События в шестом столетии четвертого тысячелетия

The life of the righteous Isaac dates back to the nasty life of the pagan god Zeus (who is also Dius and Jupiter), who was the son of Saturn. The Greek poets have many fables about this Zeus, as well as about other wicked gods. They are unworthy to be remembered here, and unworthy for the sake of many of their stinginess and deceit; however, we will remember a little here to discover the error and madness of those ancient people who had such gods, and to glorify our most pure and true God Jesus Christ, the Source of purity and unfading light. Opposite things, when placed side by side one against the other, best reveal in themselves what is in them. Like, for example, soot and snow, blast and gold, cobblestones and precious beads, when they are placed side by side, each individually most clearly reveals its own nature and indicates what the difference is between them - how much whiter snow is than soot, gold is more honest than dirt, and beads are more expensive than a simple cobblestone, worthless and trampled under foot; so in this case, if you look at the nasty and abominable life of the ancient pagan gods and at the most pure presence in the flesh with the people of our Lord Christ, you can see how great the difference is between them, how great the impurity of those gods and the purity of Christ, how great the falsity of those and His truth, how great the insignificance of them and His greatness and Divine glory, before which they disappear like darkness! Let us rejoice and rejoice in our true God, so pure and bright, and let us laugh at the lying god, so stingy and dark! Let us remember him here. This Zeus, or Jupiter, who in Polish is usually called Iovish, and we will call him here Diem, reigned in Crete (poets speak fabulously when they say that he reigned in heaven). He took his merchant sister, named Juno, as his wife. When she was barren for a long time, Dius hit himself on the head, and from his brain came a maiden called Minerva, who is also called Pallas; then she was the goddess of the wise. Juno was saddened that her husband gave birth to a daughter without a wife, and she went to the so-called sorcerer Oceanus to seek advice and help on how to resolve her infertility. Tired of the journey, she sat down to rest at the door of the church of one sorceress Flora, the wife of Zephyr (allegedly she was the wife of the west wind, but in reality she was a common harlot), who is called the goddess of herbs and flowers. This Flora, having learned about the cause of Juno's sadness and journey, promised to help her if only she would swear to her by the Stygian waters that she would not reveal the secret to her husband. The lake located in the underworld was called Stygian waters; its waters were held in great esteem by the gods, by which they usually swore, and if any god who swore by these waters then broke his oath, he had to abstain from sweet (red) drink for a hundred years and be excommunicated from divine honor for a hundred years. Juno also swore to Flora by these Stygian waters, and she showed her a certain herb in the Olenian fields. When Juno took and ate this grass, she conceived from it in her womb and gave birth to a son without a husband. His name was Mars. When he came of age, he became the god of war. After the birth of Mars, Juno conceived from her husband and gave birth to Vulcan. Since the baby was ugly, he was sent to the island of Lemnos and left in the desert. The poets are fabulous when they say that he was cast out of heaven and fell on Lemnos and that from this fall he injured his leg and became lame; they also say that he was raised there by monkeys. When Vulcan grew up, he became an ironsmith and, together with the one-eyed Cyclopes, forged lightning and weapons against giants for the gods. Meanwhile, Diy, not content with his wife, for he was a fornicator (such is the pagan god!), raped many wives and virgins and gave birth to children from harlots. The daughter of the titan Kay Latona was raped by him and conceived twins in her womb - Apollo and Diana. Juno, having learned about this, became very jealous and began to pursue Latona everywhere, and even released a serpent called Python after her. The latter pursued her throughout the land to the island, which was formerly called Ortygia, and then was renamed Delos. When the time came for Latona to give birth, the first to emerge from the womb was a daughter named Diana, who immediately became a grandmother to her mother, for she accepted the brother Apollo who was born after her. As soon as the latter was born, he immediately killed the serpent Python with an arrow from a bow (such is the falsity of Greek legends!). In addition to the above, the poets also add this fable: when Latona, fleeing from Juno, reached Lycia, she began to feel very thirsty and therefore went to the lake to drink. The people who happened to be there stirred up the water with their feet. Latona prayed to the gods, asking for revenge on those who disturbed the water, and immediately those people were turned into toads, and they constantly remain in that lake. Diem also raped Maya, the daughter of Atlantov, who then gave birth to Mercury. Then there were others with the same name of Mercury, of which one was the god of healing, another of rhetoric, a third of trade, a fourth of theft, etc. The king of Argive Inaz (the country of the Argians was later renamed Thessaly) had a daughter who was superior in beauty to all the maidens. She bore the name Io (later renamed Isis). Diy, seeing her from the heights of heaven (according to their superstition), was stung by her. When one day this girl was walking alone in the oak grove, he brought darkness and darkness down on her, went down to her and raped her. His wife Juno, seeing the darkness below from above and not finding her husband in the sky, understood what was happening, quickly descended and dispelled the darkness. Diy, sensing Juno's approach, turned the girl into a cow so that his wife would not know what he had done. Juno, seeing a beautiful cow, begged her husband to give it to her, since she understood what had happened and wanted to take revenge. Diy, against his wishes, gave it to him. Then Juno, having received the cow, entrusted it to a shepherd, who was called Argus and had a hundred eyes in his body in front and behind. The goddess commanded him to shepherd her vigilantly, day and night, not giving Diy the opportunity to get along with her. If Argus, when he was tending a cow, wanted to fall asleep, then he closed only two eyes, and looked after the cow with all the others. This is what he did, alternately resting his eyes: he slept with some and stayed awake with the others. Diy, feeling sorry for the girl, sent his son Mercury to somehow free the cow from Argus. Mercury in the form of a shepherd came to Argus, became friends with him, took a pipe and began to play. Argus asked him: what is this pipe made of? Mercury answered: from the cane into which the maiden Syrinx, one of the naiads, river goddesses, turned; when the son of Demogorgon, called Pan, the forest god, saw her wondrous beauty, he was wounded and wanted to take her, and she, fleeing from those who pursued her, reached a river called Ladona and located in Arcadia, and begged her sisters, the water goddesses, to deliver her from the hand of someone who wanted to kidnap her, and immediately with their help she was turned into a cane; her pursuer, not having achieved what he wanted, made a pipe out of a reed and began to play it. Telling Argus about this, Mercury charmingly played the flute, until with his playing he lulled Argus so soundly that he plunged into a deep sleep with all his hundred eyes. Then Mercury killed the sleeping Argus, cutting off his head. Juno, seeing this, took pity on the shepherd of her flocks; Taking the eyes from the dead man, she put them on the feathers of her bird, called a peacock, and decorated its tail with them. She sent fiercely biting forest flies to the cow; From their bites the cow fled and even ran into Egypt. After Diy begged Juno, she was again transformed there into her original appearance with her former beauty and then became the wife of the Egyptian king Osiris. The Egyptians considered her a goddess and renamed her Isis. Continuing to commit fornication, Diy raped a girl named Semele, who was the daughter of the Phoenician king Kadmos. Juno, having learned that Semele had conceived in her womb, came to her in the form of an old woman and asked her: does the god Diy love you? She answered: I think she loves. The old woman then said: you cannot, child, find out about his love for you, whether it is true, unless you find out if you beg him, so that he, even for one night, will come to you with the same glory with which he comes to his wife the goddess Juno; first beg him to swear to you by the Stygian waters that he will give you what you ask of him, and when he utters the oath, then ask that he come to you with the same glory with which he comes to Juno. Semele, not realizing the flattery, begged Diya as she had been taught by the old woman. Diy swore to her to fulfill everything she asked; when he heard her request, he was very saddened that he swore, but could no longer break the oath. Therefore, he came to Semele at night with his fiery glory, and when he rested with her, Semele was burned by this glory of his. Diy, taking from her womb the baby, whose time had not yet come to be born, and placing him in his womb, carried him for two months, until the time of his birth was fulfilled. Having given birth to a baby, he named him Dionysus (and in Roman he is called Bacchus) and gave him to be raised by nymphs, water maidens. (I am ashamed when I write this, which I would not even want to hear; but, desiring the denunciation and shame of false gods, their eternal reproach by Christians and spitting on them, and seeking the glorification of our true God Christ, I cannot keep my hand from writing.) Amphitryon, prince of Thebes in Boeotia, had a beautiful wife named Alcmene. Wanting to be with her, Diy chose a convenient time, when Amphitryon was at war in the regiments, taking his image, he came to his wife at a late hour, as if returning from the battlefield. Alkmene, believing that this was really her husband, was delighted, and Diy spent fornication with her. In order to be satiated with lust, he extended that night for such a long time that it became equal to three nights combined. After this, the wife conceived and gave birth to Hercules, strong in battle. Then Diy molested a girl named Danae, the daughter of the Argive king Acrisius. The Hellenes have the following story about this. King Acrisius had only one child, one beautiful daughter. When she was born, the father asked his bad gods about her and received the answer that he himself would die at the hand of the one who would be born from his daughter. That is why he created for her a high tower on the seashore with beautiful churches and locked her there along with her slaves, placing reliable guards so that no male would enter her and that she would remain celibate in virginity until her death; he was no longer sad, believing that the son who would kill him would no longer be born from her. Diy, having learned about the beauty of this maiden, turned into golden rain, fell from the clouds in golden raindrops onto the tower, penetrated through the veil onto the maiden’s womb and corrupted her. When the girl changed in appearance due to the approach of childbirth, her father found out about it. He was filled with great anger, imprisoned her in a wooden barrel and threw her into the sea. A barrel carried by the waves landed on the shore of Apul. The fishermen, seeing her, carried her ashore and found the young woman with the born baby. They attributed both of them to their king, whose name was Polydectes, although others also call him Pilumnus. This king, seeing a beautiful maiden and hearing from her lips about her family and what happened to her, took her as his wife. The baby began to grow. His name was Perseus. When he came of age, Polydectes, seeing his intelligence, intelligence, courage and bravery, began to fear that he would deprive him of his kingdom, and began to think about how to get rid of him. At that time, Phorkis, king of the island of Corsica and Sardinia, had three daughters, whose names are as follows: Medusa, Stheno and Euryale. They were called Gorgons, on behalf of the Gorgiad Islands, located on the Ethiopian Ocean, for these maidens ruled there, the eldest of whom was also the queen. This queen Medusa was at first very beautiful; Her maiden hair was yellow as gold. Her beauty offended the sea god Neptune, who lay with her in the church of the goddess Minerva. Medusa conceived from Neptune and gave birth to the winged horse Pegasus (others say that Pegasus was born from the blood of Medusa when she was cut by Perseus). Immediately that horse began to fly and flew to a mountain called Helicon, located in Boeotia near Mount Parnassus. There he struck a stone with his hoof, and a spring of water flowed out of it. Minerva, angry for the desecration of her church, from the same hour in which Medusa was with Neptune, turned her from beautiful to ugly: she made the expression of Medusa’s face evil, turning her gold-like hair into serpents, so that Medusa became a terrible monster who had the power to immediately turn anyone who looked at her into stone. The aforementioned king Phorkis, not wanting to see his stepson Perseus alive, deliberately sent him to those gorgons so that he would defeat them. The king hoped that Perseus would die there from them. But he, having asked Mercury for the sword with which the hundred-eyed Argus was killed, and from his sister Pallas (aka Minerva) a crystal shield, so that in it he could see the image of Medusa without harm to himself, while remaining invisible to Medusa, he armed himself with all this, went to fight, defeated the Gorgons, cut off the head of Medusa and took her with him. But this head, even after death, had the same power to turn those who looked at it into stone. Returning from the fight, Perseus came to the Moorish king Atlas, but he did not accept him, for he had a prediction from his gods to beware of the son of Diev. Therefore, he did not accept any of the strangers into his home. He did not accept Perseus for the same reason. Then Perseus placed the head of Medusa in front of his eyes, and as soon as Atlas saw this, he immediately turned into stone and became a high mountain, the top of which the human eye cannot see. When Perseus was in Ethiopia, he saw in the sea a maiden named Andromeda, the daughter of the Ethiopian king Kepheus, tied to a stone; Her parents stood and wept on the seashore. The reason for all this was as follows. Cassiope, the mother of Andromeda, was immensely proud of her beauty and said that she was more beautiful even than the Nereid nymphs, river goddesses who were the daughters of the sea god Nereid. Therefore, the nymphs grabbed Cassiope's daughter Andromeda, who was walking along the seashore, and tied her to a stone to be devoured by the whale of the sea. Perseus, seeing this, killed Keith, who was approaching the maiden, and took the maiden as his wife. When Perseus returned to his fatherland to his grandfather Acrisius, against his will he killed him with the head of Medusa, for Acrisius saw this head and turned into stone. Thus the prediction given to Acrisius that he would die from his grandson was fulfilled. And in general, Perseus killed many with the head of Medusa. Diy, without ceasing to commit nasty fornication, fell in love with the maiden Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor. He sent Mercury to drive a herd of animals from the Phoenician mountains to the place where Europe, along with other maidens, used to play by the seashore. When the herd approached there, Diy turned into a white bull. The princess, seeing him, came up to him and began to stroke him. The bull stood meekly, so the girl even decided to sit on him. Then the bull, moving slowly, approached the sea and suddenly rushed into it. Sailing on the sea, he brought the princess to Crete. Having transformed there into his former image, he remained with her and gave birth to three children from her: Minoas, Radamanthos and Saperdon; These he appointed as judges in the underworld. In eternal memory of his harlot Europe, he named the third part of the earth Europe. Diy also fell in love with the water goddess nymph, whose name was Plota. Having committed fornication with her, he gave birth to a son named Tantalus. The latter was king in Phrygia. The following is the story about him. One day he called all the gods and goddesses to his feast; Wanting to test the power of their deity, he stabbed his son, cut him up, boiled him and offered him to the gods to eat. The gods, having known human flesh, were indignant, and none of them wanted to eat; only the goddess Ceres, sister of Diya, ate one shoulder. Everyone was angry with King Tantalus. Having collected all the members of the youth offered as food, they formed a whole body and, sending Mercury, returned the soul of the youth from the underworld and revived the body. Seeing that one shoulder was missing, because Ceres had eaten it, they added an elephant shoulder. They cast Tantalus into the underworld and punished him with eternal hunger and thirst. Tantalus stands there bound in the middle of the river in water that even reaches his lips, and above his head hangs an apple tree with beautiful apples that touch his lips. When he wants to taste an apple with his teeth, the latter immediately rises in height from his lips; when he is thirsty, the water runs away from his lips. Thus, being in the midst of drink and food, he constantly suffers from thirst and hunger. Dius, having his sister Juno as his wife, also became involved with another sister, the aforementioned Ceres, and gave birth to a daughter, Proserpina. Having come of age, she one day was picking flowers in the fields of Enni, located in the Sicilian country, and was kidnapped by her uncle Pluto, taken to the underworld and became his wife there. Her mother Ceres, having lit a candle, searched for her daughter throughout all the heavens with great crying and sobbing, and did not find her; Only she found her belt near Lake Chiana, which is located in Sicily. There she learned from the nymph Arethusa that her daughter was in the underworld; Arethusa said that she herself saw it with her own eyes at Pluto. Ceres complained to Dius about Pluto and begged him to order the return of his daughter and her from the underworld. Diy responded to this: if she didn’t taste anything from the food there, then it is possible to return her from there; but if she tasted something, then it is by no means possible to return her from there, for such is the already established law that those who have tasted in the underworld should not return from there. Having said this, Diy sent to the underworld to find out if Proserpina had eaten anything. When this was investigated there, the son of the Archeon, Askalathos, testified that he saw her eating an apple. Proserpina was angry with the witness and turned him into a night bird, an owl, so that she would always be the messenger of sad things. Dius, wanting to console the sobbing mother, ordered that Proserpina, having lived in the underworld for six months with her husband, returned to heaven to her mother and also remained with her for six months, and then again to return to her husband for six months. Diy also loved the maiden Thetis, the daughter of the sea god Nereus, but did not want to unite with her, for he had a prediction that if he united with her, he would give birth to a son from her, who would be a greater god than himself. Not wanting to have a son who was greater than him, he did not marry the girl, but ordered his grandson Pileos, king of Thessaly, to take her as his wife. When the time came for the marriage, Diy called all the gods and goddesses, but did not call only Discordia. The latter, indignant and angry for the contempt for her, did the following: when three goddesses, who were Pallas, Juno and Venus, were sitting together at a wedding feast, she invisibly approached them and threw between them a golden apple, on which was written: “Let it be given to the most beautiful.” Immediately a dispute arose between the goddesses, for each of them considered herself the most beautiful. Diy, not wanting to judge them himself, sent them to the imaginary truthful judge Paris, who was on the deserted Mount Ida. The goddesses went to him, and each of them secretly begged him to recognize her as the most beautiful, and each promised to bring him gifts. Pallas promised to grant him wisdom, Juno promised royal power, and Venus said that she would give him a beautiful wife. When all three of them appeared naked before him, he, having examined their beauty, praised Venus, saying that she was the most beautiful of all. Although not soon, Venus later fulfilled her promise when she helped him kidnap the beautiful Helen, for whose sake the Trojan War arose. And here you can see, although these are Hellenic fables, how strongly carnal passionate love dominates in people, for the sake of which people despise wisdom and do not care about their honor; for the aforementioned judge did not want either wisdom or the kingdom, just to receive female beauty and satisfaction for his carnal lust. Diy also loved Lyda, the wife of Tindar, king of Laconia. Wanting to be with her, he turned into a swan and began to sing. With his singing, he attracted Lida not only to the fact that she began to listen to him, but also to the fact that she took him: she liked this swan, and she took him. When she made fun of him, he raped her, and his wife conceived in her womb; She gave birth to an egg, from which came two babies, Castor and Pollux. Immediately she gave birth to another egg, from which came two maidens, Helen and Clytemnestra. This Helen was beautiful, and she was kidnapped by Paris thanks to the assistance of the prodigal goddess Venus, for which Troy died. Let us remember here the struggle of the Giants with these wicked gods. The giants, or Veletna, which we mentioned when we talked about the life of the bad god Saturn, were like oak trees in age and were born from the blood of the slain Titans. It was they who started a war against the gods, wanting to drive them out of heaven. (Greek poets call the sky the Olympian Mount, on which Diy lived with other gods.) The Veletni began to demolish mountains in one place and put a mountain on a mountain in order to thus reach the sky. At first the gods were very frightened and fled from the sky, turning into various animals, and hid in Egypt. Diy was transformed into a ram, Apollo into a raven, Dionysus (aka Bacchus) turned into a goat, Diana into a wild goat, Juno into a white cow, Venus into a fish, Mercury into a crane, and other gods and goddesses turned into other animals so as not to be recognized by anyone. Then Diy was notified by magic that he would defeat the Giants when he made himself a shield from the skin of the goddess Aegli, the wife of the forest god Pan, covered his head with the head of the gorgon Medusa and would always have the goddess Pallas with him. Diy did just that. He flayed the goddess Aegli, made a shield from her skin, armed himself with the Gorgon and, together with Pallas, went against the Giants and defeated them. The lame Vulcan also assisted Diy: he, as was said before, forged lightning for him, with which Diy struck the Giants from above. After this battle, Diy, wanting to reward Vulcan with his mercy for his labors and zeal, told him with an oath: ask me what you want, and I will give it to you. He asked that Diy allow him to lie with Minerva (she is also Pallas). Dius, not being able to change his word because of the oath, allowed him at his request, and Minerva ordered that she herself resist Vulcan if she wanted and could. Vulcan fought with Minerva and could not defeat her. However, from the great lust of Vulcanova, the baby Erichphonius with snake legs was born, as if without a wife, who, having come of age, became the king of the Athenians. He was ashamed of his snake-like legs, and therefore he invented a chariot (as if chariots had not existed before his invention) and rode in it so that his legs would not be visible. Juno's son Mars fell in love with Vulcan's wife Venus. When he once mixed with her, it was seen from the heights of heaven by Apollo, carrying the sun. (So ​​the Greeks then believed that Apollo was the driver and manager of the solar chariot, which is why their poets sometimes call Apollo himself the sun.) Apollo, seeing the deed of Mars and Venus, announced this to Vulcan. Then Vulcan secretly forged invisible chains, surrounded his bed with them and showed the appearance that he had gone somewhere far away. Meanwhile, Mars came to Venus, and when they both lay naked on the bed, they were so tightly tied by those invisible chains that they could not move. Vulcan immediately returned, found them in this position and called all the gods, among whom were Mercury, Neptune and Apollo, but the goddesses did not come. And everyone laughed at the naked and bound. Neptune begged Vulcan about the prisoners, but the latter was barely begged and allowed them. Venus conceived from Mars in her womb and gave birth to Cupid, a most beautiful youth who never grew old, but always remained young; he is depicted as winged, wearing a bow and gold or tin arrows, holding a lighted candle in his hand and blindfolded. His job was to serve his mother Venus and, together with her, kindle fornication in people, to sting hearts with the arrows of carnal love. The goddess Venus, angry at Apollo for bringing her fornication with Mars to fame and ridicule, wounded his heart with love for a certain beautiful maiden Leukothoe, daughter of the king of Babylon, and inflamed him with lust for her, so that Apollo loved her so much that he left the sun he carried in the sky motionless, lingering with the girl. He came to her in the likeness of her mother and raped her, and she remained pregnant. His first mistress Clytia, having learned about this, became jealous and announced what had happened to the girl’s father Archamus. The father, overcome with anger, immediately buried his daughter alive in the ground. Apollo, powerless to resurrect her, turned her into an incense tree, and hated Clytia and completely abandoned her. She, grieving over the deprivation of Apollo’s love, stopped eating and drinking. She constantly looked at the rising and setting sun and accompanied him to where Apollo was taking him. She was completely exhausted from hunger and intense grief and turned into grass and a flower called heliotropias, that is, sunflower. After this, Apollo laughed at Cupid, who carried a bow, as if he were a weak youth who did not know how to shoot a bow. Cupid, responding to laughter with laughter, secretly shot him in the heart with a golden arrow and stung him into love for a certain girl, whose name was Daphne. In the same way, he shot the girl with a tin arrow and made her hate Apollo, and as much as Apollo loved her, she hated him. He, unable to bear the flame of love burning in him, rushed after her who was running away from him and pursued her in the mountains and deserts, wanting to catch up and forcibly satisfy his lustful desire. When he had already reached her and was ready to grab her with his own hands, she called on the name of her father Peneos and with his help turned into a laurel tree, which also bore the name of this maiden Daphne. Apollo fell in love with a certain nymph Coronis and committed fornication with her, and she became pregnant. But she once committed adultery with a certain Thessalonian youth, Ishidis. The raven saw this and announced it to Apollo; At that time the raven was not black, but white. Apollo became enraged and killed the maiden with an arrow, but immediately repented, became angry with the raven and turned him black, and turned his voice into a sign of evil news. Having cut open the womb of his murdered mistress, he took out the baby from there and named him Asklipius, and gave him to the doctor Chiron to teach. There is the following story about this Chiron. Saturn committed adultery with the daughter of Oceanus, Philliroe, and his wife Opis caught him in the act. Transforming into a horse, Saturn immediately ran away. Fillira conceived and gave birth to a child who was a man from the waist up, but the rest of his body was like that of a horse. He grew up in the deserts and acquired the knowledge of all kinds of herbs and flowers, that is, the power contained in them, and thus became a skilled doctor. It was from this Chiron that Asklipius studied; Having become well acquainted with the art of medicine, he resurrected two dead men with his healing. For this, the god Diy was angry with him and killed him with lightning. Apollo, avenging his son, turned his wrath on the Cyclopes, the lightning forgers, and struck down many of them. Then Dius deprived Apollo of divine honor. But since there was no one else who could carry the sun across the sky, all the gods gathered begged Dius to forgive Apollo and command him to be in his rank again. Diy created at their request. Let us finally remember another uncleanness of the very nasty pagan god Diy. Diy, according to the false saying of the Hellenists, sitting in heaven, saw on earth a beautiful youth named Ganymede, who was the son of the Trojan king Trois, and was stung by him with supernatural lust, and commanded his eagle to kidnap him and carry him on his wings into the air to him. Having raped him, Diy put him to serve himself in heaven, making him a cup-maker. Previously, this position was occupied by a girl named Hebe, about whom the following is narrated. When Apollo was preparing a feast for his stepmother Juno in his father’s house, among other foods he presented her with field salad. She ate it a lot, preferring this dish to all other foods, and from this salad she conceived in her womb and gave birth to the maiden Hebe. Diy did not consider Heba his daughter, since she was not born from him, but, however, for the sake of the beauty of her face, he appointed her as his cup and made her the goddess of youth. When he one day, together with other gods, went to Ethiopia for some kind of feast and Hebe was carrying cups, she slipped from one mountain and fell headlong, and her nakedness was revealed before the eyes of the gods. Diy was indignant at her for this and removed her from her service, and put the youth Ganymede in her place. However, later, when Hercules was ranked among the gods, Dius gave him the goddess Hebe as his wife. This is what the pagan gods were like - fornicators, defilers, adulterers, rapists, sorcerers, filled with all kinds of impurities and all kinds of stinginess; and it’s not for nothing that the Greeks made up such false fables about them that are worthy only of laughter! Is it fitting for God to marry, bear children and commit fornication not only according to nature, but also unnaturally? Is it proper for a god to transform himself into cattle, a bird, a fish, or any animal at all? Is it characteristic of God’s nature to be afraid, to run, to hide, not to know the future and to seek information in fortune-telling? But it is enough to talk about these Hellenic fables, which are countless, and who can retell them in detail? There is not enough time for the narrator. To clarify, expose, root and condemn the most vile life of these abominable gods, in whom lost people believed, worshiping and making sacrifices to their idols - for this, what we have said is quite enough. Glory to Christ our God, most pure, undefiled, immaculate, “Who shall not commit sin, and deceit shall not be found in His mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22), in whom we believe and worship Him! Is this what our Master is like, and this is what His servants who please Him are like? May the lying and vile pagan gods be ashamed and put to shame, may our one true and most pure God be glorified, and may His blessed name be praised from the east of the sun to the west forever. In the days of righteous Isaac there was famine on the earth, as before during the life of Abraham. Isaac wanted to go to Egypt, just as his father had previously gone there during a famine. But God appeared to him and forbade him to go to Egypt, ordering him to settle in the land that He would show him. At the same time, the Lord promised to be constantly with him, to bless him and multiply his seed like the stars of heaven, and, as he swore to his father Abraham, to give to his (Isaac’s) descendants all the lands of Canaan, that is, Palestine. Therefore, Isaac, by the command of God, came to Gerar to Abimelech, but not to the one who had his father Abraham, but to his heir, for that one was before the birth of Isaac, and this one was in the days of Isaac’s life, as this will later be clarified. There Isaac did exactly the same thing as his father had done before: fearing evil people, he called his wife his sister. Abimelech, having learned for certain that Rebekah was not the sister, but the wife of Isaac, revealed this and said to him: “What hast thou done to us? Not long ago, there had not been someone from my generation with your wife, and you would have laid temptation on us” (Gen. 26:10). And Abimelech commanded his people, saying: Whoever touches this man or his wife will be guilty of death. “Thou wouldst have laid upon us (temptation) every sin,” and Jerome’s translation reads as follows: “thou hast brought upon us” (Gen. 26:10). This is similar to the words of the former Abimelech, who spoke to Abraham about Sarah: “What hast thou done to us? Why have you sinned, so that you can lay a great sin on me and on my kingdom?” (Gen. 20:9). We heed the following: although the idolaters, being pagans, did not count fornication as a sin, being defiled by it uncontrollably, they considered adultery, touching another man’s wife, to be a great sin, causing great offense to their neighbor in his marriage, and they forbade people with their mortal commandment so that they would not dare to commit such a sin. Nowadays, how much this lawlessness has multiplied among Christians! It’s barely even considered a sin! For many, not having the fear of God, gave themselves over to this uncleanness without restraint. For the sake of such, let a discussion be offered here about how great the sin is adultery and what disasters it can cause. Although it is shameful to talk and write about the sins of fornication and adultery, the need is present and the duty prompts this, for it is appropriate to offer treatment when illnesses multiply, and not to neglect the sick. And Saint Chrysostom, although he was chaste and pure at heart, and was ashamed to speak and write coldly, for no rotten word came from his lips, however, when he accepted the rank of teaching and spiritual healing for the healing of spiritual ulcers in people, then he spoke and wrote against his will, not ashamed of what he had previously been accustomed to be ashamed of. He says to the fornicators and adulterers: “You accept me, who proclaims something unclean to you and is not ashamed or blushing, for I do this not of my own free will, but for the sake of those who are not ashamed to do shameful things, I am forced to say this; for even a doctor, wanting to remove rottenness from an ulcer, first of all puts his fingers into the patient’s ulcer, and if he does not first defile the healing hand, he will not be able to heal. So, if I do not first defile my lips, healing your souls or passions, I will not be able to heal you” (Chrysostom. On the Epistle to the Ephesians, ch. 4, conversation 5). And we, the humble, need to partly imitate this great teacher. In order for the great gravity of the sin of adultery to be revealed more clearly, it is first of all necessary to recognize that there is another kind of fornication and another kind of adultery. Fornication is the fall of a free man with a free man into the sin of fornication, when both persons - a man and a woman - are unmarried, are not bound by a legal marriage and each own their own body as they wish. Adultery is the fall of an unfree person with an unfree one, that is, a husband who has his own lawful wife with a wife who has her own husband, or the fall of a free person with an unfree one, or vice versa, a free person with an unfree one; in the latter, the sin of a free person is judged as fornication, and that of an unfree person as adultery. Adultery is damage and desecration of someone else's bed and one's own. If both persons are not free, then both of them simultaneously defile someone else’s and their own bed, not preserving faith and love in their legal marriage and transgressing the limits of the law; therefore, the sin of adultery is judged more than the sin of fornication. If the fornication of the free is considered a grave sin, desecrating the soul and body, saddening the Holy Spirit and driving away from the fornicator or fornicator, making them Oods, redeemed by the honest blood of Christ and belonging to Him, Ouds fornicating and alienating them from the Kingdom of God, according to the words of the Apostle: “Everyone who is fornicating or unclean has no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ God” (Eph. 5:5), then how much more serious is the sin of those who are not free, who are in marriage and who commit adultery, although none of them no longer has power over their body? For the Apostle says: “The wife does not own her own body, but the husband does; Likewise, the husband does not own his body, but the wife does” (1 Cor. 7:4). The fall of such is a great and grave sin, not only containing the burden and filth of fornication, but also damaging and desecrating a legal marriage and annoying the Creator and Lawgiver God. From time immemorial, God created male and female sexes and said: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and both will become one flesh. Moreover, one who is not two (Christ says) but one flesh: for God has joined together, let not man separate” (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4–6; Mark 10:7–9). The adulterer separates what God has united, cuts the one flesh in half and offends the mystery of marriage, which signifies the inseparability of Christ in the Church, as well as the two natures in Christ. Therefore, the sin of adultery is a doubly greater sin than fornication, and the guilt of the former is greater than that of the latter. For fornication defiles only two free persons - the fornicator and the fornicator; adultery extends to four: it defiles two persons, and offends two others. An adulterer, as has been said, defiles both the bed of the adulterer and the bed of his lawful wife; Likewise, an adulterer defiles both the bed of the adulterer’s lawful wife and the bed of her husband. Therefore, the penance for an adulterer was laid down by Saint Basil the Great: a fornicator is subject to a ban for 7 years, and an adulterer for 15 (see the Helmsman’s Book, 58 and 59 of the rules of Saint Basil the Great). Adultery is similar to theft, for it is also committed secretly, just like theft. Righteous Job speaks about adultery like this: “In the night it will be like a thief; The eye of the adulterer preserves darkness, saying: a strange eye shall not see me, and put on coverings of the face. I dug a church in the darkness, and sealed it for myself in the days” (Job 24:14–16). But the guilt of adultery is incomparably greater than the guilt of theft, for a thief steals a soulless thing, gold, silver, and the like, while an adulterer steals an animate thing, the neighbor’s wife, steals union love and marital purity, which is immeasurably superior in dignity to gold and silver. A thief has the opportunity with good reasons to defend himself against accusing himself of crime, citing need and poverty, pointing out his poverty and hunger, which is why Scripture says: “It is not surprising if someone steals: he steals so that his hungry soul can be satisfied” (Proverbs 6:30). He who has his lawful wife and commits adultery cannot have any excuse, “but because of the poverty of his mind he brings about the destruction of his soul” (Proverbs 6:32). And truly there is poverty of mind in the adulterer: having his own bread, he seeks someone else’s; despising the clean spring located in his house, he thirsts for a nasty swamp; having the opportunity to be with his wife without sin and the misfortunes of human condemnation, he desires someone else’s wife with a soul-destroying sin for himself, with such great (for others) misfortune, general condemnation and reproach. “The thief does not come,” according to the Gospel word, “unless he steals and kills and destroys” (John 10:10). And the adulterer comes with no other intention than to steal someone else’s marriage, being ready to fight if anyone catches him in a sinful act, and murder in such cases sometimes occurs on both sides. The adulterer also destroys two souls - his own and someone else’s with whom he sins, for both of them go to great eternal destruction. Therefore, adultery is a greater sin than theft. And Saint Chrysostom considers adultery to be more sinful than even robbery and says the following: “God gave each a wife and laid down laws for nature, establishing union with one. Therefore, a crime with another is robbery and extortion, and even a crime more cruel than any robbery, for we do not suffer as much when our property is taken away as when a marriage is undermined” (Chrysostom. On the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, Chapter 4, Art. 6). Adultery is enmity against God Himself. The Holy Apostle James cries out: “Adulterers and adulterers, do you not know that the love of this world is enmity to God?” (James 4:4). What is the love of this world? The one you commit adultery with each other. Although the world also has other unpleasing loves, for example, for riches, honors, proud exaltations and vain glory, most of all the world is mired in carnal love, in sensuality and sinful lusts and in the gluttony of fornication, which exceeds the boundaries of legal marriage. It is this adulterous love of this world that is enmity to God: enmity, because it opposes the law of God, destroys His statutes, transgresses the limits established by Him and, as it were, considers human conjugal cohabitation itself, established, defined and legalized by God, to be insignificant. How great a sin is adultery, let everyone judge and consider this for themselves. Adultery is such a great sin that the sinner is not even worthy of pardon. We hear Saint Chrysostom saying the following about this: “The wife was given as an assistant to the husband, so that she would quench the raging nature and calm the lustful waves. Just as a helmsman who drowns himself in a pier does not receive any pardon, so a person who defiles the bed of others or looks lustfully at any wife even after his marriage will not receive any justification either before people or before God.” This saint called marriage a refuge and a quiet place for a human life that is agitated and overwhelmed by lusts and carnal passions! So that a person does not plunge into the hellish abyss with his prodigal sins, let him have his lawful wife, as the Apostle advises: “For the sake of fornication, let each one have his own wife” (1 Cor. 7:2), that is, in order to protect himself from fornication with another, let him have his own, just as every wife should have her own husband. If a person, being in this refuge and quiet place, voluntarily drowns himself, plunging into adultery, such a person is unworthy of mercy from either God or people. This is how this great church teacher reasons. Adultery in the Old Testament was not awarded mercy and forgiveness and could not be purified by any sacrifices: this is not mentioned in the Book of Leviticus, which describes what sacrifices must be made for what sins. There was no sacrifice or atonement for adultery, but what? - the death penalty, and in no other way was this sin exterminated and cleansed in the people of God than by the death penalty. In the Books the following is written: “A man who commits adultery with a married wife, let both the adulterer and the adulterer die by death” (Lev. 20:10); and again: “If a husband dares to lie with his married wife, let them both kill the married woman and the one lying with her, and take away the evil from Israel” (Deut. 22:22). The sin of adultery is so great that no one is worthy of pardon! If in the new grace repentance is established for adultery in the church books, however, here it is not because of any dignity or any of his deeds and labors that the sinner is awarded the mercy of forgiveness, for who can repay the justice of God for such sins with an equal and worthy measure? - but by the ineffable compassion of God, not overcome by human sins, he accepts forgiveness and is cleansed before God, but not before people. For if this sin of his is revealed before people, then before them he will not be able to cleanse himself from his vice all the days of his life, and after his death his fall from grace will still persist for a long time. That is why in the Proverbs about adultery it is written: “His reproach will never be spent” (Proverbs 6:33). What disasters are caused by adultery? Adultery, even if it has not been discovered, is nevertheless accompanied by constant internal torment in the conscience; the inner worm of conscience constantly gnaws, denounces, aggravates and leads to despair. In addition, the adulterer is still tormented by the fact that he is afraid of everyone, lest others find out about his sin, and thinks about everyone that he knows about his business. If he sees someone quietly talking to another, he assumes that they are talking about him and that he is being condemned. Saint John Chrysostom speaks the truth: “Although the adulterer has no one as his accuser, he still does not cease to expose himself within himself; the pleasure was temporary, but the illness was everlasting, fear from everywhere, trembling, looking around and fear, and he trembles at the very shadows, fears his slaves, knowing and ignorant, and offended faces, and bypasses them, carrying in himself everywhere a bitter accuser - conscience, and cannot rest at all, being condemned by himself. And on the bed, and at the meal, and in the marketplace, and day, and night, and in sleep, he watches over numerous idols of sin. He leads Cain’s life, “groaning and shaking on the ground,” and has a burning fire inside him.” All this is caused by undetected adultery. What does open, discovered adultery cause? It causes the greatest evil. After adultery is discovered, it will be followed by great shame, dishonor, the indomitable rage of the husband whose bed is defiled, the wrath of the sinner’s own wife, as well as punishment worthy of a righteous judgment. First of all, it’s a great shame. What could be more shameful than when an adulterer is seized, exposed, among the people dragged to the courtroom, with everyone laughing and looking at others? You will say: so-and-so was not caught at the scene of the crime, but only identified, and it is impossible to convict him, because he is rich, famous and powerful. I answer: even if he is not captured and if he cannot be exposed, however, when he is identified, he is already dishonored, and everywhere they laugh at him, condemn him and slander him. Saint David secretly sinned and was privately convicted by the prophet Nathan alone (for who else would have dared to denounce the king?). Nevertheless, he was ashamed of all Jerusalem and said: “All day long my shame is before me, and the coldness of my face has covered me” (Ps. 43:16). But I will leave the rich, the honorable and the powerful, and I will speak to the people. If not exposed, but only recognized adultery brings considerable shame to the adulterer, so that he does not dare to look at human faces or talk with his friends, then how much more shame will the crime exposed before everyone bring him? Usually they are ashamed of many things - a rotten word or a false deed in front of human eyes, dishonest exposure of the body and other similar cases; however, I think that all this cannot be a greater shame than the shame of prodigal sin, which is denounced by everyone. How great is the dishonor in the latter case! Many people ridicule him, revile him, humiliate him, annoy him, scold him, and he is called a fornicator and an adulterer by everyone and spat upon! It is better for a person not to be born than to be in such shame and dishonor. The rage of that husband whose wife is involved in adultery, what will she not do to the adulterer? He screams, beats, tramples, drags him to trial, complains and asks for trial and merciless execution for his enemy. If it had been possible, he himself would have torn the adulterer to pieces; would have crushed his body, as it is written in Proverbs: “The wrath of her husband is filled with jealousy, and will not spare (the adulterer) on the day of judgment.” the adulterer will not in the least change the reward of the enmity of the husband whose bed is defiled, and will not be forgiven thanks to many gifts. For every person can be begged when he has been offended, but the one offended in marriage is always implacable: the adulterer is more likely to appease God with true repentance and tears than the husband with whose wife he committed adultery. What will he repay his husband for the desecration of his wife, when nothing can ever be repaid for this? Likewise, a legal wife, having learned about her husband’s adultery, what does she do? She cries, sobs, throws reproaches to her face, is tormented from the heart by jealousy and damages her love for her husband. It sometimes happens that some wives, angry at their husbands for their adultery, give themselves over to adultery, and others even kill their husbands. The historian Justin writes that the Cyrenean king Demetrius, brother of the Macedonian king Antigonus, died by his wife Veronica, daughter of Agis and Arsinoe, died precisely because he committed adultery with his mother-in-law Arsinoe, the queen of the deceased Cyrenean king Agis. Veronica, having learned about the secretly committed lawlessness, watched for some time and then looked for strong husbands, murderers. When the king hid from his wife at night and went to his mother-in-law, the wife, sensing this, took the killers she had found with her, followed him and, finding her husband at the crime scene, killed him. - Queen Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek king Agamemnon, when the latter was in the military regiments, heard about him that he had loved a certain captive maiden Chrysas and was committing adultery with her, she fell into great anger and jealousy and herself gave herself up to adultery with a certain Aegisthus. When Agamemnon returned to his house with the regiments and was in the bath, Clytemnestra, having conspired with her adulterer, killed him. Subsequently, she herself was killed by her son Orestes, who avenged his father’s death. Her adulterer Egistus was killed along with her. There is an island in the Aegean Sea called Lemnos. There are cities and villages on it. The following event happened there in ancient times. The warriors, who went on ships for military purposes to the neighboring country, captured many wives and girls; Having brought them into their homes, they committed adultery with them, leaving their wives. Then the wives, having all agreed among themselves, beat their husbands at night - each in her own house killed her sleeping husband with the adulteress. Then, overcome with rage, they beat up all the males on the island, not sparing their sons. Only many years later did they agree to again accept husbands from another place. In general, there are many such examples in history when the jealousy of wives exterminated their adulterous husbands from among those living on earth through various deaths. Such is the evil that follows adultery! After all this, when adultery is discovered, exposed and handed over to the court, the last disaster follows, the appropriate torment, for there will be no truth in this if such sin is not punished with torment, as the Scripture says: “Shall anyone bind fire into the bowels, and burn his own garments? Or will someone step on a fiery coal and burn his foot? Likewise, he who goes to a married woman will not remain without torment” (Proverbs 6:27-29). What kind of torment is appropriate for an adulterer? If there is a righteous trial, then the adulterer will undoubtedly suffer the death penalty, for since ancient times adulterers have been executed with various deaths. The Law of Moses commanded that a husband and wife caught in adultery be stoned (John 8:5). If any wife was suspected of adultery by her husband, then the priest gave her water to drink, which would bring a curse, as it is written about in the Book of Numbers, chapter five; and if she too was guilty of sin, then her womb was tormented (Numbers 5:27). – Among the ancient pagans there was also a law - to burn an adulterer and an adulteress. By this ancient pagan law, which existed before the law of Moses, Judah, the son of Jacob, condemned his daughter-in-law Tamar to be burned. Opilius (aka Macrinus), the Roman king, ordered the adulterer and the adulteress to be tied together and thrown into the fire. Augustus Tiberius, Domitian, Severus and Aurelius established the following punishment for adultery: bend the tops of two trees, tie the person guilty of sin to them by the feet and then release the trees! They did the same with the guilty wife, tying her legs to two leaning trees. Thus the body of the sinner or sinner was torn into pieces. Other Roman kings allowed a husband, when he caught his wife committing adultery with another, to kill both, the adulterer and the adulteress, with impunity. The ancient Greek king Senedius issued a law - to cut off the heads of a husband and wife taken at the scene of adultery with an ax. He showed an example of such a judgment in his son, who fell into this sin, and did not spare his blood. In Arabia and Parthia, adulterers were punished with death. The Saxonians, who were still in idolatry, convinced the adulteress that she herself, tying a rope around her neck, should hang herself and hang herself, and then burn her corpse and hang the adulterer over her fire. Other nations, although they did not put such sinners to death, did not leave them without cruel punishment. The Egyptians beat the adulterer with iron, inflicting a thousand wounds on him, and cut off the nose of the adulteress. The Cumans, having placed their wife naked on a donkey, drove her throughout the city and beat her. The Brazilians killed those wives who were caught in the act of adultery or sold them as slaves. In other places, wives' noses and ears were cut off, and husbands were cut off for adultery. There were many other cruel punishments for adulterers in various countries. Nowadays, among Christians, such sins are so numerous, but they are not subject to the death penalty; In general, this sin is weakly punished, and only the righteous Judge Himself will execute it in the next century. Why do such great disasters befall us everywhere? Because of our sins, God's vengeance hits us, but we do not want to recognize our guilt and repent. Abimelech was afraid of such vengeance from God, lest it come upon his kingdom; and he said to Isaac: “Why have you done this, would you have brought great sin upon us?” If even for adultery committed in secret, God’s kingdoms and nations are punished, then what will happen for obvious iniquities? Having considered all of the above, it is good for married people to listen to Solomon’s advice: “Son, drink water from your own vessels and from the well of your students, so that no one who is a stranger will partake of you. Let the source of your water be yours; rejoice with your wife from your youth. Let the tree of love and the lot of your graces talk with you; may yours follow you and be with you at all times. Let not the lust of alien kindness overcome you, nor let your eyes be caught” (Prov. 5; 15:17–19 and 6:25); and again: “See thy life with thy wife, whom thou hast loved all the days of thy youth, for behold thy part is in thy life” (Eccl. 9:9). While staying in Gerar, Isaac sowed his seeds in undepleted fields and, having reaped them, acquired a hundredfold fruit that year. This abundance was a wonderful blessing from God to him, and not a consequence of the fertility of the Gerar fields, for he alone had such abundance, while the other inhabitants of Gerar did not have it. This caused envy. The people of that country began to envy Isaac, seeing that God had blessed him with an abundance of grain and herds of livestock, and began to harm him. Those wells that his father Abraham, who formerly lived in Gerar, dug, they covered them with earth. Abimelech said to Isaac: “Get away from us, for you are stronger than us here” (Gen. 26:16). Isaac, leaving there, settled on the borders of the land of Gerar in the valley, where wells were dug by his father Abraham, who lived there before, and subsequently, after his death, they were filled with earth by the Philistines. Isaac used his efforts to dig and clean the wells again. When his slaves were digging, they found a storehouse of living water. But at this time Isaac had no peace from the envious. The shepherds of Gerar with their flocks came to this place and began to argue with Isaac's shepherds, saying: this is our water! And Isaac called this well “offense,” because the inhabitants of Gerar had offended him. Yielding to human anger, Isaac moved a little further and dug another well, but a dispute arose about it with the shepherds of Gerar. Isaac gave it the name "enmity." From there he moved out and then dug a third well. There was no longer any dispute about him with opponents. Isaac nicknamed it “space,” saying: “Now the Lord spread us over the earth” (Gen. 26:22). After this, the Lord appeared to him at the Well of Oath and said: “I am the God of your father Abraham, do not fear, I am with you, and I will bless you, and I will multiply your seed Abraham for your father’s sake” (Gen. 26:24). After this vision, Isaac created an altar to God in this place and called on the name of the Lord with prayer and sacrifice, and then set up his tent there. Abimelech came to him from Gerara with his nobles for reconciliation. Isaac treated them in a friendly manner, and peace was concluded between him and the Gerar king Abimelech at the Oath Well, near which their fathers also made peace. During Isaac's stay here, his forty-year-old son Esau took himself two wives from the Canaanite daughters, contrary to the blessing of his parents. Isaac and Rebekah were saddened, since their daughters-in-law were both unbecoming and ungodly, as born and raised in idolatrous wickedness and trained in evil behavior. And Esau's wives grieved their father-in-law and mother-in-law with their morals. “At that time you will gain a hundredfold fruit” (Gen. 26:12). The surprising thing is that in a time of famine, in a barren summer, in a foreign country, and not in his original one, Isaac sowed his seeds and reaped a hundredfold fruit, while the fields of all Gerar farmers yielded very meager fruits. Why did these fields hired by Isaac receive such great power to produce fruit? “That summer you will gain a hundredfold fruit, the fruit of barley and all kinds of crops, for God will bless it” (Gen. 26:12). This is the power of the earth’s fertility - it is in God’s blessing given to Isaac: “as God bless him”! Here we see how fertile the field is - God's blessing! Let this be a lesson to Christian farmers who eat bread by the sweat of their brow (Gen. 3:19), so that they first of all try to be worthy of God’s blessing if they want to have their fields fruitful. Usually the land is fertile when it is good, perfectly cultivated, sown with good seeds, sufficiently watered with heavenly rain and dew, warmed by the warm rays of the sun and protected by “well-dissolved airs” (from the Great Litany). However, if there is no God's blessing, then all this will be of little help. Where righteous Isaac lived in Gerar at that ancient time, everyone had the same land, and everyone worked equally in agriculture, plowing and sowing, each cultivating his own field properly; everyone also had the same air, common rain and dew, a common sun, shining equally on both the good and the evil (Matthew 5:45). However, only Isaac’s fields yielded a hundredfold fruit, while the other fields, although adjacent to Isaac’s, turned out to be meager in their fruits. Why? Because those who cultivated them were not worthy of God's blessing, which Isaac was worthy of; That’s why their fields turned out to be barren, but his fields were fruitful, for God blessed him. Why did God bless him in his labors with earthly fruits, but not those? Because he was righteous and they were sinners; he pleased God, but they angered Him; he was a faithful servant of God, and they were slaves of demons, being idolaters. Isaac was kind to God because of his virtuous life, but they were abominable to God because of their nasty and lawless deeds. Therefore, God blessed him as worthy, but rejected those as unworthy, and as a result of this, Isaac’s fields bear fruit, but those fields remain barren. Hear this, Christian farmers! If you want to be blessed in your labors, then by the sweat of your brow be righteous and pleasing to God, as Isaac was righteous and pleasing to God, and then you will be blessed with an abundance of the fruits of the earth, as Isaac was blessed. The blessing of God is such a fruitful field that sometimes, even without agricultural labor, it fills the granaries of His saints and servants. Let us remember here the following thing from the life of St. Theodosius the Great, who had his own community monastery in Palestine. The Monk Theodosius had the custom of going to Bethlehem for prayer. One day, wanting to take a break from his work, he turned off the path to the monastery of the Monk Marcian. The latter, having kindly received the welcome guest, had nothing to treat him with, for at that time he had neither bread nor wheat. After a long spiritual conversation, when the time for the meal approached, Marcian ordered his disciples to cook for them richly. Theodosius, seeing such great poverty, ordered his disciples to bring the bread they had taken on the road and offer it. While they were eating, the Monk Markian said to the Monk Theodosius: “Do not be offended, father, that we have prepared a meager meal, and do not reproach us for the fact that we did not even offer bread, for we have become very poor and have no wheat at all.” When he said this, Theodosius, looking at Markian’s bard, saw a grain of wheat that had come from nowhere; Taking it carefully, he smiled joyfully and said: “Here is the wheat. How then do you say that you have no wheat?” Blessed Marcian joyfully took the grain taken from his beard from the hands of Theodosius and, like some precious grain, ordered it to be taken to the granary, believing that, with the blessing of Saint Theodosius, without any special worries it would bear numerous fruits, greater even than well-cultivated fields, which is what happened. After Theodosius left, the disciples in the morning wanted to open the doors of the granary, but could not do this. Then Marcian sent to the Monk Theodosius to announce the miracle that had occurred and to thank him for the multiplication of wheat. The monk answered: “It was not I, but you, father, who multiplied the wheat, for grain was taken from your grain.” From here we see how good the field is God’s blessing and how God rewards His saints with the abundance of wheat, who seek first of all the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). If this field, God’s blessing, I say, is capable of bearing fruit without agricultural labor, then how much more fruit will it bring to those cultivating the land, if the farmers first of all try to please God with their righteous and virtuous lives? “You have restored to him the things of the Philistines” (Gen. 26:14). When God blessed His servant Isaac with an abundance of earthly blessings, the people who inhabited that land began to envy. Wherever God's gifts are bestowed upon someone, human envy increases. Evil people began to do dirty tricks on the righteous in the wells in order to kill his people and livestock with lack of water and to remove him from themselves so that their eyes would not see him. For the envious eye cannot bear the visible happiness and prosperity of another. Saint David, having said about a righteous man, “as his horn shall exalt in glory,” immediately adds that “the sinner will see and become angry, he will grind his teeth and melt” (Ps. 111:9-10). The horn of glory and prosperity pierces the eyes of the envious, for whom the good of others is torment, for he is heartbroken and tormented by seeing his neighbor prosperous. And it seems to me that the Lord God could have sufficiently nourished His saint Isaac in some other place during the famine, nevertheless He deliberately sent him to the country of Gerar in order to torment the wicked inhabitants of Gerar, whom He was punishing for their sins during the famine, also by the fact that before their envious eyes His servant would reap a bountiful harvest on that land on which sinners would reap meagerly. When the Lord sent all kinds of blessings to His righteous man, then He created torment for sinners, for He gave them a reason for envy during torment for their lack of abundance and poverty. The Lord did something similar in Egypt: while benefiting His people, He tormented the pharaohs, about which the psalms read like this: “Turn their hearts so that His people hate Him” (Ps. 104:25). What did you turn into? Did he convince them to be evil, or did he teach them to be evil? No way! For the Lord does not want any person to be evil, and does not instruct anyone to do evil. How did He change their hearts so that they would hate His people? Let’s read the words of the previous verse: “Grow your people greatly and strengthen them even more than their enemies, transform their hearts,” and so on. From here you can clearly see what and how he turned: the beneficence that he showed to his people. By this He turned the hearts of the Egyptians to hatred, not Himself making them so, since they hated the people of God by their natural malice, but giving them a reason for greater hatred in that which benefits His people, increases, multiplies and strengthens them. One of the interpreters explains this as follows: “When it is said that God turned their hearts to hatred, this means that He does not make the Egyptians evil, but gives His people blessings, by which the evil are easily prompted to envy.” The Egyptians, seeing the people of God multiplying, strengthening and blessed by the highest God, were tormented in their hearts, tormented by envy, and from envy they turned to hatred and anger and began to torment the Jews with work. Torment for the evil is if they see someone in a good state, and they are glad to eat such a person alive. The Egyptians tormented the people they hated, but they themselves were no less tormented by envy, for as they oppressed them, they multiplied even more and became very strong. For the people of God, Egyptian slavery was torment, and for the envious Egyptians it was torment that the people of God were greatly multiplied and strengthened. In the end, God's people remained invincible and gloriously emerged from Egypt, while the Egyptians with their envy finally perished. For envy destroys everyone in whose heart it grows strong. Envy is like a moth that is born in clothes and eats these clothes - so envy devours the heart in which it is born. The holy prophet Isaiah, boasting in the face of his haters of the many mercy received from God and His help, says to them the following: “You have all promised a robe, and you have taken away a prayer” (Is. 50:9). You are consumed by envy and will be completely destroyed by it. The moth seems small, but it ruins good clothes; Envy is also invisible, hiding in the heart, like a small thing, but it greatly damages human health and harms salvation. It damages health, because the envious person is consumed with the prosperity of his neighbor and is tormented inside, exhausted by health and sometimes falls into illness from immense envy. It harms salvation, for if one remains in envy to the end without repentance, he cannot be saved, as the Apostle testifies to this in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he describes evil deeds, uncleanness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, wrath, heresy, etc., adding envy to this (Gal. 5: 19-21). “Abimelech came to him from Gerar” (Gen. 26:26). What is surprising is that the king of Gerar, Abimelech, who was seized with envy along with his people, not tolerating Isaac being on his land and not being able to bear to see him enriched with the blessing of God, sent him away, saying: “For you are stronger than us here” (Gen. 26:16), and this same Abimelech subsequently came to Isaac along with his nobles when he was staying with Oath well, and came to seek reconciliation and neighboring love, saying: “Be an oath between us and you, and we will make a covenant between you and us, so that you do no harm to us” (Gen. 26, 28-29). Truly, it is amazing that the righteous one, without war or weapons, frightened his hostile haters, overcame them and brought them into submission, so that they themselves began to seek peace and mercy from him, so that he would not do them any harm. Let us see how this righteous man overcame those who hated and offended him? When we look at the life of Isaac in Gerar, we see that the inhabitants of Gerar, who hated him, filled his wells to the top with sand and drove him away from them, and he, without telling them anything, withdrew from their city. And this is not surprising: as a stranger, he could not be contradicted in a foreign city. When he settled far away on the border of the land of Gerar, in the valley where the wells of his father had been filled up by the Philistines, and when he again dug the well of his dead father Abraham and cleansed it, the shepherds of Gerar again began to offend him, for they began to argue with his shepherds and said: “This is our water!” (Gen. 26:20). Here Isaac could resist them, since he was not near Gerara and at his father’s well, but he, however, did not tell them anything on the contrary and moved from there, giving way to their anger. At another and further distant place, he dug up a filled-up well, cleaned it and found good water, and began to live with it. But even there the envious shepherds of Gerar attacked him, offended him and drove him away from the well. Here Isaac had the opportunity not only with words, but also with an army to resist them and take revenge for previous insults, since he had numerous household members, among whom were alive those who, with his father Abraham, went against the king of Hodologomor to recapture the captured Lot. For Isaac, blessed by God and multiplied by household members, it was even possible to conquer the entire country of Gerar, which was small. However, he did nothing of the kind, remaining righteous and meek, patient and kind, not wanting not only to offend anyone, but even to anger anyone with something insignificant. Giving up what he had, he preferred to move out of there. Then Abimelech, who was the king of one of the cities of the Gerar country, came to him and asked for reconciliation. From here we can clearly see how Saint Isaac overcame his enemies: meekness, patience and kindness. This meekness with gentleness, enduring everything, frightened the king of Gerar and his subordinates, and they were afraid that someday this mighty man and strong people, having his God as his assistant, would not rise up for revenge, would not raise a fight against them; which Isaac did not even have in his thoughts, they were in awe of, and therefore came to him with an expression of their submission. O the power of meekness, patience and gentleness of the righteous! Meekness with patience and kindness intimidates without rage, conquers without weapons, drives away its adversaries without militia, which is beautifully explained in the Apocalypse, which speaks of the Lamb seen by St. John the Theologian. Raptured in spirit to heaven, Saint John the Theologian saw the throne of God and God sitting on it in ineffable glory, holding in His right hand a book of unknown Divine mysteries, sealed with seven seals. And “a mighty angel preached with a great voice, saying: Who is worthy to open the book and loose its seals? And no one is more powerful, neither in heaven nor on earth.” And Saint John began to cry: “I,” he says, “have cried a lot.” Why? Because “no one will be found worthy of unbending and carrying a book, below the eyesight.” Then one of the elders sitting around the throne of God consoles the weeping John, saying: “Do not cry; Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome; He is worthy to open that book and open the seals” (Apoc. 5:1–5). Having heard these words: “Behold the Lion,” let us turn our mental eyes to Him and see what this Lion is like? And so we see, together with Saint John, although not with such a quick and clear mental eye, that “in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures, and in the midst, an old Lamb standing as if he had been slain, came and received the book from the right hand of Him who sat on the throne. And the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb and worshiped Him and sang a new song, saying: “Thou art worthy to receive the book and to open its seal, for thou art slain and hast redeemed us with Thy blood” (Apoc. 5:6-9). Leaving aside the study of the book and the seals, we will speak only of the Lamb. Isn’t it amazing that it was said: “Behold the Lion,” but we saw not a lion, but a Lamb: the name “lion,” but the image of a lamb? And then: the image of a lamb, and the strength of a lion: “Behold, the Lion is victorious.” It is not surprising when a lion defeats someone, for he is the king of beasts, strong and formidable, “delighting and roaring” (Ps. 21:14), terrible not only for animals, but also for people. But what strength does the lamb have? What thunderstorm? What does he “admire”? What is his struggle and who is afraid of him? How and who can he defeat? But in order to more clearly understand the power, strength and courage of the Lamb we saw, let us follow Saint John the Theologian to the sand of the sea and see what His warfare is like, how and with what adversaries He fights? “And I walked on the arctic fox,” says the Theologian, “and I saw a beast coming out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns” (Apoc. 13:1); and further: “And I saw another beast rising from the earth, having two horns” (Apoc. 13:11); and then: “The beast is terrible from the abyss” (Apoc. 11:7). They all gathered for battle. Against whom do they want to raise this battle? We hear the words of an angel saying to the Theologian: “These will make war with the Lamb” (Apoc. 17:14). Let us be surprised again: how many terrible beasts take up arms against one Lamb! Can't each of the lesser beasts alone overcome the Lamb? One wolf drives a thousand sheep, but in the Apocalypse so many animals have gathered against one Lamb! Can the Lamb overcome them? The angel tells that the Lamb will overcome them. “The Lamb,” he says, “I will overcome, for the Lord is Lord and King over king” (Apoc. 17:14). How did the Lamb defeat these beasts? The theologian says that they were “quickly cast alive into the lake of fire” (Apoc. 19:20). Let us understand this explanation of the power that patient meekness and kindness have. The image of the lamb is imprinted with meekness, but has the power of Leo. Who is worthy to receive the book of the mysteries of God with gifts and seals? Quiet Lamb. Who is worthy to be praised and worshiped by the heavenly powers? Gentle Lamb. Who is strong to defeat these terrible and fierce beasts that come from the sea, from the earth and from the abyss? Meek Lamb: “I will overcome the Lamb.” Who rules over things below and above? Patient, the slain Lamb, for “the Lord is Lord and King of kings.” This Lamb, seen by the Theologian in the Apocalypse, is an image of the meekness and at the same time of the invincible power of the Lamb of God Himself, who takes away the sins of the world, Christ, our Savior, who in His free suffering “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearers is silent” (Isa. 53:7). “Whoever is reproached is not reproached, nor will the suffering be spared” (1 Pet. 2:23). What good did His gentle and long-suffering meekness not do, what honor did it not receive? What fierce beasts did not the power of His meekness defeat? Everyone can be convinced and judge this from the Holy Scriptures. And from here we can clearly see that the lamb’s meekness with patience and kindness overcomes everything that is resistant. And therefore, if you want to overcome your enemies without fighting, to win without weapons, to tame without labor and to subjugate yourself, be meek, patient, quiet, gentle, like a lamb, and you will overcome, win, tame and subdue. Saint John Chrysostom convinces us well of this, who says this: “As long as we remain sheep, we will overcome and overcome, even if countless wolves surround us; We will not only overcome (he says), but we will also overcome if we are sheep. We will overcome not by our strength, but by God’s help that protects us. For just as a shepherd tends his sheep, so God shepherds and protects us, so that our wolf-like enemies do not harm us. And vice versa, if we are not sheep, but we resist those who are hostile to us, we are moved to rage and malice, and we rise up for revenge, repaying evil for evil and annoyance with annoyance, then we ourselves will become wolves, we will destroy the gentle meekness of the sheep and will no longer be able to overcome our enemies, because the help and protection of our Shepherd God, who is the Shepherd, will be taken away from us only for meek sheep, not wolves. If we are wolves, we will be defeated by those who are hostile to us, for the help of the shepherd will depart from us, for He feeds the sheep, not the wolves, leaving the latter to those who are hostile to them and departs.” From this it is clear that God’s help fights only for those who have the meekness of sheep, and not for those who turn into wolves and want to torment their opponents, and shepherds only those who are gentle, and not those who are anti-malignant. He avenges those who do not avenge themselves, and not those who want to avenge themselves. In the Patericon we read about the following. One brother, having received an insult from another brother, came to Father Sisoes of Thebes and said: I received an insult from my brother and I want to take revenge on him for this. The elder admonished him and said: no, child, do not avenge yourself on him, but rather leave him to God, so that He may avenge you. The same one said: I will not leave him until I take revenge on him. Then the elder said: pray, brother, to God. And he stood up and began to pray, saying: God! We no longer trust in You: therefore, do not worry about us; do not take revenge on those who offend us, for we take revenge for ourselves. The offended brother, hearing this, fell at the feet of the elder and said: I no longer quarrel with my brother and do not want to hurt him, but I forgive him. To this the elder said to him: believe me, child, that he who has endured annoyances will be saved without difficulty, while he who is angry with his brother destroys all his virtue and becomes a slave of the devil. “Esau is fourty years old” (Gen. 26:34). From this it is clear that Isaac was one hundred years old at that time when Esau married, being forty years old, for Isaac gave birth to him at the age of sixty from birth. Therefore, King Abimelech was different in the days of Isaac’s residence in Gerar, and not the one who lived before the birth of Isaac, in the days of Abraham. – Esau, contrary to the blessing of his parents, took as his wife one of the pagan evil daughters, became unpleasant to God, for his wives brought sadness to the righteous Isaac and Rebekah, who saw their evil behavior and unpleasing life. Obviously, the life of Esau himself before his marriage was not pleasing to God, for evil wives are given by God to evil people as punishment for their sins, as it is written: “The lot of the sinner falls upon the soul” (Sir. 25:21), that is, the lot of the sinner is an evil wife, life with whom is fierce torment all the days of his life. The Holy Scripture also speaks about the following: “It is better to live with a lion and a serpent than with a wicked woman: the wickedness of a woman changes her face, and darkens her face, like a bear among her sincere ones; her husband lies down and, hearing, sighs bitterly. All malice is small against the malice of women” (Sir. 25, 18–21). If one wife is a great torment for a sinful man, then how great a torment were two wives for the God-hating Esau, about whom God says in Scripture: “I hated Esau” (Mal. 1, 2 and Rom. 9:13)? God, even before eternal torment, already in this life tormented him for his sins with two evil wives, like two incurable ulcers, all the days of his life. When Isaac grew old, his eyes became blind. Calling Esau, he said to him: Behold, I am old and do not know the day of my death, and therefore now take your weapon, bow and arrows, go out into the field, catch the beast and prepare for me the food that I love, and bring it to me so that I can eat it and so that my soul may bless you before I die. Rebekah heard these words from Isaac. When Esau went fishing, she remembered God’s revelation to her before the birth of her children, in which she was told that the older one would work for the younger one. She did not tell this revelation to Isaac, keeping the secret of God within herself. In order to fulfill what the Lord told her, she made sure that instead of Esau, Jacob came to his father for blessing, and for this she prepared Isaac’s favorite dish from goat, not animal meat, and dressed Jacob in Esau’s best clothes, which she kept, and tied goats around his hands and neck so that he would be shaggy, like Esau. When Jacob did not dare to do this, fearing that he might arouse anger in his father and bring a curse on himself instead of a blessing, Rebekah said to him: let the curse fall on me, child, just listen to my advice. She knew, as a prophetess, in spirit that Jacob would not receive a curse from his father, but a blessing, being chosen for this by God Himself. Jacob, obeying his mother's command, took the prepared food to his father, posing as Esau instead of Jacob. Isaac, touching Jacob’s hands, said: “Behold a voice like the voice of Jacob, and a hand like the hand of Esau” (Gen. 27:22). And he did not recognize him and, having tasted the food brought, blessed him with a blessing befitting a firstborn, saying: “May the Lord give you plenty of wheat and wine from the dew of heaven and from the moisture of the earth, and may the nations work for you, and may princes worship you, and be a master to your brother; let the sons of your father (that is, grandchildren) worship you; He who curses you will be cursed, he who bless you will be blessed” (Gen. 27:28–29). When Isaac stopped blessing Jacob and when Jacob left the presence of his father, Esau came from the fishing and, having prepared food from the catch, carried it to his father, saying: “Arise, my father, and eat from your son’s fishing, may your soul bless me.” Isaac said: “Who are you?” Esau answered: “I am your son, the firstborn Esau.” Isaac was very surprised and said: “Who brought me the bait, and the poison of it before your coming, and blessed him, and blessed is he?” Esau, hearing his father’s speech, cried out with a great and sorrowful voice and said: “Bless me too, father.” The father answered him: “Your brother, who came with flattery, took your blessing.” Esau said: “In truth, his name was called Jacob (the stammerer), but this is second to me: first I took my primacy, and now I took my blessing.” And then he turned to his father again: “Is there any blessing left for me, Father?” Isaac answered: “I have already made you his master, strengthened him with wheat and wine, what will I do to you, child?” Esau said: “Food is the only blessing you have, father? Bless me too” (Gen. 27:31–38). When Esau began to cry very bitterly, his father took pity on him and said to him: from the moisture of the earth and from the dew of heaven will your blessing be, and you will live by your sword and serve your brother; but the time will come when you will remove his yoke from your neck. (Isaac said this prophetically about subsequent generations that were to descend from Esau and Jacob, for Esau himself was not in bondage to Jacob, on the contrary, Jacob humbled himself before Esau; but subsequently the tribe of Esau was in bondage to the tribe of Jacob during the kingdom of Judah. In the same way, the yoke was removed from the neck in the days of King Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, since Edomites, or Edomites, descended from the tribe of Esau, separated from the kingdom of Judah.) Because of the blessing, Esau became Jacob's opponent and said to himself: If the days of my father's death had come, I would have killed my brother Jacob. Rebekah, having learned about these words of Esau, advised Jacob that, giving way to Esau’s anger, he should go to Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) to her brother Laban and remain there until Esau’s anger and bitterness passed. As a blessed reason for traveling in that direction, she pointed to marriage, so that he would take a wife not from the daughters of the Hittites living in Canaan, but from the daughters of Laban living in Mesopotamia. Therefore, she said to Isaac: I have burdened my life because of the daughters of the Hittites, and if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of this land (as Esau took wives for himself), then it is better for me not to live. Isaac agreed with her advice - to let Jacob go to Mesopotamia to Laban for the sake of marriage. “I do not know the days of my end” (Gen. 27:2). The righteous Isaac, who saw and predicted the future with a prophetic spirit, however, could not know the day of his death, since this was not revealed to him by God. Why did the Lord God, who revealed many secrets to His saint, not reveal the day of his death? I think that because he was for us an example of remembering death and preparedness for it, for this righteous man, who did not know at what hour his death would befall him, prepared for death many years before his death and expected it all the days in his old age. How many years did he prepare himself for death? Let’s look at this. All the years of his life are 180. He gave birth to Esau and Jacob in the sixtieth year of his life. Esau married in the fortieth year of his life, and Isaac at that time was already a hundred years old. Jacob, according to the testimony of Kedrin, remained in pure virginity with his parents until the sixty-third year from his birth, and then, having accepted the blessing of his father, he went to Mesopotamia to get married. At the time when Jacob was blessed in Esau's place, Isaac was 125 years old—there are still 55 years of Isaac's life left. Consequently, he prepared for his death for 55 years and blessed his sons with the last blessing, and lived all this time as if dying daily. We will pay attention to how many years this righteous man remained, studying in the memory of death, and was ready every day to be separated from his body. Who of those living in the world today would be one who would be ready for the hour of death even in one year or even in one month? We all put off our preparation for death from year to year, from time to time, from youth to old age, and the old people put it off even when they begin to be mortally ill, and, lying sick on their beds, then they only want to prepare, when there is little time, and their strength falls, and serious illnesses befall them, and another’s mind and speech will be taken away, and he will not be able, as it should be, to confess his sins and regret his death. deed. And thus death, either unexpectedly finding them before old age, finds people unprepared and kidnaps them, or, coming in old age, does not find them prepared and chops them up like a withered tree and sweeps them into the fire of hell. Oh, if every Christian person would constantly have in his mind these words of the righteous Isaac: “I know not the days of my end”! And if the ignorant were afraid of the unexpected arrival of a mortal and prepared himself with true repentance for his outcome! Then death would not be cruel for sinners, and Christian souls would not be filled with hell! But woe to our negligence! For we live as if we will live here forever and endlessly enjoy the visible world: we do not think that “the end is at the door, the ax at the root, the death scythe is over the head, the day of the Lord, like a thief, judgment does not touch, destruction does not slumber” (Matthew 24:33; 3:10; 1 Pet. 4:7; 2 Pet. 3:10; 2, 3), and thus we unexpectedly fall into hellish diseases and mortal snares, as Scripture says: “Man does not know the end of his time; But like fish caught in the deep, and like birds caught in a net, the sons of men are caught in the sea when evil comes upon them suddenly” (Eccl. 9:12). O mortal people! Why don’t we remember death, which we cannot avoid in any way? Why are we not afraid of the bitter hour of death, in which no one can help us? Why don’t we prepare ourselves for death, about which we don’t know, on what day or what night and at what hour it will take us from here? The gospel of Christ, protecting us, cries out like a trumpet: “Watch! You don’t know when the Lord will come to the house of mortal debt to collect from us, in the evening or at midnight, or at the sound of a loop, or in the morning: lest he come suddenly and find you sleeping” (Matthew 13:35-36). We do not listen to this voice and, like deaf asps, we close our ears so as not to hear it (Ps. 57:5-6), as if it were not being said to us. The Gospel proclaims: “Like an evil servant who eats and drinks with drunkards, and who beats his minions, the master will come on a day he does not like, and at an hour he does not know, and he will spend half his time, and put his part with the infidels: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24: 48-51). But we are not at all horrified by this, as if we were good and chosen servants of our Lord, although in reality we are filled with sins and iniquities. If the saints and righteous were afraid of death and, through great deeds, prepared themselves for the hour of death for a long time (like the righteous Isaac), not knowing the day of their death, then how much more necessary is it for us, sinners, to fear and prepare, cleansing our sinful defilements in repentance with warm tears, so that the end would not come to us wallowing in a swamp of sewage and unprepared to be betrayed to the terrible torture. For for this reason the time of death, the day and night of our death, are hidden from us, so that we, not knowing this, but always expecting and fearing, would be ready for the outcome at all times. Saint Chrysostom, in response to the Gospel words: “Be ready, for at this hour do not forget, the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 24:44), writes in his conversation the following: “Therefore the Lord says this to them, so that they will watch and always be ready. That’s why he said to them: “When you have no hope, then he will come,” because he wanted them to constantly remain fearless and in a virtuous life. If people knew when their death would befall them, they would take every possible care of that hour” (Discourse 77 on the Evangelist Matthew, moral teaching 2). And also, interpreting the words of the apostles: “The Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night” (Thessalonians 5:2), he writes the following: “If you want to understand why that day of the Lord is hidden and why it comes like a thief in the night, then I will say, and I will say, as I think, good. No one would have been diligent in virtue throughout his entire life if the hour of death had not been hidden, but had been revealed: he who did not know his last day and had committed countless and cruel atrocities on the eve of his death would have come to the bath of repentance and so would have departed from here” (Chrysostom. On the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, ch. 5, v. 2). And indeed, if we, not knowing the day and hour of our death, are frightened by its anticipation and nevertheless decide to commit countless and cruel atrocities, then what evil would we not dare to do if we knew that we would live for many more years and would not die soon? But since we do not know when, at what hour or day we will die, we must live all our days in such a way that we are daily prepared for the outcome, and think about the present day, whether it will be the last day of our life. Also, regarding this night, say to yourself: will this night be my last among the living? When you want to go to bed, say in your mind: will I rise alive from my bed and see the light of day again, or will my bed already become my tomb? And then, when you wake up from sleep and see the beginning of Daylight, think this way in your mind: will I reach the evening and the beginning of the night, or will the hour of death befall me on this day? When someone thinks like this, he is ready for death every day; lying down on his bed in the evening to sleep, he will set his conscience in such a way as if that night he would betray his spirit to God. He sleeps poorly who has fallen asleep in mortal sin; He does not rest well whose bed is surrounded by demons, waiting to drag his soul from his bed into the fiery wilds; It is not good for him who began the night without being reconciled with God! If even in the case when we anger our neighbor with something, the Apostle tells us: “Let not the sun go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26), then how much more should he who has angered God fear and take care that the sun does not set on God’s wrath and that he does not fall asleep without being reconciled with God? Since the hour of his death is unknown, let the death that attacks him not snatch him away unprepared! Don’t say, man, that in the morning you will be reconciled with God, in the morning you will repent and in the morning you will correct yourself. Do not put off your conversion and repentance to God from morning to morning, since it is not known whether you will wait until morning or evening. Righteous Anthony the Great teaches well. Remembering the Apostle, who dies every day (1 Cor. 15:31), he further says the following: “Rising from sleep, let us not hope to reach the evening and, going to sleep, let us not wait for the coming of the day, always remembering the uncertainty (the time of termination) of our life. In this way, we will not sin, we will not be carried away by any perishing lusts, we will not be angry with each other and we will not desire to collect earthly treasures, but with the constant memory of the fear of mortal we will trample all perishable things; Women’s love will cease, and the flame of lust will fade away. We will leave debts to each other, and we will always cleanse ourselves in advance, constantly having the memory of the coming of the last breath and the hour of death. For fear of death and judgment, fear of torment and trepidation in view of impending eternal executions easily destroy the pleasantness of bodily lusts and, as it were, raise a falling soul from the abyss.” “Bring it to me, yes yam, may my soul bless you” (Gen. 27:4). The father, wanting to bless his son with the last blessing, demanded that his son nourish him from the labor of his hands. Here is an example for those who bless and are blessed, spiritual, I say, rank and worldly, for bishops and priests, being fathers of the people, shepherds, teachers, prayer books and blessings, giving spiritual benefits to the people of God, and to their spiritual children, can demand food from them; people must nourish them, giving what is necessary for the body to those from whom they take spiritual things. They must according to the apostolic court, for the holy Apostle in his letter to the Romans says: “I am coming to Jerusalem, serve the saints. It was good for Macedonia and Achaia to create some kind of fellowship with the poor saints living in Jerusalem; for they are well-intentioned and indebted to them” (Rom. 15:25-27). These words say that the inhabitants of Achaia and Macedonia sent alms through the Apostle Paul to feed the saints living in Jerusalem, who were in poverty and poverty. Which saints exactly? First of all, to James, the brother of the Lord, the apostle and first bishop of Jerusalem, and with him also to the other apostles who had not yet dispersed throughout the universe, but preached about Christ in neighboring countries, again returning to Jerusalem, and then with them to the other consecrated servants of Christ, who were teachers and spiritual mentors in the primal Church. It was to them that the Apostle Paul took alms from Macedonia and Achaia. We will pay attention to the following saying of the Apostle Paul: “They are good and owe them debts” (Rom. 15:27). This is the apostolic sentence: worldly people must feed their spiritual shepherds and teachers by giving them alms from their estates. Why exactly they should, the same Apostle says the following about this: “For if in the spiritual they were partakers of the Gentiles, they must serve them in the carnal” (Rom. 15:27). The inhabitants of Macedonia and Achaia were pagans and were enlightened by the holy apostles and their successors staying in Jerusalem; from them they accepted faith, they were guided on the path of salvation and from them they received spiritual grace. Therefore, they must serve them with bodily benefits, they must provide them with what they need and need for life, they must fill their poverty with their own blessings, so that they do not weaken in their spiritual labors, have food from them and do not interrupt their service. “We owe them the essence!” The same holy Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, explains this duty with more extensive arguments. There he, first of all, says: “Or are I and Barnabas alone not imams of power, and should not do this?” (1 Cor. 9:6), that is, not to seek food from the labor of your hands or, as St. John Chrysostom explains, to eat from those who are taught? If sometimes Saint Paul worked to satisfy his bodily needs, as he says in another place: “Serve my needs and those who are with me with these hands” (Acts 20:34), or as he also says about himself: “We labor, working with our own hands” (1 Cor. 4:12), however, he also pointed out that other apostles and their successors did not engage in crafts, but diligently engaged in one thing only by preaching and teaching; food and clothing were not their own, but given to them from the people whom they taught. That’s why he says: or do I and Barnabas not have the power, just as the other apostles in the Church of Christ have the power not to do anything, but to diligently practice the preaching itself and feed from those who teach? The Holy Apostle Paul also gives various examples of the above position. “Who,” he says, “makes war with his dues?” (1 Cor. 9:7). When a king leading a war must give quitrent to his soldiers, he collects tribute for this from those peoples who are under his authority. Persons of the clergy are, as it were, warriors of the Heavenly King Christ, and therefore Christian peoples must pay taxes to them. In the same place the Apostle says: “Who plants grapes and does not eat of its fruit? Who feeds the flock and does not eat the milk of the flock?” (1 Cor. 9:7). Just as a vinedresser gets his food from grapes, and a shepherd of livestock gets his food from milk, so the spiritual order must receive food from worldly people. Then the Apostle cites the Old Testament law, saying: “In the law of Moses it is written: Thou shalt not stop the mouth of an ox when he threshes” (1 Cor. 9:9). Saint Chrysostom interprets these words as follows: “These unworn lips of an animal cry out for nothing else, except that it is appropriate for working teachers to accept reward.” Chrysostom speaks of reward not as a bribe, for spiritual gifts are not for sale, but he calls reward food. Just as the animal with which a person plows and on which he places burdens, he always feeds sufficiently, so people should also feed with sufficient alms those who work in the Church, cultivate spiritual fields, sow the seeds of the word of God and take upon themselves sinful human burdens. Further, the Apostle says: “If we sow your spiritual seeds, how great is it if we reap your bodily ones?” (1 Cor. 9, I). He seems to be saying this: we do you more good when we sow spiritual things to you, satiating your souls, than you do to us when you give us what we need for the body; there is nothing great in the fact that when we reap your bodily, we accept temporary food from you, since you accept incomparably more from us, you accept eternal spiritual gifts, that is, soul-beneficial teachings, the resolution of sins, the cleansing of your souls, guidance on the path of salvation, daily prayers to God for you, forgiveness and blessing. Finally, remembering the Old Testament priests, the Apostle ends with the Lord’s command, saying the following: “Do you not know that he who makes sacred food eats from the sanctuary, and he who serves the altar shares with the altar? Thus the Lord commanded those who preach the gospel to live, eat and eat from the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:13-14). These are the arguments given by the holy Apostle regarding the fact that worldly people have a duty to nurture the spiritual order. Rebekah tied Jacob's hands and neck with goatskin, and this was a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Just as Rebekah covered Jacob with goatskin, so the Mother of God clothed the Son of God in Her womb with flesh. Jacob was a type of Christ. Just as Jacob took on the likeness of Esau and the skin of a goat on his hands and neck, so Christ took on the image or likeness of a servant and bore the sins of men on His body. When Jacob spoke to his father, his voice was the voice of Jacob, but his hands were like the hands of Esau; so the preaching of Christ and the power of His words were Divine, but His Divinity was hidden by humanity. Isaac did not recognize Jacob, who came to him in the form of Esau; Nor did the Jews recognize the Messiah who was promised to them and who came to them, “who took the form of a servant and became in the likeness of mankind, and was found in the likeness of a man” (Phil. 2:7). “Isaac marveled at the great man” (Gen. 27:33). Interpreters of the Holy Scriptures say that Isaac was surprised, being in a frenzy, when it was revealed to Him from God that this Jacob’s deed was not a matter of Jacob’s self-will, but a matter of Divine discretion, and that not Esau, but Jacob was loved and chosen by God. After this, Isaac not only did not become angry with Jacob, not only did he not change his blessing, but he confirmed it even more. “Cry out with a great and bitter voice” (Gen. 27:34). Esau wept bitterly, having lost his father’s blessing and primacy, but the holy Apostle says about him: “For you will not find a place for repentance, even if you sought it with tears” (Heb. 12:17). Why his repentance was not given room, Saint Chrysostom explains this, pointing out that he “did not discover true repentance.” In another place the same teacher says the following: “Those who believe to sin without languor (that is, they think that there will be no punishment for sins), let them think about why Esau did not receive forgiveness: because he did not repent as he should.” From here we see that tears alone will not help if proper repentance is not added to them, if there is no satisfaction for sins, correction of life and deeds appropriate to true repentance. Affection will not help if the old disposition remains uncorrected. What is the use of shedding tears over sin, but not giving up on sin? Stop, O man, from committing sinful evil, create fruits worthy of repentance! Then God will not despise your contrite and humble heart (Ps. 50:19): then there will be room for your repentance when you repent properly. But let’s look a little at the crying Esau, and I want to find out here how he should have repented. Esau cries, and not just cries, but sobs, crying out in a bitter voice. Who would not be heartbroken to see his sobbing so great? Who would not expect to be pardoned by God? Who would doubt the forgiveness of his sins? Who would not think that the merciful God would be pleased with such great tears? However, they turned out to be unpleasant, rejected, hated: “I hated Esau,” says God in prophecy (Mal. 1, 2). Why? Let's consider this. Esau weeps. What is he crying about? Is it about sins? No way! About what? About his loss, because he lost his father’s blessing and primacy. He sinned greatly before the Lord God when he treated such an honest, as was said before, and holy thing - primacy - into insignificance, selling it for small food: this is a great sin, for he rejected the priestly service of the Lord and despised God Himself, despising the holy dignity. He took wicked and malicious wives from idolatrous daughters, thereby saddening his father and mother, and this did not remain imputed to him as a sin: the Apostle calls him a fornicator and a defiler (Heb. 12:16), and this is God’s great wrath. For the sake of his sins, he became unworthy of his father’s blessing and primacy. Does Esau repent of such great sins and cry? It is not written in Scripture that Esau regretted the evil deeds he had committed and came to God with repentance and tears. When by deed he was alienated from what he was not worthy of, then he burst into tears and sobbed not for sins, not for God’s wrath, and not for his unworthiness, but for his loss, since he was alienated from such great blessings. If the Apostle says about him that he sought repentance, “with tears,” he says, “he sought it,” that is, he repented, but what did he repent about? It’s not about the fact that he sinned because he sold his championship. He does not confess his guilt, but places the blame on Jacob, saying: “My primacy has been taken!” (Gen. 27.36). Instead of saying: I sinned, for I sold my primacy, he says: “I took my primacy.” It was as if Jacob had forcibly taken away the primacy from him, as if he had kidnapped him as a bandit, had unjustly taken it away! It was fitting for Esau to recognize his sin and regret it, to bring his guilt to God; It was fitting for him not so much about his loss as to weep and weep that he had angered the Lord his God. But since he did not repent as he should have, his repentance was therefore ineffective and his tears were rejected. Here is an instruction for us so that we know in our repentance what we should cry and weep about: not only that we suffered a great loss from our sins, but most of all that we angered our Creator and grieved His compassion. Isaac called Jacob, his son, and blessed him a second time with the full blessing befitting the firstborn, and commanded him not to take wives from the daughters of Canaan. He sent him to Mesopotamia, to the city of Harran, to Rachel’s brother Laban, so that he could take a wife from that family. Jacob, leaving his father's house, walked along a predetermined path. When night found him on the way, he took one of the stones lying there, put it under his head and fell asleep. He saw a dream: behold, a ladder is established on the earth, the top of which reaches to heaven, and the angels of God ascend and descend along it; The Lord established himself on her. And God blessed Jacob, as he had blessed Abraham and Isaac his father, giving him a promise that he would not leave him, but would be with him in all his ways, and that he would multiply his seed like the sand of the sea, and give him the land on which he sleeps as an inheritance. God also revealed to him about the Messiah who would come to earth when he said: “All the nations of the earth will be blessed because of you, and in your Seed” (Gen. 28:14), that is, in Christ, the Savior of the human race. Waking up from his sleep, Jacob was afraid with holy fear and, reverently honoring the place where he was honored to see the Lord, said: “Truly the Lord is in this place, I do not know: this place is terrible, this is not a simple place, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” (Gen. 28, 16–17). He took the stone that was under his head and set it up as a pillar, poured oil on it and called the place: “The House of God.” Here Jacob prayed to God for a long time and made a vow, saying: “Of everything that the Lord has given me, I will tithe you” (Gen. 28:22). The amazing thing about this story is that Jacob, the son of a rich father, was released from his parents’ house alone, a beggar, having nothing except a piece of bread in the feast (sum) and a small amount of oil, and with a rod in his hand, as he himself later, returning rich and with many servants, said to God in prayer: “With this rod the Jordan passed away, but now I am in two regiments” (Gen. 32, 10). Why didn’t Isaac send with him at least several slaves who would protect him on the way and carry everything he needed? Or if not several, then at least one slave who would carry the feast with bread and oil after him? Abraham, sending his eldest slave in the house to Mesopotamia to bring from there the maiden Rebekah to his son Isaac as a wife, gave him ten camels laden with all sorts of goods; Isaac, when he sent his beloved son Jacob to the same country to marry, did not give him anything, and only his mother put a small piece of bread and a jar of oil into his tobolets (bag). What is the reason for this? Truly, none other than the following: the holy man Isaac, having great faith in God and great trust in Him, entrusted his son to the Providence of God, entrusted him to God, firmly hoping that God would not abandon his son, but would keep him safe on the way and bring him to Laban healthy, and there would arrange everything for him in the best possible way. That is why, when he released his son, he did not give him wealth, but gave him the Father’s blessing; He did not send servants with him, but sent his prayers, entrusting him to the Providence of God, that Providence, the gracious action of which he himself had previously experienced. For when he was led by Father Abraham to the slaughter, he asked his father, saying: “Father! Behold the fire and the wood, where is the sheep needed?” His father answered him: “God will see (provide) for the sheep he needs, my child” (Gen. 22:7-8). And so it happened. God provided for the sheep, but it remained intact. From that hour, Isaac never doubted the Providence of God, he always firmly relied on it. Having entrusted his son Jacob to him, he sent him on his way, as if surrounded by a shield and armor, surrounded and protected by many military regiments. And Jacob himself relied on God, having been taught by his righteous parents Isaac and Rebekah, and walked fearlessly, not doubting anything, but looking to the one God and trusting in Him securely. He immediately recognized His presence and protection in a wonderful dream, in which he heard the Lord’s merciful words: “Behold,” He said, “I will be with you and will keep you all the way, even if you go, and I will return you to this earth, for I will not leave you, until I will do everything that I told you” (Gen. 28:15). From here we can learn to fully rely on God and His holy Providence and to trust in Him undoubtedly, for He does not abandon those who trust and rely on Him, but arranges for them everything good and useful according to His good will and philanthropic mercy. If He provides for those who do not rely and trust in Him, for He pours out His grace on everyone, just as the sun shines with its rays on the evil and the good, then much more does He provide for those who trust in Him and rely entirely on Him. Let us think about the Providence of God for the Israeli people in the desert, about those who were ungrateful for the benefits God showed them, who revealed their great disbelief in Him (although they saw His great miracles) and were easily inclined to idolatry, there were murmurers, opponents, constantly angering God, as the Psalmist says about them: “A generation that is obstinate and bitter, a generation that has not corrected its heart, nor trust your spirit with God. And His good deeds and His miracles are forgotten. Having made the Most High bitter, slandered God and decided: will God be able to prepare a meal in the desert? You do not believe in God, you put less hope in His salvation. Having loved your lips and lied to Him with your tongue; but their hearts were not right with Him, having less confidence in His covenant. How did the Kolkrats grieve Him in the desert, anger Him in the waterless lands? (Ps. 77; 8, 11, 17, 19, 22, 36–37, 40). This is what those people were like, however, God did not abandon them either, but devoted His Providence entirely to them! In the desert land he fed them with manna and sent them birds in abundance for food; he sweetened the bitter waters, he brought forth a spring for them from a stone; kept their clothes undecayed for forty years and promised to keep them intact: the tunic placed on the baby grew with him until he reached adulthood. He saved them from Amalek, fighting their enemies for them; provided a quick and effective cure for the bite of snakes in the copper serpent; They were not subject to any ailments that usually occur in people, not even until they entered the promised land. For the psalms say: “Do not hurt their knees” (Ps. 104:37). Such was God’s providence for those people, such was the provision and care. Therefore, does not the Lord provide for those who serve Him diligently with faith and love and place all their hope and trust in Him? Will he who cares for the ungrateful take care of those who thank Him? Providing everything necessary to those who do not love Him, will He not provide those who love Him? Without abandoning those who move away from Him, will He abandon those who draw closer to Him? He will not leave her, for he says: “The imam will not leave you” (Gen. 28:15). And again: “Will food forget his mother as a child, and not have mercy on the offspring of his womb? Even if the wife forgets, I will not forget you, says the Lord” (Is. 49:15). People usually have excessive concern for two things: about temporary life and about what is necessary for life. Everyone takes care to lead this life safely, prosperously, comfortably, to have all sufficiency in food, drink and clothing and to remain in all abundance. But there are few who would care about their salvation. The Lord says in the Gospel: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). And the Lord is not lying in His words, but truly about all His servants who seek the Kingdom of God, care about salvation, diligently and faithfully serve Him, their Lord, and rely on His Providence, He cares for them, provides for them, makes their life useful and gives them everything they need for life in abundance. He arranges their lives prosperously, just as he arranged the life of the righteous Jacob. If any troubles and misfortunes happen to His servants, He does not leave them in them, but frees them from troubles and misfortunes and leads to a good end for them, as He brought the life of Joseph the Beautiful. He was hated by his brothers, thrown into a ditch, sold into slavery, taken to a foreign land, suffered misfortunes from a woman and was thrown into prison. And what after all this? God made him a king and a glorious ruler in Egypt. God gives His servants everything they need for life. Didn’t Elijah feed the prophet during the famine through an angel and meat brought by a raven? Didn’t he feed the imprisoned prophet Daniel with Habakkuk’s food in the den among the lions? Didn’t he give the thirsty Sampson a drink of water miraculously taken from a donkey’s jaw? Did He leave the poor but virtuous widow who lived in Zarephath of Sidon to starve? Did he not send a prophet to her, so that her water supply of flour would not run low and her arrogance of oil would not diminish? And the prophet’s other wife, a beggar, when her husband was dying and left her with two children to the will of God’s Providence, commanding them to have undoubted hope in the Lord, when this wife was oppressed by a creditor who wanted to take her children into slavery, was she abandoned by God’s Providence? No! For God filled many large vessels with oil from a small vessel, and the price of this oil was not only sufficient to repay the debt, but also so that the wife could have food for a long time with her children. Jehoshaphat, king of Jerusalem, with the wicked son of Ahab Joram, king of Israel, who was in the regiments and suffered seven days without water with all the soldiers, when people and cattle were exhausted from thirst, did the Lord leave him to perish due to lack of water? Did he not send rain and a river for his sake, which flowed through a dry place to the army of Jehoshaphat? For the sake of His only faithful servant Jehoshaphat, He gave drink not only to the good, but also to the evil. All this was in the Old Testament. What shall we say about the many saints of God and the providences of God who were in the new grace? I, the narrator, do not have enough time, and I will only remember two here: the Monk Alexander, the founder of the monastery of the undying, and the reverend Abbot of Syria Theophan. God sufficiently nourished Alexander with clean and warm bread, sent by His Providence to the monk, who wept with many people in the desert. Likewise, Theophan, when he was still a layman and when one day, during the heat of the harvest in the desert, he and his servants slowed down and began to become exhausted from thirst with everyone else, God gave them to drink from a suddenly flowing source of living water. How all this happened, let anyone who wishes to read about it in the lives of the mentioned saints (July 3 and March 12). In a similar way, God is a Provider in relation to other needs that are necessary for human life, if only one places trust in Him, which is clear from the fact that He was a Provider for the righteous Jacob, whom he multiplied into two regiments, although he left his parents’ house alone and came alone to Laban, and returned him to his father with great wealth, although Jacob left the house poor. In addition to all of the above, from this example that the righteous Isaac, releasing his son to a distant country as a beggar, entrusts him to the Providence of God, so that the parents of their children will learn to entrust the Providence of God in the same way and, better than God, than property, leave them as an inheritance. Saint Chrysostom teaches well about this. He answers the person who, before his death, says: Children surround me, and I want to leave them rich; If you leave God as their joint heir and trustee, then you have left countless treasures. For just as in the case when we avenge ourselves, God does not take revenge for us, but when we leave revenge for us to Him, God then avenges us, and then something happens that we do not expect, the same thing happens with regard to estates: if we take care of them, He retreats and does not provide for them, but if we entrust everything entirely to Him, He will arrange both the estates and the children in every way. If you want to leave great wealth to your children, leave them the Providence of God, which gave you, who did nothing, a soul, a body, and life; God, when He sees that you show such great love for Him and entrust Him with your children with your property, He will open all kinds of wealth to them. If Elijah was fed with a small amount of flour and since he saw that the woman preferred him to her small children, then he showed a threshing floor and a grindstone in the widow’s house - how much more, do you think, will the Master of Elijah show the loving care and goodwill? So, let us not so much care about leaving our children rich as about ensuring that they remain virtuous” (Chrysostom. On the Epistle to the Romans, conversation 7, moral teaching 9). Let us cite here a story from Limonarium (or Limonarium - a flower garden, a collection of stories about the deeds of desert dwellers who shone with holiness; this book was translated into Slavic and published in 1628), which the Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Holiness Sophronius, wrote with his friend John. It says the following: “One of the fathers told us, saying: one day I came out of necessity to Constantinople, and when I was sitting in the church, a Christ-loving worldly man came in and, seeing me, kissed me kindly, sat down next to me and began to ask me about spiritual benefits. I told him: those who arrange earthly things well will also be given heavenly things. He answered: you said well, father; for blessed indeed is he who has hope in God. Then he continued: I, father, from the beginning entrusted myself entirely to God, and I was the son of glorious and rich parents. My father was very merciful and always gave a lot to the poor. One day, calling me, he showed me all his property and said: child, what do you want - will I leave it all to you, or instead of this, Christ the Provider? I, strengthened by faith and sympathizing with what my father was doing, said: instead of all this, I most of all desire Christ, for all this only exists today, and tomorrow may not exist, while Christ abides forever. My father, having heard this from me, throughout all the days of his life gave everything to those who needed it, and when he died, he left me very little. But I remained and lived my life humbly, having hope in my Christ, to whom my father entrusted me. There was another glorious and very rich husband in this city, who had a Christ-loving and God-fearing wife and an only daughter. One day his wife said to him: My lord, God has given us a lot of good things, and we have only one daughter; what will we do? If we wish to give it to some husband who is as rich as we are, but unbecoming and unvirtuous, then what will be the benefit? For he will always insult her. Let’s look for a better person who is humble and fears God, who would live with her in God’s way and in love. He answered her: you said well; Therefore, go to the holy church, pray diligently to the All-Merciful God and wait there, and whoever enters the church doors first is the groom sent by God to our daughter. And his wife did so. When she prayed in the church and sat down, immediately, according to God’s dispensation, I entered the holy church, and she, sending a slave to me, called me to her and asked, saying: where are you from? I said: from this city, and named my father. She said: Are you the son of the merciful man? I said: yes, I am his son, madam. I told her everything that my father told me, and that I answered him that I chose Christ instead of all the possessions. Then she asked me again: do you have a wife? I said: I don’t have it. Hearing this, she glorified God and said to me: good is He who cares for you - your Christ, whom you preferred to everything, and He now gives you a wife and wealth, so that you may accept both with the fear of God. Taking me with her, she brought me from the church to her house and, having married me to her daughter, gave me all her large estate. “I pray to Christ God, my Provider, that He will allow me to walk in the path of my father until the end of my life.” Here we see what God’s Providence is for those who trust in Him and always rely on Divine care! “Taking from the stone of that place” (Gen. 28:11). This is the bed of God's servant - the bed is earth, and the head is stone, an image of a discerning ascetic life and the benefit that comes from it. For resting your tired body on a hard bed is a feat; To be worthy of God's and angelic appearances is a benefit, but this benefit does not come before the achievement. While Jacob ate sweet meals in his parents’ house, slept on a soft bed, enjoyed the love of his father and mother and talked friendly with the household, until then he was not granted God’s revelation. When he left all this and accepted an ascetic life, he began to take a sorrowful path, placing himself on the Providence of God, he immediately saw the entrance to heaven, angels and God, enjoyed His words and accepted a merciful promise from Him, and God became for him instead of father and mother, angels instead of home friends, instead of his father’s house a ladder to heaven, encouraging him with an eternal fatherland located in heaven. Such a change in life! Let us also heed this: Jacob, called to earthly prosperity, so that his descendants might multiply, so that he would be rich and glorified on earth by the many tribes that would descend from him, began his path to this earthly blessing with the feat of life: to his increase he went alone, to wealth he went beggars, to glorification he went humble and had on his way at night an unsoft bed covered with precious linen, but a hard stone placed under the head. Especially for those who strive for the glory of the Heavenly Kingdom and the eternal riches with which Christ the Lord blessed His chosen ones on the Day of Judgment, saying to them: “Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you” (Matt. 25:34), for such a person it is all the more necessary to go through a difficult and regrettable path, to have a cruel life, in order to get what he wants; for it is impossible to live long and widely here in the temporal pleasures of this world, and there to enjoy eternal blessings: they do not move from earthly pleasure to heavenly pleasure, from carnal pleasure here to the rest there, from covetousness and delicacy to those riches that God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). A narrow path and a narrow gate lead to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:14): a stone bed, a stone life, I say, and let him who wants to rest firmly in this abide with those of whom the Psalmist speaks: “The saints will be praised in glory and will rejoice on their beds” (Ps. 149:5). And these benefits are not given in any other way than as indicated: an ascetic life on earth is the intercessor of heavenly repose. About the Israeli people who entered the promised land of Canaan (which is also Palestine), Scripture says: “The honey came from the stone and the oil from the hard stone” (Deut. 32:13). These written words have the following interpretation: the Promised Land was so abundant in honey that swarms of bees multiplied even in stone crevices, and this is what the Scripture says: “The honey came from the stone.” This country was so prolific in oil or olive trees that even in rocky places there were abundant and numerous olive fruits, and this is exactly what it says: “Oil from the hard rock.” We, interpreting all this spiritually, will understand by the Kingdom of Heaven promised by the Earth, by honey and oil - the eternal blessings there, for the saints there enjoy the flow of sweetness and are likened to olive trees: “I am,” they say, “like an olive fruitful in the house of God” (Ps. 51:10). The solid stone is the ascetic life here. From the solid stone a honeyed and unctuous sweetness flowed forth to the Israelites; From hard and ascetic living according to God, Christians receive eternal heavenly blessings. Was it not from the hard stone that heavenly sweetness flowed from the holy first martyr Stephen when the Sweetest Jesus Himself appeared to him? “I see,” he says, “the heavens are opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). When does he see? At a time when they were preparing to kill him with stones. Well, the Holy Scripture likens one who builds his church on a stone to a wise man (Matthew 7:24); for only he is worthy to enter into the palace of heaven with the wise virgins (Matt. 25:1-10), who tries to create the house of his salvation on the solid rock of a difficult ascetic life, being heavy for his flesh and an ascetic against the sinful lusts that overtake him. “Put yourself in charge.” This stone, on which Jacob rested, was, we think, a prototype of Christ, our Lord, who says: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He is the head for the hardworking, on which not only in the future life will all those who worked here for His sake rest, but also in this present life those who have Divine love in their hearts will sweetly rest, consider this life to be a pilgrimage and diligently strive for the heavenly fatherland, shedding their sweat and taking on unslothful day-night labors. For each of these, if only he raises his mind to his beloved Master, in the name of Whose love he works, immediately all work becomes easy for him. For someone who loves Christ, no work, even the greatest, is difficult, performed for the love of Christ and for the glory of His holy name. The holy Apostle Paul recalls his labors, saying: “In labor and struggle, in vigils in abundance, in hunger and thirst, in abundance in fasting, in winter and nakedness, love for His sake, an attack all the days, and care for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11, 27-28). Truly, the apostolic labors were great, not only labors, but also disasters, wounds, prisons, everyday death: “In labor,” he says, “there was much more, in wounds there was great pain, in prisons there was abundance, in death there was much” (2 Cor. 11:23). St. Chrysostom, reasoning about this, says: “He endured great and frequent troubles and labors of troubles and did not leave any time for rest.” And what about the Apostle? Was he tired, was he exhausted from so much hard and troublesome work? No, for he says: “If anyone faints, I will not faint” (2 Cor. 11:29). What gave the Apostle relief in such great and unbearable labors? Nothing other than love turned to Christ the Lord, from which nothing could separate him - neither sorrow, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor trouble, nor sword (Rom. 8:35), but all heavy burdens were light for him for the sake of love for Christ, as he himself says: “Of these we overcome all for the sake of those we love” (Rom. 8:37). Oh, how many labors the reverend fathers, wandering in deserts, mountains, dens and earthly abysses, went through, fighting day and night with invisible adversaries and crucifying themselves with passions and lusts! However, all these labors were not burdensome for them, for they had one joy - Christ’s Divine love, for the sake of which everything seemed easy to them, according to the word of Christ who loved us: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew I, 30). What can we say about the holy martyrs? How much labor did they endure, suffering bonds, torments, wounds and various deaths? Doesn't all this seem too heavy for our weak flesh? However, for them this was easy and joyful, for their mind was entirely in Christ God, as if resting at the head, and their heart was delighted by His Divine love. And now any of the true servants of Christ, who works in something, and in his labors seeks not himself, but Christ, if he only thinks for Whom he is working, his work immediately becomes easy for him, and he desires to work even more and credits his work to himself not for work, but for peace and coolness. For if those who work for themselves for the sake of their own temporary self-interest have in their labors joy, the very hope of receiving what they work for in order to get what they want, then how much greater joy do those who work for Christ have - Christ Himself? He is their hope, He is their comfort, He is their desire and their constant delight, and they labor to gain Christ, to be loved by Him, to enjoy His love. And they are not deprived of their hope, for “hope does not put one to shame” (Rom. 5:5). Jacob, resting on the top of the stone, saw a ladder to heaven, angels and God Himself; and resting a well-meaning mind in Christ God, Who is the spiritual Rock (“The Rock is Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4)), and the one who deepens his thoughts into Him is ready for entry into heaven, association with the angels and the sweet sight of Christ. “I saw a dream” (Gen. 28:12). There are three types of dreams: either from God, or from a demon, or from nature. There was a dream from God, for example, the righteous Jacob, who saw a ladder, and the beautiful Joseph, who saw the sun, moon and stars that bowed to him, and the sheaves that bowed to his sheaf. And another Saint Joseph the treemaker had a dream vision from God about the Most Pure Virgin Mary, as well as the three Persian wise men bowing to Christ, who were not supposed to return to Herod. There were also dreams from God to others, not only to saints, but also to sinners, like Abimelech of Gerar regarding Abraham’s wife, Pharaoh about seven cows and ears of corn, Nebuchadnezzar about a golden-headed image and a great oak tree, and others about other things. For example, a monk had a dream from a demon, about whom the Monk Antiochus writes the following: “On Mount Sinai there was one monk who labored very diligently in a hut, secluding himself for many years. Despite all this, he believed the dreams and was reproached by the devil because he leaned toward Jewish circumcision. The devil repeatedly showed him sleepy visions with which he deceived his mind and darkened him. Subsequently, the devil showed him that it was as if the faces of the apostles, martyrs and all Christians were in darkness and filled with all punishment, and against them was the godless face of the Jews, illuminated by light and filled with joy. Then the accursed one got up and left the holy mountain, went to Palestine, to the dwellings of the Jews, was circumcised and became a Jew. He also took a wife and openly entered into disputes with Christians, defending Judaism. After this, he did not live even three years when he died an evil death: while still alive, he began to rot and died, eaten by worms. “When we saw this,” says Antiochus, “I and the other monks wept, for he looked like a good man, covered with gray hair, who had grown old in fasting and labor and died because of faith in dreams.” As for, finally, dreams from nature, they are the ordinary dreams of every person; however, they are also twofold. Other dreams are in the mind of daydreaming, when someone dreams about what he saw or heard with his mind, or when he thinks for a long time about what he desires or fears, and draws it out in his mind with this long deliberation, then in his dream he sees the same thing, in which he delved deep into his mind for a long time before sleep. Saint Chrysostom also recalls this in his conversations on the Apostolic Epistles, saying: “When you contain these stories, visions and hearings in your soul, then you accept similar dreams: your soul gets used (in sleep) to dreaming about what it thinks and desires during the day” (Chrysostom. On the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, conversation 5). Saint John Climacus also talks about the same thing, that a person in a dream sees the same thing that he has in his thoughts and desires while awake. Talking about sleep, he says the following: “Whoever truly loves always keeps his beloved face in his mind and embraces him (in his heart) sweetly; even in his sleep he cannot remain silent from desire, but enters into conversation with the desired person. Someone, being wounded, said about himself that I sleep for the sake of a natural need, but my heart is awake (Song. 5:2) because of many desires” (Sermon 30, chapter 13). About the holy Bishop Vassian (June 1), who was a friend of St. Ambrose, it is written that even in his youth, during sleep, he uttered prayer words with his lips, calling on the name of God, in the One Trinity; To whom in the waking state he sent warm prayers, to whom he prayed in his sleep; in a dream, apparently, he did the same thing that he did in reality. Another kind of natural dreams occur from some kind of internal dissolution and moisture or infirmity that prevails in a person. If cholera (bile) takes over in someone (over other components of the human body), then he becomes angry, and he dreams of wars, battles, and fiery flames. If someone is phlegmatic, that is, full of phlegm, he dreams of water, abyss, swimming, drowning, or a slow flight from some harmful thing. If blood prevails in someone, he dreams of music, feasts, helicopter cities, birds, and flying. If someone is melancholic, that is, sad, gloomy and despondent, in his dreams he sees terrible things, dead people, coffins, Ethiopians, demons. About Saint James it is not only known that his dream was from God, but it is also probable that before this dream his mind was directed towards God and his thought deepened in God. For when he left his father's house into an unknown country, what else was on his mind except God, to whom both his father and mother had entrusted and in whom he had been taught to hope? His thoughts spoke differently in him. One thought said: as you go alone to a distant country, will you not fall into the hands of robbers or into the teeth of fierce beasts? To this Jacob responded with the words of another thought: The God of my father and my mother, through the prayers of my parents, will keep me safe and sound. The first thought again spoke to this: will Laban accept you to him? whether he would like to have you as a son-in-law; will you feel good? And he answered the first with a different thought: The God of my fathers, through their prayers, will arrange everything for my good and benefit. Again the first thought objected: will you see your father and mother alive, and will they see you? Wasn't that the last kiss you kissed them? He answered: the life of my parents and mine are in the hand of God, and if He wishes, He will grant me the privilege of seeing their sweet and amiable face. So, reasoning within himself with his thoughts, he raised his eyes to heaven with sighs and tenderly prayed: My God, my God! You are my father and mother, You are my guardian, leader and provider; You are my hope and refuge, do not leave me who trusts in You! – Raising his mind in this way to God and performing prayer, he followed the path he had taken. Therefore, he was freed to see God in a dream; Whom he thought about before sleep appeared to him in a dream vision. From here let us learn to often raise our minds to God and constantly think about Him, so that not only in our sleepy visions we may see Him, but also in our mortal rest we may be worthy to see Him and enjoy His contemplation in endless life. “The ladder is established on the earth” (Gen. 28:12). People are accustomed to interpreting dreams, and therefore let this dream of Jacob be interpreted. According to the letters, the interpretation of this dream is as follows: the ladder marked the path of Jacob; ascending angels signaled Jacob's safe journey to Mesopotamia; descending angels - his safe return; The Lord, establishing himself on the ladder, was an indication that the manager and organizer of Jacob’s journey was God Himself. According to the spiritual interpretation, church teachers Cyril of Alexandria, Herman, Patriarch of Constantinople, and others understand the ladder of Jacob as a prototype of the cross of Christ, and the Lord, who established himself on it, foreshadowed that He who took human flesh would be nailed to the cross. Truly, the cross is the ladder with which Christ first ascended to heaven, as he said: “Isn’t this fitting for Christ to suffer and ascend into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). After Him, many saints then ascended, and now the true servants of Christ are ascending and will ascend even until the coming of the Lord with His holy angels; those who are likened to the One who suffered on the cross and who are likened by the crosses of their suffering ascend. For for every servant of Christ in this life, suffering is a cross and a ladder to heaven, as this is beautifully explained in the life of the holy martyr Perpetua and others like her, who had the following vision before her suffering. It seemed that she saw a large golden ladder reaching to heaven; on both sides there were many weapons stuck: swords, knives, razors, spears, nails and the like. Under the ladder, at the first step, there was a reptile - a large serpent, which prevented those who wanted to climb the ladder. The holy young man Satyr, not afraid of this terrible serpent, approached, and first of all climbed this ladder, reached its very top, turned around and said: Perpetua, I am waiting for you, but beware that the serpent does not bite you! She said: the serpent cannot harm me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! And she first stepped on the serpent’s head, as if on the first step, and then she climbed onto the ladder itself and saw the beautiful villages of paradise and the multitude of those who settled there. When Saint Perpetua announced this vision to her squad, everyone understood that they were called by the Lord to a suffering feat, and began to neglect their temporary life. In the same way, for those who become martyrs without blood, crucifying themselves with passions and lusts, their suffering is a cross and a ladder to the mountain villages. And all those who innocently endure troubles and misfortunes and thank the Lord, all of them in suffering have a cross and a ladder with which they ascend to heaven. Jacob's Ladder was also a prototype of the incarnation and birth from the Most Pure Virgin of Christ, our Savior, who had to come from the tribe of Jacob, descending to us, as it were, along the steps of the family of forefathers, among whom Adam was the first, and Joseph and the Most Holy Virgin were the last. The ladder is established on the ground; The Son of God became incarnate on earth. The top of the ladder reached to heaven; The incarnate Son of God was flesh on earth, and divinity in heaven, constantly reigning with the Father, as the Church sings at the Ascension of Christ: “Without separating the bosom of the Fathers, Sweet Jesus, and having lived with those on earth as a man, He also lifted up His received flesh into heaven.” The angels of God ascended during the Ascension of Christ, and before, during the Annunciation and Nativity, they descended, as it is written about this: “There were with the angel a multitude of heavenly howls, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke 2:13–14). In addition, the angels ascending the ladder signified many angels in the flesh who, after the incarnation and Ascension of Christ, will ascend to heaven. Until Christ became incarnate and ascended, no one ascended to heaven; after He took on flesh and sat down at the right hand of the Father, immediately the angels in the flesh under His leadership went to the Heavenly Father. For this is what Christ said about this: “No one will come to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). Finally, Jacob’s ladder was a prototype of the Most Pure Virgin Mary, who came from his tribe, by whom God descended from heaven to us, showing us the entrance to heaven. That is why the Church sings to Her, saying: “Rejoice, bridge leading to heaven, and a high ladder that Jacob saw.” One can also call the life of a righteous man a ladder, who, believing in his heart to climb as if by steps, approaches God with good deeds and, being on earth, reaches to heaven with his God-thought mind. The two sides of this ladder are faith and works, for love for God and neighbor; Ascending angels are good thoughts deepening in God, and descending angels are caring for others. “Take the stone with its head, and set it up as a pillar” (Gen. 28:18). The Jewish rabbis say that Jacob took three stones and put them under his head, and when he woke up, he found these three stones fused into one stone and therefore, being afraid, said: “This place is terrible!” He set up this stone as a pillar and called it “the House of God.” However, our interpreters do not mention the combination of three stones into one, and this could be the image and sacrament of the Holy Trinity, for we profess three persons, but believe in one God. “Of all that I have given you, I will tithe you” (Gen. 28:22). You see from how ancient times existence began, not taking away, but giving by pious people to God and His churches. And God commanded Moses to command the people to give tithes to God from the fruits of the earth and from livestock: “Every tithe of the earth,” it is said, “of the seed of the earth and of the fruit of old, is holy to the Lord” (Lev. 27:30). And again: “Every tithe of oxen and sheep shall be holy to the Lord” (Lev. 27:32). God commanded this, not demanding it for Himself, for everything belongs to Him, but so that those who serve His altar would have their food from the people’s alms. This is what He said to the Levites: “Let you and your sons and your household eat that (tithes), for this is your wages, for your place of service, which is in the church of witness” (Numbers 18:31). From the old law, this good custom of giving tithes to churches passed on to Christians and was preserved for a long time. For Saint Vladimir, the Grand Duke of Russia, having enlightened the country with holy baptism, established church tithes for the food of God’s servants; and to this day in the city of Kiev there is a witness to this - a church called the Tithe, so called from the tithes that were contributed to it. Nowadays, this ancient custom in Russia is being discontinued and is not preserved (although it still exists in some Christian countries). Those who serve God and make daily sacrifices in prayer for people should be nourished by people. Just as warriors going into battle, taking up arms for the fatherland against the enemy, should be given a portion by those who remain in their homes and do not take up arms, so spiritual warriors, who fight for all the faithful against the invisible adversary, should receive alms from Christians for their meager sustenance. To those who do not give, but also murmur against Christ’s servants, as if they have excessive wealth, Saint Chrysostom answers them, saying the following: “Consider what the Jews gave (to the priests and Levites) tithes, firstfruits, more tithes, and still other tithes, and yet other thirteen tithes, and no one said that (the priests) eat a lot, for the more they receive, the more Great reward is given and reward to the giver. They didn’t say then: they take a lot, they overeat, as I hear some people saying now” (Chrysostom. On the Epistle to the Philippians, conversation 9). Let us present here what happened during the time of the Greek king Zinon. In a country called Norikia, lived the man of God Severin, a saint and wonderworker. Having enlightened this country, he exhorted its people to give tithes to feed the servants of God and the poor. When they did not want to do this, it happened that the fields they had sown vegetated, grew beautifully, were approaching the harvest, and then rust found them and was finally ready to destroy the fruits of the earth. People, having learned God's punishment for their stinginess, came to Saint Severin, repented and asked for forgiveness. He said to them: if you gave tithes to God’s impoverished servants, you would not only receive an eternal reward, but you would also have an abundance of real blessings; but since you now realize with repentance your guilt, then from God’s mercy I promise you that this rust, although it is great, will not damage your crops, only from now on let your faith not be untrue. Having said this, he commanded them to fast; and immediately rain came down from the sky onto their fields and washed away that rust, and the harvest was abundant, and the lives were abundant. From this we can see that giving to the poor and to those who serve God does not impoverish the giver, but rather makes him rich; stingy wealth does not increase, but decreases. It is all the more certain that the one who not only does not give his own, but also takes away someone else’s, will not become rich. When Jacob came to Mesopotamia to Laban, his mother's brother, he was greeted there kindly. Laban said to him: You are of my bones and of my flesh (Gen. 29:14). When the days of one month had passed, during which Jacob was entertained in Laban’s house, then Laban said to Jacob, “You are my brother; So that you don’t work for me in vain, tell me what kind of reward can I give you? Laban had two daughters: the eldest was Leah, and the youngest was Rachel. Although Leah had a beautiful face, she had sore eyes, and Rachel was good-looking and had beautiful eyes and surpassed Leah in beauty. Jacob loved Rachel and said to Laban: I will work for you for your youngest daughter Rachel seven years, so that you will give her to me as a wife. Laban agreed and said: I’d rather give her to you than to another husband, just live with me. Jacob worked for Laban for Rachel for seven years, and these seven years seemed to him like several days, for he loved her very much. When, after this time, the day of the marriage arrived and evening came, Laban took his eldest daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob. The night passed, and Jacob, seeing that it was not Rachel, but Leah, who was given to him for marriage, was indignant and said to Laban: what have you done? I worked for you for seven years for Rachel, and you wronged me in vain? Laban, pointing to the law of that country, which prohibits the marriage of a younger daughter before an older one, said: Finish the seven days of the wedding feast, and I will give you Rachel, for whom you will work for me for seven more years. Jacob agreed, and after seven days Rachel was given to him. And he worked for her for seven more years, so that all Jacob's work for Rachel was fourteen years. Laban gave Zilp to his daughter Leah and Bilhah to Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. The Lord God, seeing that Jacob did not love Leah, prepared her womb for the birth of children, while Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore Jacob a son, and named him Reuben. Then she conceived again and gave birth to Simeon, Levi and Judah, and then she stopped giving birth. Rachel, seeing herself barren, became jealous of her sister and said to Jacob: give me children; if you don’t give it, then I will die. Jacob answered angrily: Am I God? Rachel said: Here is my servant Bilhah, go in to her, and she will give birth to my knees, and I will have what is born of her as my child. Rachel gave her servant Bilhah to wife Jacob. And Jacob went in to her, and Bilhah conceived and gave birth to a son. Rachel said: God judged me and heard my voice, and gave me a son. Therefore she called his name Dan. And Bilhah conceived again and gave birth to Naphtali. Leah, seeing that she had ceased to give birth, gave her servant Zilpah to Jacob as a wife, and Zilpah conceived and gave birth to a son. Leah named him Gad. And Zilpah also conceived and gave birth to a son, Issachar, then Zebulun, and finally a daughter, Dinah. God remembered Rachel, heard her prayer and opened her womb. She conceived and gave birth to a son, and said: The Lord opened my womb and took away my shame. She named the child born Joseph. When Jacob wanted to leave Laban and return to his father, he said to Laban: let me go, so that I can go to my place, to my land, and give me my children and wives, for whom I worked for you. Laban, seeing that for Jacob's sake God had blessed his house with much wealth, begged Jacob to stay with him for a while longer and offered him whatever reward he wanted. Jacob did not want any other bribe from him than that he would separate him the motley sheep and goats, to which Laban agreed. Jacob stayed with Laban for six more years, so that all the years of Jacob's life with Laban were 20 years. During this time, Jacob's goats and sheep multiplied greatly, since they were all born motley. For Jacob, when he watered the flocks, put walnut rods, variegatedly planed, in the troughs; looking at them, the sheep and goats drank, and their variegated fruit was born. Jacob became very rich. He had a lot of cattle, oxen, camels and donkeys, male and female slaves. The sons of Laban began to be jealous and indignant, saying: Jacob took all the wealth of our father and, with the help of our father, created for himself all his glory. Laban also changed his former love for Jacob. Jacob saw that Laban's face was no longer the same as it had been before. And the Lord appeared to Jacob and said to him: “Return to the land of your father and to your generation, and I will be with you” (Gen. 31:13). Jacob called Leah and Rachel to the field and expressed to them his idea that he wanted to return to his father, and they agreed with him. And Jacob took his wives, children and all his property, which he had acquired in Mesopotamia, and went to the land of Canaan. He did not tell his father-in-law Laban about this, who at that time had gone into a distant field to shear his sheep. Rachel, leaving her father's house, secretly took her father's idols, not, however, because she loved idols, but because they were gold and silver, that is, she stole gold and silver. She did this righteously, partly for her marriage, partly as a reward from Laban, given to Jacob for his twenty years of labor. When Jacob had already retired to his own people, crossed the river Euphrates in Mesopotamia and ascended the mountain called Gilead, then it was only told to Laban that Jacob had fled and that it was already the third day since he left. Laban, filled with anger, took all his brethren with him and chased after Jacob for seven days. When he was already overtaking the fugitive, an angel appeared to him in a sleepy vision and forbade him so that he would not dare to do anything evil to Jacob or even to speak. “Provide yourself,” he said, “so that the wrath of God does not overtake you” (Gen. 31:24). Waking up, Laban overtook Jacob, who had spread his tents on Mount Gilead, and said to him: “What have you done? Where have you gone and stolen me, and taken my daughters away like captives, captive with weapons? If only you had told me, I would have sent you away with joy, with tambourines and harp; I would not be worthy of kissing my daughters and grandchildren, you did it senselessly. Now my hand is able to reward you, but the God of your father forbid me; Go in good health to your father, what have you stolen, my gods?” (Gen. 31, 26–30). Jacob answered Laban: I was afraid that you would take your daughters and all my property from me, and therefore I left you without informing you; let the one from whom you find your gods not be alive before our brethren; everything is mine here, search and find out if I have anything of yours, and take it if you recognize anything as yours. Jacob did not know that his wife Rachel had stolen her father's idols. Laban entered the tabernacle of Liin, looking for his possessions, and did not find idols. He also examined the tents of Jacob and the two slaves and did not find what he was looking for, but after all he entered Rachel’s tent. Rachel, taking the idols, put them under the camel's saddle, sat on top of them and became like a sick person, unable to get up from her place, and said to her father: Do not be angry with me, my lord, because I cannot stand before you, for I am possessed by illness. He, without removing her from the place, looked for idols in the bush and did not find them. Jacob became angry and entered into an argument with Laban, and said: what is my guilt, what is my sin before you, that you persecute me? You looked at all my things, what did you find that was yours? Show me here before my relatives and yours, and let them judge between us both. For twenty years I was with you, tending your flocks; your sheep and your goats were not barren; I have not eaten any sheep from your flocks; I did not bring you anything torn to pieces by a beast; if anything was stolen, I made up for it from what was mine. I languished from the heat during the day, and from the cold at night, and sleep ran away from my eyes! Then Laban began to make peace with Jacob, and having reconciled, he created a great grave of stones; and they ate and drank at this grave-hill with joy, and they called this grave “witness.” For Laban said to Jacob: Let this hill be a witness between me and you, a witness of our reconciliation, so that neither I pass this hill, coming to you with malice, nor you to me. Having thus concluded a peace treaty, they spent the night here; In the morning Laban got up, kissed Jacob and his daughters and grandchildren and returned to his place. “Yes, I worked for Rachel seven years” (Gen. 29:18). In those ancient times, there was a custom among the Jews, as among the Greeks and the Hellenes, that grooms bought themselves a bride. So, then David bought himself a daughter Michal from King Saul for two hundred Philistine circumcisions (1 Sam. 18:27); The prophet Hosea bought himself a wife who was a harlot for fifty pieces of silver (Hos. 3:2). Jacob, being a beggar and not having anything to buy himself a wife, offered instead of the price his labor of seven years’ work. “Yes, I’ve been working,” he says, “for seven years.” And these summers were like a few days for him, for he loved Rachel. Here we will each think about our souls and about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jacob worked so hard for the sake of female temporary beauty, promising to work for seven years, but worked for fourteen years; For the sake of the eternal salvation of our souls and the enjoyment of endless blessings in the Kingdom of Heaven, we are lazy and truly work for God for one day. Jacob loved Rachel so much that very long labor was easy for him for the sake of love for her; To us, even some insignificant feat for the sake of spiritual salvation seems difficult. Truly, we do not love our souls, we do not love because we do not care about spiritual salvation; but we not only do not love, but also hate, we enmity against the soul, committing evil and unrighteous deeds, as the Psalmist says: “He who loves unrighteousness hates his own soul” (Ps. 10:5). And the angel said to Tobiah: “Whoever commits sin and iniquity is the enemy of his own soul” (Tob. 12:10). Rachel was so loved by Jacob even for the sake of a temporary marriage; But we, who after the general resurrection will again be united with our souls and live in this union for endless centuries, we do not want to love our souls, and if we do, we love carnally, and not spiritually. For everyone loves his soul only for the sake of life and in order to enjoy the pleasures of this world; there is no spiritual love for the soul, there is no need to take care of it, so as not to destroy it in the future life, not to plunge it into the abyss of hell, not to give it into demonic hands, into unquenchable fire, into an unquenchable worm, into tartar, which even Satan himself trembles at. We do not care about this, so as not to plunge our soul into such cruel and eternal misadventures; therefore we have no love for the soul. What is more beautiful than a soul created in the image of God, immortal and eternal? And what is more pleasant than the Kingdom of Heaven? There will be no end to it? We consider both as something worthless, we neglect the soul and despise the Kingdom of Heaven for the sake of a temporary sinful life! O our extreme madness! When I wrote about the two wives of Jacob - about Leah and Rachel, I was reminded of the words of St. Andrew of Crete, which are sung during Lent in his canon: “I have two wives, understand the deeds and the mind in sight: Leah is the deed, like one with many children, but Rachel is the mind.” And in another verse: “Be vigilant, my soul, and be courageous, like the great patriarchs of old, so that you may accomplish deeds with your mind, so that your mind will see God” (On Thursday of the 5th week of Lent, 4th hymn). From these words it is clear that Saint Andrew set those two wives as an example of the strict rules of life for those who are being saved - deeds and intelligent vision, that is, hardworking in good deeds and soul-saving feats of life and godly deeds. The rule of a hardworking life is to work for the sake of your neighbors, to provide for the needs of the poor and wretched in their poverty, to feed the hungry from the sweat of your brow, to clothe the naked, to give rest to strangers, to visit prisoners and the sick, to bury the dead and to do all other works of mercy, and also for the sake of God to bear diligently the labors of imposed obedience. The rule of intellectual vision or God-thinking is to withdraw from all rumors, from all worldly cares and cleave to the one God, to work for Him in the spirit, deepening all your mind and all your thoughts into Him. For one who seeks salvation, both of these rules of life are as beneficial as every person needs two eyes and two hands. It is possible to see with one eye what is in the heavenly world, of course, if there is no other, but with two eyes it is better to see; You can do something with one hand if you don’t have the other, but it’s better to do it with two hands. In a similar way, we need to understand both the rules we are talking about, that is, about hardworking and about God-minded speculation. It is possible, of course, for someone to seek salvation by making one rule as a basis, but it is better to adhere to both: to seek salvation through both rules, by making both of these rules - action and speculation - the basis of a single and virtuous life. But let us heed: the oldest of the two is not Rachel, but Leah; so people first of all learned to work, and not to study in the contemplation of God. It was Rachel, not Leah, who was dearest to Jacob; This God-thought life is pleasing to God, rather than a laborious life not connected with God-thought. Leah and Rachel were both sisters; Both of the above-mentioned statutes of saving life are, as it were, cousins. Laban united both of these girls with Jacob; So both of these - action and speculation, hard work, I say, and the thought of God - should be united together for the one who wants to be saved. Jacob first of all united with Leah, and then with Rachel; and for one seeking salvation, it is first of all necessary to take up a hard-working life in doing good deeds, and then to study with mental vision and in the thought of God. Leah was more fertile than Rachel; in the same way, those who seek salvation through hardworking living are more numerous, and those who are established in speculative thinking about God and have comprehended the benefits of this are not numerous. Rachel is more beautiful, not Leah; A godly life is more useful than hard work. The Gospel indicates the implementation of each of these two statutes in the person of the Lazarus sisters - in Martha and Mary: Martha works, and Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listens to His words. She observed the rules of action, and this (Mary) carried out the rules of mental contemplation; she was hardworking, and this one was God-minded. Therefore, the Lord said to that one: “Martho, Marfo, worry and speak about the multitude,” and praised this, saying: “Mary has chosen the good part, even though it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). The Lord did not humiliate or reject Martha either; Her labors were not unpleasant for Him, since she worked not for the sake of anyone else, but for Him, in order to treat her Lord to a noble meal, but He exalted Mary more than Martha. Why? Because Mary, having rejected all care for external things, deepened her entire mind into God, listening to the words of God; Martha, neglecting the word of God, served only by her labor. Therefore, she was convicted by the Lord of excessive concern for the things of life, for the work for which the word of God, prayer and thinking about God is abandoned is unnecessary, even if it is in a good deed. The external labors of those who are being saved are pleasing to the Lord, but only if they are combined with the thinking of God, and without this, those living are told: “Be anxious and speak of many things.” Thought of God is the adornment of all the works of a good ascetic. A hard-working life, if it is not connected with the thought of God, is like Peter walking on the waters; God-thought living is like John reclining on the breasts of Christ. This one is in the middle of the waves, and this one is in silence; he is in fear and trembling, and this one is in carelessness; he drowns, and this one rests; to whom Christ stretches out his hand to save him from drowning, and to this he reveals His innermost secrets. You can see this difference between hard work and godly living when you separate each of them from one another; If you combine hard work and thought of God in a single life, then this can be likened to both of those apostles who rushed to the tomb of Christ in order to be convinced of His Resurrection; however, John strove faster than Peter. Likewise, a God-thought life precedes a hard-working life in striving to more quickly comprehend Christ. Therefore, a godly life is more beneficial than a hard-working life, just as Rachel is more beautiful than Leah. Also, as an example and explanation of both types of this life, let us remember here two righteous fathers - Moses and Arseny, of whom one was hardworking, and the other God-minded. Moses gave himself entirely to his love of hobbies, to treating himself to food, to receiving his brothers, and he worked hard in this. Arseny, remaining in silence, listened to himself, lived in solitude, avoided everyone. And the wandering brother Moses was praised more than Arseny. A certain father heard this praise and began to pray to God, saying: “Lord, show me this matter: one avoids people for the sake of Your name, while another accepts everyone for the sake of Your name; Which of them is more perfect and worthy of greater Thy grace? And this father saw in a vision two great ships floating on a certain great river; in one was the Monk Arseny, and the Spirit of God steered his ship in great silence; in another ship was the Monk Moses, and the angels of God with him, who steered the ship and put the honeycomb into Moses’ mouth. This father told this vision to other experienced fathers, and they, having considered everything, said that the perfect one is the silent Arseny, and not Moses who receives strangers: God Himself is with Arseny, and the angels of God are with Moses. Using the example of Rachel and Leah, one can also see that the Lord God does not give His gifts to everyone equally: He gives one thing to one, another thing to another, and all together to no one. He gave Rachel the beauty of her face, but did not give her fertility, for initially she was barren, and then her barrenness was allowed for the birth of only two children, after which she died. Leah, having united with her husband, immediately began to give birth and gave birth to six sons and one daughter. But most of all, the part of Leah became better than Rachel, because from her tribe, from her son Judah, the Messiah Christ promised by God would come. “There was scorching heat in the days, and cold in the night, and sleep departed from my eyes” (Gen. 31:40). Let all who have been entrusted by God with the flock of verbal sheep, bishops and priests, and other spiritual officials, shepherds of human souls and rulers, listen diligently to these words of the righteous Jacob, the shepherd of livestock, and let them delve into them with consideration. If the one who shepherds dumb animals endured such labor, “scorched in the days by the heat and cold in the night,” without giving sleep to his eyes, then how incomparably greater labor and vigor are needed by the one who shepherds human souls, for which our great and eternal and good Shepherd Christ shed His blood and laid down His soul on the cross, and which He has to accept from the hands of the shepherd with great consideration and testing! This work of shepherding requires not only labor, but also great art. Just as Jacob, skilled in herding dumb sheep, invented a wonderful way of multiplying motley sheep, placing motley rods in troughs during watering in front of the eyes of the sheep, so a skillful shepherd of verbal sheep, in order to multiply the sheep she shepherds, must offer them, like motley rods, images of a virtuous life from the lives of saints, and especially an example of his own life according to the instructions of the Apostle: “Being a model by faithful speech, by living in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). So, let’s talk here about what a shepherd of verbal sheep should be like. Exhorting the people of Israel who had once departed from Him to turn to Him, the Lord God promised to give them skilled shepherds. “I will give you,” He said, “a shepherd after My heart, and they will guide you with understanding and teaching” (Jer. 3:15). Let us listen to what kind of shepherds God wants to see among His verbal sheep: intelligent and teaching. “And they feed you,” He says, “with understanding and teaching.” So, first of all, a shepherd should be reasonable and teaching. For how can he reason with the unreasonable if he himself is unreasonable? How can he teach the ignorant if he himself is uneducated? How can he be a teacher if he himself is not learned and does not know the power of Holy Scripture? How can he instruct the erring one if he himself does not know the way where he is going? Can a blind man lead a blind man in the right way? Will not, according to the word of Christ, both fall into the pit (Matthew 15:14)? Therefore, a pastor must first of all be intelligent and teaching, and not ignorant and unlearned. God gave the ancient Old Testament forefathers a promise that He would send His people a Shepherd, the Messiah Christ, about whom He said to Bethlehem: “From you will come a Leader who will shepherd My people Israel.” (Mic. 5:2). Describing prophetically the coming of this Shepherd, the prophet Isaiah calls Him a rod, for the shepherd walks with a rod, and a flowering rod, giving hope for fruit to feed the spiritual sheep. On this rod, he says, the Holy Spirit has to rest with His gifts: “The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and piety will rest on Him, and the Spirit of the fear of God will fill it” (Is. 11:2-3). Let us hearken: among the gifts of the Holy Spirit resting on the rod of shepherding, wisdom and meaning are placed in the first place: “The Spirit of wisdom and meaning.” Let it be known to us that everyone who shepherds the people of God, although he must be adorned with many good deeds and spiritual gifts, must first of all acquire spiritual wisdom, meaning, a teaching mind, which God also wants to see in the mouth of the priest, for He says in the prophetic scripture: “The mouth of the priest retains understanding, and I will exact the law from his mouth” (Mal. 2:7). The gift of teaching sense and reason must be kept in the mouths of pastors, like a kind of rich treasure, so that he may be wise in teaching, in instruction, in admonishing and in rebuking the disobedient, as the Apostle says about the bishop, and therefore about every priest: “Let him be able to comfort them in sound teaching, and to reprove those who rebel” (Tit. 1, 9). He who does not have the spirit of wisdom and sense and does not preserve reason in his mouth is not worthy of the pastoral rank. In Hosea’s prophecy, God says: “You have rejected your ability, and I will tell you that you should not prophesy” (Hos. 4:6), that is, I do not want to be among the priesthood, because you did not seek reason, wisdom and teaching. In a similar way, Chrysostom, in conversations on the epistles of Pavlova, writes: “He who does not know the Scriptures and cannot fight with heretics will be far from the episcopal rank; He is not worthy to be in the rank of sacred servants of God, caring for the souls of men; he who is not skilled in the Divine Scripture and rejects skill is not worthy of the rank of shepherd” (Conversation 2 on the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1). If this is said about unlearned shepherds, then what can we say about those who not only do not know spiritual reason, but also do not treat those who have been admonished with love and condemn and blaspheme the teaching? Let us listen to what Scripture says about them: “Wisdom and punishment are despised by those who are dishonest; Their hope is idle and their labors are fruitless, and their work is unfinished” (Wis. 3:11). The Lord God commanded the first Old Testament bishop Aaron to make a holy robe, on the omet (trimming) of which there were to be golden bells “so that whenever he serves, his voice may be heard as he enters into the sacred place before the Lord, and when he goes out, lest he die” (Ex. 28:35). The decoration of this robe with bells was marvelous, but even more marvelous was the fact that death awaited the bishop if the bishop’s robe did not have bells: “Let his voice (coming from the bells) be heard,” it is said, “let him not die.” We know that everything of the Old Testament was a prototype of the New Grace; and the Old Testament priesthood was a type of our priesthood; the bells emitting a ringing, according to the interpretation of Saint Gregory the Double-Speaker, signified the voice of the teaching of the saint, meaning that the bishop, like the priest, should not be dumb and should no longer proclaim with bells, but with his lips and tongue, teaching and admonishing the people of God, according to the admonition of the Apostle: “Preach the word, insist on the season and the untimely, reprove, rebuke, beseech with all patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2), do the work of an evangelist. The bells were golden; and from sacred lips must come golden words: about pleasing, about holy and righteous life, about love for God and neighbor - words that are golden and not tin, that is, useful and not useless, honest and not dishonest, loving and not hostile, not blasphemous and not rotten. He who does not have these golden spiritual bells of reason and the art of books, who does not acquire the spirit of wisdom and who is not a teaching servant of God and a shepherd of human souls, is mute, and at the same time dead. For just as the Old Law saint, if he had dared to enter the sanctuary without bells, would have faced death, so also the newly blessed bishops and priests, who dare to take upon themselves spiritual rank with many intrigues and who do not have the bells of reason and spiritual wisdom, who cannot teach the flock of Christ, will face some special death - not physical, but spiritual, for they are considered by God to be dead, and To each of them He says in the Apocalypse: “The name of the Lord is that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev. 3, 1). Dead before God is the one who only bears the name and dignity of shepherding, but does not fulfill the duties of a shepherd; The duty of the shepherd, first of all, is to teach usefully, destroying human sins and instructing on the path of salvation. This is what God says to the shepherd: “Lift up your voice like a trumpet and tell my people their sins”; “If you do not tell it, the wicked will die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at your hand” (Is. 58:1, Ezek. 3:18). It is as if he were killing a sinner with his own hand if he did not try to admonish him with his tongue and turn him away from his sins: the silent tongue of a shepherd is like a sword that kills the souls of sinners. Therefore, the Apostle says about himself: “Woe to me if I do not preach the good news” (1 Cor. 9:16). Woe to the silent shepherd, woe to his tongue, which does not preach the word of God and does not teach! But how can the tongue preach the word with benefit and teaching, if the mind has not learned spiritual wisdom? This is said about those who, being very unskilled in the book mind, are barely able to read and are not those who understand what they read, not knowing how to teach, with great zeal seek for themselves and buy the rank of priesthood and shepherd, not in order to shepherd and save human souls, but in order to shepherd themselves and become glorified by being revered. On behalf of them, Saint Chrysostom says: “We strive for external leadership and spiritual shepherding in order to be glorified and revered by people, but we perish with God. What is the gain from this honor? (Conversation 3 on the Acts of the Apostles, moral teaching 5). The shepherd must be not only intelligent, skillful, and a teacher of the Divine Scripture, but also virtuous and holy in life, for it is proper to teach the verbal sheep not only with words, but also with the image of a good life in God. The Holy Apostle Paul, commanding his disciple Timothy to be an example for the faithful, and saying what this example should be, first of all indicates life along with the word: “Be an image,” he says, “be a faithful word, life,” etc. For along with the word there must be life, so that the life of the shepherd is consistent with the teaching words coming from his mouth, so that the shepherd himself does what he teaches others, so as not to be denounced by the words of the Apostle: “When you teach others, do you not teach yourself?” (Rom. 2:21). Can someone who does evil deeds teach them to do good deeds? Will someone who is going to hell himself lead anyone to the Kingdom of Heaven? Isn’t it a shame for the one who washes others from cronyism to remain in stinking feces and not take care to wash himself from pollution? Can someone who is himself covered with scabby ulcers and overcome by a serious illness heal the illnesses of others? Will not everyone say to such a person: “Physician, heal yourself” (Luke 4:23)? And God Himself says to such people: “Will you forever tell My justifications and accept My covenant with your lips? But you hated punishment and you rejected My words back” (Ps. 49:16-17). And the Jewish teachers told people many things from the law, teaching them, but they themselves did not do what they taught. That is why the Lord said about them to His disciples and the people: “The scribes and the Pharisee sat in Moses’ seat; All slaughter, if they tell you to watch over it, watch and do; but do not do them in deeds, for they say and do not do them” (Matthew 23:2-3). He who speaks and does not act is like thunder in clouds without rain during a drought. What good is the thunder of the clouds if rain does not fall on the thirsty earth? What tenderness is there for the soul from the voice of a teacher who not only does not use his life, but even more seduces? For a word without an image of a virtuous life is not valid. Let someone speak sweetly on his tongue like honey, but if the gall of temptation is visible in his deeds, he will not sweeten the heart of the listener. He who wishes to kindle the love of the Lord in others must himself not be ice, but flame, like a seraph, with Divine desire; whoever wants to enlighten others should not be darkness, but light. Therefore, the Lord says to pastors and teachers in the Gospel: “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). And Saint Chrysostom exhorts: “It is fitting for a ruler to be brighter than any luminary and to have a blameless life, so that everyone, looking at him, can imagine his life in their own lives” (Conversation 10 on the First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 3). When the lights go out, darkness comes; If a boss leads an evil life, then how can he not be tempted by his subordinate looking at him! When the shepherd goes astray, how can the sheep not go astray! If light is darkness, then how much more darkness! Therefore the light must be light and not darkness, in order to enlighten those for whom it shines. “Let your light shine before men,” says the Lord, “so that they may see your good deeds” (Matthew 5:16). He who wishes to lift up those who fall, let him stand firm; He who guides the lost to the right path, let him himself follow the right path! Be, O shepherd, an image of virtues for your sheep, and then you will be able to teach them. The Lord says in the Gospel: “Whoever does and teaches, he will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:19). Let us heed these words: “he will create and teach”; first he creates, then he teaches. You cannot, as He says, teach others unless you first do what you want to teach them. First do it yourself, and then you can teach others, for the voice of action is more effective than the voice of word: the word is heard only for those who are present, but the work is preached to the ends of the earth. Therefore, it is necessary for a pastor to have a virtuous life along with teaching. In the above-mentioned prophetic (Malachi) scripture, which says that the lips of the priest should keep understanding and that the law of God is sought from his mouth, it is written that the shepherd is the angel of the Lord Almighty: “Let rivers of teaching flow from the lips of the priest, for that angel is God” (Mal. 2:7). Let us note that teaching and angelism are put together: the shepherd must have a teaching word in his mouth and maintain an angelic, holy, immaculate life. And the Psalmist says: “Walk in the blameless way, you who serve me” (Ps. 100:6). If you are a servant of God, if you are a shepherd of the verbal sheep, if you are a teacher, then be blameless in your life, like an angel of God, proclaiming the word of God, do not do the works of demons; serving in the church of God together with the angels, do not go outside the church with demons to anger God; using words, do not tempt with deeds, for “woe to the man to whom temptation comes” (Matthew 18:7). Thousands of spoken words may not bring any benefit, but a single evil deed, done openly, will seduce thousands of people, and what you were able to create in human souls with many words, you will destroy with one seducing deed. Be an angel in life, and everyone will be happy to sweetly listen to your words and do what you command, having the image of your life. And you will not be able to shepherd the flock entrusted to you and guide it on the path of salvation if you yourself are not the first to follow the path of salvation; You cannot motivate people to love God if you yourself do not appear as God’s beloved friend. Promising the people of Israel to send them wise and teaching shepherds, the Lord God, as stated above, first of all indicated that He would give them shepherds after His own heart: “I will give you,” He said, “shepherds after My heart” (Jer. 3:15). What it means to be after God’s heart - the Apostle Paul explains this, speaking on behalf of God about David: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My desires” (Acts 13:22). So, to be after God’s heart means to do all His desires. And when God gave a promise to send shepherds according to His heart, shepherding with reason and teaching, He announced that these shepherds, together with reasonable teaching, would have a good life, doing all His desires. Let’s say again: to be after God’s heart means to love God with all your heart. What is the sign that someone loves God with all their heart? This sign was indicated by Christ Himself when He said with His pure lips: “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves Me” (John 14:21). A sign of love for God is the fulfillment of His commandments. And therefore, when God said that shepherds would be after His own heart, He also indicated that they would love Him with all their hearts, keeping His commandments. And if such were the shepherds in the Old Testament, then even more so now in the new grace shepherds must be not only teaching in words, but also virtuous in life, be after God’s heart, fulfilling all His desires, keeping the commandments out of heartfelt love for Him. A shepherd should be a lover of God. The Lord Himself, wanting to consecrate Saint Peter as a shepherd of the verbal sheep, first of all asked him three times about love, saying to him: “Simon Ionin, do you love Me?” And then Peter answered Him three times: “By God! You know that I love You,” the Lord entrusted him with the flock: “Feed My lambs,” “Feed My sheep,” feed My chosen ones (John 21:15–17). Love for God is recognized through a virtuous life (as stated above), revealing along with the word the life of a shepherd. But it is not enough for a shepherd to be a teacher in word and a saint in life; he must also have great care for the flock, work and be watchful. He needs to take care of the flock, for God will demand an account of the flock entrusted to the hands of the shepherds, and at the last hour he will say: “Give an answer to the stewardship” (Luke 16:2). In the prophecy of Ezekiel one hears a menacing word addressed to careless shepherds: “This says the Lord Adonai: O ole shepherds of Israel, do the shepherds graze food themselves? Aren't they sheep grazing? Behold, you have eaten milk and clothed yourself with the waves, and grown fat, but you have not shepherded My sheep, you have not raised the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not treated the broken and the wounded, you have not looked for the erring and the lost; I punished with authority and scolded and scattered My sheep, as if they had no shepherd, and were devoured by wild beasts. For this reason, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord Adonai; Since My flock was made to be plundered and My sheep to be devoured by wild beasts, I visit the shepherds of My flock, but the shepherds feed themselves, but do not shepherd my sheep; For this reason, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Behold, Adonai the Lord says: Behold, I am a shepherd, and I will seek My sheep from the hand of the shepherd” (Ezek. 34: 2-5, 7-10). Let us hear how threateningly the Lord will test the shepherds with their fears. Therefore, it is fitting for a shepherd to be very careful about his flock. The shepherd also requires much labor, for he must bear the burdens of everyone, as the Apostle says: “We must bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not please ourselves” (Rom. 15:1). In the parable of the good shepherd, the Lord says: “He goes after the lost sheep until he finds it, and when he finds it, he places it on his frame, rejoicing” (Luke 15:4-5). This is the position of the shepherd: to give his ramen to the sheep entrusted to him and bear its burdens. Let us listen to what the Lord once commanded Moses, the leader of the people of Israel: “Take them on your frame, as a milkmaid carries her milk” (Numbers 11:12). Not only as a shepherd carries a sheep, but also as a mother carries her child and feeds it with her teats, so the shepherd must spiritually carry his verbal sheep, feeding them with spiritual food, like a baby with milk, and without denying what is necessary for the body, but, if possible, making up for the insufficiency of the poor. In all this, the shepherd has no small work to do: labor in finding the lost, labor in raising the fallen, labor in healing the ulcer, labor in bearing the infirmities and burdens of the burdened, labor in plucking the sheep stolen by the wolf from the very teeth of the beast and presenting it intact to Christ; It is also difficult to give a helping hand to the offended in external needs, to protect the innocent, to care for the poor and poor, and to perform other duties of church government - all these labors must be undertaken by the shepherd. And woe to that shepherd who seeks only pastoral honor, but does not undertake the work due to him! Woe to the shepherd who seeks only his own benefit, shepherds only himself, and does not care about the sheep. Such a shepherd is like an idol, for it is to such a shepherd that God says in Zechariah’s prophecy: “O he who feeds the vanity and the abandoned sheep!” (Zech. 11, 17). In another translation, this passage reads: “O shepherd and idol!” A shepherd who leaves the sheep, who does not work, who does not care about the sheep, is an idol, and God says to him: “O shepherd and idol!” What kind of idol is such a shepherd like? Truly, he is like that golden calf, which the people of Israel, driven out of Egypt, carved for themselves in the desert in the absence of Moses and before which they exclaimed: “Behold your gods, O Israel!” (1 Kings 12:28). Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and other interpreters of Divine Scripture say that it was not the whole calf that was sculptured, but only the head of a calf, for when a lot of gold was put into the fire, then out of it poured out the likeness of a calf’s head eating grass, which the Psalmist also mentions: “I changed His glory,” he says, “in the likeness of a calf eating grass” (Ps. 105, 20). Look what this golden idol was like: it had neither ribs nor legs, so that you could put a yoke on it and force it to be carried; he had only a mouth that ate grass. An unkind, lazy, careless shepherd is like this idol. The idol is gold and honest for the sake of gold; and the shepherd is golden in rank and is honest for the sake of the shepherd's rank. The idol is golden, but soulless; and a shepherd who does not have the spirit of zeal for the sheep is, as it were, soulless. The idol did not have ramen and did not wear a yoke on its neck; and a shepherd who does not, as appropriate, bear the burden placed on him, also, as it were, has no shoulders, cannot be harnessed to the yoke of Christ. The idol image did not look like a working calf, but only an eating calf; and a shepherd who does not undertake the labors appropriate to him, but only feeds freely on rich meals, is like an eating calf, and therefore is like a golden idol of a calf. And it is not in vain that such a shepherd is said in Scripture: “O shepherd and idol!” In many pastoral mouths one can still hear the words of the ancient shepherds mentioned in the prophecy of Zechariah, who said: “Blessed is the Lord, for we have become rich” (Zech. 11:5); but there are few who said: “Blessed is the Lord because we found the lost sheep, plucked it from the mouth of the wolf, healed the ulcerated one, fed the flock with good pasture, in addition to the fact that we ourselves were enriched and fed.” Therefore, God speaks through the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: “Woe to the shepherds! ...Behold, I will saturate them with ashes and make them drink gall” (Jer. 23:1, 15). This is what God's retribution awaits careless and lazy shepherds: instead of sweet food, wormwood (wormwood), instead of sweet drink, bile. When will they receive this reward? On the last day, at the hour of the terrible test. So, a lot of work and care is required for the one who shepherds human souls. Along with labor, a shepherd also needs great courage, like a guard assigned to guard a city or a regiment. For the words of God spoken to the prophet Ezekiel apply to every shepherd: “I have set you a guard for the house of Israel” (Ezek. 33:7). The guard who watches at night does not sleep; It is not proper for the shepherd of the spiritual flock to be sleepy. The psalmist says: “The guardian of Israel will not slumber, nor will he sleep” (Ps. 120:4), and he says this not so much about the natural sleep of the weak flesh, without which no one can do, but about spiritual sleep - about the negligence, inattention of a careless shepherd, for someone who is inattentive and careless about what is happening is the same as sleeping. Saint Chrysostom, citing as an example the vigilance of shepherds of verbal flocks, says: “If the care for the wordless is so great, then what answer can those sleeping in a deep sleep, to whom verbal souls are entrusted, give? Or do you not know about the dignity of this herd? Was it not for him that your Lord did countless things and then shed His blood? And you are looking for peace! What could be worse than such shepherds? Don't you think that these sheep are surrounded by evil and fierce wolves? Can’t you imagine how much is needed for someone who wants to take charge of the structure of the soul?” (On the Epistle to the Romans, conversation 29, moral teaching 5). The image of the good shepherd is shown by those six-winged, four-faced, many-eyed cherubs whom John the Theologian saw at the throne of God and who, according to the explanation of the interpreters, are images of the four evangelists and, after the evangelists and apostles, images of church shepherds. For each of the shepherds must be as strong against the wolves attacking the flock, as hardworking in his rank as an ox, merciful and compassionate as a man, and soaring high in his God-minded mind as an eagle. It is written about these cherubim that they are “full of feathers in front and behind” (Apoc. 4:6); like them, the shepherd must be wide-eyed, considering not only the present, but also the future. Chrysostom says: “The shepherd needs thousands of eyes everywhere; thousands, for he must feed the sheep and keep a watchful eye so that no wolf in sheep’s clothing gets into the flock” (Discourse 3 on the Acts of the Apostles, moral teaching 4). The heavenly cherubim not only have many eyes outside, in front and behind; they are “full of desire within” (Apoc. 4:8). It is also not enough for the shepherd to watch his flock closely; he must watchfully look inside himself, into the depths of his conscience: will his conscience catch him in something? For before God it is not commendable to look after others, but not to see oneself, noticing the blight in the eyes of one's neighbor, not to feel the beam in one's own eye (Matthew 7:3; Luke 6:41) and, showing others the good path, oneself falls into the pit. Therefore, it is appropriate for a shepherd to be wide-eyed not only externally, but also internally, not only correcting the sins of others, but also carefully protecting himself from falls and temptations. And for this, as we said at the beginning, the shepherd needs great art. An inexperienced doctor will do more harm than heal, and an inexperienced helmsman would rather lead a ship to sinking than guide it to a haven. Likewise, an unskillful shepherd would rather serve to the detriment of his flock than to the benefit. And woe to such a shepherd! For he will have to give an answer to God about all those who perished. Therefore, many of the saints shied away from the pastoral office, considering themselves not skilled enough to bear such a burden and fearing the terrible test in the shepherding of human souls. Saint Ephraim the Syrian, having learned that the people of Edessa wanted to place him on the episcopal throne, and not wanting this, pretended to be a holy fool, ran around the marketplace, dragging his clothes behind him like a madman, and, stealing the bread and vegetables that were being sold, ate them. Seeing this, people considered him crazy, and he, having fled from the city, hid until another bishop was installed in this place. The wise Ammonius of Egypt, forced to become a bishop, cut off his ear; he would have cut off his own tongue if those who forced him had not left him, as is narrated about this in Lavsaik Palladiev (chapter 4, in the Russian translation, chapter 12). Let us think: if the saints, being wise and worthy of this dignity, so shied away from accepting it upon themselves and preferred foolishness and damage to their flesh to shepherding over many human souls, then what can be said about those who try to receive this dignity, being neither skillful nor worthy of shepherding, not having a virtuous life, they try to get it only through much effort and sacrilege! Indeed, their salvation is in doubt. Let us listen to what Saint Chrysostom writes about such shepherds: I think,” he says, “that few of such priests are saved, but the majority perish”; and again: “When you want the priesthood, think about Gehenna!” (Conversation 3 on the Acts of the Apostles, moral teaching 5). But perhaps someone will say: the holy Apostle Paul did not blaspheme those who wish to be shepherds, for he said: “If anyone desires the episcopacy, he desires good works” (1 Tim. 3:1), and therefore, it is not shameful, but good, to desire some kind of spiritual power and useful to seek it. Let him who speaks thus heed the last words of the apostle: “he desires action.” If anyone desires work and not power, labor and not pride, cares and not exaltation, then the Apostle praises such a desire, for the holy order was established by the Lord on earth not for peace and pleasure, but so that the saint always bears the greatest labors, caring for the salvation of all, not for collecting wealth, but for feeding the hungry and clothing for the naked, for church estates are the estates of the poor. The bishop and every other spiritual leader do not exist for this purpose, so that he may be magnified and exalted, as revered by all, but so that he always and in everything carries on himself and unfeignedly displays the image of the humility of Christ, so that he is a clear champion of the truth, without hesitation, regardless of faces, always ready to lay down his soul for Christ and the Church of Christ. For the Apostle did not blaspheme those who wished to become bishops because in the times of the apostles martyrdom followed episcopacy, and both of the apostles and of the bishops, few died a natural death; the majority died as martyrs. For the wicked tormentors first of all sought the apostles, bishops and Christian teachers as leaders. And therefore, the one who desired episcopacy also desired martyrdom, desired to die for Christ and for Christ’s sheep, therefore in those days “if anyone wants a bishop, he desires good deeds.” Nowadays, those seeking the episcopal or priestly rank, or any other spiritual leadership (abbess or archimandrite) need to be careful lest, having taken upon themselves the care of the salvation of many, they do not destroy their own soul. Let us listen to what Saint Chrysostom says about all those in authority: Oh, what a great misfortune awaits all who plunge themselves into such an abyss of languor! About everyone over whom you are in charge: about wives, husbands and children, you must give an answer. This is the fire into which you place your head. I doubt that any of the leaders could be saved when, with such punishment and corruption, I see those still striving and plunging themselves into such a burden of authority. For if those who are drawn by need have neither forgiveness nor justification when they do not care about the matter and arrange it poorly, then even more so those who make efforts to obtain this and plunge themselves into the authorities deprive themselves of all forgiveness. It is fitting to fear and tremble at this, both for the sake of conscience and for the sake of the burden of the authorities” (On the Epistle to the Hebrews, conversation 31). This is how Saint Chrysostom ends his words. Let's finish our conversation about shepherding here. Look at the rest: in the first epistle of Peter, ch. 5, art. 2 and 3; in Paul's first letter to Timothy, ch. 3, art. 1 etc., and in the letter to Titus, ch. 1, art. 7 et seq. See also the last word to the shepherd of St. John Climacus. When Laban returned from Jacob to his country, Jacob went his own way, thanking God for bringing him with all his property safe and sound from Mesopotamia and not offended by Laban. Now he was thinking about how to reconcile his brother Esau, who was angry and malicious against him. He was sad because he was afraid of his brother's anger. The Lord, comforting His servant in this sorrow and revealing to him that He was protecting him, opened his eyes to the sight of the angels: looking up, Jacob saw the armies of God, and the angels of God met him. After this vision, he sent ambassadors before him to his brother Esau, announcing himself and tempering his old anger with his prayer. Esau at this time no longer lived with his father, but lived in a land called Siir, which is also called Edom (later it was nicknamed Idumea). For after Jacob retired to Mesopotamia to marry, Esau saw that those wives he had taken from the daughters of Canaan were evil before his father and mother, and he retired to his uncle Ishmael, who lived in the land of Paran. There he took his uncle's daughter Maelepha as his wife, and then chose the land of Siir for his residence. The ambassadors, returning to Jacob, announced that Esau himself was coming to meet him, and four hundred men with him. Jacob was very frightened and, not knowing what was the matter, divided his servants and herds into two regiments, saying: “If Esau cuts off one regiment, the second regiment will remain intact.” Jacob began to pray to God, begging Him to change Esau’s hostile heart to love, he said in prayer: “With this rod the Jordan passed away, but now I am in two regiments; deliver me, O Lord, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid of him, lest he kill me and my mother as children (Gen. 32:10-11). After the prayer, he sent before him large gifts from the herds of cattle to Esau, saying to himself: with my gifts I will tame his face. And the Lord heard the prayer of His servant, turned the wolf into a lamb, the enemy into a friend, the angry Esau into a lover. Jacob, coming to the stream called Jabbok, flowing into the Jordan, spent the night there. Rising before dawn, he crossed the waters of this stream with all his people, then stood in a special place and began to diligently pray to God that He would preserve him from Esau. And God appeared to him in the likeness of an angelic man, who embraced him in a friendly manner and wrestled with him until the morning, showing that he could not overcome Jacob (like a mature man, playing with a little boy, fights with him, as if unable to overcome him, but showing that he himself was overcome by him, so likewise this face of God, which appeared to Jacob, struggled with him and showed that he could not overcome him). Then God touched Jacob's thigh, and immediately a vein in it became dead, as if it had been cut, and Jacob felt pain and limped. However, Jacob grabbed hold of the one struggling with him and overcame Him, and then the one being overcome said: Let Me go, for the dawn has risen. Jacob answered: I will not let you go until you bless me. Then God blessed him and renamed him Israel, saying: “Your name will not be called Jacob, but Israel will be your name” (Gen. 32:28). And he left him when the sun began to rise; Jacob called this place “Penuel,” that is, the image of God, saying: “I saw God face to face, and my soul was saved” (Gen. 32:30). And Jacob limped on his hip after this struggle. When Jacob went his way, Esau, who had his own husbands, met him, for he too had already multiplied. When they saw each other, Jacob bowed to Esau to the ground seven times as he approached him, and Esau, quickly approaching, hugged and kissed him, and fell to his neck. They both cried. Esau, seeing the wives and children of Jacob, kissed them with love, and there was love and great joy between them. Esau, not wanting to accept the gifts that Jacob sent him, said: “Imam, brother, my darling, you are yours.” And Jacob said: “If I have found grace before you, accept the gift from my hand; For now I have seen your face, as someone sees the face of God; show me love and accept my blessing, which came from those whom God gave to me” (Gen. 33:9-11). Esau, prompted by his brother’s prayer, took what was given to him, and after brotherly conversation and rejoicing they parted. Esau went to Siir, and Jacob, entering the land of Canaan, came to Sohot, to Salem, and lived near the city of Shechem, buying part of the village there; and he erected an altar there to God and prayed to Him, offering sacrifices. “In the form of the army of God” (Gen. 32:1). Jacob saw two regiments of holy angels. One regiment was the regiment of that angel who was the guardian of the Mesopotamian country and, with the angels subordinate to him, escorted Jacob from Mesopotamia to the borders of Canaan; the other was the regiment of that angel who was the guardian of the land of Canaan and, with the angels subordinate to him, met Jacob entering the land of Canaan in order to keep him safe from Esau and other troubles and to bring him healthy to his father. From here we can see how kind the righteous Jacob was to God and His angels and how great God’s care for His servants is, that even with His angels He protects them. “The man fought with him until morning” (Gen. 32:34). The man who fought with Jacob was an angel of God, instead of God Himself, which is clear from the prophecy of Hosea, speaking about Jacob: “Strengthen with the angel, and it will be possible” (Hosea 12:4). And Saint Dionysius the Areopagite talks about the same thing, saying that in the Old Testament times God never appeared to people by Himself, but through angels; for that well-known manifestation of God, which was to Moses at Sinai, took place through angels, as the holy Apostle Paul explains in his letter to the Galatians, saying the following: “The law of transgression was added, until the seed came, to whom it was promised, the angels were given” (Gal. 3:19). The law, he says, was administered through angels. Although God appeared through His angels, and not by Himself, this phenomenon is called God’s in the Holy Scriptures. So, God through His angel wrestled with Jacob. From here we can learn that when a person prays warmly to God, deepening his entire mind in Him, then God invisibly embraces him mercifully, like a father to a son. Saint Niphon clearly experienced this himself. When he, raising his hands, made a diligent prayer with tears to God, he was in some kind of delight, and saw in the cloud the face of a bright man who appeared to him, whose arms were outstretched: with them he hugged the blessed one, as the father sometimes hugs the prodigal son, and kissed his neck, saying: it’s good that you came here, my offended child! “The one who prays to God also embraces him with his godly mind when he goes deeper into God. And further, just as Jacob, wrestling with God, prevailed over God, since God deigned to diminish His power in the struggle, so one who prays accurately and warmly and embraces God with his prayerful mind overcomes his Lord, bending His anger to mercy and wrath to mercy and accepting from Him what is asked. From this night-long struggle between Jacob and God, one can also see that Divine revelations to people usually occur during night vigils and solitary divine prayers, and not during bustle and anxiety. It is also possible to see from here that this struggle was a sacrament and a prototype of the incarnation of God, for the angel of God, by the command of God, who took upon himself the image of such a person as the Son of God was to be in the flesh, embraced Jacob tightly and fought, foreshadowing that in the person of Christ the Divinity with humanity will be united, as a dear friend is embraced with a dear friend, and that both natures will remain in inseparable connection. “Israel will be your name” (Gen. 32:28). This name Israel is interpreted as “overcoming God,” for in this struggle Jacob overcame the angel who was in the form of God incarnate, and this struggle was a sign of God’s ineffable love for people, by which the Son of God seemed to be overcome, descended from heaven and became incarnate, uniting with man in a strong union of love: “So God love the world!” (John 3:16). Otherwise, this name Israel is understood as “ruling with God.” Humanity, having united with the Divinity in the person of Christ, accepted from God the Father dominion over everything, as it is written in the Gospel: “The Father loves the Son and gave all things in His hand.” And again: “The Father judges no one, but the Son gives all judgment.” And again: “Jesus knows that the Father has given all things in His hands.” And the Son Himself says: “All things were handed over to me by My Father” (John 3:35, 5:22, 13:3; Matthew 11:27). In the Kiev Lexicon, Israel is interpreted: “the mind of God is in vain,” for Jacob then saw God, as he himself says: “I saw God face to face,” and therefore he was nicknamed Israel, or “who saw God.” “I am lame with my lash” (Gen. 32:31). Jacob's lameness, which occurred from the cutting of a sinew during the struggle with the angel, was a sign of the cutting of the old law. For when the time of new grace came, although the law given by God to Moses at Sinai was observed, which Christ commanded to keep when he said to a certain young man: “If you want to be brought into the belly, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17), however, all other Old Testament statutes, ceremonies, actions, customs are cut off from the new grace, so that the old law became like would be lame. In addition, Jacob’s lameness was a sign that some of his tribe would believe in Christ, but not many, while others (and the majority of them) would remain in unbelief, which is what happened. So the tribe of Jacob became, as it were, lame, when some remain in faith, while others remain in unbelief. “Bow down to the ground seven times” (Gen. 33:3). Jacob, wanting to change his angry, unloving and proud brother into freedom from anger, love and meekness and to reconcile the hostile one with himself, first of all sent him gifts in front of him, and then, seeing him, he humbly bowed to him seven times. To this he also added kind words, saying: “I have seen your face as someone sees the face of God” (Gen. 33:10). Thus he turned the beast into an Englishman. From here everyone can learn how to appease those who are angry, to tame those who are angry, to bring those at enmity to reconciliation and friendship, and to make those who do not love lovingly friendly. If you want to make your enemy your friend, be meek, humble and show him love, do not repay evil with evil, but for annoyance with annoyance; for you cannot cool the fire with fire, you cannot defeat evil with evil, and you cannot reconcile enmity with enmity, unless you irritate it even more, whereas with meekness, humility and love you can easily overcome all hostility. It is not false that the Holy Scripture says: “The answer of the humble will take away wrath” (Proverbs 15:1). His Holiness Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, writes in Limonar: “Two bishops lived close to one another and had some kind of quarrel among themselves. One of them was rich and a predator, and the other was very humble. And the predator was looking to harm his friend. The humble bishop, hearing about his enmity, said to his clergy: I know what I will do, and I will overcome him by the grace of Christ. The clerics said to him: Master, who can resist you? And the humble bishop answered them: wait a little, and you will see the mercy of God. When the feast of the holy martyrs arrived in the city in which the bishop who was at enmity with him was, the humble bishop went to him, taking with him his clergy, to whom he said: follow me and whatever you see me doing, do it, and we will overcome it. The clergy were surprised, saying among themselves: what does he want to do? Arriving in the city and seeing the bishop who was at enmity with him going with a litiya to the holy martyrs, along with all the inhabitants of that city accompanying him, the humble bishop approached him and fell at his feet along with all his clergy, saying: forgive us, master, from now on we are your slaves. The bishop was very surprised at this and was moved by such great humility of his friend, since God transferred the cruelty of his judgment to love; he mutually bowed to the humble bishop and took hold of his feet, saying: “You, lord, forgive me!” From that time on there was great love between them. And the humble bishop said to his clergy: didn’t I tell you that I would overcome with the help of the grace of Christ? And when you have an enemy, do the same, and you will overcome.” So, from here you can see that a humble word and submission take away the power of rage, overcome enmity and reconcile, and make the enemy a friend. Conversely, a cruel word raises anger. In the life of Saint Macarius of Egypt it is written: “The monk, going one day from the monastery to Mount Nitria and already approaching it, said to his disciple: go a little ahead of me. The student, walking ahead, met a pagan priest walking quickly and carrying a large tree. His brother called to him: listen, listen, demon, where are you going? The priest returned, beat him severely and, leaving him barely alive, took his tree and ran away. He ran a little when Abba Macarius met him and said to him: save yourself, hard worker, save yourself! He was surprised and said to his father: what good do you see in me, greeting me with these words? The elder replied that he saw him working. The priest said: I am touched, father, by your words and I see that you are a man of God; another monk, meeting me, annoyed me, and I beat him to death. And the priest fell down to the saint, hugged his legs and said: I will not leave you, father, until you make me a Christian and a monk. He went with Saint Macarius, came to his lying brother and, finding him barely alive, carried him to the church, which was on Mount Nitria. The Nitrian fathers, seeing the pagan priest walking with the Monk Macarius, were surprised. They baptized him and made him a monk, and then for his sake many Greeks became Christians. Abba Macarius said: an evil word makes the good evil, and a good word turns the evil into good.” You might be interested in: