Судьбы Божии

There is no blind chance! God rules the world, and everything that happens in heaven and under heaven is done according to the judgment of the all-wise and omnipotent God, incomprehensible in His wisdom and omnipotence, incomprehensible in His governance. God rules the world: let His rational creatures submit to Him, and let His servants contemplate reverently, and praise in wonder and bewilderment His majestic government that surpasses their understanding! God rules the world. Blind sinners do not see this management. They have invented a case alien to reason: they are not aware of the lack of correctness in their gaze, the dullness of their gaze, the darkened gaze, the perverted gaze; they attribute to the government of God a lack of correctness and meaning; they blaspheme God’s government, and they recognize a wise action and call it a foolish action. “The Lord our God: His destiny is throughout all the earth,” (Ps. 104:7) preaches the royal Prophet. “The destinies of the Lord are true, justified together” (Ps. 18:10). There is nothing unfair about them! There is nothing unreasonable about them! They are justified by their consequences, by their spiritual fruits; they are justified by the perfection of their all-perfect Source. “Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! for strengthen the faith of your gates, bless your sons in you” (Ps. 147: 1, 2). Only the Orthodox Church is capable of praising God with godly praise; only her true sons, faithful to her depth - her dogmatic and moral tradition - are able to inherit the blessing. “God, proclaim Your word to Jacob, His justification and destiny to Israel” (Ps. 147:8; Gen. 32:28) 33, reveals the teaching of salvation to all members of the Orthodox Church; but the mystery of the Gospel truth and the mystery of His destinies reveals, as far as it can be comprehended, only the chosen ones, who are honored to see with a pure mind God in His providence and management. God “do not do this to every tongue, and do not show them His destiny” (Ps. 147:9). The vision of God's destinies is a spiritual vision. By Divine grace, in due time, the mind of a Christian who strives correctly 34 is raised to this vision. The heart sympathizes with the spiritual vision of the mind with a spiritual, holy sensation, with which it is infused, as if with a sweet and fragrant drink, pouring into it nourishment, courage, and joy. I look into Your destinies, my Lord: “Your destinies are a great abyss” (Ps. 35:7). Neither the human mind nor the angelic mind can explore their depth, just as our sensory eye cannot see the vaults of the sky hiding behind its transparent, boundless blue. Correct and accurate fulfillment of God's will is not possible without knowledge of God's destinies. What are God's commandments? This is the will of God, declared by God to people for guidance in actions depending on their will. What are God's destinies? These are actions or allowances of the will of God, on which the arbitrariness of man has no influence. It is obvious that, for a person to fully fulfill God’s will, it is necessary for a person to take a correct attitude towards both the commandments of God and the destinies of God. “I have preserved the ways of the Lord,” says the true servant of God, “for all His destinies are before me, and His justifications have not departed from Me” (Ps. 17:22-23). “Teach me Thy destinies, my Lord” (Ps. 119:108). “Let us confess to You in the uprightness of our hearts, never having learned the destinies of Your righteousness” (Ps. 119:7). “Annoy the Lord, the sinner” - an arbitrary servant of demons - “there is no God before him, his ways are defiled for all time, Your fate is taken away”, our Lord, “from before him” (Ps. 9:25-26). Neglect of God’s commandments necessarily joins the rejection of God’s governance of the world and God’s providence for the world: neglect of God’s commandments follows from this rejection as a natural consequence. The arbitrary, intentional sinner recognizes either human reason or blind, senseless chance as the ruler of the universe, the initial cause of everything that happens in human society and with each person in particular. This sinner, by the very way of thinking, by the mood of the soul, becomes in an attitude hostile to the Lord, hostile to His holy Gospel; This sinner fearlessly tramples all the commandments of God, fearlessly satisfies all his vicious desires. For whom there is no God in God's providence, for him there is no God in God's commandments. He who saw God in the government of His world, who stood in awe of this rule, who stood in awe of the destinies of God, can only “nail his flesh to the fear of God” (Ps. 119:120): crucify the will and wisdom of sinful and material-loving people on the cross of the Gospel commandments. To see God in His providence, you need purity of mind, heart and body. To acquire purity, you need to live according to the commandments of the Gospel. From the vision of the destinies of God, the mother of this vision is born in great abundance - pious life. God rules the universe; He controls the life of every person in all its details. Such control, which is included in the most petty, seemingly insignificant conditions of existence of creatures, corresponds to the infinite perfection of the properties of God. The law of such management is read in nature, read in the public and private life of people, and read in the Holy Scriptures. “Are not two birds,” said the Savior, “worth a single assar, and not one of them will fall to the earth without your Father.” “To you,” the faithful servants of God, “and all the chief powers are numbered” (Matthew 10:29–30). I believe the all-holy words! I cannot help but believe them: they accurately depict the perfection of my God. “From Your presence,” my Lord, “my destiny will come forth” (Ps. 16:2)! I belong entirely to You! My life and death are hourly in Your hands! You participate in all my affairs, in all my circumstances: You will help me to please You; You are patient with me in the face of my willful, sinful, and insane actions. Your right hand constantly guides me on Your path! Without the assistance of this right hand, I would have become hopelessly lost long, long ago, and would have perished irrevocably. You, the only one capable of judging a person, judge me and decide my fate forever according to Your righteous judgment, according to Your ineffable mercy. I am Yours both before my existence, and in my existence, and beyond the limits of my earthly existence or my wanderings! The destinies of God are everything that happens in the universe. Everything that happens is accomplished as a result of the judgment and determination of God. Nothing is or can be done secretly from God and independent of Him. One thing is done according to the will of God; the other is done by God’s permission; everything that happens is done according to the judgment and determination of God. For this reason, the destinies of God are often called in Scripture the judgment of God. God's judgment is always righteous; “Thou art righteous, O Lord,” says the Prophet, “and rule Thy judgments” (Ps. 119:137). Through the action of God's will the visible and invisible worlds were created; man was created and redeemed, all events, public and private, were completed and are taking place, from which God’s goodness, God’s omnipotence, God’s wisdom shines like the sun from heaven. By God's permission, by the will of creatures, evil appeared with all its consequences: by God's permission, by their own will, angels fell, man fell, people did not accept God and people, redeemed by God incarnate, retreated from God; By God's permission, by the evil will of the angels of rejected and fallen men, the earth was corrupted by the crimes and wickedness of these angels and these men. By the permission and judgment of God, various sorrows and disasters, public and private, are and will continue to be punished by the universe; by the permission and judgment of God, the apostates from God, the enemies of God, will suffer eternal torment in the fiery, dark abyss of hell, for which they arbitrarily prepared themselves. The Apostle looked with a pure mind, with a mind illuminated by the rays of holy Truth, looked at the unattainable heights of God’s destinies, and, in sacred horror from the vision of these destinies, exclaimed: “Oh, the depth of the wealth and wisdom and mind of God! for His judgment has not been tried, and His ways have not been explored. Who understands the mind of the Lord? or who will be His adviser? (Rom. 11:33–34). The Apostle exclaimed this while talking about a terrible crime, about the arbitrary rejection of the Redeemer by the Jews, about a frenzied rejection that culminated in a monstrous crime: the murder of the Redeemer. Speaking about the crime of men, which completely depended on their free will, the Apostle expresses himself as if the crime was committed by God. “God shut all” the Jews “to rebellion” (Rom. 11:32). “God give them the spirit of compunction 35, so that eyes cannot see and ears cannot hear” (Rom. 11:8). God's permission is called the action of God. Unlimited in strength and power, as it were, he limited himself, without changing the will of man, without stopping the actions of men who entered into stubborn resistance, in fierce opposition to the will and action of God. The will of creatures, all their efforts would not be able to resist the almighty right hand of the Creator. This has not been done. These are God's destinies. Comprehension of them is impossible, as it exceeds the intelligence of rational creatures. The study of what cannot be comprehended is futile work, alien to meaning. The study of the destinies of God is forbidden by God, as an undertaking inspired by blind arrogance, as an undertaking inspired by a false view of the subject, as an undertaking leading to inevitable error, to blasphemy, to destruction of the soul. One must, following the example of the Apostle, see and contemplate the destinies of God with the eye of faith, the eye of spiritual reason, and, not allowing oneself to make fruitless judgments based on human principles, one must reverently plunge into sacred bewilderment, into sacred spiritual darkness, which is also the wonderful light with which God is closed from the mental gaze of both human and angelic (Ps. 17:12). “Evil has no essence,” said the Fathers, “it appears from our negligence about virtue, and disappears from our zeal for virtue” 36. Evil, being a lack of good, can only apply to limited rational creatures in which good is limited. Lack has no place in the infinite, nor an approach to it. God is infinite, and His goodness is infinite. The infinite by its property does not decrease with all kinds of numerical subtractions from it and does not increase with all such applications to it. Neither the evil nor the good of creatures has and cannot have any influence either on God or on His actions. The destinies of God stand at a height inaccessible and inviolable; they stand at a height that does not depend on the actions of both demonic and human. The action of God remains with its own property and meaning, despite whatever the action may be, both human and demonic, united in appearance into one action with the action of God. A striking example of such action is the great event: the suffering and death of the God-man. On the one hand, God who became man deigned to submit to this suffering and this death according to His all-holy will: on the other hand, the Jewish high priests, also led by their own will, subjected the God who became man to the most humiliating dishonor, cruel torture and shameful death. Demons participated in the atrocities of people, as the leaders of atrocities (John 13:2-27). Here the action of God was combined, in appearance, into one action with the action of human and demonic; but, in essence, action was distinguished from action by an all-perfect difference. “You have rejected the Holy and Righteous One,” the Apostle Peter said to the Jews, “you have killed the Author of life; But God, who made the lips of all His prophets foretell that Christ should suffer, fulfill this” (Acts 3:14–15, 18). The same thought was expressed by all the Apostles in the prayer they said at the news of the opening persecution of the Church in Jerusalem. They said in their prayer: “O Master, You, O God, created the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything that is in them: with the Holy Spirit did You say from the mouth of our father David, Your servant: In this way are the nations reeling, and the people have learned in vain? the kings of the earth appeared, and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. Having truly gathered in this city against Thy Holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, Herod and Pontic Pilate, with the tongues and people of Israel, may Thy hand and Thy counsel be made before the Lord” (Acts 4:24-28). The destinies and actions of God go their own way; human and demonic actions also go their own way. Crimes and atrocities do not cease to be crimes and atrocities in relation to their agents, even if those who commit evil with evil intentions together are only instruments of the will of God. The latter is a consequence of the unlimited wisdom of God, the unlimited power of God, due to which creatures, acting according to their free will, together remain invariably in the power of the Creator, without understanding it, fulfill the will of the Creator, without knowing it. The destinies of God are present and act in the environment of events committed by people and demons, like the subtlest spirit among matter, not depending on matter, not constrained by matter, acting on matter and not being affected by matter. The destinies of God are the omnipotent action in the universe of the all-perfect God, the one, in the exact sense, Spirit, filling the universe and everything that is outside the universe, not encompassed by the universe. The material world, subject to our feelings, does not embrace God; God and the world of spirits, which is not subject to our feelings, does not embrace God. His actions and his destinies correspond to God: and they are not encompassed. May both men and angels remain silent and reverent before them! In relation to God, spirits are the same substance: they differ from God both in essence and properties, they differ in immeasurable difference, they differ as much as the gross substance differs 37. This is the law for the relationship of the infinite to everything limited and finite. No matter how limited objects differ from each other, no matter how they increase or decrease, their difference with the infinite does not change and can never change: it is always equal, because it is always infinite. “Woe to the world because of temptation: the need is to come with temptation. “Besides, woe to the man to whom temptation comes” (Matthew 18:7). This was said by the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is said about events that are taking place before our eyes and must still take place, in which the all-holy destinies of God merge with the criminal and disastrous consequences of the sinful, lustful will of man, hostile to God. “Need comes with temptation”: with these words the predestination of God is announced, the destinies of God are announced, incomprehensible to man and inaccessible to his comprehension. “Woe to that man to whom temptation comes”: this declares the wrath of God to ministers, preachers, patrons of sin, sowers and distributors of sin in human society, enemies and persecutors of the true knowledge of God and worship. Their mood and activity have already been condemned by God; thunderous threats have already been made against this mood and this activity; Eternal hell with its dungeons, with its terrible tortures and executions has already been prepared for them as retribution. But the activities and moods of people, hostile and opposing God, are allowed by God. Such are the destinies of God. Evil committed by creatures cannot violate in God - in the All-Perfect Good - the indestructible, inviolable abiding in His unchangeable properties and dignity; it cannot prevent the infinite Wisdom of God from fulfilling Her all-holy, omnipotent will. What is God's predestination? This is an image of expression used by the Holy Scriptures, which depicts the greatness of God, which exceeds any image. The concept of predestination has many similarities with the concept of destinies: concept and concept often merge. Let us explain, to the best of our ability, the predestination of God, the existence of which is testified by the Holy Scriptures (Rom. 9), an incorrect understanding of which leads many into the disastrous abyss of error. God is not subject to time 38: time does not exist for God. The word “time” expresses the concept formed in rational creatures from the impression made in them by changes in phenomena in nature. This is how time is defined by science. “And there was evening, and there was morning, one day” (Gen. 1:5). This is how Scripture presents the origin of the concept of time, in complete agreement with the conclusion of positive science 39 . It is obvious that impressions from the outside cannot act on God, otherwise He would not be perfect and would be subject to additions and detractions, which is not characteristic of the infinite. In general there is no time for God: there is no future time for him either. What is to be accomplished lies before the already accomplished face of God, and the afterlife of every person, which must flow as a natural consequence from his earthly, voluntary activity, is already known to God, has already been decided by God. “Thy eyes have seen my unfinished work” (Ps. 139:16), all-perfect God! The inspired Prophet confessed this: every person must, by logical necessity, confess this. “I am predestined! I have no opportunity to resist predestination, change or destroy God’s predestination. Why force yourself to inexorably strict Christian virtue? Why expose yourself to countless hardships and live constantly renouncing life? I will live as I want and like it! I will hasten to what my dream lures me to, drawing charming pictures before my eyes! I am amused to my fill by all pleasures, even sinful ones! They are scattered with luxury throughout the universe, and unbearable curiosity attracts to taste and experience them! If it is predestined for me to be saved, then, despite all my depravity, God will save me. If I am destined to perish, then I will perish, despite all my efforts to achieve salvation.” Such a judgment is declared to be ignorance of the sacraments of Christianity! It is proclaimed as false by reason and carnal wisdom. It utters a terrible blasphemy that they do not understand! An unfortunate, completely erroneous mentality is recognized and accepted by many as an irrefutable truth: a self-willed life, a lawless and depraved life is based on it. An eternally sorrowful existence, an everlastingly disastrous existence in the afterlife is based on an earthly, vicious life. False, soul-destroying speculation about predestination and fate arose from the confusion of actions characteristic of the one God with human actions. One error inevitably leads to another error; it leads to many errors if it is made in initial, initial thought. Man, having mixed his action with the action of God, has already, as it were, naturally subordinated both actions to one law, one court, the court of his mind. From here an endless field of errors opened up for him. Having placed himself as a judge of God's actions, he necessarily ascribed to God the same attitude towards good and evil that man has towards them. He recognized the properties of God as identical with human properties; He subordinated the thinking of God to the laws of human thinking: he established a certain difference, but the difference is not infinite, but some kind of his own, indefinite, alien to correctness and meaning. From His beginningless beginning, God was and is content with His one Word. The Word of God is together with His Thought: “The Word from time immemorial was unto God, and God was the Word” (John 1:1-2). This is the property of the infinite Mind. According to His infinite perfection, God has one and only Thought, despite the fact that this Thought is expressed in the realm of rational creatures by countless thoughts. Let us separate from ourselves, at an infinite distance, the being of God, and His properties, and His actions: then our judgment about fate and predestination will receive the due thoroughness. The predestination of man's fate is completely befitting of God due to the unlimited perfection of God's mind, due to God's independence from time. Predestination, showing man the greatness of God, and being a mystery known to God alone, does not in the least constrain the free activity of man in the entire field of earthly life, has no influence on this activity, no relation to it. Having no influence on human activity, God's predestination does not and cannot have any influence on the consequences of this activity, on the salvation and destruction of man. To guide our behavior, we are given, on the one hand, reason and free will, and on the other, the revealed teaching of God. The revealed teaching of God proclaims with the most satisfactory detail the will of God as a means of salvation, proclaims the good pleasure of God so that all men may be saved, and proclaims eternal torment for trampling on the will of God. From here there is a clear consequence: the salvation and destruction of a person depend solely on his will, and not on the determination of God unknown to him. Why is one born into wealth and nobility, the other into poverty, among people who are despised and oppressed, doomed to lifelong bodily labor by the sweat of their brow, deprived of the means for mental development? Why does one die as a decrepit old man, another in the prime of adolescence or manhood, another as a child, and even as a short-day-old infant? Why does one constantly enjoy health and prosperity, while the other languishes in illness, passing sorrows to sorrows, disasters to disasters, as if from hand to hand? These and similar questions once occupied the great desert dweller of Egypt, Anthony, and in vain the desert dweller sought a solution to them in his own mind, overshadowed by Divine grace, capable of delving deeper into the consideration of the mysteries of God. When the holy elder was tired of fruitless thinking, a voice came to him from heaven: “Antony! These are God's destinies. Researching them is mentally harmful. Pay attention to yourself" 40. “Take heed to yourself,” O man! Enter into the work and research that is essential for you, necessary. Define yourself with precision, your relationship to God and to all parts of the vast universe known to you. Determine what is given to you to understand, what is left to your contemplation alone, and what is hidden from you. Determine the extent and limits of your ability to think and understand. This ability, as the ability of a limited being, naturally has its own degree and its limits. Human concepts, in their known forms, are called complete and perfect by science, but they always remain relative to the human ability of thinking and understanding: they are as perfect as a person is perfect. Achieve the important knowledge that a perfect understanding of something is unusual and impossible for a limited mind. Perfect understanding belongs to one perfect Mind. Without this knowledge, the knowledge of the faithful and the holy, the correctness of the position and the correctness of the activity will constantly be alien to the genius himself. The position and activity here are understood to be spiritual, in which each of us is obliged to develop by the development assigned and prescribed for the rational creature by its Creator. There is no mention here of the urgent situation and the urgent activity into which we are placed for the shortest possible time during our earthly wanderings, as members of human society. It seems: what is closer to me? What is known to me better than me? I am always with myself; by natural necessity I must constantly pay attention to myself; I pay attention to other items, as far as it is necessary for me. Love for myself is given to me by God's law in proportion to love for my neighbor. And I, who undertake to recognize distant things in the depths of the earth and the sea, in the depths of the heavens and beyond the vaults of the sky, come into difficulty, into complete bewilderment, I don’t know what to answer when I hear the question: who am I and what am I? Who am I? Is it a creature? But I am subject to extraordinary changes from the day of my conception to the day of my death. A being, in the full sense, should not be subject to change; it must constantly manifest the same, always equal force of life. There is no evidence of life in me that would be entirely contained in myself; I undergo a complete exhaustion of the vital force in my body: I ​​die. Not only is my mortal body subject to death, but my very soul does not have within itself the condition of indestructible life: the sacred tradition of the Orthodox Church teaches me this. The soul, like the Angels, was granted immortality by God: it is not their property, not their natural belonging 41 . The body, to maintain its life, needs to be nourished by air and the products of the earth; the soul, in order to support and preserve its immortality, needs the mysterious action of the Divine Right Hand on itself. Who am I? Phenomenon? But I feel my existence. For many years, someone pondered about a satisfactory answer to the proposed question, pondered, delving into self-examination in the light of a lamp - the Spirit of God. After many years of reflection, he was led to the following relative definition of man: “man is a reflection of a being, and borrows from this Being the character of a being” 42. God, the one “He” (Ex. 3:1), is reflected in human life. This is how the sun depicts itself in a pure raindrop. In a raindrop we see the sun; but what we see in it is not the sun. The sun is there, at an unattainable height. What is my soul? What is my body? What is my mind? What are the feelings of the heart? What are the feelings of the body? What are the powers of soul and body? What is life? Unresolved questions, unanswerable questions! Over the course of thousands of years, the human race began to discuss these issues, tried to resolve them, and retreated from them, becoming convinced of their intractability. What could be more familiar to us than our body? Having senses, it is subject to the action of all these senses: knowledge of the body should be most satisfactory, as acquired by both the mind and the senses. It is exactly the same in relation to knowledge about the soul, about its properties and powers, about objects that are not subject to the feelings of the body 43; together it is knowledge that is extremely insufficient in relation to the conditions under which knowledge can be recognized as complete and perfect. To find out the meaning of any substance, science must decompose it into its component, non-decomposable parts, then recreate the decomposed substance from its component parts. Science accepts the knowledge about matter obtained by this method as true: assumptions 44, until they are positively proven, are not allowed into the body of knowledge, into the treasury of science, although human arbitrariness proclaims them both orally and in print, as if about truths, mocking the ignorance and gullibility of mankind. In order to satisfactorily decompose the human body, it is necessary to do this while the body is still alive. There is no way to determine the meaning of life except by grasping it and considering it alone and in itself. The correctness of decomposition must be proven by the formation of a living body from its constituent parts. This is impossible. We decompose only corpses 45, not knowing what life leaves in the body it leaves behind and what it takes with it. By uncovering the corpses, we become acquainted with the structure of the machine hidden in the inside of the body, but a machine no longer capable of movement and action, a machine already deprived of its essential meaning. What do we know about our body? Something far removed from complete and perfect knowledge. Let us ask our mind, this main instrument for acquiring knowledge, to give an essential definition to itself: what is it? Soul power? But this only expresses a concept that has appeared in us from impressions produced by the actions of the mind; it does not determine the essence of the mind. We must say exactly the same about the human spirit, that is, about those sublime heartfelt feelings that animals are deprived of, about the feelings by which the human heart differs from the heart of animals and which constitute an elegant excess of feelings in the human heart over the hearts of animals. Spirit is the power of the soul. How are the powers of the soul connected to the soul itself? The image of the connection is incomprehensible, since the image of the connection of the body with its senses, vision, hearing and other various senses is incomprehensible. The feelings of the body leave the body at the same time that life leaves it, they are carried away from it by the departing soul. This means that bodily feelings belong to the soul itself, and when it resides in the body, they become, as it were, feelings of the body. From this follows a necessary natural consequence: the ability of the soul to feel what the body feels; the affinity of the soul with the body, not that perfect antithesis which some have rashly attributed to the soul and created spirits, which hitherto is attributed to them by ignorance 46 . There is a gradualness among creatures and a difference arising from gradualness, just as there is between numbers. The difference can be very significant; but it does not destroy either affinity or gradualism. In this gradualness, one thing is rougher towards us, the other is subtler; but everything created, limited, existing in space and time, cannot be alien to materiality, this integral part of everything limited. Immaterial - one God: He is distinguished by a decisive difference from all creatures; It is opposite to them in essence and properties, just as infinite numbers are opposite to all of them, without exception. This is what we know about our soul, our mind, our heart! What do we know? Something, the most limited something. Who knows all this with complete satisfaction? One God! He, by the property of the infinite, has a perfect concept of everything, alien to any deficiency, and He proved such a concept with perfect proof: by creating out of nothing countless worlds, visible and invisible to us, known and unknown. It is characteristic of the infinite to animate the non-existent into existence, which no numbers are able to create, no matter how great they are. The proof of the infinity of the Mind that governs the universe continues to be magnificently expressed by the existence of everything that exists 47 . The slightest number of laws of creativity and existence, and even then to some extent, have been comprehended by people. They also comprehended that all of nature is embraced by legislation that exceeds human comprehension. If the mind is needed to comprehend a particle of laws, the more necessary it is to compose them. Human! “Pay attention to yourself,” look at yourself! From a clear, if possible, understanding of yourself, you will look more clearly and correctly at everything that is subject to your gaze outside of you. How, for what reason did I come into existence and appear in the field of earthly life? I appeared in this field involuntarily and unconsciously; I don’t know the reason for the entry into existence from non-existence. I think about it, I look for the reason and I cannot help but admit that I must, of necessity, recognize it in the determination of the unlimited, unknown, incomprehensible Will, to which I am unconditionally subject. I appeared with the abilities of soul and body, as with accessories: they were given to me - not chosen by me. I appeared with various infirmities, as if already sealed by execution; appeared as a sufferer and doomed to suffering. I found myself in the circumstances and surroundings that I found, or those that were prepared for me, I don’t know. On the path of earthly wandering, I very rarely can act according to my will, fulfill my desire: almost always, I am forcibly drawn by some invisible, omnipotent Hand, some stream, to which I cannot offer any resistance. I almost always encounter something unexpected and unforeseen. I am taken away from earthly life most suddenly, without any consent of mine, without any attention to my earthly needs, to the needs of those around me, for which, in my judgment and theirs, I am necessary. I'm leaving the earth forever, not knowing where I'll go! I'm being carried away in terrible loneliness! In the unknown country, which I am entering by death, I will be greeted by something new, something never seen before. To enter an unknown country, I must leave everything earthly on earth, I must throw off my very body. From there, from an unknown country, I cannot give any news about myself to the earth: because there is no way for anyone clothed in the shell of earthly, coarse matter to hear the message from there. My life in this visible world is an uninterrupted struggle with death; such is she from my cradle to my grave. I can die every day and hourly, but I don’t know the day and hour of death. I know that I will die; there is not and cannot be the slightest doubt about this, but I live as if immortal: because I feel immortal. The feeling of death was taken away from me, and I would never have believed that it was possible for a person to die if I had not seen in all people that death is the inevitable destiny of every person. The Gospel correctly depicts the weakness of our power over us. “No matter how much effort you make,” the Gospel tells man, “you cannot add one cubit to your age (Matthew 6:27), and turn your white hair black” (Matthew 5:36). “Why is it done this way? One cannot help but admit that much of what is said here is said with palpable justice. The suffering state of humanity on earth, the state before the eyes of everyone, must have its own reason. But how can posterity be guilty of the sin of a forefather who is distant from posterity and already alien to posterity? The offspring are punished: this is obvious. Why is it punished, innocent? Why does it bring terrible eternal punishment? Execution passes from generation to generation, falls heavily on each generation, erases each generation from the face of the earth, having previously subjected each generation to countless languidities. Each generation appears on the face of the earth unconsciously, involuntarily, forcibly. Each person enters earthly life without the ability to voluntarily act with abilities that in an infant should be more like seeds than plants. What kind of participation of posterity in the sin of the forefather, participation worthy of such executions, when there was and is not the very opportunity for posterity to take part in the sin, either by subtle heartfelt consent, or by the slightest deviation of the mind? Where is God's justice here? Where is the goodness? I see one thing that is contrary to them.” This is how a weak person cries, blinded by his sinful, material life. So he cries out and calls before him to interrogate the fate of God. The ignorance of God is so blatant! So cries out human pride! Man’s ignorance of himself is so glaring! This is how the false concept of oneself and one’s entire surroundings screams! So they cry - and no one hears the cry. Through such exclamations, people, without understanding it, only reveal the illness of conceit and self-delusion that has befallen them: through such exclamations, they denounce the consciousness that lives within them, the ability and desire to be stewards of the universe, judges and mentors of God in His governance of the world, and no one gives them high, transcendental thrones, on which the indignant angels wanted to sit before the indignant people. A reckless undertaking sinks, as if into a dark abyss, in its recklessness, tormenting victims who have recklessly given themselves over to this undertaking, tormenting them with fruitless torments in insoluble chains. Events go on as usual, no change occurs in the economy of the universe, God’s destinies remain immutable. The insignificance and self-delusion of people is proven to them positively and irrefutably by harsh experience. The most precise mathematical consideration explains to man with certainty the infinite difference between him and God both in essence and in properties, although the same words are used to depict both because of the poverty of human language. The Infinite is governed by completely different laws than everything that can only be represented by numbers according to the method of positive science, on which all other sciences are based, just as the entire composition of man is based on the bones. From this axiom follows another axiom: the actions of the infinite are naturally inaccessible to the comprehension of all, no matter what, rational creatures that are represented by numbers. A number, no matter how much it increases, remains a number and differs from the infinite by the infinite difference by which all numbers are equally distinguished from the infinite. The desire to comprehend the inaccessible to comprehension is nothing more than a consequence of false knowledge, composed of false concepts. This desire cannot but act in accordance with its origin: it must lead to the most disastrous consequences, according to the nature of all actions proceeding from lies. Where did this desire come from? Obviously: from a proud, erroneous opinion about himself, which entices a person to give himself a different meaning than what is given to him in the vast universe. Looking at myself! And here is the spectacle that appeared before me as I looked at myself! This is how I am undeniably described, described with true features, living colors, described by the very experiences, the very events of my life! What conclusion should I draw about myself from this painting? The conclusion is that I am by no means an original and independent being, that I am deprived of the most basic, most vital knowledge about myself. There is an urgent need, an urgent necessity, for someone else to explain me more satisfactorily, for him to announce to me my purpose, for him to show me the correct activity, and thereby protect me from activity without meaning and without purpose. This urgent need, this necessity, was recognized by God himself. He recognized it and gave people a frank teaching that leads us to knowledge that is not accessible to our own comprehension. In the revealed teaching, God revealed Himself to man, to the extent that the unlimited and inexplicable God can be explained and revealed to a limited man. In the revealed teaching, God revealed to man the meaning and purpose of man, his relationship to God and to the worlds, visible and invisible. God revealed to man the knowledge of man, to the extent that this knowledge is accessible to the human mind. Complete and perfect knowledge of man, like every other creature, has one, capable of complete and perfect knowledge of everything: the all-perfect God. Divine revealed teaching, being compared with the knowledge gained by a person by an accurate examination of himself, is confirmed by this knowledge and confirms it. Knowledge, confirmed by one another, appears before humanity in the bright light of irrefutable truth. Divine revealed teaching proclaims to me, life's experiences prove to me that I am God's creation. I am the creation of my God! I am a servant of my God, a slave completely subordinate to the power of God, embraced, contained by His power, unlimited power, autocratic in the precise sense of the word. The power does not consult with anyone, the power does not give any report to anyone about its assumptions and actions: no one, neither from people nor from angels, is able to either give advice, or listen, or understand the report. “Thou shalt bring forth His Word unto God” (John 1:2). I am a slave of my God, despite the fact that I have been given free will and reason to control the will. My will is free almost only in the choice of good and evil: in other respects it is protected from everywhere. I can wish! But my wish, meeting with the opposite will of other people, with the opposite direction of insurmountable circumstances, remains for the most part unfulfilled. I can wish for a lot, but my own weakness makes many of my wishes fruitless. When a wish remains unfulfilled, especially when the wish seems prudent, useful, and necessary, then the heart is struck with sadness. According to the meaning of the wish, sadness can intensify, often turning into despondency and even despair. What calms you down in severe times of mental distress, when all human help is either powerless or impossible? One thing that calms one is the consciousness of oneself as a slave and a creation of God; This consciousness alone has such power. As soon as a person says prayerfully to God with all his heart: may your will be done to me, my Lord, when the excitement of the heart subsides. From these words, spoken sincerely, the most severe sorrows are deprived of their dominance over a person. What does this mean? This means that a person, having confessed himself to be a slave and a creation of God, having surrendered entirely to the will of God, immediately enters with his whole being into the realm of holy Truth. Truth brings the right mood to the spirit and life. He who has ascended to the realm of Truth, who has submitted to the Truth, receives moral and spiritual freedom, receives moral and spiritual happiness. This freedom and this happiness do not depend on people and circumstances. “If you continue in My word,” the Savior said to the Jews, “you will truly be My disciples, and you will understand the Truth, and the Truth will set you free. Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. If the Son of God, who is Self-Truth, sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:31–34, 36). Serving sin, lies, and vanity is slavery in the full sense, even if it appears outwardly to be brilliant freedom. Slavery is eternal slavery. Only he is completely and truly free who is a true servant of his God. I plunge even deeper into examining myself, and a new sight opens up before me. I see a decisive disorder of my own will, disobedience to its reason, and in my mind I see a loss of the ability to guide the will correctly, a loss of the ability to act correctly. In a distracted life, this state is little noticed, but in solitude, when solitude is illuminated by the light of the Gospel, the state of disorder of mental powers appears in a vast, gloomy, terrible picture. And it serves as evidence to me that I am a fallen being. I am a servant of my God, but a slave who has angered God, a rejected slave, a slave punished by the hand of God. This is how Divine Revelation declares me to be. My condition is a condition common to all people. Humanity is a category of creatures languishing in various disasters, being executed. It can't be otherwise! I am surrounded by evidence of this both outside and inside me. If I were not an exile on earth, like all my brothers, people, if my earthly life were not a punishment, then why should this whole life be a field of incessant labor, incessant conflict, insatiable desire, never satisfied by anything? Why should earthly life be a path of suffering alone, sometimes acting more strongly, sometimes weaker, sometimes felt, sometimes drowned out by the intoxication of earthly cares and pleasures? Why should there be illnesses and all other misfortunes, private and public? Why should there be quarrels, insults, and murders in human society? Why should there be all this variety of evil, vigilantly campaigning against good, oppressing and persecuting good, almost always triumphing over good? Why is every person poisoned within himself by passions, tormented by them incomparably more than by sorrows from without? Why should there be death, devouring everyone mercilessly? What kind of phenomenon are generations, replacing one another, emerging from oblivion, entering life for a short time, again plunging forever into the unknown? What kind of phenomenon is the activity of each generation on earth, as if eternal on it? What kind of phenomenon is this activity, constantly contradicting itself, constantly building with effort, building on streams of human blood, as if on cement, constantly destroying its work with the same effort, with the same bloodshed?.. The earth is a vale of exile, a vale of uninterrupted disorder and confusion, a vale of urgent suffering of beings who have lost their primitive dignity and home have lost common sense. People suffer in countless forms of suffering in this dark and deep vale! They suffer both under the yoke of poverty and in abundance of wealth, they suffer both in wretched huts and in magnificent royal palaces, they suffer from disasters from without and from that terrible disorder that affects the nature of every person inside him, which affects both his soul and body, which perverts and blinds his mind. So I’m guessing about myself! The experiences of my life and everything that has happened and is happening to all of humanity lead me to such undeniable, tangible conclusions. This is how Divine Revelation depicts me, depicts me with greater certainty, opening for me the gates to the realm of knowledge according to the gift of my God, gates that are closed, to which I could only reach, before which I could only stand by the action of my own thinking. It is told by Divine revelation that the first man was created by God out of nothing, created in the beauty of spiritual grace, created immortal, free from evil. This story cannot but be fair: I feel immortal, and evil is alien to me; I hate him, I am tormented by him, I am carried away by him, as a flatterer and as a tyrant. The first man created on earth was taken to a part of heaven called paradise. Here, in the midst of undisturbed bliss, he poisoned himself by spontaneously tasting evil, in himself and with himself he poisoned and destroyed all his offspring. Adam, as this man was called, was struck by death, that is, by sin, which irrevocably upset human nature and made him incapable of bliss. Killed by this death, but not deprived of being, and death is all the more terrible as it is felt, he is thrown to the earth in chains: in rough, painful flesh, transformed into this from a dispassionate, holy, spiritual body. The earth is cursed for the crime of man: it, having lost its primitive state (Gen. 2:5-6), was transformed into the state that the abode of exiles from heaven should have for trampling on the commandments of God in heaven. We encounter a hostile mood towards us from all visible nature at every step! At every step we meet her reproach, her censure, her disagreement with our behavior! Before man, who rejected submission to God, the soulless and animate creature rejected submission! She was submissive to man as long as he remained submissive to God! Now she obeys a person by force, persists, often violates obedience, often crushes her master, cruelly and unexpectedly rebelling against him. The law of reproduction of the human race, established by the Creator after creation, has not been abolished; but he began to act under the influence of the fall; he has changed, become corrupted. The parents were subjected to hostile relations among themselves, despite their carnal union (Gen. 3:16); they were subjected to the pains of birth and the labors of education (Gen. 3:16–19); children, conceived in the womb of corruption and sin (Ps. 50:7), come into being as victims of death. Staying on the surface of the earth, among various and numerous longings, is given to every person urgently. After the passage of time determined by the incomprehensible God, each person must descend into eternal prison, into hell, formed by the vast interior of the earthly planet. What is humanity, filled with proud dreams of itself, maddened by this vain and false dream? Humanity is rubbish, obscene for the sky, swept out of the sky, thrown first to the mouth of the abyss, then gradually thrown, as it multiplies, into the very abyss. The abyss is called the abyss: this is how it is in relation to people. There is no way out of it: “rivet its faith forever” (John 2:7), says Scripture. I listen to the message of Divine Revelation and recognize it as true. It is impossible not to recognize it as fair! The Infinite God is all-perfect good; man differs from Him in an infinite difference in essence, and in properties and direction he has become in a position of opposition to God. If a person, so insignificant before God, is also an opponent of God, then what significance should he have before the shrine and greatness of the Divine? 3 the meaning of despicable uncleanness and defilement, according to the testimony of Scripture (Apoc. 22, 11, 15). He must be expelled from the face of God, as if hidden from the sight of God. Divine Revelation teaches man that he is a creation of God and a servant of God, a criminal slave, a rejected creature, reptiles and perishing in his fall (Gen. 2:7, 22, 3:11-12. Ps. 119:125, 89:13, 16, Ps. 37, etc.). Poisoned by communication with the leader and parent of evil, with the frenzied and stubborn enemy of God, with the fallen angel, deprived of natural freedom by submission to this all-evil spirit, man perverted his natural attitude towards God, and became, like the fallen angel, an enemy of God (Rom. 5:10). Some people were satisfied with this state, not understanding or assuming a different state, finding pleasure in serving sin; others, instructed by God and the remnant of their good will, entered into an intensified struggle against sin, but could not cleanse nature from unnatural impurities, from evil, could not break the shackles of slavery and overthrow the yoke of sin and death. Only the Creator of nature could restore nature. Humanity languished in terrible slavery for more than five thousand years, according to the incomprehensible judgment of God; it languished in slavery, abundantly filled the prisons of hell, having received from God the promise of liberation at the very hour of falling into slavery. “One day before the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). The promise is pronounced together with the sentence of punishment for the crime. Humanity was worthy of this promise because the cause of the fall was deception and infatuation, and not a deliberate and deliberate plan. After five thousand years, the Redeemer, God incarnate, descended to earth, to the exiles, to the land of their exile. He visited both the threshold of our prison - the surface of the earth, and the prison itself - hell. He granted salvation to all people, leaving them free to choose whether to accept salvation or reject it. He freed all those who believed in Him: He elevated those imprisoned in the underground abyss to heaven, and He brought those wandering on the earth’s surface into communion with God, breaking their communion with Satan. The God-man, having taken upon himself all the consequences of the fall of man except sin, also took on the image of earthly life corresponding to the fallen and rejected, punished by the justice of God, aware of his fall, confessing the justice of God with the complacent patience of all allowances. He revealed in His activity a model for the activity of every person in the field of his earthly life. The Gospel presents to our eyes two distinctive features in the activity of the Savior: the most precise fulfillment of the will of God in matters dependent on arbitrariness, and perfect submission to the will of God in the destinies of God. “I came down from heaven,” said the Lord, “not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 6:38). “The cup that the Father gave Me, shall not the Imam drink it?” (John 18:11). The God-man expressed the most precise fulfillment of the will of God and submission to the destinies of God with His entire life. The great virtue, the beginning of all virtues, lost by Adam in heaven, the virtue of obedience to God, was brought by the God-man from heaven to earth to people who were languishing in destruction caused by disobedience to God. This virtue especially appeared in all its greatness during the Lord’s perception of severe suffering. He, “in the form of God,” without ceasing to be God, “humbled Himself, and took on the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of mankind, and being found in the likeness of a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, death on the cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). Because of such complete submission to God, the Lord was the only true Servant of God by His human nature 48 . He was an all-perfect Servant of God, who never deviated from fulfilling the will of God and from submitting to this will. Not a single righteous man has fulfilled this most sacred duty of man before God satisfactorily and without failure. The Lord declared to the assembly of the Jews: “I do not seek My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 5:30). Before His descent into life-giving suffering and death on the cross for the human race, the Lord revealed in Himself the weakness of fallen man before God’s punishing destinies. He began to grieve and grieve (Matthew 26:37). He deigned to reveal the longing of His soul to the chosen disciples: “My soul is sorrowful unto death” (Matthew 26:38), He told them. Then he turned to prayer, this faithful refuge in adversity and temptation. He fell “on His face” (Matthew 26:39), and was elevated by humanity to such an intense feat that “His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground” (Luke 22:44). Despite such a tense state into which the human nature of the God-Man was brought, His prayer simultaneously expressed the presence in Him of the human will and the complete submission in Him of the human will to the will of God. The prayer of the God-man, pronounced by Him before going into suffering, is a spiritual, precious heritage for the entire Christian tribe: it is capable of shedding consolation into a soul languishing under the burden of the most severe sorrows. “My Father,” said the Lord in His prayer, “if it is possible to eat; Let this cup pass from Me: neither do I as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39); “Neither is my will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42). The Lord called the cup of God's destiny. This cup is given by God to man for his salvation. The God-man deigned to take upon himself the death of the cross and the abuse, torment, and torture that preceded it arbitrarily. As the Son of God and God, who has one will with the Father and the Spirit, He laid execution on Himself, on the innocent of sin, on the Son of man and together the Son of God, for the atonement of mankind guilty of the sins. To those who attempted to use human means in His defense, in opposition to the destinies of God, He said: “Return Your sword to its place. Or do you imagine that I cannot now pray to My Father, and that a greater angel than twelve legions will present to Me? How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled”, in which God’s determination is depicted, “as it should be”? (Matthew 26:52–54) 49. The Lord expressed the same concept about the operation of the immutable destinies of God before Pilate. The proud Roman, offended by the silence of the Lord, said: “Don’t you speak to me? Don’t you think that the imam has the power to crucify you, and the imam has the power to let you go?” The Lord answered him: “Have no authority whatsoever upon Me, unless it be given from Above” (John 19:10–11). The destinies of God are at work, the power of God is at work: you are an instrument that does not understand itself. But the weapon is gifted with reason and free will: it is convinced of this, expresses it with impudence and vanity. It acted without any understanding of the destinies of God, it acted freely and arbitrarily: its action is declared to be sin, which has its own weight and measure at the judgment of God (John 19:11). Resistance to the destinies of God is considered one of the undertakings of Satan. When the Lord foreshadowed to the disciples about the suffering and violent death that lay ahead of him, “Peter, when he sang it, began to contradict Him, saying: You are merciful, Lord, you should not have these things. He turned to Petrov’s speech: follow me, Satan, you are the temptation of me: you do not think that the essence of God is human” (Matthew 16: 22-23). Peter was apparently moved by a good feeling; but he acted from the way of thinking and from the good that belong to fallen human nature. The mind and goodness of fallen human nature are hostile to the will of God and the all-holy good that comes from God; they blame and condemn the destinies of God. The human mind and will, in their blindness, are ready to oppose and resist the destinies and determinations of God, not understanding that such an undertaking is an absurd undertaking, it is a struggle between the most limited, insignificant creature and the omnipotent and all-perfect God. “You have no understanding of the times and seasons that the Father has laid down in His power” (Acts 1:7), the Lord said to the Apostles when they asked Him about the time in which the kingdom of Israel should be formed. This answer of the Lord is the answer to all questions of human curiosity and pride about the destinies of God. “It is not yours,” O people, “understand” what “God has placed in His power”! You have an understanding that corresponds to your mind: it is not typical for you to understand the thought of the infinite Mind. Your activity, people, should entirely consist in fulfilling the will of God. An example of this activity is shown, the rules of this activity were taught to humanity by a perfect man, God, who took upon Himself humanity. Moved by the power of the most correct faith in God, carefully follow the commandments of the Gospel, and reverently submit to the destinies of God. What leads to violation, to trampling on the commandments of Christ, to opposition to the destinies of God, to opposition through vain efforts, grumbling, blasphemy, despair? Forgetfulness of eternity, forgetfulness of death, forgetfulness of the fact that we are short-term wanderers on earth, rejection of the thought that we are exiles on it, the desire to satisfy lusts and passions, the desire to enjoy carnal and sinful pleasures, destructive deception and seduction of oneself, under the charm of which a person insanely abuses power over himself and his will, sacrificing himself entirely as an earthly sacrifice vanity, killing himself for the bliss returned by the suffering feat of the Redeemer, preparing for himself an eternal coffin in hell, a coffin for both body and soul. “Let this be the wisdom of you, even in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5-8), the Apostle Paul exhorts Christians, pointing to the submission of the God-man to the destinies of God, to unquestioning submission, which extended to the acceptance of the execution to which only criminals from barbarian nations were subjected, from which criminals from the citizens of Rome were free. “We have put aside all pride and are comfortable with serious 50 sin; let us persevere with patience and pursue the struggle that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author of our faith and perfecter of faith, who, instead of the joy set before Him, endured the cross, being careless about the shame 51 . Consider the reproach of the sinner who has suffered from him 52, lest you suffer from the cold, your souls weakening” (Heb. 12:1-3). “Jesus, may He sanctify people with His blood, has deigned to suffer outside the gates. Therefore let us come to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:12-13). Departure from the camp and putting aside all pride is called renunciation of peace. The Apostle recalls the Divine consolation spoken by God to those of His chosen ones whom He adopted as sons to Himself, and whom, as proof of adoption, He visits with sorrows: “My son! Do not be overwhelmed by the Lord’s punishment, weaken below, we reprove from Him, for the Lord loves him, punishes him, beats every son, and accepts him” (Heb. 12:5-6). “Christ suffered for us,” says the holy Apostle Peter, “leave us an image, so that we may follow in his footsteps” (1 Pet. 2:21). “If you do good and endure suffering, this is acceptable in the sight of God: for this you are called quickly” (1 Pet. 2:20-21). Such are the destinies of God! This is God's definition! This is the calling of true Christians for the entire duration of their earthly wanderings! Christians beloved by God and Heaven! Do not be surprised, as it were, by a strange adventure, unusual, occurring out of order, by that fiery temptation that is sent to you to test (1 Pet. 4:12). Rejoice in the onslaught of temptation! Just as here on earth you become partakers of Christ’s sufferings: so in the future life you will become partakers of His glory and triumph (1 Pet. 4:13). The house of God is subject to the judgment of God and needs this judgment (1 Pet. 4:17). The entire Church of Christ and every Christian are called the House of God. This house requires a visit from God and cleansing, as it is subject to constant desecration and damage. And with great help from sorrows that humble the spirit of man, so inclined toward exaltation, salvation is difficult, very difficult. “The righteous can hardly escape!” (1 Pet. 4:18), if so, then what awaits “those who resist God’s Gospel?” (1 Pet. 4:17). “Where will the wicked and sinful appear?” (1 Pet. 4:18). “Acquire humility: for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). You will feel the coming of grace through the wonderful calm and consolation that will flow into your hearts when you confess God’s judgment regarding you as righteous, and yourself as worthy of punishment and in need of it. When temptations come, do not give in to sadness, hopelessness, despondency, murmuring, these manifestations of pride and unbelief: on the contrary, quickened and inspired by faith, “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that in due time you may take away all your sorrow,” that is, cast all your care and all your solicitude “on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Pet. 5, 6–7). Suffering ones! Know that you suffer according to the will of God; be convinced that without the will of God, without God’s permission, no sorrow would touch you. The Lord looked upon you mercifully, took pleasure in you, recognized your heart and life as pleasing to Himself, and therefore extended a helping hand to you in His destinies. He sent or allowed you sorrows for your purification, for your protection, as a means to achieve perfection. Suffering by the will of God! During the onslaught of sorrows, surrender yourself entirely to the will and mercy of God, and be especially diligent in fulfilling the commandments of God (1 Pet. 4:19). The time of sorrow is that blessed time in which God creates the soul of His beloved chosen one from among men. God has established a narrow and sorrowful path from earthly life to heaven: the procession along this path under the cross is commanded; along this path, under the burden of His cross, passed the Leader of the Christian tribe, God incarnate. The cross is patience in the Lord of all sorrows and misfortunes that will be allowed by God’s providence. This is God's judgment. What is it based on? - on the fact that a person on earth is a criminal in a place of exile. This criminal was given a short period of earthly life solely so that he could see his state of fall and rejection, recognize the need for salvation, and gain salvation through the Redeemer of men, our Lord Jesus Christ. A criminal who has confessed himself to be a criminal and seeks pardon must express his confession of sinfulness with his very life. Confession cannot be considered sincere unless it is evidenced by appropriate behavior. The criminal is obliged to prove the truth of his appeal to God by fulfilling the will of God and submission to this will: he is obliged to offer before God, who is just and in mercy, the patience of God’s punitive permissions, to offer humble patience, like fragrant incense, as a favorable sacrifice, as a reliable testimony of faith. All the saints, all without exception, partook of the path of sorrow (Heb. 12:8). All of them passed through the course of earthly life along the thorns, eating unleavened bread of various deprivations, being sprinkled with bitter hyssop, constantly drinking the cup of various trials. This was necessary for their salvation and perfection: sorrows served them together as a means of spiritual education, as a medicine, and as a punishment. The damaged nature in not a single person was left without its characteristic fruitfulness to a greater or lesser extent; Our damaged nature constantly needs, as an antidote, sorrows: they extinguish in it sympathy for the sinful poison of passions, especially for pride (2 Cor. 12:7), for passion, the most poisonous and destructive among the passions; they lead the servant of God out of a pompous, incorrect opinion of himself, into humility and spiritual intelligence. A pompous opinion of oneself must necessarily take away the correctness and dignity of a life that appears to be satisfactory in appearance 53 . “I understood, Lord,” His holy prophet confesses to God, “for the truth of Thy destiny, and Thou hast truly humbled me” (Ps. 119:75). “Your destinies are good” (Ps. 119:39), despite their strict outward appearance. Their consequences are beneficial, their fruit is life-giving and delightful. “It is good for me, for Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn by Thy justification” (Ps. 119:71). “I have chosen the path of truth and have not forgotten Your destiny” (Ps. 119:30), “I have not deviated from Your destinies” (Ps. 119:102), because without submission to them, pleasing You is impossible. In grave temptations and misfortunes, not finding help from anywhere, “I remembered Your destiny from eternity, and was comforted” (Ps. 119:52). “You trust in your fate!” (Ps. 119:43). “Your fate will help me!” (Ps. 119, 175). “In the seventh day”, that is, constantly “praising You about the destinies of Your righteousness” (Ps. 119:164): the action of man, corresponding to the action of God in His incomprehensible destinies, is constant or, if possible, frequent praise of God. By glorifying God, thoughts of unbelief, cowardice, murmuring, blasphemy, and despair are driven away, and holy, Divine thoughts are introduced. The apostle says: “We are judged by the Lord, we are punished, lest we be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32). Amen. The people of Israel are called here both Jacob and Israel by the name of their ancestor, who was named Jacob at birth, and was renamed Israel after he was granted the vision of God. In the spiritual sense, Israel refers to Christians who have achieved significant spiritual success. St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 56. Bitterness, insensibility, blindness of mind and heart. St. Abba Dorotheos, lesson 11. “Angels,” says Saint John of Damascus, “are called incorporeal and immaterial in comparison with us. In comparison with God, the only incomparable one, everything turns out to be crude and material.” Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 2, ch. 3, About Angels. Science, in its modern development, defines with all clarity that everything limited is, of necessity, material. St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 2, ch. 3, About Angels. St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 2, ch. 3, about Angels. St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 4, ch. 13. This applies to some carnal people, in whom the soul is not quickened by the action of Divine grace. Those revived by this action have a clearer concept of the soul. A corpse is a human body in the first stages of decomposition after leaving it with the soul, but not yet completely decomposed. Descartes and his followers recognize the soul as a substance completely opposite to the body, having nothing in common with it, having nothing to do with space and time: we recognize the one God as such a substance. An accurate exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John of Damascus, book IV, ch. 13. According to the explanation of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, the 17th verse of the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The largest army of the Romans, rulers of the universe, extended to 12 legions. It is obvious that here the intention of the Word of God was to express the concept of such an army, which is more numerous and stronger than any human army. Without paying attention to the dishonor inflicted on Him. This is seen with particular clarity from the book of Job. The righteous man first counted his virtues and presented them in a beautiful, picturesque picture; when he was purified and perfected by sorrows, then his concept of himself changed: he saw himself as if he had disappeared before the greatness of the Divine, he recognized himself as earth and ashes. You might be interested in: