Восемь главных страстей с их подразделениями и отраслями

Borrowed from the holy patristic writings Binge eating, drunkenness, non-keeping and allowing fasting, secret eating, delicacy, and generally violation of abstinence. Incorrect and excessive love of the flesh, its belly and rest, which constitutes self-love, which leads to failure to maintain fidelity to God, the Church, virtue and people. Prodigal incitement, prodigal sensations and desires of the body, prodigal sensations and desires of the soul and heart (scrambling), acceptance of unclean thoughts, conversation with them, enjoying them, consenting to them, delay in them. Prodigal dreams and captivities. Desecration by suit. Failure to preserve the senses, especially the sense of touch, is the insolence that destroys all virtues. Foul language and reading voluptuous books. Natural prodigal sins: fornication and adultery. Sins of prodigal unnatural: malakia, sodomy, bestiality and the like. The love of money, in general the love of property, movable and immovable. The desire to get rich. Thinking about the means to get rich. Dreaming of wealth. Fear of old age, unexpected poverty, illness, exile. Stinginess. Selfishness. Disbelief in God, lack of trust in His providence. Addictions or painful excessive love for various perishable objects, depriving the soul of freedom. Passion for vain concerns. Loving gifts. Appropriation of someone else's. Likhva. Cruelty towards the poor brethren and all those in need. Theft. Robbery. Hot temper, acceptance of angry thoughts; dreams of anger and revenge, indignation of the heart with rage, darkening of the mind with it: obscene shouting, argument, swearing, harsh and caustic words, stress, pushing, murder. Malice, hatred, enmity, revenge, slander, condemnation, indignation and insult to one’s neighbor. Sadness, melancholy, cutting off hope in God, doubt in God’s promises, ingratitude to God for everything that happens, cowardice, impatience, lack of self-reproach, grief towards one’s neighbor, grumbling, renunciation of the cross, attempt to descend from it. Laziness towards every good deed, especially prayer. Abandonment of church and cell rules. Abandoning unceasing prayer and soul-helping reading. Inattention and haste in prayer. Neglect. Irreverence. Idleness. Excessive calming by sleeping, lying down and all kinds of restlessness. Moving from place to place. Frequent exits from the cell, walks and visits with friends. Celebration. Jokes. Blasphemers. Abandonment of bows and other physical feats. Forgetting your sins. Forgetting the commandments of Christ. Negligence. Captivity. Deprivation of the fear of God. Bitterness. Insensibility. Despair. The search for human glory. Boasting. Desire and search for earthly honors. Love of beautiful clothes, carriages, servants and cell things. Attention to the beauty of your face, the pleasantness of your voice and other qualities of your body. A disposition towards the dying sciences and arts of this age, a desire to succeed in them in order to acquire temporary, earthly glory. Shame to confess your sins. Hiding them before people and the spiritual father. Craftiness. Verbal justification. Disclaimer. Making up your mind. Hypocrisy. Lie. Flattery. People-pleasing. Envy. Humiliation of one's neighbor. Changeability of character. Pretense. Unconscionability. The character and life are demonic. Contempt for one's neighbor. Preferring yourself to everyone. Insolence. Darkness, dullness of the mind and heart. Nailing them to the earthly. Hula. Disbelief. Lovely. False mind. Disobedience to the Law of God and the Church. Following your carnal will. Reading books that are heretical, depraved and vain. Disobedience to authorities. Caustic ridicule. Abandonment of Christ-like humility and silence. Loss of simplicity. Loss of love for God and neighbor. False philosophy. Heresy. Godlessness. Ignorance. Death of the soul. Such are the ailments, such are the ulcers that constitute the great ulcer, the decay of the old Adam, which was formed from his fall. The holy prophet Isaiah speaks about this great ulcer: “from the feet even to the head there is no wholeness in him: neither a scab, nor a sore, nor a burning wound: there is no plaster to apply, lower than oil, lower than duty” (Is. 1:6). This means, according to the explanation of the Fathers, that the ulcer 95 - sin - is not private, not on just one member, but on the entire being: it has embraced the body, embraced the soul, taken possession of all the properties, all the powers of a person. God called this great plague death when, forbidding Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said: “If you take away one day from it, you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Immediately after eating the forbidden fruit, the forefathers felt eternal death: a carnal sensation appeared in their eyes; they saw that they were naked. The knowledge of the nakedness of the body reflected the nakedness of the soul, which had lost the beauty of innocence on which the Holy Spirit rested. There is a carnal sensation in the eyes, and in the soul there is shame, in which is the accumulation of all sinful sensations: pride, impurity, sadness, despondency, and despair! The Great Plague is spiritual death; the decay that occurred after the loss of the Divine likeness is incorrigible! The Apostle calls the great plague “the law of sin, the body of death” (Rom. 7:23–24), because the mortified mind and heart have completely turned to the earth, slavishly serve the corruptible desires of the flesh, have become darkened, burdened, and become flesh themselves. This flesh is no longer capable of communicating with God! (Gen.6:3). This flesh is not capable of inheriting eternal, heavenly bliss! (1 Cor. 15:50). The great plague spread over the entire human race and became the unfortunate property of every person. Considering my great ulcer, looking at my mortification, I am filled with bitter sadness! I'm perplexed, what should I do? – Will I follow the example of the old Adam, who, seeing his nakedness, hastened to hide from God? Will I, like him, justify myself by placing the blame on the guilt of sin? It is in vain to hide from the All-Seeing One! It is in vain to justify yourself before Him, “Who always conquers; He never judges” (Ps. 50:6). Instead of fig leaves, I will clothe myself with tears of repentance; Instead of justification, I will bring sincere consciousness. Clothed in repentance and tears, I will appear before my God. But where will I find my God? Is it in heaven? I am expelled from there - and the Cherub standing at the entrance will not let me in! By the very burden of my flesh I am nailed to the ground, my prison! Sinful descendant of Adam, take heart! A light has shone in your prison: God has descended into the low country of your exile to lead you to your lost highland fatherland. You wanted to know good and evil: He leaves you this knowledge. You wanted to become “like God,” and from this you became like the devil in your soul, like cattle and beasts in your body: God, uniting you with Himself, makes you a god by grace. He forgives your sins. This is not enough! He removes the root of evil from your soul, the very infection of sin, the poison cast into your soul by the devil, and gives you medicine for the entire path of your earthly life, for healing from sin, no matter how many times you become infected with it, due to your weakness. This healing is the confession of sins. Do you want to put off the old Adam, you, who through holy baptism have already been clothed in the New Adam, but through your own iniquities managed to revive old age and death in yourself, to choke life, to make it half-dead? Do you want, enslaved to sin, drawn to it by the violence of habit, to regain your freedom and righteousness? - Immerse yourself in humility! Conquer vain shame, which teaches you to hypocritically and craftily pretend to be righteous and thereby preserve and strengthen spiritual death within yourself. Cast out sin, enter into hostility with sin by sincere confession of sin. This healing must precede all others; without it, healing through prayer, tears, fasting and all other means will be insufficient, unsatisfactory, fragile. Go, proud one, to your spiritual father - at his feet find the mercy of the Heavenly Father! One, one sincere and frequent confession can free one from sinful habits, make repentance fruitful, and correction lasting and true. In a brief moment of tenderness, in which the eyes of the mind are opened for self-knowledge, which comes so rarely, I wrote this as a rebuke to myself, as an admonition, a reminder, an instruction. And you, who read these lines with faith and love for Christ and, perhaps, will find something useful in them, bring a heartfelt sigh and prayer for the soul that has suffered much from the waves of sin, that has often seen drowning and destruction before itself, that has found rest in one refuge: in the confession of its falls. Venerable Abba Dorotheos. Lesson 1. You might be interested in: