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Under the sign of the holy cross, I lead you, brothers, to a spiritual spectacle. Let Anthony, the desert dweller of Egypt, the great saint of God, be our leader. He, through the action of Divine revelation, once saw the nets of the devil spread throughout the world to ensnare people into destruction. Seeing that there were countless numbers of these nets, he asked the Lord with tears: “Lord! Who can bypass these snares and receive salvation? 419 I immerse myself thoughtfully in examining the networks of the devil. They are located outside and inside a person. One network is closely connected to another; in other places the nets stand in several rows; in others wide holes are made, but which lead to the most numerous bends of the nets, escape from which seems impossible. Looking at the multi-devious networks, I weep bitterly! The question of the blessed desert dweller involuntarily repeats in me: “Lord! who can get rid of these networks? Nets have been laid for my mind in various books that call themselves light, but contain the teachings of darkness, written under the obvious or hidden influence of a gloomy and all-evil ruler of the world, from a source - a mind damaged by the Fall, “in the lies of men, in the deceit of the wiles of flattery” (Eph. 4:14), in the words of the Apostle, by writers who are “crazed with madness.” his flesh" (Col. 2:18). My neighbor, in the love of whom I must seek salvation, becomes for me a net that traps me in destruction, when his mind is caught in the nets of the teachings and wisdom of the lying and flattering. My own mind bears the seals of fall, is covered with a veil of darkness, infected with the poison of lies: it itself, deceived by the ruler of the world, sets nets for itself. Even in paradise, he indiscriminately and carelessly strived to acquire knowledge, which was disastrous and murderous for him! After his fall, he became more indiscriminate, more reckless: with impudence he drinks in the cup of poisonous knowledge, and thereby decisively destroys in himself the taste and desire for the Divine cup of saving knowledge. There are so many nets for my heart! I see coarse networks and thin networks. Which of them are more dangerous, more terrible? I'm perplexed. The fisher is skillful, and whoever escapes from the rough nets, he catches in the fine nets. The end of the hunt is one: death. The networks are covered in every possible way, with excellent art. The fall is clothed in all types of triumph: man-pleasing, hypocrisy, vanity - in all types of virtue. Deception, dark charm, wear the guise of the spiritual, the heavenly. Spiritual love, often vicious, is covered with the appearance of holy love; false, dreamy sweetness, passed off as spiritual sweetness. The ruler of the world tries by all means to keep man in his fallen nature: and this is enough, without gross falls, to make man a stranger to God. Gross falls into sin will be completely replaced, according to the correct calculations of the hunter, by the proud opinion of a Christian about himself, content with the virtues of a fallen nature and falling into self-delusion, thereby alienating himself from Christ. There are so many nets for the body! it itself - what a network! how the ruler of the world uses it! Through the body, condescending to its humiliating inclinations and desires, we approach the likeness of dumb animals. What an abyss! what a departure, what a fall from the Divine likeness! We fall into this deep abyss, terribly far from God, when we indulge in gross carnal pleasures, called falls due to their sinful severity. But less coarse carnal pleasures are no less harmful. For their sake, care for the soul is abandoned, God, heaven, eternity, and the purpose of man are forgotten. The ruler of the world tries to keep us in constant entertainment, darkness, through bodily pleasures! Through the senses, these doors to the soul, through which it communicates with the visible world, he constantly introduces into it sensual pleasure, inseparable from it, sin and captivity. Music thunders in famous earthly concerts, expressing and exciting various passions; these passions are presented in earthly theaters, excited in earthly amusements: man is led by all possible means to enjoy the evil that killed him. In his intoxication, he forgets the Divine good that saves him and the blood of the God-man, by which we have been redeemed. Here is a faint outline of the nets placed by the ruler of the world to ensnare Christians. The mark is weak, but it hardly failed to bring justified horror to you, brethren, and the question was hardly born in your soul: “Who can escape these snares”? The terrible picture is not over yet! Still, my brush, led by the Word of God, is still excited to paint. What does the Word of God say? It proclaims a prediction that is coming true in our eyes, a prediction that in the last times, because of “the increase of iniquity, the love of many will fail” (Matthew 24:12). The unfaithful Word of God, more solid than heaven and earth, proclaims to us the multiplication in the last times of the devil’s snares and the multiplication of the number of those perishing in these snares. Exactly! I look at the world and see: the networks of the devil have multiplied, in comparison with the times of the primacy of the Church of Christ, they have multiplied to infinity. Books containing false teaching have multiplied; minds have multiplied, containing and communicating to others false teaching; the followers of the holy Truth have diminished, diminished to the extreme; respect for natural virtues available to Jews and pagans increased; respect for virtues appeared that were downright pagan, contrary to nature itself, which looked at them as evil; the concept of Christian virtues has been diminished, not to mention how their actual fulfillment has been diminished, almost destroyed; material life developed; spiritual life disappears; bodily pleasures and worries consume all the time; there is no time to even remember God. And all this turns into a duty, into a law. “By the increase of iniquity the love of many will dry up,” and of those who would have maintained their love for God, if evil had not been so universal, if the networks of the devil had not multiplied to such innumerability. The sadness of Blessed Anthony was just. All the more just is the sadness of a Christian of these times, when he sees the snares of the devil; the lamentable question is fundamental: “Lord! Who of the people can bypass these snares and receive salvation? To the question of the venerable desert dweller, the answer came from the Lord: “Humility passes through these nets, and they cannot even touch it.” Divine answer! how he removes all doubt from the heart, depicts in brief words the sure way to defeat our adversary, the way to dissolve and destroy his many-woven intrigues, arranged with the help of his many years and many-vicious experience. Let us protect the mind with humility, not allowing it to strive indiscriminately, recklessly to acquire knowledge, no matter how its news and the importance of its titles may attract our curiosity. Let us protect him from the test of false teachings, covered with the name and guise of Christian teaching. Let us humble him into obedience to the Church, casting down every thought that is placed on the mind of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) on the mind of the Church. At first, the narrow path of obedience to the Church is deplorable for the mind; but it leads to the breadth and freedom of the spiritual mind, before which all the imaginary inconsistencies found by the carnal and spiritual mind in strict obedience to the Church disappear. We will not allow him to read about other spiritual things, except in books written by writers of the true Church, to which the Church itself has testified that they are organs of the Holy Spirit. He who reads holy writers inconspicuously communes with the Holy Spirit who dwells in them and speaks through them; He who reads heretical writers, even if they are adorned with the title of saints with their heretical hosts, becomes familiar with the evil spirit of delusion 420: for disobedience to the Church, in which there is pride, he falls into the snare of the ruler of the world. What to do with the heart? “Let’s graft a twig from a fruitful olive tree onto this wild olive tree, let’s instill in it the properties of Christ, teach it to the humility of the Gospel, let’s force it to accept the will of the Gospel. Having seen his disagreement with the Gospel, his constant contradiction, his disobedience to the Gospel, we will see in this opposition, as in a mirror, our downfall. Having seen our fall, we will mourn for it before the Lord, our Creator and Redeemer, and we will be pained with saving sorrow; We will remain in this sadness until we see our healing. “God will not despise a contrite and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19), handing it over to the enemy’s trap. God is our Creator and complete Ruler: He can recreate our heart, and He will transform the heart that continually cries out to Him in weeping and prayer, from a sin-loving heart to a God-loving, holy heart. Let us guard our bodily feelings, not allowing sin into the spiritual cage through them. Let us curb the curious eye and the curious ear; let us put a cruel bridle on the small member of the body, but which produces strong shocks, on our tongue; let us pacify the body’s wordless aspirations through abstinence, vigil, labor, frequent remembrance of death, and attentive, constant prayer. How short-lived are bodily pleasures! what a stink they end in! On the contrary, the body, protected by abstinence and preservation of feelings, washed with tears of repentance, sanctified by frequent prayers, is mysteriously built into the temple of the Holy Spirit, which makes all the enemy’s attempts on a person unsuccessful. “Humility escapes all the snares of the devil, and they cannot even touch it.” Amen. 1846. Sergius Desert. Patericon of Skitsky. - Reverend Abba Dorotheos. Lesson 2. Saint Peter of Damascus. Philokalia, part I. About reasoning. You might be interested in: