Поучение к простому народу при посещении епархии. О спасении

Beloved brothers! The ineffable mercy of God has made me, unworthy, your shepherd; it vouchsafed me to visit you, to combine my poor prayers with your prayers, and, finally, to talk with you. What should we, brothers, talk about? Let's talk about our salvation. We are all short-term wanderers on earth. Each of us will stay there for as long as God has assigned him, and then he will die, he will certainly die. And our houses, and gardens, and fields, and property, and our very bodies will be taken from us by death. The soul, one soul with its deeds, good or evil, will go into eternity, in eternity it will either be constantly blissful and rejoice, or constantly suffer, cry and groan. Let's talk about how we can be saved, how to please God, how to get rid of bitter hell, how to inherit a sweet paradise. Brethren! Get ready to listen carefully to my words so that you understand and remember them. Having the opportunity to rarely talk with you, I now intend to teach you the most necessary teaching. "God! You will open my mouth, and my mouth will declare Your praise” (Ps. 50:17). Whoever wants to be saved must belong to the one holy Orthodox Church, be her faithful son, and submit to her institutions in everything. If someone does not obey the Church, if someone has separated from the Church, if someone is a schismatic, then no matter how much he bows, no matter how much he fasts, no matter how much he prays, he will not be saved. The Lord compared the one who disobeys the Church with an idolater: “If anyone disobeys the Church,” He said, “you will be like a pagan and a publican” (Matthew 18:17). Even in the Old Testament, when Saul made an unauthorized sacrifice, in disagreement with the commandment of the Lord, the prophet Samuel said to him: “It was folly for you, because you did not keep my commandments, even as the Lord commanded you” (1 Samuel 13:13). “Burnt offerings and sacrifices are acceptable to the Lord, how does one obey the voice of the Lord? This obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than the fat of a ram. As sin is enchantment, so sin is rebellion, and as sin is idolatry, so is disobedience” (1 Samuel 15:22–23). In the New Testament, the beloved disciple of the Lord testified that only the Lord accepts our prayer when this prayer is offered according to the will of the Lord (1 John 5:14). The prayers of those who oppose God by their actions are not accepted and rejected by God (Matthew 7:21–23). The schismatic and the heretic are alien to humility, just as the devil is alien to humility, and therefore they are alien to salvation, just as the devil is alien to it. Once upon a time the devil appeared to the Monk Macarius and said: “Macarius! You fast a lot, but I don’t eat at all; you sleep little, but I don’t sleep at all; You defeat me with only one thing - your humility" 246. The schismatics hold long and difficult fasts, spend whole nights in prayer, make numerous bows, but alas! They work in vain and in vain because they do not want to reconcile themselves. Without humility it is impossible to be a disciple of Christ. The Lord said: “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). He who has not humbled himself is not a disciple of Christ, he has not submitted to Christ. True humility comes from obedience, said Saint John Climacus 247, just as the Lord showed His humility in that He “was obedient to the point of death, death on the cross” (Phil. 2:8). Without obedience to the Church there is no humility; Without humility there is no salvation: “Humble yourself, and save me,” said the prophet (Ps. 114:5). Heresy and schism contain, moreover, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is a mortal sin, unforgivable by God to man, either in this age or in the future, if a person continues in this sin. The blood of martyrdom itself cannot cleanse this sin, according to the teaching of St. John Chrysostom, Fr. This sin is cleansed only when a person renounces his heresy, leaves the schism and joins the holy Church. Whoever wants to be saved must pray to God, albeit little by little, often. On weekdays, pray to God at home: in the morning, rising from sleep; going to bed at night; before lunch and before dinner. Don’t even have breakfast or dinner without remembering God and making the sign of the cross on yourself. On holidays and Sundays they must take part in public church prayers. Go to Matins, to the All-Night Vigil, to the Divine Liturgy and to Vespers. It is great happiness for a sinful person that he is given the opportunity to attend the Church of God: he can beg God to forgive him his sins and grant him salvation. David was a glorious and rich king, he was also a prophet, but he asked one thing from the Lord: “I have asked one thing of the Lord, this I will require: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord, and that I may visit His holy church” (Ps. 27:4). David recognized the opportunity given to him to go to church as the special mercy of God: “but,” he says, “through the abundance of your mercy I will go into your house, I will worship your holy church in your passion” (Ps. 5:8). In general, prayer is the greatest virtue, a means of connecting a person with God. The Holy Fathers call prayer the mother of all virtues, 248 because with it you can ask the merciful Lord for all other virtues, all temporal and eternal blessings, as the Lord testified: “Ask,” He said, “and it will be given to you; seek and ye shall find; push and it will be opened to you.” To the commandment about prayer, the Lord added a promise to hear our prayer: “Whoever asks receives it, and whoever seeks finds, and it will be opened to the one who asks. Your Father in heaven will give good things to those who ask Him” (Matthew 7:7–8, 11). Prayer must be done with faith; it must be based on kindness. What the soul is to the body, so is faith to prayer; just as a body without a soul is dead and incapable of movement, so prayer without faith is dead, devoid of strength and effect. What a foundation, a foundation for a house, is kindness for prayer. Just as a house cannot stand without a foundation, but must fall, so prayer, if it is not based on kindness, cannot ascend to God, but is mired in carnal wisdom and is destroyed by it. The Lord said: “Every time you ask, believe as you receive, and it will be done for you. And whenever you stand praying, forgive whatever you have against anyone: so that your Father who is in heaven will forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:24–25). Prayer not only brings us temporary and eternal benefits, not only attracts God’s blessing to us, it protects us from misfortunes, and rescues us from the greatest disasters. She extracted the prophet Jonah from the belly of the whale; she delivered King Hezekiah from the death that had already been announced to him. “Pray so that you will not fall into misfortune” (Luke 22:40), said the Lord. On the contrary, he who neglects prayer is exposed to many and various disasters and may lose his very salvation. Whoever wants to be saved must, according to his strength, do mental and physical alms. Spiritual almsgiving consists of forgiving one’s neighbors for their sins, i.e. insults and insults inflicted on us by our neighbors. Physical alms consist of helping one's neighbor as much as possible with bread, clothing, money and hospitality. The Lord said: “Blessed are the mercy: for these will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7), that is, they will be saved. On the contrary, judgment without mercy awaits the unmerciful (James 2:13), that is, the unmerciful cannot be saved. Whoever wants to be saved must bring to God thorough repentance for his sins, both during his daily prayers, and especially before his spiritual father during the sacrament of confession. The divinely inspired prophet proclaims: “I have known my iniquity, and have not covered up my sin: I have said: let me confess my iniquity to the Lord, and you have forsaken the wickedness of my heart” (Ps. 31:5). Consider the order of the words spoken by the Holy Spirit: first, a person knows his sins, which is achieved by pious consideration of himself; then he rejects those excuses with which an evil conscience usually tries to excuse its sin; finally, the repentant person becomes an accuser of himself and expresses to the Lord, with his spiritual witness as a witness, all his sins, without at all sparing his pride. Then he receives forgiveness of iniquities from God. The Apostle said: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, that he may forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Why, “if anyone sins, the imams intercede with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and for him there is cleansing for our sins, not for ours specifically, but for the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2). We have an all-powerful intercessor, our Lord Jesus Christ! We have almighty cleansing from our sins by our Lord Jesus Christ! Having destroyed our sins through confession through such an Intercessor and through such cleansing, we undoubtedly receive an all-joyful guarantee of our salvation. After purifying oneself by confession before one’s spiritual father, one must, with the fear of God, faith and love, partake of the all-holy Body of Christ and the all-holy Blood of Christ, which is necessary for salvation. The Lord said: “Amen, amen, I say to you: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you do not drink His blood, you do not have life in you, i.e. you have no salvation. You who eat My flesh and drink My blood will have eternal life,” i.e. has salvation (John 6:53–54). Must participate in at least all four posts, four times a year. If, unfortunately and unfortunately, everyday worries do not allow this to happen, then you should certainly partake of it once a year. Whoever wants to be saved must generously endure all the sorrows that will be allowed to him during this short earthly wandering. Will there be a crop failure, or the already ripened grain will be destroyed by locusts, or hail will strike; whether there is a loss of livestock, a fire, illness of one's own and family members, the death of one of the closest relatives, whether one has to endure persecution and insults from a strong person - all this must be endured generously, without grumbling, especially without blasphemy. The Lord commanded us to win our souls through our patience (Luke 21:19); “He who endures to the end,” He said, “will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). This means: the one who will be saved is not the one who endures one sorrow patiently, but during other sorrows indulges in sorrow and murmuring; The one who will be saved is the one who will complacently endure all the sorrows, all the misfortunes that may befall him during his earthly life until his death, until the day and hour of death. Compassionate patience with sorrows is an active, living consciousness of one’s sinfulness! Compassionate patience with sorrows is an active, living knowledge and confession of the Redeemer! Compassionate patience with sorrows is following our Lord Jesus Christ. “Christ suffered for us,” said the holy Apostle Peter, “leave us an image, so that we may follow His footsteps” (1 Pet. 2:21). No arbitrary feat, no arbitrary deprivation and suffering can bring the benefit to the soul that involuntary sorrows sent by God bring to it. Any arbitrary feat is not devoid of conceit and vanity, more or less obvious; but the feat into which the soul is elevated by sorrow sent by God is free from the aforementioned subtle and disastrous passions. This feat brings abundant humility to the soul and brings it true repentance. Sorrows sent by God are a sure sign for a person that that person has been chosen by God and loved by God. “I,” the Lord testified, “even those I love, I rebuke and punish” (Rev. 3:19). For this reason, the apostle consoles the mourning and suffering in this way: “My son, do not be overwhelmed by the punishment of the Lord, weaken below, we are convicted by Him. The Lord loves him and punishes him: he beats every son, but he accepts him. If you endure chastisement, as if God were found to you as sons” (Heb. 12:5–7). Such is the dignity of earthly sorrows when they are endured with complacency! They are the gift of God (Phil. 1:29); they are a sign of adoption to God! In order to learn to patiently and complacently endure sorrows, one must meet each coming sorrow with the words of the blessed thief: “I accept what is worthy according to my deeds; remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42). It is also useful to remember and repeat the words of the much-sick Job. “We have received good from the hand of the Lord; shall we not endure the evil?” (Job 2:10) “As the Lord willed, so it was: blessed be the name of the Lord forever” (Job 1:21). All the saints, through many sorrows and deaths 249, inherited the Kingdom of Heaven! All the saints glorified and thanked God for the temptations and misfortunes sent to them, by which they were purified, like gold in a furnace, and became capable of eternal bliss. Compassionate patience with the sorrows sent by God is crucifixion on one’s cross. The confessor of his sinfulness becomes a confessor of the Redeemer and from his cross ascends to paradise for the eternal enjoyment of heavenly joys, the sure guarantee of which are earthly sorrows. Anyone who wants to be saved must read divine books. “Blessed is the man,” said the holy prophet David, “who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, and does not stand in the path of sinners, and does not sit in the seat of the destroyers, but does all his will in the law of the Lord, and learns from His law day and night” (Ps. 1:1-2). Our mind, as darkened by sin, cannot in any way be satisfied in relation to salvation with its own thoughts, weak, wavering, deceptive; he needs, through careful reading or careful hearing of the Word of God, to borrow from it Divine thoughts and be admonished by them. We must study the word of God very reverently and very often, so that it can be our guide in the matter of salvation, because our own thoughts can easily distract us from the path of salvation, mistaking untruth for truth. Our own thoughts are so damaged by sin that they even contradict and oppose the word of God. It is a great misfortune to entrust oneself to them! On the contrary, it is a great blessing when someone unfailingly holds on to the word of God, like a blind man holding on to the hand of his guide. The Holy Fathers called reading and hearing the word of God the king of all virtues 250. The Word of God reveals to us all the sinful passions that live and act in our damaged nature, reveals all their tricks, exposes malice when, to deceive us, it hides behind the guise of virtue. The Word of God reveals the machinations and plans of our enemy the devil, and instructs us in how we must repel this evil adversary who thirsts for our destruction. The Word of God constantly calls us to repentance, telling us the endless mercy of God towards fallen humanity suffering under the yoke of sin; it instructs us how to repent, how to make this repentance valid and fruitful. The Word of God presents to us all the vicissitudes and vanity of this world; it depicts before us the disastrous consequences of the seduction of the world and sin; it reveals before us a majestic eternity with its rewards for a pious earthly life and with its terrible executions for iniquities committed on earth. The Word of God teaches us the most detailed and precise teaching about virtues and the means of how to acquire virtues, how to become pleasing to God. In short, the word of God teaches us salvation. Who is a faithful son of the Orthodox Church, who daily, and even better, hourly, in every place of God’s dominion, remembers God and asks Him for mercy and help, who carefully visits the church of God on Sundays and holidays, and prays at home every morning and evening, who is merciful to the poor and strange, who repents of his sins and partakes of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, who endures the sorrows generously sent to him by God, who carefully studies by studying the word of God, he has a precious guarantee of salvation. He still has a feat ahead of him: he must necessarily preserve his treasure - his salvation - from sins, especially from mortal sins. What is mortal sin? A mortal sin is one that kills with eternal death the soul of the person who committed such a sin. If a person dies in mortal sin without bringing proper repentance for it, then demons kidnap his soul and bring it down to the underground, dark and stuffy abysses, to hell for eternal torment. The mortal sins are the following: heresy, schism, apostasy from the Christian faith, blasphemy, sorcery and witchcraft, homicide and suicide, fornication, adultery, unnatural prodigal sins, drunkenness, sacrilege, robbery, theft and any cruel inhuman offense. Of the mortal sins, suicide is the only one without repentance; other mortal sins, due to the great, ineffable mercy of God towards fallen humanity, are healed by repentance. Repentance for mortal sin consists in confessing the sin to the spiritual father, accepting penance from him, and not falling into this sin in the future. But how many who fell into mortal sin were not able to repent of their sin! Another got drunk with wine, and in this state his soul was separated from his body; another went to theft and robbery, and the wrath of God struck him at the very crime! Beware, brothers, of mortal sins! I repeat to you: mortal sin kills the soul. If someone dies in mortal sin without having time to repent of it, his soul goes to hell. She has no hope of salvation. What do non-mortal sins mean? These are sins of thought, word, deed in knowledge and ignorance, which do not kill the soul, but only more or less wound it. Saints are not immune to these sins; but the saints are vigilant over themselves and, noticing the sin into which they were carried away by the weakness common to people, they immediately heal it with repentance. If separation of the soul from the body follows while the person has not had time to wash away his non-mortal sins with repentance, then the soul is not relegated to hell because of these sins; On the way to heaven, in the air, she is allowed to suffer from evil spirits, in whose complicity people commit sins, and is allowed to atone for sins with good deeds. If the soul has enough good deeds, especially if during earthly life it gave a lot of alms, then with this alms and other good deeds it atones for sins; The gates of heaven are opened to her, and she enters heaven for eternal peace and joy. But it happens that a soul has so many non-mortal sins and so few virtues that it is relegated to hell for the multitude of non-mortal sins. The Holy Fathers liken mortal sin to a heavy stone, and not mortal sin to an insignificant grain of sand. If you tie one large stone around a person’s neck and plunge him into the depths, he will drown: one mortal sin is enough to drown a soul in the abysses of hell. A few grains of sand amount to almost no burden: so in the saints of God, non-mortal sin, greatly diminished and crushed by constant self-observation and constant repentance, has almost no influence on their eternal destiny. But this same non-mortal sin in souls devoted to earthly cares, especially earthly amusements, receives extraordinary severity and, along with mortal sin, drags the damned soul into hell. For example, if someone said a funny and even indecent word, then repented of it, his sin is forgiven; If someone constantly utters funny, blasphemous and even shameful words, then for his constant idle talk and foul language he can conveniently be subjected to eternal torment in hell. Non-mortal sins, due to their multiplicity, can bring the same destruction to the soul that mortal sin brings to it. Thus, a bag filled with fine sand and tied around a person’s neck can drown him as comfortably as the heaviest stone can drown him. The root of all sins, said St. Apostle Paul, there is love of money, and after love of money, according to St. fathers, gluttony, the strongest and most abundant expression of which is drunkenness. Because of the love of money, Judas committed the most terrible crime among human crimes: he betrayed the Lord. Because of the love of money, countless atrocities are committed: Divine and state laws are violated, truth is trampled upon, untruth is protected, the beggar is oppressed, the bribe-taker enriches himself to his destruction. The heart of a money lover closes to mercy, and he deprives himself of God’s mercy or salvation, which is given only to the merciful. A person given over to drunkenness is not capable of what iniquities? From now on he is heated with wine, as if by the fire of Gehenna, he goes mad, he rages like one in a frenzy. He is ready for adultery, he is ready for quarrels, fights, robbery, murder. All atrocities seem convenient for those overcome by drunkenness. With all that, his atrocities cannot be compared with the atrocities of a money-lover, whose atrocities are thought out, covered with a guise of truth, far-sighted, imbued with and filled with satanic cunning, and often act in the most extensive meaning and extent, shaking and undermining the well-being of entire nations. It is not without reason that the Holy Gospel says that in the money-loving Judas, to help him and to guide him in his hellish plans, “Satan was present” (John 13:27). Beloved brothers! In my brief conversation with you, I outlined before you, in accordance with the poverty of my understanding, the path of salvation, the means to salvation and the image of how to preserve the salvation acquired by virtues from corruption by evil. Save yourself, brothers, save yourself! The earthly life of each of us is very short - we don’t know how it will pass. We can’t see how death will creep up on each of us! In the terrible hour of death, all gluttony and drunkenness, all fornication and adultery will seem to us like a stinking, deep pit and abyss. How we will begin to regret that we were lying in this pit! Then we will know that the enjoyment of any passion is the most unfortunate, the most woeful seduction. Blessed is the one who has stocked up on salvation, who has stocked up on salvation through his prayers, through his alms, through his repentance. Such a one will enter into the joy of his Lord; such a one will enter the paradise of sweetness, where rivers of God’s grace flow, where the eternal feast of salvation is celebrated. On the contrary, the soul that was drowned in sins during earthly life will be brought down to hell by fierce demons. O brothers! The torments that await sinners in the dungeons of the underworld are inexpressible. There is eternal darkness and at the same time unquenchable fire; there is gnashing of teeth, there is a never-ending worm. There are constant screams and moans there! beg for mercy; but there is no one who would hear and pay attention to the most convincing and most pitiful prayers. There they ask for help and deliverance; but there is no one helping and delivering. “It is impossible to convey in words,” says Saint Cyril of Alexandria, “it is impossible to depict and imagine the disasters and suffering to which souls cast into the abyss of hell are exposed. All human lips are exhausted to explain the fear and trembling that surrounds the prisoners of hell; there are no human lips that can express their longing and crying” 251. Brethren, let us try through a pious life to avoid the cruel torments of hell and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever of you has lived piously until now, let him continue to do so. Let those who have hitherto allowed themselves to lead a sinful life bring repentance, and from now on, begin to lead a virtuous life. “As I live, says the Lord, I do not want the sinner to die, but to turn and live to be him” (Ezek. 33:11). Amen. Alphabetical Patericon; Life of St. Macarius the Great, Egyptian. Chetii-Minei. January 19 Word of St. Mark the Ascetic. About those who think that they will be justified by works, ch. 35. Kindness, part 1. “Prayer is called a virtue, even if it is the mother of virtues: it gives birth to them from union with Christ” See Breviary, succession of the minor schema “Flower Garden” of Hieromonk Dorotheus; Saint Peter of Damascus. On reading according to Bose, On reasoning, book. 1. Dobrot., part 3 and many other fathers A word about the exodus of the soul. Psalter with resurrection You might be interested in: