Учение о плаче преподобного Пимена Великого 102

The brother asked Abba Pimen what kind of work a monk should do. Abba answered: “When Abraham came to the Promised Land, he bought himself a coffin, and from the coffin he began to take possession of the Promised Land.” The brother asked: what does “coffin” mean? Abba answered: “This is a place of crying and sobbing.” The following saying also belongs to Abba Pimen: “Crying is deep: it does and preserves.” The brother asked Abba Pimen: “What should I do with my passions that outrage me?” The elder told him: “We will weep with all our might before the goodness of God until it shows mercy to us.” The brother asked Abba Pimen: “What should I do with my sins?” The elder said: “Whoever wants to get rid of the sins living in him gets rid of them by crying, and whoever wants not to fall into sins again, by crying avoids falling into them. This is the path of repentance, handed down to us by Scripture and the Fathers, who said: weep! there is no other way but crying.” One day, Abba Pimen, passing through Egypt, saw a woman sitting on a coffin and crying bitterly. At the same time, he said: “If those who consoled her from all over the world had flocked to her, they would not have distracted her soul from crying. Likewise, a monk must constantly have crying within himself.” One day the Monk Pimen was walking with Abba Anuv in the vicinity of the city of Diolka. Seeing a woman there, tormented and crying bitterly over the grave, they stopped to listen to her. Then, having walked away a little, they met a passerby, and Saint Pimen asked him: “What happened to this woman? She’s crying so bitterly.” The passerby answered: “Her husband, son and brother died.” Then Abba Pimen, turning to Abba Anuv, said: “I tell you: if a person does not mortify all his carnal desires and does not acquire such crying, then he cannot be a monk. The whole life of a monk is a lament.” The elder said: “Crying constitutes the teaching (spiritual work, spiritual feat) of the monk. If there is no crying, then it is impossible to keep from being upset and embarrassed.” I answered: “When I am in my cell, then crying remains with me; But if someone comes to me, or I leave my cell, I will no longer find it.” To this the elder said: “This is because crying is not assimilated to you, but is, as it were, given on loan.” I asked you to explain these words to me. The elder said: “If a person works hard to acquire crying, then he will find it to serve himself whenever he wants.” The brother asked Abba Pimen: “To what should the attention of the silent one in the cell be directed? The elder answered: “I am like a man mired in a swamp up to his neck, with a burden on his neck, and crying out to God: have mercy on me!” Have mercy on me! This is an expression of crying that has penetrated into the soul. Crying, when it reaches development, cannot be clothed in many thoughts and verbosity: it is content to express an immense spiritual feeling with the shortest prayer. The brother asked Abba Pimen about monastic work. The elder said: “When God visits us with a call to eternity: then what will concern us?” - The brother answered: “Our sins.” The elder said: “So! Let us enter our cells; Having secluded ourselves in them, let us remember our sins, and the Lord will listen to us.” What we should mean here is not a superficial, cold recollection of sins and one’s sinfulness, but a recollection combined with repentance and crying. When Abba Arseny the Great died, Saint Pimen, at the news of the Great’s death, shedding tears, said: “Blessed are you, Abba Arseny! Because you cried for yourself in this life. He who does not cry here will cry forever. It’s impossible not to cry, either here voluntarily, or involuntarily there, in agony.” Alphabetical Patericon, letters P and A. You might be interested in: