and poor and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17). Our old man is completely opposite to the new: the old has his evil vision, his evil hearing, his touch evil and unclean, his sense of smell and taste unclean, his imagination and memory evil and unclean; the mind is unclean, the heart is unclean and the will is unclean; intentions and enterprises are unclean, all activities are repugnant to God, because they are full of pride, self-indulgence, and self-interest. Doesn't the description of the ap. suit our time and modern people? Paul of the morals of the people who lived in his time? He wrote this about the people of that time: they are filled with all kinds of untruth: fornication, wickedness, greed, malice, hatred, envy, murder, strife, deception, evil spirits; slanderous, slanderous, abusive, self-praising, proud, inventive in evil, disobedient to parents, reckless, treacherous, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful (Rom. 1:29-31). All the works of God in the world bear the stamp of inimitable wisdom, perfection, beauty, especially the crown of God's creation - man, male and female. Every artist and person distinguished by the high style of his art is extremely sorry and offended when his works are neglected by others like him, especially when they are distorted, disfigured, and take on a completely undesirable appearance and coloring. What is it like for the highest, only, inimitable Artist - God - to see His best creation - man - disfigured, distorted, desecrated, corrupted in soul and body! What indignation, what righteous anger deserve those people who disfigure themselves with sins and passions! The higher, more gracious, wiser the goal and meaning indicated by the Creator to man, the more criminal the person is, the more worthy he is of righteous and great punishment from God, who has given His laws and rules to everyone and everything, through which the goal indicated by the Creator and Provider must be achieved by creatures. Therefore, man, created in the image of God and destined to be like the Creator and to eternal blissful life, must achieve perfection in reason and knowledge, fulfilling the commandments of God and, since he is a being fallen by will, must certainly repent of his sins and correct himself, with God’s help, with his diligence and zeal in doing good deeds. – The devil, knowing well the purpose of man and the beauty of the god-like soul and body of man, opposes in every possible way God’s intention for man and his purpose, and tries to defile, disfigure, and corrupt him with all sorts of sins, especially fornication and intemperance, unbelief, freethinking, unbelief, deceit, all sorts of worldly addictions, in general attachment to corruptible things, envy, luxury, covetousness, hard-heartedness and petrified insensibility! Therefore, everyone must understand to work out their salvation with fear and trembling! For God is the one who acts in us, both to will and to do for good pleasure, according to the good will of God (Phil. 2:13). Foolish sinners extinguished their lamps, given to them by God - reason and conscience, trampled, like dumb ones, all the gifts of nature, all the wealth of God's grace. In all kinds of earthly and carnal deprivations, people grieve, sometimes immeasurably, but when they are clearly deprived of the grace of God through their sins, then few people grieve, and often they regard the deprivation as nothing. The extreme blindness and delusion of fallen man! What is more important: soul or body, carnal or spiritual deprivation? Is it deprivation of ashes, or deprivation of eternal life, deprivation of spiritual peace, truth, light, freedom, the mercy of God? About the confusion and blindness of people, who, out of their madness and lack of understanding, lose the one thing they need, because of an insane addiction to the flesh and the world! Come to your senses someday and give up your addiction to the world - after all, the world will soon leave you if you do not leave it. Cling to the Lord with all your heart, and He will never leave you. Eternal truth and immutable: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me. He who wants to save his soul will destroy it, and whoever destroys his soul for the sake of Me and the Gospel will save it” (Matthew 8:34-35). I am amazed, on the one hand, by the greatness of God’s gifts to humanity in the immortalization, purification, sanctification, renewal and deification of its nature; on the other hand, human cunning, pride, unbelief, ingratitude before God, frivolity, deliberate religious ignorance, blasphemy against faith and miracles; immersion in sensuality, drunkenness, prodigal uncleanness; anger, envy, disobedience to parents and authorities, disrespect and contempt for elders. What is needed is a decisive change, revival, renewal, a different way of thinking, believing, feeling, doing. Is there any thought, the most absurd, stupid, insane, unclean, wild, is there any most absurd, insane, dishonest, crafty, corrupt feeling, and absurd, reckless, harmful and destructive desire of the will, of which our fallen soul is involved, even for a minute, or for a moment? Our soul has experienced all kinds of spiritual winds, storms, and stench because of the natural corruption that prevails in our hearts, and from the influence of evil, unclean, absurd, crafty spirits. And St. the fathers bitterly lamented and grieved in their lives and in their writings about the obsessions they experienced in life, the floods of all sorts of nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts and the storms of demons: for the demons for our sins were allowed to tempt us in every possible way, so that the real dispositions and aspirations of our souls would be revealed, a strong hope in God would appear and be formed in us, and the establishment in us of all virtue. The divine principle in man - the soul is completely suppressed when given over to passions, for example, drunkenness, fornication, pride, envy, hatred, self-interest, laziness, despondency, despair, vanity, ambition, deceit, lies. O sinful soul, blind, corrupted, defiled! How crafty, unrighteous and lascivious you are! You stare at the beauty of a face and lust voluptuously, not paying attention to the image of God with which the soul is adorned and with which the face of a person is beautiful, and through this you curse God - our Prototype. You see a crooked, blind, lame, or sick, or ugly-faced person - and you turn away from him, you despise him, you don’t love him. O disciple of the devil! Why do you do the will of this charming man and murderer? Why do you curse the image of God? Look not at the outside, but at the inside, at the immortal soul, and equally honor every person, regardless of your greedy, voluptuous flesh, as God commanded you. Every soul, as the image of God, is beautiful; and the corruptible body receives all sorts of deformities as punishment, or a lesson, or for the salvation of the soul. You are a majestic and proud creature, smoking with your mind and various talents, or with your beauty and strength, arts, knowledge, enterprises and important deeds; think about what your mortal body consists of: earth, water, air, fire and a small amount of light, and from countless small worms and ciliates; in fact, you are a worm, and you are entirely made up of worms, which, if you want, you can see with both a simple eye and an armed one, through a magnifying glass; and after death you become the prey of worms entirely in your body. This is your physical side, which you caress so much, protect beyond measure, cherish, cherish, satisfy its whims. Stop being proud, humble yourself before the incorruptible eternal Creator, and do not be seduced by the visible, but strive with your mind and heart and with your whole being for the incorruptible, invisible, eternal, and reverence the One who created you in a dual being, spiritual and material, incorruptible and corruptible, and be diligent about the immortal soul, and cut off the body, that is, its whims. 2) Sin, its essence and origin Sin is an absurd, insane, flattering, captivating, ungodly monster that dishonors and kills the soul. Every Christian must know its qualities firmly and fight against it, turn away from it, and not succumb to it. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in high places. Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the day of cruelty, and all that you have done” (Eph. 6:12-13). “Aphids smolder” (Matt. 6:19). By corruption we mean sin, addiction to visible goods: beauty, sweetness, fame, wealth, luxury. Let us not cleave to the creature instead of the Creator. “What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Sin is lawlessness, rebellion against God, failure to submit to Him, and separation from God; sin is meaninglessness, madness, absurdity, ugliness, darkness, corruption and relaxation of soul and body, deceptive sweetness, demonic stench, rage, obscenity, disgrace, shame, confusion, enemy storm, coldness that numbs the soul; wave of the devil, demonic violence; bonds that bind the soul, enemy captivity, demonic darkness, mental torment, temporary and eternal death. If sin is so absurd and senseless and deadly, then why don’t we disdain it, don’t stop obeying it, doing its will? Because of his great charm, because of his charm, his incessant deception, because of temporary sweetness and temporary satisfaction of the self-love of a sinful person, because of the darkness brought on by sin. Thus, there is the delight of pride, the delight of malice, the delight of drunkenness, the delight of womb, the delight of the loins or fornication, the delight of laziness and inaction, the delight of sleep, the delight of waywardness and disobedience, the delight of the love of money and the love of gold, the charm of hard-heartedness, the charm of vanity, luxury, the charm of horse races, the delight of entertainment, artistic charm, especially genre, when it exposes the nakedness of one of the sexes of the human race. With such a diverse charm of sin, the Christian faith requires an everlasting, urgent, unrelenting struggle and - in order to defeat it - the special gracious help of God, called upon by those who are tempted; and to receive this help from God, you need strong faith in Him, in His quick, all-powerful help; only in Him can all sinful charm be overcome; and after victory over sin, the soul accepts peace from God, a feeling of inner satisfaction and is filled with gratitude to God for the victory and for standing in His righteousness. He who overcomes will inherit everything, and I will be his God, and he will be My son, says the Lord the Hero of Heroes (Rev. 21:7). To him who overcomes I will give to sit on My throne, just as I also conquered and sat with My Father on His throne (Rev. 3:21) Sin is an old disease, an ulcer, uncleanness, corruption, separation from God; he has deeply planted his countless roots in the entire human being; and no one can heal this terrible disease, this corruption except the Lord Himself, Who came down from heaven, took on our body, lived on earth, suffered for us and died, giving us His Most Pure Body and Blood for food and drink, as the Wise Physician. How does sin take us captive every day? Our excessive love for ourselves and contempt, pride and dislike for our neighbor; charm, darkness, blindness and violence, for sin itself is ugliness, meaninglessness, extreme harm and destruction, torment, shameful captivity, slavery to the most inhuman and cruel tyrant - the devil, removal from God, the Source of life; and, as such, disgusting; with our selflessness he is powerless. Therefore let the Christian man deny himself. Eternal enmity against God nests, lives and acts in our flesh, and the more we please it, the more it grows and intensifies; and therefore, in order to please God, it is necessary and absolutely necessary to abandon all friendship towards her and crucify her with passions and lusts. Those who are Christ's are flesh crucified with passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24), and the love of this world is enmity against God (James 4:4). You cannot work for God and mammon. You cannot work for two Masters (Matthew 6:24). Carnal lusts include: pride, carnality, gluttony, drowsiness, greed, love of money, fornication with all lustful thoughts, hardness of heart, laziness in prayer, passion for clothes, for luxury in everything; envy, hatred, hypocrisy, partiality, reading secular books, dancing, dances, theaters, clubs, masquerades, singing secular songs, playing cards, kissing, passionate hugs, flattering speeches, deceit, deception. Sin constantly intensifies between God and man in countless types of earthly lusts and passions; Our multi-passionate flesh, or the enemy through the flesh, is constantly at enmity against God and against our soul, against its closeness and love for God - and with all its might it tries to extinguish love for God - with love for the world and its charms and temptations. Therefore, to love God, one must hate one’s flesh in the sense of its lusts and passions, and hate the world in the sense of its ungodly and corrupt customs; you need constant vigilance over yourself, over your five senses, over your heel (the flesh), so as not to be carried away to sin, the temptations of the flesh, or a voluptuous picture, or the beauty of a woman’s face, or some kind of clothing, or the shine of precious stones, gold, silver, the beauty of buildings, the decoration of rooms, the grace of print fonts, the binding of books, or sculptural sculptures; - everything that flatters the eye, taste, touch, or that through the ear relaxes and pampers the soul and flesh. Everywhere in the world, through sin, enmity against God reigns, through everything and in everything. Therefore, his saints despised the world and its delights, as well as their multi-passionate flesh, hostile to God, and did not spare it, exhausting it with labor, fasting, vigil, prayer, spiritual contemplation, obedience to elders in everything, and thus achieved perfect love for God. Sin gains strength and victory over people with its charm, violence, and constancy in the pursuit of its victim; the aphid of sin at first is very sweet for the voluptuous flesh, and a person, unscathed by high, incorruptible, pure love for virtue and for his Creator, easily succumbs to the charms of carnality and lust, or false mental and physical satisfaction. Therefore, sinful sweetness must be overcome by spiritual, incorruptible, peaceful, eternal, most excellent sweetness, and the attraction to earthly, corruptible beauty - by the attraction to heavenly, imperishable, imperishable beauty. How does sin seduce and, so to speak, bribe a person? Imaginary sweetness, satisfaction of self-love, ambition, pride, envy, greed; passion for possession, contentment, peace: and have many good things for many years: rest, eat, drink, be merry (Luke 12:19), says the peace-lover and carnivore. Every sin takes over people who are devoted to this world through their charm, their cunning, their violence and coercion, their persistence and constancy, acting in reality and in their sleep. Therefore, a Christian needs constant attention to himself, repentance, humility, prayer, abstinence; for the race of demons constantly confuses us with various sins, and comes only through prayer and fasting. Lord, help us for Thy name's sake! Sin constantly rushes to put itself into action in every person, especially the Christianly unenlightened one - it strives to put itself into action in all kinds of sinful forms and passions: in laziness, overeating, delicacy, intoxication with wine, in self-love, unbrotherly love, hostility, malice, envy, pride, humiliation of one's neighbor, disobedience and submission, in murmuring and impatience, in malice, malice, malice, in deceit, coldness. A person must constantly be on guard of his heart and his thoughts, and in the feat of secret prayer, in constant repentance and self-condemnation and in tears, in order to wash away with them the constantly accumulating defilements of sin. If sin is in such a hurry to produce itself into action, then truth must constantly produce itself into action in a person, and not be only in thoughts and good intentions; for faith without works is dead (James 2:20); and a Christian must constantly demonstrate his meekness, kindness, patience, chastity, love for everyone, obedience, simplicity, humility, and goodwill. The temptation of sin can be so great that the simplest things, for example, eyes, face, nose, eyebrows, every movement of the body, gait, gaze, tempt a sinful person with an unclean disposition of heart, thoughts, and inclinations; every animal seduces; holy icons at home and in the church tempt; the life-giving cross, the enemy envelops everything, everything in his unclean, stinking fog and communicates to a person with an unclean heart his unclean, false, gloomy, blasphemous vision; presents everything to man in a perverted, unclean, blasphemous form. This is the cunning of sin; how charming are the actions of the enemy in our souls! Because of this, many, having been deceived, clung with all their hearts to empty things, for example, to money, to home furnishings, maps, statues, to animals and defiled themselves by mixing with them; they stopped praying in front of icons at home and in church; and those ignorant of the true God in ancient times defiled themselves through the action of demons by idolatry, just like today’s idolaters: the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and others. And the air is infected with our sins, and the earth stinks from our iniquities, and fire with rage and jealousy awaits the time when it will be allowed to consume the opponents of God's truth. Everything about us is infected with sins: flesh, blood, eyes, ears, tongue, smell, taste, and touch; all brains; mind, memory, imagination, desires, will, the whole being, so that we neither see, nor hear, nor taste, nor touch - without sin. To the pure everything is pure, and to the unclean everything is unclean, but his mind and conscience have become defiled, everything tempts him, and the holy thing seems unclean. This is how sin infected the heart and the entire human being. Cleanse your heart, O man, day and night with prayer and tearful repentance, while the time of testing and work continues. How great and deep is the corruption of our nature by sin in its countless types and directions! I am aware and feel this every day, every hour. Every minute, like a hurricane, he is ready to seize and shake, to disturb her suddenly, at the slightest inattention and indulgence of his sensuality, to shake me with anger, irritability, embitterment towards my neighbor, especially the low and poor, who bore me with daily begging; then by lustful thoughts and lusts, and by flattering recollection and imagination of the sweetness of sin; now by envy in the most empty and unimportant things, now by partiality and people-pleasing, now by greed, and worldly love of life; sometimes by vanity and essence; sometimes by disobedience, stubbornness and laziness, sometimes by drowsiness and yawning; then through cowardice, pride, despondency and relaxation of soul and body, and all sorts of sins, we are strengthened to push away from God - the Source of our life, light, peace and bliss. We need unceasing vigilance, attention, unceasing prayer, unceasing repentance, unceasing struggle with sin, faith in God, hope for His help and mercy, undying and strong love for God. And the Lord, seeing our weakness, inclination to sin and resorting to His all-powerful help, will constantly help us, protect us, have mercy and save us. Glory to His mercy! Only the constant struggle with sin strengthens our soul in patience and love for God. It is better to rush to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. We, slaves of flesh and blood and all sin, usually rush to the house of feasting, and run away from the house of weeping and sorrow, or reluctantly and often with annoyance and chagrin, we go there at the invitation. Sin has distorted all our relationships towards our neighbors and ourselves. We are selfish, carnivorous, selfish, lazy, crafty, evil, malicious, partial, disgustingly, only by appearance and clothing, evaluating the invaluable essence of man, created in the image of God, redeemed by the death of Christ God on the cross. The Lord God is the all-desired Being, he is the very goodness, love, imperishable beauty, indescribable fragrance, most joyful light that sanctifies the faithful, simplicity and the most holy truth; all rational creatures naturally strive for Him, but sin, which entered our nature, perverted the whole order and turned the minds and hearts of people away from God. Love covers everything, all the sins of the repentant and various physical and moral shortcomings; and enmity and hatred invents all sorts of imaginary physical or spiritual shortcomings, finds fault with everything, punishes cruelly for everything; and in relation to God and the saints, he imposes nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts. O sin, living and active in man! How fierce, cursed, angry, picky, restless, and deadly you are! III. Consequences of the fall: disasters, illness and death All humanity is constantly and strongly attracted to sin in all forms, and experiences its consequences - confusion, contrition, sorrow and distress, and all sorts of disasters, with ultimate death. There is only one Deliverer from this all-destructive sin - the Lord Jesus Christ. But how little faith people have in Him! How many scoffers of His holiness and truth? How many teachings are contrary to His teaching? Man first departed from the solid foundation of the will of God and the commandments of God, as if from solid rails, speaking figuratively and in modern language, and deviated onto the disastrous path of self-will and the will of the devil, an enemy and apostate from God, and therefore his disasters have no end or measure. You are a creature; God is your Creator, Sculptor, Artist, who formed your soul and body, you are in His complete power, good, right, omnipotent, perfect. As a good, righteous, wise, perfect, beginningless Creator, He gave you the same perfect, good, righteous, blessed law, by fulfilling which you would be holy, righteous and blessed forever and ever. He, as the Creator, subordinated all creatures, verbal and dumb, animate and inanimate, to laws; thanks to these wise laws, creatures prosper and are in well-being; correct and expedient, beautiful interaction, order, harmony and beauty. But when a person brought into his life disobedience to the Creator, arbitrariness, self-indulgence, then the whole life of a person turned upside down, inside out, and became discordant, ugly, disastrous, deplorable from countless human passions: pride, self-love, greed, ambition, love of money, intemperance, drunkenness, fornication, all debauchery, hard-heartedness, malice, envy, laziness, disobedience, impatience, self-indulgence and other passions - and the human race was subjected to countless disasters. Only then does he begin to prosper when he comes to his senses, repents, corrects himself and completely submits to the laws of the Creator and lives according to them exactly. In the world, as in some magnificent house, we see marvelous order and reason in everything - in the movement of the stars and the earth, in the movement of the winds, in the changes of the year, in the development of plants, in their wonderful beauty, in the plant and animal kingdoms; the wise Builder and Master in everything - small and great - can see wise laws, order, harmony, inimitable beauty. And in the human race there are countless disorders, lawlessness, outrages, disasters, inconsistencies, disorders: for some - poverty, for others - luxury in everything and excess, stinginess, hard-heartedness towards their own kind, envy, intemperance, murder, suicide, disobedience of the younger to the elder. This is what sin has done and is doing. Try to create all truth. The Lord God is the all-desired Being, he is the very goodness, love, imperishable beauty, indescribable fragrance, endless sweetness, ineffable wisdom, a most joyful light that illuminates the faithful, simplicity and the most holy truth, and all rational creatures naturally strive for Him, but the sin that has entered into our nature has perverted the entire moral order, and the devil has invented his own nasty lusts, money-loving, lazy, evil, envious, thieving, ambitious, power-hungry, etc., and seduces people with them, and through them removes them from God, and plunges them into death and torment, into sorrow, oppression, darkness, shame. “The love of this world is enmity against God. If anyone desires to be a friend of the world, he becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4). This is the duality that reigns in our nature, due to sin! So fight with yourself day and night! Man, living on earth, for the most part lives in delusion, vanity and corruption, in addiction to the flesh and corruptible things, and not in God, not in truth, not in righteousness, not in spirit and incorruptibility; and therefore what he ultimately inherits, unless he repents, is not life, but corruption and death: “Whoever sows to the flesh, from the flesh will reap corruption, but whoever sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). Every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:10). This is a parable: under the tree there is of course a man; under the fruit are the good deeds for which we were created; beating is a death sentence, or deprivation of temporary life; By fire we mean fiery Gehenna, or eternal torment; an unquenchable fire to which all evil, crafty, vile spirits - demons - are condemned.