Глава 5. Участие самого человека в устроении спасения, совершенного Христом для всех, но не всеми достигаемого

I. Fighting sin through: 1) Self-observation (contemplation), attention to one’s inner world, vigilance over oneself and impartiality to everything in life “Or do you not seek the riches of His goodness and meekness and long-suffering, not knowing how the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). The immeasurable goodness of God towards man was manifested in the creation, providence, redemption and deification of man, in the granting of all powers for salvation, in the granting of eternal life, eternal bliss, in the granting of the most pure Body and Blood as food and drink of eternal life. “God so loved the world, as He gave His only begotten Son to eat” (John 3:16). They say: God is good, He will have mercy on all sinners. Yes, but which ones? Those who sincerely repent and forsake untruth and do righteousness. Do you want to populate paradise with drunkards, adulterers, money-lovers, thieves, traitors to the faith, apostates from God - heretics, sectarians and schismatics, who themselves are divided into hundreds of self-inflicted factions - arbitrators who do not want to submit to the one Church of God and its one Head - Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit? No, they themselves would not go to heaven, even if, for example, they were allowed to enter there, it is alien to them, they would rather go to hell to those like themselves, because there they have their own people, people like them, and demons, whose will they have always done, to whom they have become like. No, nothing vile or unclean will enter heaven, for what fellowship has light with darkness? Right with lawlessness? Christ with beliar? (2 Cor. 6:15). “God is true to Himself: for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. 2:13) - from His righteousness, holiness and truth. “Do you think that I will be like you,” God says to the sinner. Where will God's justice be?! If God did not spare His Only Begotten Son for our salvation, but gave Him up to suffer and die for us, giving us in His person a Deliverer, Intercessor, Almighty Intercessor, Helper, Savior, Doctor, Enlightener, Comforter, Nourisher, who offered Himself as the food and drink of eternal life, then we, for our part, must prove our faith, our obedience, our love, gratitude, and To be His active disciples and ascetics, zealous fighters against sin, which fights us, and against invisible and visible enemies, drawing us to sin, we must bring our own deeds. Demanding holiness from us, the Lord demands from us only what is due, as from creatures created in the image and likeness of God; for the human soul is endowed with the greatest gifts of God and the capacity for all virtue, for living faith, for fiery and selfless love, for works of mercy, for unshakable patience, for the sake of truth and for the sake of love for God and neighbor, for purity and holiness. Why is it that, instead of being inclined towards every virtue, we are inclined towards every sin, to every passion? Is it not because of our negligence, lack of attention to ourselves, lack of faith? Let us correct ourselves, let us be jealous of the exploits of the saints, their attention, correction, abstinence, patience, prayer, meekness, kindness, and mercy. The Lord wants to reign in us as the Creator, the Lord and the righteous Judge and the Rewarder - with truth, holiness, goodness, peace, freedom, bliss; and the devil, in the most jealous way, also wants to reign in us - with all untruth, flattery, violence, slavery, all blasphemy, malice, deceit, envy, hostility towards one’s neighbor, prodigal uncleanness that corrupts the soul and body. The enemy fights against us constantly, quickly, putting into us the threefold lust - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. We must constantly be on guard of our hearts and our thoughts, constantly repelling the attacks of enemies by looking to God, prayer, unceasing repentance, excelling in every virtue - meekness, humility, obedience, abstinence, etc. Our earthly life is a constant struggle and feat. Sinners and sinners! Do not forget that our sins in thoughts, desires, intentions, words and deeds are seen by God, the Mother of God, our Lady, seen by St. Our guardian angels see St. saints of God, who make up one Church of Christ - heavenly and earthly - and walk carefully, in the fear of God, constantly examining your conscience, moving away from all evil and doing good. Be like merchants who count their profits and are jealous of the profit of trade and the increase of their wealth. Take care of the spiritual profit of virtues. Oh, how diligently you must restrain your feelings and lusts and not allow your soul even for a moment to desire anything other than one pure desire - namely, to desire to be only with the Lord and to love Him alone unceasingly with all your heart. “How little God’s love and common Christian sense are in us; for when the first, slightest reason for sin presents itself, for example, sexual or lustful lust, or for hostility, pride, arrogance, we are immediately carried away by the first reason and sin in deed or thought, lust and passion, and love for God scatters, as it were, into dust. No, you, Christian, prove in practice that you are a Christian; that the commandments of God are hidden in your heart and you value them more than any treasure, any carnal sweetness, any earthly gain, more than any carnal pleasure. Repel every pretext of sin with faith and the fear of God, oppose to carnal desire a heavenly, spiritual, Divine desire; to a sinful desire - a holy desire; to an unclean desire - a pure desire; to a material desire - a spiritual desire; to a corruptible desire - an incorruptible desire. Otherwise, when we are tempted, we experience extreme inconsistency, contradiction to ourselves, our duty, our good, the absurdity of our thoughts and desires to our detriment and to the insult of God, our Prototype. If we love God, then we will love him always, unceasingly, without falling away from Him even for a minute, and also from love and goodwill towards our neighbor. How often is our fickle heart senseless and shaken by the winds of the earth? We also often walk in the flesh and not in the spirit. Continually look with the eyes of your heart at the Lord and do not distract them from Him even for a moment, lest sin creep into your heart and sting you with its destructive sting. “Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Look more carefully, deeper into your inner, mental or spiritual world, full of the greatest mental and moral interest, and do not get carried away by the external, material, transitory and disappearing world - heaven and earth, for heaven and earth will pass away, according to the immutable word of the Creator, and the words of His law will not pass away forever and ever (Mark 13:31). In that inner world you have a lot, a lot of work and effort ahead of you, due to our perversion of the spiritual order or creative laws, and mental and physical corruption; for it is said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The kingdom of heaven is acquired through effort and strengthened seekers acquire it (Matthew 11:12). Remember the barren fig tree; remember the grapes and the vinedresser; remember the servant who owes his Master the multitude of talents. The life of a Christian in the Gospel is likened to military guards - the first, second and third, and this instills constant vigilance of the Christian over his thoughts, feelings, movements of the will, vigilance regarding the ethereal enemies who are constantly attacking us and seeking to devour us to the end. The holy saints were on spiritual guard day and night - they constantly prayed, fasted, worked - leading a contemplative and active life. Our whole life should truly be a guardian: it is short, the task we have to solve is great and complex, and there are very many enemies who attack viciously, insidiously and powerfully. Let us be wise like a serpent, and our goals like doves (Matthew 10:16). Sinful thoughts and lusts are swift, like scorching lightning, or like a sudden strong wind, shaking the soul like a reed; or like a stormy stream that drowns the soul, like a church built on sand; or like a dirty, stinking wave, filling the whole soul with stench and stench. May every Christian beware of all sin, voluntary or involuntary, and may he establish his spiritual feet on the rock of faith - Christ God; let him pray unceasingly and always bring secret and open repentance to God, and let him abhor sin in all its countless manifestations, let him despise the voluptuousness of the flesh like a deadly poison, and let him value gold and silver and everything precious and shiny; let him despise human glory, this transient and harmful glory, which undermines the soul like a worm; let him seek incorruptible blessings, and let him always strive to have Christ in his heart, this Treasure is vital and all-sufficient for all eternity. One unrighteous thought is an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 15:26). And instantaneous carnal lust is betrayal of the Lord and the abomination of idolatry. This is because the soul is a simple being, a spirit, and in an instant it inclines either towards truth or towards untruth, and becomes like either God or the devil - that is why the Apostle says: “Do not be like the evil, but the good.” (3 John 1:11). “Guard your heart with all care; from this comes life” (Proverbs 4:23). Take care of your heart especially in order not to allow earthly, passionate lusts to reach it: for even one instant lust defiles the soul and separates it from God. Try constantly to ensure that it gravitates towards heaven, and not towards earth, towards God, and not towards Belial, so that it desires incorruptibility, love and virtue, meekness and humility, simplicity and gentleness, and not earthly, albeit brilliant or sweet, decay. We are in constant danger from earthly lusts: a sinful person clings to everything forbidden; protect your heart from anger, malice and envy, voluptuousness, pride, arrogance and exaltation of yourself over others! In every possible way, Christian, guard your heart: from that comes the life. Protect your heart in every possible way from sinful carnal lusts, which bring with them defilement, confusion, darkness, slavery, corruption. Sin creeps in most conveniently through our carnal lust: for the flesh loves sweetness, and corruption very easily creeps in through sweetness. “Guard your heart with all care, for from that comes life” (Proverbs 4:23). Watch - is faith intact in him, look - what are his desires, intentions, quests, yearnings, what is he attached to, strives for - to God or to the world, to heaven or to earth, is there in him a thirst for salvation, a thirst for the love of God, love for all truth and hatred for all unrighteousness, for all sin? Does he have a strong desire to please God and save a soul that is perishing in sins? Read the parables, understand them, put them in your heart... fulfill them! Keeping your feelings from the sin of sight means: not looking with partiality at someone else’s beauty, at someone else’s outfits, rich incomes, rich decorations of houses, at other people’s treasures and wealth, for all this will go to dust and ruin the purity of the soul; do not give free rein to rancor, to the unclean imagination that imagines and depicts sin in lovely, desirable forms; do not look at seductive images or paintings and statues, do not read seductive books; avoid seductive communities, gatherings of fun and frivolity, where sin is imputed to nothing, in general, beware of any occasion for sin, for there are many temptations in the world. Woe to the world from temptations, for there must be temptations for the sake of testing, but woe to the one through whom the temptation comes; it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck (Matthew 18:6-7). Why? Because the human soul is precious to God, who did not spare His Son for its salvation, it is more precious than the whole world... Long sleep relaxes and cools our soul to God. Our soul should be as awake as possible, in a state of contemplation and action. Our enemy does not sleep and takes advantage of every opportunity of sleep and mental inaction to desecrate and relax it. Be vigilant at all times, praying, says the Lord. In the life of a Christian, it is necessary to force oneself to do every task - to pray secretly and openly, to read and listen to the Word of God, to the divine service, to force oneself to any correction from sins and passions of all kinds - from pride, self-indulgence, carnality, gluttony, laziness, stinginess, greed, selfishness, ambition, envy, pride, gluttony, malice, malice, malevolence, rancor, disobedience, murmuring, cowardice, unbelief, unclean memories and imaginations of persons and objects, from evil, nasty and blasphemous thoughts, from superstitions (for example, not saying hello at the door, smiling when serving salt, or stepping on the wrong foot, and not starting work on Monday). It is necessary to force yourself to do good deeds - giving alms, to please your neighbor for his good, to any goodwill, good deeds, to affectionate treatment: “Be kind to one another with brotherly love, do one another with honor” (Rom. 12:10); in greetings, be considerate, ready to help, bear each other’s burdens and not please yourself (Gal. 6:2). All sorts of dangers for living according to God await me in this life: if I eat too much, my spirit becomes coarser and grows colder towards God; If I sleep an extra hour, too; If I take on any carnal or earthly passion for a moment, I immediately fall away from God; Whether I read secular books and newspapers with enthusiasm, I again grow cold towards God and heaven; and everywhere and from everything there is danger for my spiritual life. My soul is so subtle and sensitive to everything, and so conveniently it can cleave to the world, and so quickly and conveniently it can grow cold towards God and fall away from the one thing needed. Stay awake and pay attention to yourself, O man, at all times and guard your heart with all care. Remember the prophet and king who said: “What do I have in heaven, and what do I desire on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God, the stronghold of my heart and my portion, O God, forever” (Ps. 73:25-26). “Guard your heart with all care, for from that comes life” (Proverbs 4:25). Look to whom or what the desires of your heart are directed; to God or to the world, to heaven or to earth, to incorruptible and eternal blessings or to corruptible and transitory ones, to spirit or to flesh? Look - the disembodied enemy, the evil one, does not sleep: he is constantly doing his work, the work of your delusion and destruction, in you and tries to turn your soul away from God with all kinds of charms - now fornication, now self-seeking, now vain, now with pride or envy, or gluttony and drunkenness, now with laziness and inaction, now with reading empty books, or only secular ones, not allowing you to read books, teaching faith and piety, and one thing that is needed. The enemy constantly tries to rob the soul with a wide variety of vanities and delights. Stay awake and do not indulge in sinful slumber. Remember that God alone is the object of the desires of our hearts. “What do I have in heaven, and what do You desire on earth? God, the stronghold of my heart and my portion, O God, forever” (Ps. 72:25-26). A Christian must have a heavenly heart, not an earthly one: for we are all called to heaven to the wedding supper of the Lamb. Woe is our heart. “Be wise above all, not on earth” (Col. 3:2). “Our fatherland is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). Away with earthly passions! Continuously, unswervingly look to the Lord with the eyes of your heart in prayer of repentance, glorification and thanksgiving, and do not look partially at anything in life, as perishable and transitory, do not cling to anything with your heart. Look how the saints lived and labored, how for the love of God they renounced all worldly love, all property, even love for their parents according to the flesh, loving them spiritually in God and for God. Look at the great prophet Elijah; one coat was his property and nothing more. Be jealous of the strength of the saints of God. If wealth flows, do not attach your heart to it. “What good is it for a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul”? (Matt. 16:26). What does a man give as a ransom for his soul? How you should value your soul! How to save! How to run away from worldly addictions and all sin in general! Lifting the heart to God on the feast of the Nativity of Christ. I thank the Lord, who has made me worthy to experience the bright day of His Nativity according to the flesh. “Let us withdraw from the world, and fix our minds and hearts on heaven” (Akathist to the Theotokos), where the eternal city is prepared for us; “For we are not seeking the imams of the city that is here, but of the one to come, for its Artist and Creator is God” (Heb. 11:10). To You, Trinitarian God, - the original and source of eternal life, intelligence, beauty, love, strength, truth and righteousness - I am drawn with all my soul and all my being: for from You is all the beauty of creatures, sensual and spiritual, all life, strength, intelligence, and short-sighted, blind, damned is he who does not see You in creatures and does not flow to You with his mind and heart, but stops at them and cleaves to them, according to the teaching of the devil! 2) Abstinence (struggle with oneself): internal struggle in a person, crucifying the multi-passionate flesh Strive, brothers and sisters, diligently for the salvation of your soul and the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who strive are woven with bright crowns of incorruptibility and eternal glory and joy. Don't doze, don't sleep; speed up your journey to God. “The Kingdom of Heaven is in need and the needy women delight it” (Matthew 11:12–13). Be renewed, put off the old man and his deeds; put off smoldering; crucify and eradicate passions. Fast, pray. Who does not see the blindness, recklessness, shame, madness, absurdity, and destruction of sin? And if he is like that, then why do we continue to sin? Why do we do lawlessness? Our duty and direct benefit is to fight sin with all our might, calling diligently on God’s help, without which it is unthinkable to overcome any sin, for it is said: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our duty is to know the usual cunning, charm, falsehood of sin, the obvious destruction that we have experienced over ourselves and over countless people; on the other hand, truth, beauty, vitality, freedom, glory, peace, joy, the triumph of a virtuous soul, health and strength of a body that does not succumb to sin, success in all everyday affairs of a virtuous person, clarity of understanding of everyone and everything around him; For a virtuous person it is always day, as for a sinner, his whole life is dark night, for passions blind a person. Fight sin constantly with the help of God: the Lord, our Helper and our Intercessor, is always closer to us than sin, than the devil, although this one is always close because of our slavery to him, because of his nesting in the depths of our souls... But he must certainly be driven out of his inner nests, and the thief, the swindler, the shamer, the murderer must be beaten mercilessly, in whatever form he may appear to violate us. So mercilessly beat your pride, vanity, pride, greed, selfishness, stinginess, hard-heartedness, anger, irritation, disobedience, superstition, despondency, murmuring and other sins - deception, all deceit, lustful thoughts, lusts... shameful speech, all kinds of shameful appearances... Everything, drive away everything sinful, unclean, hate with all your hatred, beat the thieves, thieves of all kinds mercilessly and destroy them to the end, so that they do not hide somewhere, do not secretly settle in the heart, and then you will be a friend of God Himself. “I commanded you not to do this, servants, but friends; if you do, I will command you” (John 15:15). “My foot is firmly in the right,” says the king and prophet David, that is, my soul is firmly established on the right path, on virtue, on the fear of God, hating every path of unrighteousness. Why shouldn’t I have long ago established myself on this Divine path, completely deviate from evil and do only good? Why not establish ourselves on a solid point of standing, as the saints who lived and labored before us achieved this? Don't they and we have the same nature? Did they live without temptations, without sorrows and illnesses? Didn’t sin attack them, didn’t they struggle with various passions of the flesh and spirit? We fought and won. The cause of sin is in ourselves, in our many-passionate flesh, in our self-love, ambition, pride, lust for power, impatience, laziness, greed, hard-heartedness, stubbornness, conceit, free-thinking, duplicity, partiality and hypocrisy, deceit, ill will, malice and gloating, in doubt and disbelief of the truth, in delicacy and gluttony, in despondency, cowardice, despair and other countless passions. Fight with yourself, with your sinful habits, inclinations, passions, - win, - after you fall, rise again and win again, remembering the words of the prophet: even if you are able, the enemies are my sins and my passions - and then you will be victorious, as God is with us. Remember often what our Lord has done and is doing for our salvation; what strength he gave and gives to those who fight against sin, how gloriously he crowns the conquerors of sin; Under such an all-powerful Leader, should we doze, be lazy and fall? And if you fall due to weakness, due to sinful skill, or due to inexperience, immediately get up and fight again, become wise in spiritual warfare and win; You can’t always be a slave to destructive sin; you have to go free, into the freedom of God. Who does Lazarus represent as dead and stinking? All humanity, stinking before God with all kinds of sins and dead deeds; depicts each sinner individually - the stench of self-love, pride, carnality, lust and all kinds of carnal sins, wickedness, envy, resentment, love of money, love of glory, hard-heartedness, disobedience, unbelief, blasphemy, blasphemy and reproach of the truth, wickedness, laziness towards prayer, repentance and all virtue; lies, deceit, deceit. These and many other sins stink humanity before God. Oh, that it would all rise from dead works, like Lazarus, and enter into the truth of God; fulfilled the righteousness of God with the help of the greatest Righteous Christ, the Son of God! The saints fulfilled this truth through the exploits of their entire lives, through victories over sin, and now they taste the immortal fruits of Christ’s justification, having been washed by His blood. Let us also follow them with deeds of abstinence, prayer, repentance, almsgiving, truth and holiness! Souls created in the image of God, holy, beautiful, incorruptible, eternal, and fallen into the filth and ugliness of sin, do not be seduced by any earthly beauty, any earthly treasures, earthly honors, which soon disappear, seducing the foolish, careless and short-sighted, do not turn the desires of your hearts to corruptible persons and things, but to the one the all-desiring, beautiful, all-holy, all-righteous, all-good, incorruptible God; do not prefer anyone or anything to His love, and you will inherit and see eternal beauty and glory, endless bliss. Work here to cultivate your heart field and the spiritual vineyard entrusted to you, grow not only flowers, but also spiritual fruits, and you will not hunger forever. Adequately appreciate the nobility and beauty of your soul, as the image of God, and wash away its absurdity and ugliness with tears of repentance, conquering all passions and creating holiness in the fear of God. The work is short, the feat is not difficult, for the yoke of the Lord is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30), but the reward is eternal; a little more - and the saints will be praised in glory and will rejoice on their beds, on the beds of the undecaying Kingdom of God. There's a lot to be excited about here! The Lord made your work easier by working a lot for you and for you, having gone through a path of terrible and inhuman suffering here. Do not be seduced by the blessings, treasures, sweets, beauties of this fleeting and perishing world. - Fight, pray, work, strive, don’t be lazy, so that you can rest forever where all the righteous rest. Every sin flatters, stings, confuses, oppresses, darkens, rapes my soul. You need constant attention to yourself, to your thoughts, feelings, desires; a constant struggle of the entire inner person is required: prayer to the Lord with repentance from the bottom of the heart, knowledge of the charm and destruction of sin, hatred of it, awareness of its absurdity and madness; and when this happens, then the soul will overcome sin; and what peace of mind will follow! What a wonderful sweetness! What freedom, strength of spirit! What light will enlighten the soul! This is what a person needs - to fear God, to keep His commandments, for this is everything for a person - this is his life, peace, contentment, strength, light, all good, all happiness. “Take your gates, O princes, and the King of glory will come in.” What are the gates through which the King of glory enters, and what princes dominate these gates and do not allow the King of glory to enter through them? This is the gate of our heart, which is controlled by our various passions: pride, self-pity, carnality, gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, laziness, pride, ambition, envy, love of money, hard-heartedness, stinginess, vanity, rancor, malice, hatred, despondency, despair, unbelief, disobedience. These and other countless passions enslave the human soul and prevent the Lord from entering it and dwelling in it. In order for Him to enter and live in it, one must declare war on one’s multi-passionate flesh, “crucify it with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), end all sinful friendship with it, and always keep it in check and in line, strictly obeying the law of God. “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me” (Mark 8:34). It has been proven by experience that every passion, admitted by a person at the beginning and not receiving the proper rebuff from the whole soul, begins to take deep and gradual roots and increases in degree and strength, and repeating itself, again weakly, hesitantly reflected by the heart and will of the person, finally covers the whole person: thoughts, feelings, lusts, will, memory and imagination, and he becomes a miserable slave of the devil - a murderer, evil, evil, nasty, all-envious, all-disdainful, arrogant, and when temptations are found, a person is in distress, like a ship at sea in a strong storm. So, we must make every effort to uproot passions from the soul and not indulge them; try to sincerely love everyone, forgive everyone, appreciate everyone. The aphid of sin has entered humanity very deeply into the very depths of souls - and man needs the greatest help from God, supernatural, and the most diligent and constant efforts on his part to alienate himself from sin: in prayer, attention to oneself, abstinence, fasting and good deeds; Man's entire being is permeated with sin and the corruption of sin. – The enemy is awake and active in people constantly, seeking like a lion to devour someone (1 Pet. 5:8): he must be resisted with firm faith and constancy. Christ came to earth for our redemption: we are members of Christ and the Church; we are the holy and chosen flock, we are soldiers of Christ, fighting against the flesh, the adulterous world and the devil, and must resist all passions and defeat them. Why do people act to their detriment, to their own detriment, not only temporary, but also eternal? From lack of faith and unbelief, ignorance of the Holy. Scripture, pride, pride, conceit, carnal knowledge; from inattention to oneself and failure to think about the ultimate goal of one’s existence; from unwillingness to fight, efforts to fight one’s vicious inclinations, habits and passions; Meanwhile, a Christian, a warrior of Christ God, needs an intensified struggle and war against sin, constant resistance to the violence of sin, self-denial and crucification of one’s self-love in all its countless forms, remembrance of one’s image of God in the soul and the need to strive for His prototype - God, without Whom we are dead, damned, poor, poor, blind, naked. Let us learn the art of the arts - to fight sin, our most crafty and powerful enemy. But I say in advance: no one should rely on their strength or intelligence, art or courage to defeat this enemy: no, he is stronger than all of us. Let us hope in the power of God, in the power of Christ our Savior, who defeated our enemy the devil for us, and gave us His name, His cross, His grace and strength, for victory over the enemy. He teaches our hands to fight and our fingers to fight (Ps. 143). Let's study together. Are you plagued by sins and various passions? And they fight me. Are you being tempted by your enemy? And me too. Are you falling? And I'm falling. But I fall and I always rise. Passions fight and defeat me, for example: anger, pride, envy, lust. But I immediately repent, pray, cry, strain my faith, hope in the Lord, pray fervently for mercy - and I conquer my passions and my invisible enemies who fight me, and I rebel. I receive a pure heart and a right spirit in my womb, peace, freedom, boldness, by the grace of Christ. A diligent struggle against sin strengthens the soul in faith, hope and love for God and neighbor, and in all virtue, and in the hope of eternal reward. For a person who sincerely struggles with sin clearly sees with the eyes of his heart the Lord who fights against him and rewards him for the struggle with peace, freedom and boldness. The fight against sin is a fight for life - life in sins is not life, but constant death, constant dying. “You are dying, O house of Israel,” says God through the prophet to the sinning Jews. Freedom from sin is life: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). “Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). The fight against sin and the victory over it of the person who is fighting is accompanied by inner contentment, peace and tranquility of conscience, freedom in soul and body, spiritual strength and strength, spiritual light, and health of the body. Sin, on the contrary, is always followed by dissatisfaction with oneself, confusion, sorrow and tightness of soul and body, darkness of the soul, spiritual bondage and captivity; reproaches of conscience, scorching fire, depletion of strength and spiritual strength, growth and strengthening in the spirit of all evil and all kinds of illnesses. Great is the power of sin, a destructive power, but greater is God’s help against sin, saving help; the destroying enemy is strong, but his Savior is stronger; The disease of sin is contagious, a fierce one, but the strongest medicine against it is also given - faith in Christ, His merits, His mercy, repentance, the most pure Body and the most pure Blood of the Lord. Everything is given to us for salvation from sin and for success in faith and virtue. Only our lack of faith, negligence and laziness serve as an obstacle to salvation, and addiction to our multi-passionate, transitory and corrupting flesh, and to “the world, which also passes away with its lust” (1 John 2:17). Many are seduced by the sweetness of sin, but this sweetness is deceptive, temporary, fleeting, and torment for unrepentant sin will continue forever, without end; and God’s wrath against unrepentant sinners is unbearable... Let us all come to our senses while there is time, and let us strive against sin in order to receive an eternal reward and an incorruptible crown, eternal pleasure, eternal praise from God, and angels, and saints - peace and joy. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities and rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12)... Our life on earth is war, a constant war: for invisible enemies are constantly fighting through our countless passions; Our very flesh, subject to passions, is at war, the adulterous and sinful world is at war with its temptations and untruths; our flesh fights us: with self-love, self-indulgence, laziness for prayer and for every good deed, hypocrisy, deceit, double-mindedness, voluptuousness, lustful thoughts and lusts, malice, rancor, gloating, envy, ill will, irritation, despondency, murmuring, cowardice, lies, deception, untruth, blasphemous thoughts, passion for condemning others, intemperance, drunkenness, gluttony, covetousness, greed, unbelief, freethinking, disobedience, disobedience, impetuosity, zeal and compulsion to all sin, coldness and alienation from all good. Therefore, our Savior says in the Gospel: The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and strong seekers acquire it. But we must always believe and remember that God is with us, the invisible Helper and Companion against all sin, our omnipotent Defender and Conqueror of our enemies - the Lady Theotokos, Chosen to our Leader, is with us; Guardian Angels are with us; With us are all the saints of God, interceding with the Lord for us with their prayers, and teaching us through their lives to constantly resist sin in every possible way, to pray, to be attentive to ourselves and to be constantly vigilant and to overcome sin by the grace of Christ. In my flesh there is constant enmity against God and neighbor; to love God sweetly - peacefully, easily, broadly in the soul - also to love your neighbor; but the flesh fights, is infuriated by the voluptuousness of the loins, pride, gluttony and delicacy, envy of one’s neighbor, greed, vain malice towards one’s neighbor, who is innocent of anything against us. So fight it constantly, pray, condemn yourself. Satan very intensely throws the prodigal poison into the heart and loins and the whole body with the greatest flattery. Be strong, servant of Christ, and remember that your incorruptible and pure pleasure is Christ. For Him, keep your heart from all uncleanness. It is necessary for a true Christian to “crucify his flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), for the enemy easily catches in his nets anyone who is addicted to carnal pleasures, or to self-interest and the love of money; one instant pleasure in carnal lust or an instant addiction to money or greed for it and pity for the poor - and a person is captured by the enemy, and has fallen away from God and become an enemy of God. “If anyone wants to be a friend of the world, he becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4). “Do not love the world, nor what is in the world: for all that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of this world. And the world passes away, and its lust, but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17), which is what happened to all the saints of God; they live even after death and are glorified forever. “They who are Christ's are the flesh crucified with passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24). Have you come to the realization of the need to crucify your flesh at every minute of your life, since the flesh fights against the spirit every minute and defiles the entire being of a person, through sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing; through thoughts, imagination, feelings, arousal of various passions, it intensifies to defile and corrupt a person. She is ready to make everyone and everything the subject of her passions - self-love, voluptuousness, vanity, ambition, guile, envy, covetousness; present everyone and everything in a perverted, unclean, corrupted form, pervert and desecrate the mind, feeling, memory, imagination; turn everyone and everything into an object of contempt and ridicule. He avoids serving for the benefit of his neighbors, confining himself only to himself, serving his own selfish, selfish views. Oh, what a hundred-headed serpent nests in our multi-passionate flesh! How diligently, how constantly we must crucify him, kill him, until he kills us completely! They who are like Christ have crucified their flesh with passions and lusts. Excess in food and drink extremely weakens the soul and body. We know this from countless experiences, both our own and those of others, but we continue to be satiated with delicious dishes. Isn't this nonsense? Isn't it self-harm? Do we not thereby irritate our Creator and Master, who wants to dwell in us as in his churches not made by hands? – Let us imitate the saints who spent their entire lives in abstinence, purity and unceasing prayer. It’s enough to play what you shouldn’t, both harmful and detrimental. The danger of sin, defilement, falling away from God and spiritual death lies in our love for our flesh, for its sweetness, especially female sweetness, in pride and self-love, self-exaltation and humiliation of our neighbor; Also, the danger of sin often depends on our love for the peace of the flesh, on the desire to sleep more; and therefore, we must despise the flesh as transitory, but be diligent about the soul, the immortal thing, watch, pray, and work. May God help everyone overcome the passions of the flesh! And how much spiritual, incorruptible sweetness, peace and bliss is found in fulfilling the will of God, good, holy, wise, incorruptible, eternal, blessed! So much that because of this bliss, wise Christians and Christian women joyfully endured all sorts of exploits, torment, exhaustion of the flesh, day-long prayerful standing, all sorts of ridicule, grief and bitterness and persecution from people and from demons, and all sorts of other hardships and - they were not deceived in their hope - they received eternal blessings and eternal bliss. Maintaining strict mental and physical chastity, you feel peace and fullness of spiritual and physical life - lightness, cheerfulness, simplicity; and having violated chastity, even with just one thought and carnal unlawful fornication, you immediately feel confusion, crampedness, heaviness, shame and cowardice, despondency; Having repented with all your heart, you again feel peace and boldness before God and people. This is God's moral order. There are so many rewards for virtue and so many punishments, admonitions for evil and wickedness to avoid it. - God bless! “I mortify my body and enslave it, so that by preaching to others, I myself will not be enslaved” (1 Cor. 9:27). Where there is friendship with the flesh, there cannot be success in a spiritual life pleasing to God. Damned intemperance and gluttony! How many mistakes we make throughout our lives, indulging in excessive appetite and pleasure. How many times have you repented, accepting the intention to be abstinent, and not fulfilled what you wanted to do! How venerable and exemplary in this respect, as in many other virtues, are St. saints of God, who strictly observed abstinence throughout their entire lives, and who dedicated all their efforts, all their strength, all their minds, all their hearts, all their wills, all their beings to God and His love - to prayer, contemplation, and spiritual work. And therefore, how worthily they are glorified both from God and from people, from the Holy Church! Here, among countless saints, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker became famous for his abstinence, faith, humility, purity, mercy, zeal for faith and life. And the Councils of the Reverend Greek and Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian and other nationalities! How many of them pleased God and were saved by abstinence! Be jealous of them, Christian, be jealous of them, my soul, and soon be saved from the delusion of the belly and loins! The holy saints of God so strengthened their souls and bodies in sacred things with unceasing prayer and unflagging abstinence that they were immovable from sin and passion, remaining meek, humble, chaste, obedient in everything to the Lord and His Church, while we, constantly carried away by delicacy and intemperance, are willing to accept any sin: anger, malice, fornication, envy, impatience, disobedience, pride, arrogance, despondency and other passions. So, we must fast and always be abstinent. The motives of greed, delicacy and gluttony dominate in a person devoted to the stomach over all thoughts, desires, intentions and actions, often producing reluctance and laziness to his direct duties, disobedience, anger, bitterness - and during prayer they manifest themselves in coldness, carelessness, haste. One must in every possible way mortify the passion of gluttony and keep the stomach within proper boundaries, giving it only what is necessary. Our trouble is that we love our flesh very much, we make friends with it, we please it diligently, but we also love sin with it; for sin reigns over us through the flesh, just as it reigned over people in the beginning, namely first of all and most of all through the flesh, through eating the forbidden fruit. Therefore, a Christian must certainly crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24). One carnal, unclean thought is enmity against God; momentary lust, momentary anger, envy or addiction to food, drink, clothing, or other material goods - there is enmity against God, and this enmity is in our flesh; Our multi-passionate flesh is the enemy of God and us, and it must be crucified by abstinence, prayer, contemplation of God, reading the word of God, labor, vigilance, humility, obedience - which is what all the holy saints did, constantly standing guard over the thoughts of the heart and the movements of the flesh and soul, praying unceasingly, and exercising in bodily labors. If an incorporeal enemy, an apostate from God, all-evil, flattering, destructive, presents you with the sweetness of sin, although it is momentary, fleeting, then imagine, remember that in God there is an eternal, inexpressible sweetness. If the enemy seduces with physical and generally material, worldly beauty, then in God there is original, indescribable, eternal beauty, from which all spiritual and physical, material beauty has its origin, and as much as you like, be captivated by it, admire it, be satisfied: it is pure, incorruptible, all-blessed; The saints admired and enjoyed her, and for her they despised all earthly beauty, considered it vain, vanity, as transitory and perishable, and for her sake they fasted and prayed unceasingly; they suffered, endured countless torments, afraid to defile themselves with sin and for one moment, so as not to be deprived of the enjoyment of this beauty. II. Purification of the soul through a repentant mood, preparatory to the sacrament (of repentance) and accompanying it. Revealing sinful sores My old man is all-condemned, constantly rushing into every sin. The bodiless enemy does not sleep, working in us for our destruction, but is constantly awake and incites us to every sin: we need attention to ourselves, constant struggle, repentance, prayer, tears. The Lord knows our weakness and inclination, and is patient with us, waiting for repentance and correction; He soon hears our secret and open prayer, and soon intercedes, has mercy, saves, pacifies, renews the soul faithful to Him; no matter how many times someone falls into sin during the day, mentally, or in the depths of the heart, or in words and deeds, but for sincere repentance the Lord has mercy and forgives. The Lord commanded seventy times seven to forgive those who fall into sins (Matthew 18:21-22). Glory to the Lord! I must hate my old, sinful man, reeking of all sorts of passions, and crucify him, put him to death, that is, self-love, greed, voluptuousness, ambition, vanity, partiality, waywardness, disobedience, self-pity, laziness, bliss, malice, wickedness, envy, hatred, condemnation of one’s neighbor, grumbling, cowardice, despondency, impatience, disrespect, contempt, disdain for a person because of his illness, disgrace, inconsistency of character, etc. and so on. “Unless someone hates his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Yes, a true follower of Christ must inevitably hate his soul - multi-passionate, self-loving, voluptuous, proud, crafty, evil, vindictive, envious, greedy, lazy, prodigal, hateful, condemning others, and elevating himself, sad, murmuring, impatient, fearful, unfaithful, hard-hearted, selfish, money-loving, loving. This is what our soul is like; how perverted, mutilated, mutilated, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, corrupted! “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me” (Mark 8:34). “He will not break the broken reeds and will not quench the flax that heeds, Dondezh will bring judgment to victory, and in His name the nations will trust” (Matthew 12:20-21). This is said about us. We are reeds, tossed by the winds of the enemy’s temptations, prone to every sin and sinning a lot at every hour, angering the Lord of our life. But if we sincerely acknowledge our sins and have true humility and contrition of heart about our sins and about our guilt before God, do not justify ourselves and do not become proud, but try to correct ourselves and do good deeds, then He will take pity on us, will be merciful to us, will not cut us like a barren fig tree, but will grant us repentance for many years, and will not break a bruised reed, that is, will not cut us. mortal axe. The abyss calls the abyss; the abyss of my sins requires the abyss of God’s mercy, and I hope that the abyss of God’s mercy will overcome the abyss of my sins if I always call on it in sincere repentance. For only the Lord knows the whole abyss of our weaknesses and sins, and therefore He Himself clothed Himself with it for the sake of mercy, although to strengthen it. And I have already experienced on myself a thousand times the unsearchable abyss of His mercy. God would not be all-perfect if he were not long-suffering and abundantly merciful. We are extremely impatient to the point of pettiness and quick to take revenge and anger. There is a God of spirits and of all flesh; there is a spiritual, intelligent, wonderful world of good spirits; There is also an evil world - evil spirits. Often I experience in myself the vile actions of evil spirits, inciting me to various passions, often I turn in my mind and heart to God with a prayer of faith and repentance, especially when I feel the machinations of evil spirits within me and - I always receive help from the Lord, intercession, protection, deliverance, salvation, peace, freedom, lightness, joy, triumph over evil and sin; I feel the power of God above me, the goodness of God, His hasty obedience to me. How gratifying this is for the soul! How this gives me firm confidence that even after death my soul will live and praise Him, our Lord and Savior, and His destinies will help me; that I will give my soul into His hands! Repentance is denial, condemnation of sin, war with sin from the whole heart and mind, in word and deed, disgust with sin, no matter how pleasant it may seem, and disgust from it, trampling on all its charm and attractiveness, the deepest hatred of it as an ugliness, stench, madness, and absurd enmity against God and against oneself, against one’s own good. Remember, Christian, the all-seeing Eye and behave carefully at every moment. Remember impartial, exact judgment, and beware of all sin! The appearance of spring in nature: an abundance of light, a shortening of the night, a decrease in cold, an increase in solar warmth, the awakening of plant and vitality in plants. - There is also a spiritual spring: warm repentance of Christian souls, - the manifestation of light in souls, approaching Christ and Christ to the souls of the repentant; tearful rain, tearful sighs of repentance. Do not hide your sins from yourself, do not conceal them within yourself; this is misfortune, trouble for you; open them carefully, diligently; accuse, accuse, reproach yourself for all your weaknesses, habits and sinful inclinations and passions. Say: I am proud, crafty, evil, envious, selfish, stingy, hard-hearted, greedy, lustful, unbrotherly, treacherous, flattering, deceitful, fickle, unfriendly, hateful, partial, bribery, cowardly, impatient, irritable, sad, timid, grumbling. When you sincerely remember your sins and repent, then your spirit will rejoice, and the Lord will have mercy on you, and your soul will be happy. People do not understand the benefits of thorough repentance. Tell the all-good, all-powerful and all-healing Physician of souls and bodies, the Lord, what sinful ulcers and ailments you suffer from - and there are so many, many of them that it is difficult to count; remember them, ask the Lord for heart illumination, enlightenment, knowledge of them, sighs, tears: and you will receive the wealth of mercy, healing, health, peace, silence and freedom and grace; for the heavenly Physician is always ready to have mercy and heal us, to soften and bind up our spiritual wounds. III. Nurturing good spiritual impulses and aspirations. Development of good skills: love, compassion, forbearance, chastity, etc. All sinful movements of the heart and carnal lusts must be humiliated, despised, hated with all my soul, as harmful and destructive for man and contrary to God. We must exalt and love all spiritual impulses and aspirations for prayer, reading the word of God, for spiritual conversations, for love, compassion, mercy, purity, abstinence, humility. The need and necessity for a person to love God and his neighbor, as the foundation and primacy of the entire law of God: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). The enemy most of all attacks love, the feeling of love, and hellishly strives to tear love out of the heart and plant and root in it self-love, malice, envy, greed, carnality, fornication, etc., in order to corrupt the soul and body of a person and make him incapable of true love through the planting of false, carnal, narrow, blind, insane, shameful, fruitless, deadly. Love God and prefer nothing in the world to His love and you will find heavenly grace; sacrifice everything to this love, as our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed all of Himself to His Heavenly Father, subjecting Himself to humiliation, ridicule, spitting, strangulation, beatings, suffering and the most blasphemous and painful death. “I have come to bring down fire on the earth, and how I want it to burn” (Luke 12:49). – Fire of zeal for faith and piety. Such fire was brought down on the apostles on the day of Pentecost in the form of tongues of fire. The Christian martyrs and martyrs, saints, and saints had such a fire within them: such were Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory; St. George the Victorious, Panteleimon; Theodora Tiron and Stratelates, martyrs - Catherine, Varvara, Paraskeva, Euphemia, etc., such as Anthony, Theodosius, Isidore Pelusiot, Sergius of Radonezh, etc. This Divine fire is also necessary for us - the fire of zeal for faith, prayer, repentance, the love of God, truth and holiness, mercy, abstinence, purity and chastity. Love everyone, especially love those little ones who need you, your condescension, your help, your protection, love and respect for whom you have fallen to zero. Human! Try with all your might to plant, develop and strengthen in your soul sincere goodwill and love for every person - and mercilessly always drive out from your heart the incipient envy and ill will or contempt, hostility and hatred, which are the offspring of the devil. Leave judgment over unrighteous people to the righteous Knower of Hearts and Judge of all - God; You pray earnestly for the unrighteous, so that they may turn from unrighteousness to all righteousness, so that they will not perish and be saved. Meanwhile, it happens that we become embittered at the unrighteous and judge them harshly within ourselves, wishing them punishment and torment and even death, forgetting that they also have a rational soul, capable of feeling, loving, repenting, correcting themselves, and changing for the better. Try with all your might to have love and a desire for good in your heart for everyone, so that they also wish you good and love you. Do not be like the evil (the devil), but the good (God) (3 John 1:11). If you find any high-ranking, especially spiritual, person (of course, a well-known person) to be inconsistent with your expectations in character, in isolation, in unsociability, or shyness, or conceit and pride, do not at all have indignation and grief towards him, or hostility towards him - God forbid - but pray with love for him, may the Lord give him a kind, loving heart, sociable; and love him yourself as your own flesh and blood. Examine the inner state of your soul and eradicate all evil from the depths of it: when hearing or reading about misfortunes and insults, human deaths, fires, failures through the ice and all sorts of others - do you experience coldness and insensibility, inattention, negligence, indifference of heart? Correct yourself immediately, crucify your pride, affirm in your soul love for God and neighbor, sympathize, have compassion for human sorrows, cry with those who cry. “Not a single man of those called will taste my supper: for many are the called, but few are the chosen” (Luke 14:24). Why don’t they taste God’s supper, the supper of the Kingdom of Heaven? Because they did not prepare, did not acquire the wedding, spiritual garments, did not purify themselves with repentance, did not adorn their souls with faith and virtue - meekness, humility, gentleness, purity, simplicity, mercy towards others, did not develop a taste for the incorruptible pleasures of the spiritual Kingdom of God, which is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14, 17); and they defiled and darkened their souls with worldly passions, which they did not try to reject. A terrible but righteous sentence from the Lord. My soul! Be ready every day to appear before the judgment of the Lord with repentance and virtue; for you do not know when the Righteous Judge will call you to account. You need to force, force yourself towards every virtue and not relax, not be inactive: if you don’t feel like praying, pray fervently; If you don’t want to give alms to someone in need, give with diligence, show mercy with good will; If you don’t want to forgive an insult, forgive it from the heart and don’t hold grudges, envy gets boring - be kind with all your heart; greed attracts - abstain and neglect sweets; lustful lusts attract and seduce - consider them an empty dream and an absurd dream of a disordered imagination; contempt, pride in front of your brother overcome, arrogance, self-aggrandizement - consider this a demonic game and dream in you, for through this dream Satan himself fell from angelic greatness and indescribable beauty, and became an abomination and ugliness, falling into the darkness of the underworld with all the demonic multitude. “The Kingdom of Heaven is in need, and the needy women delight it” (Matt. 11:12). Holy wives and virgins and entire families during times of persecution committed suicide in order not to be desecrated by violent fornication with the wicked, or threw themselves from the heights of buildings and were killed, or went into rivers and drowned - mothers with their daughters, and became martyrs for Christ, for faith and piety (Chrysostom). IV. Christian (ethical) worldview: the highest good is in God; renunciation of the world; the purpose of life is to fulfill the commandments of God; good and evil; moral sense; righteous and sinners The only vital and invaluable treasure of our heart is God; it is given only to those who have renounced the world and everything in the world, and their many-passionate flesh, as an inalienable property. To cling to the world and its temporary momentary blessings is reckless and disastrous: for they do not give life, and addiction to them is the work of the devil. Seeing everywhere in the world, in all creatures great and small, inimitable beauty, attracting and cheering our hearts, raise your mental, spiritual gaze to the primitive, uncreated Beauty, to the first uncreated personal Mind, to the first Kindness, and Beauty, to the hypostatic Wisdom, the infinite Goodness, which created everything according to one goodness - not driven to creation by any necessity, no need: for she is all-satisfied and all-blessed in herself; and - do not be seduced by the beauty of visible creatures, as corruptible and transitory, but attach your heart to the supreme, eternal personal Goodness - to God, Who can completely fill and bless your soul, as the end and end of all our desires. What is more desirable than the Lord? Who and what is more beautiful than the Lord? Who is worthy of complete heartfelt love forever, for eternity? Who besides the Lord? What do we cling to with our hearts? What and who do we love, and how do we love? Is this true love? Isn’t she ghostly, isn’t she hypocritical, isn’t she carnal and sinful? Isn't it a minute? Let us turn our entire love to the Lord and reject vain love, as the saints did and did. What fiery love, what a strong constant desire for the Lord we must have, being created in the image of God and as temples of the Holy Spirit; how we must be cold towards the adulterous and sinful world and at the same time ardent towards people, as brothers and sisters of the same nature and the same destiny; how to take care of their salvation, enlightenment, correction, sanctification and direction to God; about all the help they need in soul and body; how to take care of them, love them, and be patient with them! By the Resurrection of Christ the sky was opened, which was previously closed by the sins of Adam and all mankind; – now free entry into it is open to all believers, repentants and those who do good deeds. Direct your minds and hearts, your desires and hopes there to heaven. We have now been given by Christ God such imperishable, eternal, excellent blessings, which no one's eye has seen, which no ear has ever heard of, and which have never entered the heart of man. What do earthly goods mean in comparison with them - gold, silver, precious stones and fabrics, lightly decorated chambers, honors and shiny, precious signs of earthly honors? What is earthly beauty? What is the beautiful color of youth? What colored clothes and head decorations? What is the beauty of power and wealth? What does earthly nobility of blood mean in comparison with the nobility of the sons and daughters of God? What do all earthly blessings taken together mean in comparison with heavenly, incorruptible, inalienable, eternal? The perishable goods here will all disappear: beauty, wealth, nobility, honors, all kinds of earthly pleasures. But now - while God gives us imperishable, eternal life, incorruptible most excellent blessings - the flesh, the world and the world ruler the devil strongly attract us to themselves - to earthly pleasures, wealth, honors. An intense, constant struggle is required with oneself, with one’s sinful passions and inclinations, with earthly customs, rules, habits - and without struggle one can become completely carried away by the charms and customs of the world, lose eternal blessings and perish. “The Kingdom of Heaven is in need, and the needy women delight it” (Matthew 11:12). When the Lord calls His body the Church or our bodies the church of God, then He instills in us high respect for the body as a temporary tabernacle in which our immortal spirit lives, as well as the fact that we must in every possible way protect it from desecration and corruption and keep it in purity and holiness. “Thy hands make me and create me; give me understanding and I will learn your commandment” (Ps. 119:73). The Most Holy Theotokos was the true church of the Divine. When we worthily partake of the Divine Body and Blood, we are also especially churches of the Divine. We thank You, Lord our God, who has honored us with so much honor! The life of a Christian is a struggle and achievement, and this struggle should have the goal and consequence of affirmation in faith and love for God and neighbor, for the enemy fights against humanity and acquires for himself strong fighters or servants, free and unwilling, for example, heretics and sectarians, generally freethinkers and blasphemers, traitors, traitors to God and the king, or fornicators, drunkards, envious people, murderers, proud people, thieves, rebels, etc. and through them he operates against God and people, or the powers that be, and the more they satisfy their passions, the more strong they become in them, the more they serve the devil and the greater they become opponents of God and people (for example, Judas the traitor, Leo Tolstoy). The truth of God requires that a person, fallen by the will, consciously strive against sin, fight against it and, defeating it, diligently call upon the grace of God for help, without which he can never be a conqueror of sin, in order to earn an eternal reward from God and have the consolation of the conviction that this moral victory also contains his share of merit. “For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). What is the good yoke of the Lord and His light burden? What is the yoke of the enemy, the yoke of sins and passions? How painful it is! How many troubles, sorrows, illnesses, poverty, unrest, wars, countless deaths come from him! How sweet it is to work for the Lord with a sincere heart! What peace, what sweetness, lightness, spaciousness in the soul during heartfelt prayer, reading the word of God, doing good deeds! How deceptive and destructive is sin? How beautiful, true, honorable and praiseworthy is virtue? The most vital question we must all solve is: what should we do to live? Answer it, said the Giver of Life and God Himself: if you want to live, keep the commandments (Matt. 19:17). So, in keeping the commandments there is eternal life. And the commandments consist of love for God and neighbor. One must do the will of God with all zeal and desire it with all one’s heart, strive for it with all ardor and energy; for in fulfilling it is our life, peace, joy, glory, bliss, strength. Thy will be done, the Lord taught us to pray! And how He fulfilled and fulfilled it to perfection. “Behold, I come to do Your will, O God,” He says in the words of Scripture (Ps. 39:8). And how He taught us to do exactly the will of God! “If anyone does the will of My Father in Heaven, this is My brother and my sister and My mother” (Matthew 3:35). And how little care and effort we have to do the will of God! Everyone creates his own stupid, corrupt, depraved, blind, destructive will. The proud man has his, the evil man has his, the drunkard has his, the covetous has his, the envious has his, the fornicator has his. And the will of God is our life, our eternal bliss, our holiness. “This is the will of God—your holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3). Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done! A Christian must sincerely wish for himself and others that the name of God would be glorified incessantly in him and in others, and to grieve when it is not glorified, but is blasphemed by various sins; to wish that everyone would be churches of God not made by hands. - “Don’t you know that you are the church of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Every Christian man and woman needs to know and firmly remember the real, real purpose from the Creator of all things in the world, all the abilities of the soul and all members of the body, and in accordance with their purpose and purpose, use them for the good of themselves and people, and for the glory of God. Meanwhile, due to our passion, sinfulness and spiritual blindness, we forget this good goal of the Creator and pervert His good intentions into evil and destruction for ourselves and people; We use them either immoderately, untimely, or completely wrong. How much moral and physical harm comes from this! How much chaos! How much corruption of souls and bodies! Do you see this wonderful harmony or agreement, the order of creatures great and small throughout the universe, their harmonious flow and life, do you see the wonderful order of all creation? And in your being, in your soul and in your body - may there always be order and harmony of all forces - with constant obedience to the laws of the Creator and Provider. God created bright and good angels and man, although he foresaw that a third of the angels would turn into evil and the human race would fall terribly and disastrously. Why did you create it? May the superiority of His goodness appear, and may the free malice of the creatures of His immeasurable goodness and love for mankind not prevail. For this reason, he came down to earth, suffered, died and rose again, so that the superiority of His goodness will be shown in everything and may the exploits and virtues of ascetics and fighters of good against evil be rewarded, and may the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints, saints and all saints receive the most brilliant crowns of glory for their faith and piety; may holiness, truth and love, mercy, abstinence, purity and chastity, courage, patience triumph for faith in the Hero of Labor and love for Him. Where would there be a place for feat if there were only good in the world and no evil, which, however, does not exist necessarily, but by chance, as a result of the arbitrary deviation of a good angel into evil? So, all of you, strive against sin and be saved, so that you may receive crowns of glory. From my daily temptations by evil spirits, whose dirty tricks and intrigues I see clearly, I am convinced that there is a whole world of evil demons, insidiously and destructively acting incessantly in the human race, namely in the entire human race, because over thousands of people of different ranks, conditions, sex and age, I noticed countless machinations of the same demons. It is a pity for the human race, which has been wronged in many ways by Satan and his evil and all-evil army; there is no number of sorrows, troubles, illnesses, losses inflicted on people from the world of evil spirits. Thanks be to God in the Trinity that He did not leave us without intercession and redemption from these invisible evil reptiles and constantly curbs their desires against us, that He gave us bright Guardian Angels who protect, protect, enlighten, guide and save us according to His will. So, there is a whole kingdom of evil spirits, which for the time being have been allowed by God to do mischief in the world as a punishment for sinful people, or for testing and confirming the virtues of righteous people, like Job, and similar persons in the Old and New Testaments. But, if there is a world of spirits - good and evil - and exists for all eternity, having received existence in time, then my soul and all human souls that have the nature of spirit will also exist forever, having begun existence in time; and temporary life is a preparation for the eternal, a feat for testing the quality of my soul, the degree of its good or evil; struggle and experience, from which I myself can see what my soul is fit or unfit for: whether to live eternally with God, or to live eternally with evil spirits, to which I sometimes become like in my sinful, passionate aspirations. The man of this world, flesh and blood, is always extremely self-loving, carnivorous, and therefore spiritually myopic and blind, and sees nothing beyond this life and his own nose. His whole mind, dreams of imagination, pleasures, hopes, calculations, sorrows or joys revolve in this world; he does not believe in future bliss, in future torment, and considers the future life to be a fable. On the contrary, a spiritual person, a believer, loves, if possible, everyone, considering everyone to be children of God; he hovers with his thoughts, heart, and imagination in heaven, contemplates God in them, His eternity, beauty, bliss, holiness, goodness, truth, lightness, and strives to unite with Him through a righteous life, godly thinking, virtue, meekness, mercy, abstinence, patience, etc. Moral feeling is a spiritual shield with which the Creator protected every person from the attack of evil and to preserve his moral, spiritual and physical purity; this feeling is especially given to the Christian through the grace of baptism and confirmation; in pagans, Mohammedans and non-Orthodox Christians it is incorrect and very weak, and depends on the views or teachings of faith and varies according to the quality of beliefs; sometimes it is completely perverted. So, for example, intelligent Finns and Swedes living in Russia hate Russians and the Orthodox faith with complete hatred and breathe rage and murder against Russians and do not consider it a sin. Thus, Catholics, according to the incorrect views of their faith of the Pope, and not of Christ, hate with complete hatred the Orthodox Russians, Greeks and other Orthodox peoples for their faith, for their imaginary schismatism: their sense of morality is perverted. Thus, materialists and naturalists, who believe that all good and all life is in the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, do not consider gluttony, delicacy, fornication and adultery to be sins, and say that this is required by nature and must be satisfied, and, no matter what woman or girl falls under their influence, it is possible to do with her what nature requires, and he is an idiot who does not use this. Thus, cannibals do not consider it a sin to slaughter another person and imprison him. So there were and are people who do not consider it a sin to sacrifice children or adults to an imaginary deity. So many do not consider it a sin to rob, to rob a person of wealth or average wealth. So many egoists still respect another person, as long as he brings them benefit, benefit, as long as they need him, and since they cannot get any benefit out of him, they despise and drive him away, and will not give him a piece of bread. “The Lord knows his own beings, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness” (2 Tim. 2:19). Who are the Lord's beings? Those who live not for flesh and blood, but in the spirit and mind of the Lord, who fight passions and overcome them, who strive for righteousness, who are wise on high and see grief, and not below; those who constantly have the commandments of the Lord in their hearts and unswervingly follow them, and if they fall due to weakness and skill, then they now rise up; who lay down their souls for the Lord and die for Him and for righteousness and truth are not denied. By doing good to others, you do good to yourself; by praying for others, you acquire prayer books for yourself; By pleasing others for the good, you gain helpers and friends. By praying for the departed, you gain their intercession before God, if they have boldness before Him. By glorifying the saints, you become worthy of their intercession before God. So goodness is prolific. Sinners in Holy Scripture are likened to smoking brands or logs, for they smolder and stink with their passions, while the righteous are like fragrant cypress, sweetening those who approach them with meekness, humility, abstinence, purity, obedience, courage, patience - the fragrant incorruption of their bodies.