Плач инока о брате его, впадшем в искушение греховное. Сочинено другом для друга и для брата братом, к взаимной пользе и сочинителя и читателя

And it came to pass that Israel was taken into captivity and Jerusalem was desolate when Jeremiah the prophet sat down weeping and weeping over Jerusalem. I am alone in my cell; doors are locked; the window is covered with a thick curtain; a modest lamp in the corner of the cell glows in front of the holy icons, spreading a weak, languid light throughout the cell. I don’t need brighter lighting: I left all my studies. I sit on my bed in bewilderment, in vague silence. It’s as if my existence has been taken away from me. I can’t think about anything: sadness fills my soul; Tears, streaming down my cheeks and clothes, replace any other activity for me. Don't come in, don't come in to me! don't break my silence! I am not capable of conversation with friends. I need solitude: I am only capable of crying. The more I cry, the more I thirst for it, the more I delve into it. He satisfies me, he consoles me, despite the fact that he is bitter. A sad dove flies from one withered branch to another withered branch, but does not sit on a green branch: so I move from sad thought to sad thought, from sad feeling to sad feeling; pleasant thoughts and feelings do not approach the suffering heart. When Jerusalem was devastated and destroyed, and its population was taken captive to a distant country, then the prophet Jeremiah, who in vain foreshadowed disasters for Jerusalem for the iniquities of its inhabitants, in vain calling for repentance of the hardened and blinded lawless people, remained on the ruins of Jerusalem, left to mourn his fulfilled prophecy. He sobbed an inconsolable sob on the ashes of the burnt church: this church was recognized as a miracle of architecture, it was the only church on earth dedicated to the true God. The Prophet wept with an inconsolable sob over the ruins of the city: this city was the only city on earth in which the worshipers of the true God could render the worship of God established by God, the only one favorable to God. My tears do not fall on piles of stones and ashes; I am not mourning a church erected by human hands from marble, porphyry and rotting wood; I am not crying over the ruins of a city that was built over centuries, built with the mighty muscles of kings, peoples, and gold; My sighs do not fly after the numerous crowds of Jews who are drawn by a large army into civil slavery. The reason for my crying is a moral reason, and the area of ​​my crying is the area of ​​the spirit. I mourn the burning of the invisible and not made by hands church, created by God for the invisible, most sublime worship; I mourn the destruction of the mysterious city, appointed as a monastery for thoughts and feelings of grace; I mourn the captivity of the soul, the captivity of the mind and heart, overcome by sin. They are shackled, these captives are shackled, shackled with the chains of passions, taken into slavery. They were taken to the kingdom and capital of the king of Babylon: into the power of the rejected archangel, who reigns harshly and cruelly over all rejected rational creatures - over angels and people. I cry with tears of repentance and love. I plunge into saving sadness, not into that which brings death to a person: I do not grieve about anything vain, perishable, or transitory. I am overwhelmed by crying - the inheritance of my ancestor, Adam, who turned to crying and began to seek consolation in it after the loss of the sweets of heaven. This cry is a reflection of eternal bliss; this crying is evidence that eternal bliss was once the property of man; this crying is a means to regain lost bliss. Like a reflection of bliss, like sighing and remembrance of bliss, crying contains pleasure: while it afflicts the heart with sorrow, it simultaneously waters and anoints it with consolation. The God-Man blessed with His all-holy tears the soul-saving cry of repentance and love. The God-man shed all-holy tears for the four-day-old dead man, Lazarus; The God-Man shed Divine tears for the crowded city, for the people who did not know or pretended not to know the visitation of God. Not only the harlot used tear water to wash away sins; not only did all sinners who wanted to be reconciled with God through repentance resort to tears, but the Supreme Apostle recognized tears as a necessary medicine for himself, a saving instrument. The great Peter wept bitterly after denying Christ: he healed a deadly sinful ulcer with weeping and tears. And who, who approached God crying, was not heard by God? The wicked king of Israel, Ahab, was sprinkled with a few tear drops and was moved for a short time, after which he again continued to anger God with his wickedness. The meager tears, the short-lived and unfruitful emotion did not remain without consequences: the prescribed execution for the servant of idols, stained with the blood of the innocent, was cancelled. Did you see, did you see, the Divine voice of Elijah the Prophet, through whom the punishment was announced to the king, did you see how Ahab was touched by My presence? For this sake, for the sake of insignificant tenderness, for the sake of short, insignificant tears, I will not bring evil to his days, despite the fact that I have already appointed and announced to him the most terrible execution for the most terrible iniquities. I cannot see someone crying and not have mercy on him. Oh my brother! O beloved brother! My heart aches for you; I’m crying for you, and I can’t stop crying. Both the love of the Lord Jesus and the misfortune that befell you draw me to weeping. From the tears of one who grieves and weeps for sins, the hope of salvation shines, like a star from the darkness of the night that surrounds it. Connect your crying with my crying, your tears with my tears. The Lord will not despise us who pray to Him, weep before Him, and strive to be healed by repentance. He, the giver of true repentance, grants us powerful repentance; He, the giver of tears, will open in us fountains of tears; He, the only one capable of cleansing the impurity of the soul, will cleanse us with repentance, tears, and Divine grace. Sin is the parent of weeping and tears: it is slandered and killed by its children - weeping and tears. I will begin to utter my cries! With groans and sighs I will ease and resolve the tightness of my heart! The words of my lament will not serve you as wounds or reproach; they are an expression of love, signs of participation and compassion, consolation and encouragement, a meek voice, a call to leave a sinful life, a call to enter again into the field of holy monastic feat, a call to overthrow the sinful yoke, a call to a courageous struggle for spiritual freedom with the principles and powers of heaven. My cry for you is together and my cry for me: I am filled with sins, and the heavy chains of sinful habits and impressions sound on me. If I allow myself to cry for you, then you will cry for me. Let us unite our hearts in weeping! clothed in weeping, as if in clothing necessary to cover the spiritual nakedness and shame that appeared from the transgression of God’s commandment, let us stand before the Lord: let us bring to the Lord not an empty and proud justification of ourselves, which always seals the sinfulness and destruction of men, but let us bring confession from a contrite and humble heart. By resolutely and sincerely confessing our sins, our fall, our disastrous state, we will enter into repentance and salvation. Repentance is the gateway to God. Enter into its gates in confession, the Prophet announces and bequeaths to all humanity, inviting all humanity to repentance. The sad news suddenly came to me - it came to me like an arrow. She pierced my heart with a deep wound, and together she painted before me an amazing picture, a gloomy picture, a saddest picture. The one who, at a tender age, clung to the Lord, who devoted the days of adolescence to monastic hardships, who early despised the vanity of the world, is now deceived and ridiculed by the world. Alas! You were wrecked at the harbour. Alas! In your own city, foreigners captured you. Alas! sin has enslaved you, grave sin, mortal sin; it has bound you with invisible bonds that cannot be resolved by any means, by any human effort. While your body was within the walls of the monastery, in spirit you were alienated from the Holy Abode. She yearns for you, like a son who has grown cold towards her, like a son who has already abandoned her in his heartfelt counsel. The wondrous churches of God, the humble monastic cells, the gloomy towers, the battlemented walls of the ancient monastery, consecrated by the exploits of many venerable elders, look at you sadly, as if guessing the betrayal that has secretly taken place in your soul. A mournful echo is heard in church hymns, it is heard for a heart that aches over your misfortune. For such a heart, the church hymns cry for you: the sounds of weeping are heard from them into this heart, similar to the sounds of weeping that flow from funeral hymns. I cry for you all day; I cry for you all night. My cry is of insignificant value: another cry, of incomparable value, is made for you. The Angels are crying, the faces of the Martyrs and the Desert Fathers are crying, all the inhabitants of heaven are crying - they do not want to be consoled. They carefully and lovingly look from heaven to earth, rejoice at the virtues performed by people, but are saddened by their sins. Your Creator and Savior Himself, who created you from nothing, redeemed you with His priceless blood, and who was not involved in sorrow, is saddened by you. What is the use of My blood if Mi never descends into decay? He speaks to all who sin and remain in sin. The All-Holy One, impregnable to corruption, is brought down into corruption by Christians clothed in Christ, who have Christ within them, when Christians grovel in the filth of iniquity. Sins that are apparently insignificant, but neglected and not healed by repentance, lead to more serious sins, and from an inattentive life pride arises in the heart. So that you learn to be vigilant over yourself, so that you do not trust yourself and do not admire yourself, so that you acquire a contrite and humble heart, so that your sin, standing before your eyes, overthrows arrogance and conceit in you - the Lord allowed temptation to run over you like a cloud carried by a whirlwind; I couldn’t resist the blow that was aimed at you. Your enemies have overtaken you! those who hate your soul surrounded it, placed heavy shackles on it, carried it into captivity and slavery, covered it with countless, painful, incurable sores! You have abandoned the holy deeds of monasticism; your service to God has turned into shameful hypocrisy. There is no place for true Divine service in the soul when it, having fallen into mortal sin, remains in it. Dejection and relaxation have taken possession of you; the strength of courage has faded; the good will was shaken; the heart was deprived of the gracious peace and consolation with which the monk is nourished and inspired on his path to God. Vain and sinful thoughts, along with the accompanying disturbance of sensations, hover in your soul, just as reptiles and birds of prey hover in an empty church. All your virtues have been stolen by one crime: whoever keeps the whole law, yet sins in one, will be guilty of everything, Scripture teaches us. The flowers and leaves of a plant fade when its trunk is cut with a scythe. Before you fell into sin, invisible enemies slandered your soul, touching it from the outside, shaking only its surface; они не входили в сердце, запечатленное перстом Божиим; they could not prevail over you, being constantly insulted and repelled by your disobedience. Покорился ты им в час дремания твоего, в час самозабвения; You submitted to them arbitrarily, having actually fulfilled their proposal, a seductive, deadly proposal. Они соделались владыками твоими; They drag you through wilds and abysses, over thorns and sharp stones: bound, chained by them, you have no strength to resist them. The Lord, who foresees everything and controls everything, wanted to humble you with the multitude of your iniquities. As soon as a good thought is born in you, as soon as a good intention is born, they are overthrown: they are overthrown by the sin that has taken possession of you. All her beauty [blindness] has been taken away from the daughter of Zion: the beauty has been taken away from your soul, unconvinced of Christ, the spiritual beauty has been taken away. The holy thoughts in which your mind dwelt, as in a bridal chamber, have receded; the holy sensations in which your heart swam, in which it rested, and in which it delighted, have receded. Ищешь их и не обретаешь. They went off to God knows where; replaced them with sinful, carnal thoughts and passionate sensations. You are deprived of high, royal dignity! you have fallen into the humiliated state of a slave! – The weakness produced in the soul by mortal sin is sad: because of this weakness, because of this relaxation, the encounter with every seductive, criminal, demonic thought becomes a victory for the soul. The time of sorrow has come, a difficult time, a time of your humiliation and disgrace, a time in which you will be cast away from the face of the Lord. Deprived of the help of the Most High, as if forgotten by God, left in the hands of adversaries, you serve as a plaything and a laughing stock for them. The fall of a monk and every Christian is a subject of lamentation for the holy Angels; it is an object of joy for evil demons. Their regiments rejoice over the misfortune of people; loud, insane laughter is heard in their regiments. Your mind has been deceived: you have tasted the fruit forbidden by God. The fruit seemed beautiful when you looked at it curiously and carelessly; The fruit of ignorance, inexperience, and innocence seemed beautiful; malicious and crafty advice persuaded to eat; the eating of the fruit struck him that ate with death. The bitterness of the poisonous food still foams on your lips; your insides are tormented by the poison acting in it. Confusion, bewilderment, darkness, and disbelief surround your soul. Exhausted, upset by sin, you look back, having previously been directed to the Kingdom of God. On the edge of your fall, on the edge of the sinful abyss, you did not remember that the cramped coffin and the dark grave are, sooner or later, inevitably made the dwelling place of all flesh, that sinful pleasures end with the decomposition of man, and do not prevent decomposition, that the body, for the sake of which the soul is slain, is appointed as a sacrifice to corruption, as food for worms. You didn't remember this. You have forgotten the Judgment of God, which patiently awaits the conversion of sinners, but must comprehend them. He will not delay, the Last Judgment will not delay; soon, soon it will come: he will come like a thief in the night. It will require an account from every person in all his earthly activities. You have forgotten that the wicked and cruel demons, now appearing to the soul in delightful dreams, flattering it with the intention of capturing it, after the soul leaves the body, they will rush at it like wild animals and kidnap it if they prove that it belongs to them. You have forgotten about the eternal fate of sinners who are not worthy of God’s mercy. They, for rejecting virtue and for rejecting repentance, which is used to cure deviations from virtue, descend into the underworld and are given over to torture and executions that have neither measure nor end. You forgot this, and fell into a terrible fall. The means of the world, entertainment, amusements, cares and earthly pursuits will not bring you peace. They lull the conscience for a short time, but cannot drown it out. In moments of self-reflection she wakes up; Having woken up, he denounces the stronger, the more mercilessly. Merciful God! You see and bear human infirmities: my uncleanness and my exhaustion are open before Your eyes; The cruelty of the passions and demons that torment me, torment me, is revealed before Your eyes. God commanded that no foreigner should enter the church of the Lord. I did not keep the commandments of my God. I allowed myself to be betrayed - and, through my betrayal, foreigners invaded not only the church, but also the sanctuary, stretching out their daring hands on the vessels and sacrifices consecrated to God. I call the whole person the church of God; sanctuary - heart; vessels and victims - thoughts and sensations. The church of God is trampled underfoot by wicked and unclean spirits; they desecrated the sanctuary; spiritual, grace-filled thoughts and feelings were turned into carnal, sinful, evil-smelling ones. I am filled with sighs! Sorrow nests in me, gnaws at my heart like a worm, torments it like a serpent. I am looking for consolation, I am looking for joy, I am looking for spiritual food that was once familiar to me through experience - and I do not find it! This food nourishes and delights. They offer me other food, forcefully put it into me: sinful food, which flatters satiation, not only does not satisfy, it produces even greater hunger, produces terrible languor, exhaustion, and frustration. Lord, my Lord! I have sinned before Your face, before Your eyes. You look at my humiliation; Before Your all-holy eyes, robbers are committing crimes against me. I am abandoned by You because I have abandoned You. I am in the hands of those whom I preferred to You. I do not dare to look up to You, I do not dare to raise my hands to You, I do not dare to utter a single word before You. My sin, my betrayal, took away my boldness. I fell, I became a victim of my madness, a victim of the wickedness and hatred of demons. I am close to hopelessness: it gives a message to my heart that it stands at its door. I have no intercessors; at least I don’t know if there is an intercessor for me. May Your infinite goodness be my intercessor before Your unapproachable greatness. All who walk the path of earthly life, all who pass the race from the womb that gave birth to you, to the coffin and grave, to the formidable gates through which every person enters an immeasurable and mysterious eternity, turn and see if there is a disease, like my disease. I do not grieve over the loss of perishable advantages and treasures, I am not consumed by grief over the persecutions, dishonors and plagues I have suffered from men; nothing temporary serves as the cause of my groaning, my heartache. I suffer, I am tormented by the fact that I separated from the Lord through the Fall. I betrayed the Lord, betrayed the Lord, was cast far away from the face of my Creator, cast into moral darkness, betrayed to demons. My hands and feet are tied: my holy activity has been taken away from me, my very ability to do it has been taken away. I lie, defeated, exhausted, in the abyss. This abyss mysteriously and at the same time accurately depicts and depicts the abyss of the underworld. I drink the cup of sorrows, the cup of humility. My God dissolved this cup for me in His righteous anger. The destinies of God are incomprehensible. The Lord judged in His holy council, determined it justly, pronounced a sentence of execution on me, allowed the fire of passions, hostile fire, to fall from on high, from the region of the air spirits, in the heavenly places, to burn my spiritual church, to turn its precious adornment into ashes. Nets were laid out for my feet, and I did not notice them, I got stuck in them. The enemies suddenly attacked me from the ambush in which they were hiding, and I, perplexed by the surprise, was defeated, and fled. The Lord did not have mercy on me; he handed me over to the enemy. Ultimate destruction threatens me. The chain of my days turned into a chain of illnesses. My sin stands gigantic before me; a naked sword is in his hand; furious eyes sparkle with a bloody flame; the monstrous mouth opened wide; teeth grinding. He stands relentlessly, stands day and night. The adversary has been watching over me for a long time, he has been watching over me since the day of my birth, since the day of my baptism. Envy and unquenchable hatred aroused him to vigil. He was waiting for the hour to come when I would frivolously abandon my vigilance and indulge in arrogance and imprudence. He waited for this hour and, experienced in the destruction of people, dealt me ​​a blow, a sure, decisive blow. Now, when I am in captivity of the enemy, when I am enslaved to him, he again watches over me, watches so that I do not escape from captivity, do not throw off the yoke, the blasphemous and heavy yoke. My strength is exhausted, my hands are weak, I cannot rise from the fall, I cannot free myself from captivity. I am clothed in rough and at the same time weak flesh, I remain in it as in bonds, as in a prison; my enemy is a spirit, quick in its movements, like lightning, clothed, as if in full armor, with an abundance of abilities, knowledge, and strength. My enemy watches over me like a lion roaring over defenseless prey. I cannot resist him: I multiply my sins with new sins, I am violently carried away by passions. The Lord gave me over to their torment. The Lord has trodden the winepress for the maiden, the daughter of Judah, my soul, adopted by the Lord through faith in Him: for these I weep. I cry and sob with tears that are inexplicable and incomprehensible to me. My spirit yearns and languishes within me: it feels its poverty and humiliation. By the permission of the Lord, my strength was crushed, my beauty was distorted, my beauty was disfigured, my integrity was broken, my integrity was taken away. Let me be a dirty trickster of the flesh, an angel of Satan, let me play dirty tricks on me, let me not be arrogant. This angel has his own goal, the goal of destroying me; but in his actions, regardless of them, there is God’s permission with all the incomprehensible, wise, all-good purpose. My eyes pour out water, for you have departed from Me, comfort me, bring back my soul: my sons perished, as if I were an enemy. The holy thoughts that bring comfort to my heart, encourage it, revive it, and fill it with the joyful hope of salvation, have departed from me. The grace of Holy Baptism fell silent in me, hid its presence in me, does not fight for me: the Holy Spirit is grieved by me, grieved by my mortal sin. Everything that is contrary and hostile to God has approached, entered into me, and is acting in me. I am filled with darkness, filled with confusion. My prayer is wasted by absent-mindedness; it is desecrated and destroyed by voluptuous dreams. The enemy has become terribly powerful over me: he is devouring me. I shed streams of tears, like springs of water, and they do not do what a few tear drops have done before: they do not establish sweet peace in the heart. My tears are bitter. One must mourn lost integrity with bitter tears; bitter tears must wash away the impurity from the soul, this seal always left on it by the Fall; bitter tears must blot out the mortal sin recorded in the books of the airy prince: sweet tears are shed by innocence and holy love. I bring bitter tears, heartfelt contrition, my poverty, my misfortune to the feet of the Lord who was crucified for me. Accept them, my Lord, as You accepted the tears of a harlot; accept them as You accepted the precious ointment that blessed Mary poured out on Your feet. You, all-powerful and all-good, transform my sinful and bitter tears into fragrant myrrh, favorable to You. Take away Thy justice and wrath from Thy scales; place on these scales Your love for mankind, Your mighty tears, Your mighty blood. You shed Your priceless tears for us; You shed Your priceless blood for us; You gave Your priceless blood as a price and ransom for us. With Your tears You showed Your love for us, You sealed Your love for us with Your blood. With Your almighty, Divine blood, You cleansed the sins of the whole world. I lift my mind to God; but the mind does not have the power to rise and ascend from the earth. All his attempts have hitherto been in vain. He only rises from the ground, just as he falls to the ground, he is cast down upon it by an invisible, iron hand. The Lord abandoned me, and those who sought the destruction of my soul surrounded me on all sides. With my own strength I cannot rise from the fall, free myself from captivity. The Lord, the only Lord, restores the fallen, revives the dead. The Lord determined otherwise for me. He looks at my humiliation, but does not send me help; He hears my groan, my cry, and does not delight me from captivity, from cruel captivity, from the jaws of hell. The enemy triumphs, celebrates victory, recognizes my death as certain. In his insane rage, in his insane pride, he thinks about my God that God is not able to take me out of his hands; he thinks of himself that he can resist, can successfully resist my God, Almighty God. Thou art righteous, O Lord, and Thy judges rule. I am worthy of abandonment, worthy of the torment to which I have been subjected: I am reaping the fruits of my sin. I arbitrarily transgressed the Law of God, arbitrarily neglected the word of God. I strayed from the path of the Lord’s commandments onto the path of the will of my corrupted nature. When mortal sin, having crushed a person, retreats from him, it leaves behind a trace and seal of the defeat inflicted on the person. He leaves his victim cut into pieces, bound, in the power of the vicious impression characteristic of the sin committed. All poisons are deadly; but each of them has its own effect: all mortal sins kill the soul with eternal death; but each produces in it a disorder corresponding to itself. Everyone is burdened with the captivity of their sins, Scripture teaches us. Your apostasy will punish you, and your malice will expose you: and convince and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake Me, says the Lord your God. I have not been well disposed towards you, since you have broken your yoke and torn your bonds to pieces and have declared with all your behavior: I am not the one to serve You, but I will go to every high hill, and there I will pour myself out in my fornication under every deciduous tree. I planted you, at creation into being and at reward into rebirth, fruitful grapes, all true: how did you turn into sorrow, alien grapes? The threat and decree of my God are fulfilled over me. My present position was formed from my fall, as a natural consequence. I am tormented and raped by thoughts and sensations that I previously recognized as powerless, which I reflected easily and comfortably. They act with me as by right received by them: I fell arbitrarily, arbitrarily enslaved myself, committed lawlessness that belongs to the realm of these thoughts and feelings. Alas! My girls and boys went into captivity. I was seduced by sinful lust. It appeared in the guise of innocence and immaculate pleasure, and offered me a conversation as if it were wise; then, gradually creeping into my soul, it began to change, to acquire power over me - it suddenly turned into a flame and engulfed me. I don’t remember, or rather, I can’t give an exact account of what happened next. Then I was overcome by self-forgetfulness and infatuation. Having come to my senses, I saw myself already in a hopeless abyss. It must reflect sin at its very beginning, at its first appearance. It was lost or stolen from my memory, or I did not yet have this knowledge, and evil sin stole and swallowed me up. My mysterious Jerusalem has become terribly impoverished, completely devastated. Sometimes good thoughts and intentions are born in me; but they, having no firmness, no constancy, are devoid of meaning; they are mixed with vicious thoughts and impulses, they are defiled, perverted, and overcome by them. My mind has changed! the independence that faith gave him was lost in him; hesitation appeared in him. He became cold to the word of God; does not find in it that saving, enlightening edification that he found before, with which he fed and enjoyed, with which he could not get enough due to the abundance of satiety. Such saturation arouses insatiable greed and an unquenchable thirst for God's truth. Before me is the Holy Scripture. It became alien to me. I look for nourishment, strengthening, consolation in him: I don’t find them. It was closed, the all-holy word of God, closed from me with an impenetrable veil: my sinfulness. My Lord! My Lord! from the height of Your glory, look at the disaster in which I am mired, as in stinking mud, as in a hopeless jungle; look at my misfortune, at the unbearable sorrow that has exhausted all my strength, all the strength of my soul and body. Confusion overwhelmed me; embraced - bewilderment; I was overcome by fierce melancholy and grief. I feel that eternal death has entered my soul and, with a passion that nothing can tame, with a sin that never ceases to repeat itself, has left the seal of destruction on me. Already from now on, the diseases of hell, the betrothals of eternal diseases, have beaten me, having preceded me to the snares of death. Having become stuck in these nets, I am rightly numbered among the dead, although outwardly I belong to the number of the living. The sweat of lawlessness crushes me, does not allow me to come to my senses, does not allow me to stand up and establish myself on the rock of Christ’s commandments. Midian and Amalek and the sons of the East, worshipers of idols, with countless herds of their livestock, constantly ascend to the land of Israel, do not leave the existence of life on it, devouring and trampling down crops and meadows: the exploits and virtues with which I served my God from my youth, with which I believed to work out my salvation. I sigh; my enemies are comforted by my sighs; I grieve, they rejoice in my sorrow; I groan, weep, I cry out; loud applause, shouts and songs of wild joy are heard between them; I am languishing, as if I am disappearing in the temptation that has befallen me - they are triumphant, brightly celebrating their victory over me. Intoxicated with fury, madness, arrogance, frantic hatred of God, they boast of the defeat inflicted on a weak person, as if it were a defeat inflicted on God Himself. Across the vast underworld, in all their crowds, in the camps of aerial ordeals, they announced my fall. Their frenzied and blasphemous rejoicing reaches the vaults of the sky and strikes them. Fallen angels would like to burst into these vaults and ring the holy abodes of paradise with ridicule and curses. Paradise was once already a witness to their criminal plans and undertakings; it once resounded with their violent, open, meaningless indignation against God. My creator! My Redeemer! I was Yours before I sinned: I remain Yours even after I sinned. They stole Your property from You, because You allowed it to be stolen for a time according to Your incomprehensible destinies. My enemies guess, they see that You have retreated from me or have miraculously disappeared; they see and understand this by the free access to me that they received, by the power over me that is allowed to them. The time will come, the time will come, sad for them, blessed for me: the time will come when You, my Savior, having mercy on me, will extend a helping hand to me, an omnipotent hand, when by true, real repentance you will extract me from the abyss of my stumblings. All-seeing Lord! Before Your eyes are all the countless atrocities of demons and rejected angels. They rebelled against You in heaven, they hated You, their Creator and God, they hated all Your works with a frenzied, incomprehensible hatred. You showed them Your creative power, You showed them Your unlimited power over them: You cast them down from heaven, You punished them in their very nature; You condemned disembodied spirits to life in matter and decay. The bright Angels turned into dark, bestial demons; pure spirits became, in thoughts and feelings, flesh and filth; the inhabitants of the high abodes wander and wander through the desert under heaven, on the surface of the earth, in the abysses of the underground. You handed over to them a fiery prison - a terrible hell, burning with an unquenchable flame, so that the execution prepared for them from the creation of the visible world, constantly confronting them face to face, would produce saving fear in them and convince them to come to their senses. You accomplished the redemption of people in the presence and opposition of the spirits that destroyed the human race. You made them spectators and witnesses of the procession to heaven and heaven of people who pleased You; You have been patient with them for many millennia, and nothing, nothing can break their stubbornness, soften their heart, which has turned into stone or metal, incline them to repentance, to the desire for heaven. They, crazy, fight against You, spew out terrible blasphemies against You, reject Your existence, reject You with various types of rejection. But You are not only impregnable for actions against You, you are impregnable for comprehending You. And the fallen angels, powerless, insignificant before You, directed their anger at Your creation, at weak man. They poisoned him with the poison of sin; They seek to destroy him completely, pursue him vigilantly, lay out malicious snares for him, and plunge him into countless, most painful disasters. Only You, the Almighty, can deliver from these disasters, from cruel disasters, and you deliver those people who resort to You! My grief has exceeded the measure of my strength. Hitherto, overflowing my heart, it poured out of it; now I fall silent from exhaustion. My groans are exhausted, my sighs are exhausted, my tears are exhausted: the sadness that exceeds them and is inexpressible torments me and kills me. All-seeing! You see me. You know that the hatred of my enemies will not be satisfied by any of my sufferings. In Your sovereign right hand are both me and my enemies. All-seeing and Almighty! in hopelessness for myself, in hope for You, I surrender to Your most holy will, Your infinite wisdom and goodness. A sad event affects the eyes, the eyes of the mind and heart. I am perplexed before the event. I don’t believe what the eyes see and the hands touch. The Lord, in His anger, covered the daughter of Zion with darkness. He cast down the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. Your soul was the bride of Christ; on her purity, as on captivating and beloved beauty, rested the all-holy eyes of your Lord. A wondrous palace was prepared for you in the abodes of paradise. Hosts of holy Angels and hosts of righteous people who moved to heaven recognized you as one of their own, awaited your coming to them, intended to joyfully go out to meet your soul after it had been separated from your body, to bring it into heaven for a never-ending and endless holiday... Everything collapsed! everything has changed with a terrible change! The Lord turned His face away from you, the inhabitants of heaven wept for you: alas! sin has corrupted you. The Lord wanted to strike you: he did not spare you! did not pardon! The Lord struck, and your spiritual splendor withered, burned by voluptuousness, withers, like a lush rose withers, scorched by the heat of the sun, like a tender lily withers, undermined by a worm. Your virtues and deeds have crumbled, like the magnificent buildings of a city shaken by an earthquake. Your thoughts constantly soared to God, ascended to Him, remained with Him in pure prayer and sacred meditation: now they creep on the earth; They revolve in the same perishable and vain. Your mind is deprived of royal dignity: previously it dominated the desires of the heart and body, but now it is carried away by them, serving them slavishly. Instead of a crown and purple, he wears heavy shackles, copper shackles. The cruel conqueror killed the king's sons before his eyes, and the eyes that saw this murder were inhumanly torn out with iron weapons. The royal blind man and captive was taken to Babylon, there he was committed to a house of difficult, humiliating work. Your muscle was broken in the invisible struggle: you did not resist, you did not emerge victorious. The enemies destroyed the gates and walls of your city, broke into it: they turned the city into ruins, and made you a slave. You had strong weapons; God gave you weapons; These weapons are terrible for foreigners. You were careless! damask swords, spears and arrows that were light and well-aimed, shields and impenetrable chain mail were abandoned by you and forgotten. Negligence was the reason for the victory. When a monk neglects prayer, silence, and fasting, he allows himself entertainment and carnal pleasures: then the enemy, seeing him disarmed, attacks him and strikes him conveniently. Your spiritual church is engulfed in the flames of sinful lusts. A fierce flame spread throughout the church in waves of a fiery flood; The fierce flame destroyed all the valuable utensils of the church; left only scorched, blackened walls. Your life in God has been taken away from you, your being has not been taken away: you are called by the mercy of God to revive the lost, grace-filled life within yourself. The enemy strengthened, and those who arbitrarily obeyed him prevailed. Your fall deprived you of power over yourself and transferred this power to the enemy. The power of demons and passions over a person is strengthened by despondency, double-mindedness of a person, deviation of his will, infected with a vicious desire, deviation from courageous and decisive repentance. You are in sin! you add new sins to your sin; you have found pleasure in murderous sin! You can’t tear your heart away from the deadly pleasure! In the villages of the daughter of Zion I see sad, one sad desolation: in them everything graceful and spiritual has been destroyed or scattered and trampled underfoot. The sword of God, the sword of punishment, the sword of indulgence and abandonment fell on your head, fell on your whole being, cut it, separated it. The spirit, soul and body that make up a person are at odds and act opposite and hostile to each other. Frustration has seized you, your infirmities and illnesses have multiplied, numerous stumblings have befallen you, your heart is troubled by passions, like the sea by a storm. Learn to be humble. Know that man is not an original being: he is God’s creation; he is earth and dust. Remove from yourself the conceit of the Pharisee; beware of despising, humiliating, and slandering your neighbors; imitate the behavior of a tax collector justified by God. Condemn yourself and you will attract the mercy of God. Even if your sin is forgiven you, just as Saint David’s two grave crimes were forgiven, then remember your sin constantly; always have your sin before your eyes; constantly mourn your sin, and sin will become the guardian of virtue. Despite the fact that you will be justified by God, who knows the weakness of man and conveniently grants him forgiveness, do not cease to seek justification, do not cease to plunge into repentance, acquire an unquenchable thirst for the truth of God - and your righteousness will multiply like a hundredfold fruit of wheat in a fat field. Seek abundant justification, seek it through faith and deeds, hoping to find justification not in your works: in God, in faith in God, evidenced and demonstrated by obedience to God. God! be merciful to me, a sinner. Thus prayed the publican, praised by the Gospel. He did not say long-winded and eloquent prayers: the prayer is short, one short and artless prayer is capable of expressing a feeling of repentance and self-condemnation when the heart is filled with them. The publican did not dare to raise his eyes to heaven: they were lowered to the ground. The publican hit Percy with the consciousness of sins; said nothing to excuse himself; He did not blame anyone for his sinful inclinations, neither the increased temptations in human society, nor the malice and deceit of demons. He blamed himself entirely; He presented only the mercy of God as the reason and basis for the petition for pardon. And the tax collector came out justified from the church of God, in which he offered God a prayer of repentance and humility, a prayer that turned out to be so valid. Such prayer is a sacrifice of praise that glorifies God. There is no stinking admixture of carnal wisdom in it - praise for fallen human nature. Such prayer is the path on which salvation from God appears to a person. He who humbles himself will be exalted, said the Savior: he who humbles himself will be exalted by God to the mountainous, spiritual haven of sacred dispassion and grace-filled innocence. The Lord will tear down His altar, shake off His sanctuary, and crush the wall of Jerusalem with the hand of the enemy. I am perplexed when I think about the extreme death that affects people: when I look at a lifeless body lying in a coffin, having lost life and beauty; when I look at a soul lying in the fall of sin, tormented, disfigured, deprived of grace-filled, Divine life. Oh miracle! what kind of sacrament is this? Why is the altar of God given over to destruction and the sanctuary to desecration? Why are rejected spirits given the freedom to commit evil? Why is sin allowed to make an impudent attack on me, sin that seduces, poisons, and kills me? Why is my spiritual, immortal being, so graceful, associated with corruptible flesh, which has opposite, hostile desires, reducing it to its bestial lusts? The mystery remains a mystery: it is inaccessible to my comprehension. I am the creation of my God. There is no measure that could determine the difference between God and man - just as God is great, so man is insignificant before God. I cannot demand an account, I am not able to understand an account of what is happening to me according to the will of my Creator. It remains for me to recognize and acknowledge my insignificance; It remains for me to revere God, as a creature should revere the Creator; All that remains for me is to silently cry before the impregnable greatness of my God, to beg my God for mercy. The sorrowful fall has left its mark on your face, on your entire appearance. The joy that constantly shone in your eyes has disappeared; The calmness that so gracefully arranged the features on your face has disappeared. Your step was like the step of an angel bringing good news; your speech flowed like a living stream, delighting the ears and hearts of those who listened to you; meeting and talking with you left a most pleasant, lasting impression. - Your gaze is gloomy, sad, gloomy now; anxiety and torment are written on the face; your step is slow and thoughtful; a strange hesitation appears in it. Your word is abrupt and brief; You do not have it for your friends; you seem to be constantly busy with some other conversation, invisible, incomprehensible; you are busy with some mysterious debate of words that attracts all your feelings, all your thoughts. Your heart is closed. You have replaced sincerity with evasiveness. All your intentions, your whole life are concentrated in you alone. You are unavailable for participation. Heavy sadness and emptiness remain in your wake after meeting you. A person's state of mind is reflected in his appearance. Oh, if only your fall would not be long! Oh, that stumbling would be immediately followed by repentance! Oh, if only the warmest tears would immediately fall on the sinful stain and wash it away! Oh, when, from the very midst of the fall, a tender, strong prayer would ascend to God! Tears and prayer would appease God. Oh, that you, having felt the ulcer from sin, would hate sin and make up for your momentary infatuation by decisively correcting yourself! Sudden death of the soul can be cured by quick revival: the stories of Scripture and the stories of the Church testify to this. That's not what happened to you. Falls were followed by falls; sins were added to sin; from prolonged satisfaction of voluptuousness, sympathy for it appeared, a habit was formed, passion was born, death was born. The commandments of Christ are fearlessly trampled; fearlessly and coldly you look into eternity, at the Judgment of God, at the bliss of heaven and the torment of hell. Your mind has turned to stone. As if he were made of stone or dead, he lost sympathy and became deadened to the word of God. This living word, the terrible and powerful word of the living God, turned for a mind mortified by sin into empty sounds, into sounds without meaning and meaning. Your friend, who loves you more than all your friends, is filled with sadness over the misfortune that has befallen you. Spiritual joy and rejoicing fell silent in him; he sobs with inconsolable sobs; mourns your fall, as if your fall were his fall; in grave sorrow he repeats the words of the Apostle: my God has humbled me, and I will weep for many who have sinned before and have not repented of their uncleanness and their straying. The eyes were exhausted from the shed streams of tears. I can't stop the tears. Fierce sorrow expels tears from the eyes, meager tears are expelled, painful tears are expelled, tears like drops of blood are expelled: with such suffering tears come from eyes exhausted by shed streams of tears. The heart aches and is torn by grief. Overwhelmed by bewilderment, overwhelmed by horror, I look at the disaster that has befallen you, seeking consolation in compassion for you. My brother! my brother! what happened to you? what an unexpected and terrible transformation has befallen you! In a quiet monastery haven you suffered a shipwreck! - you endured it not among the waves of the sea of ​​life, not among the pitfalls with which its bottom is strewn, not from a storm that roars and rises to the clouds, merging the sky and the sea into one. Why do you not leave the path of the corrupt? Why do you linger in the filth of sin? Why do you lie and wither in despondency, relaxation, double-mindedness? Decide to repent! decide to leave sin! tear away from him the heart, which has become natural, as if grown to sin, and needs to be torn off or cut off from it. The feat of repentance is painful and difficult for one who has fallen into mortal sins, into carnal living and wisdom, for one who has acquired sinful habits. The Fathers called this feat bloodshed and, inviting him to it, they uttered a saying, outwardly cruel: “Give the blood and receive the Spirit.” The right word, a word that explains the essence of the matter. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; below, corruption inherits incorruption: those who wish to be assimilated to Christ must certainly crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts. Do not be horrified by a difficult feat! As difficult as it is, it is so desirable and delightful; no matter how difficult it is, so much is it fruitful. Monastic feat is equivalent to martyrdom. The crown of feat is salvation; the crown of achievement is eternal bliss in the abodes of paradise; the crown of the feat is the stripping away of the fallen nature, the renewal of nature, its ascension to an immeasurable height by the union of human nature with the nature of God. God is infinitely good and infinitely powerful: approach the All-Good and Almighty in contrition of spirit, expose your ulcer before Him, bring consciousness of sin, asking for forgiveness, healing, and receive them. In your repentance, use the expressions used so successfully by the fallen royal Prophet: have mercy on me, O God, he said, according to Your great mercy, for no other reason, and for the multitude of Your bounties, for no other reason, cleanse my iniquity. Everyone who asked for it received it: no one was refused. There is no reason for delaying repentance, for doubt, for hesitation. Your remaining in sin frightens me more than falling into sin; unrepentance frightens me more than stumbling. I am afraid that death will not find you in iniquities, will not snatch you away from among them, and will not suddenly place you at the Judgment of God. Where is the monk’s refuge from drowning in the abyss of despair? his enemy usually drags him into the abyss of despair after he has been enticed to partake of the fruit forbidden by the holy vows of baptism and the holy vows of monastic tonsure. What is the consolation of a monk when he squanders the spiritual wealth with which heaven is acquired? The monk’s haven is God’s unlimited mercy; The consolation of the fallen monk is the hope of salvation brought by repentance. You are banished from chastity as from a beautiful city; you have been expelled from immaculate virginity, as from a sanctuary: take refuge in another city. When they persecute you in this city, flee to another, the Lord commanded His disciples. Banished from the holy city of innocence, seek refuge in the holy city of humility. The city of humility is built from stones that are honest before God: here are put together, in orderly order, poverty of spirit and contrition of heart, and self-condemnation, and sighs, and sobs, and cries, and tears, and humble kneeling, and strict abstinence from all excesses, and the most touching words of prayer, and unutterable lamentations, speaking in silence more convincingly and powerfully than what can be said in a word. The bond, or cement, for the stones is the feeling of crying. Crying is an expression of true repentance. Repentance cleanses the soul from all sins and restores the destroyed sanctuary of God. The second temple of Jerusalem, erected under great obstacles from persecution and shortcomings, although it required considerable time for construction, although it was inferior in vastness and splendor to the first church, erected by Solomon with an abundance of funds and benefits, but was glorified incomparably more, glorified by the presence in it of the incarnate God of the Word. And often the spiritual sanctuary, renewed by laborious repentance, is more glorious, due to the abundance of God’s grace, than that sanctuary that did not need, or needed little, cleansing and renewal. The glory of the sanctuary is not human virtue! the glory of the sanctuary is God, who highly values ​​the repentance He commanded and overshadows human virtue with the grace of the Holy Spirit, when this virtue is performed with deep humility and consists of fulfilling the will of God. Your prophets saw vainness and madness, the true Prophet of God spoke to the devastated, destroyed, burned Jerusalem about its false prophets, deceived by demons, who became instruments of the evil intentions of demons, the cause of reckless behavior and destruction of the Jerusalemites. The Prophet said this, mourning the fulfillment of his prophecy, he said, sobbing on the ruins of Jerusalem. False prophets do not reveal your iniquity. They flattered you: deceived by the demons, they deceived you; they did not prevent your capture; they turned you away from repentance, from turning to God; contributed to your enslavement. Like these false prophets, the thoughts of fallen human nature act when they do not obey the word of God, when they act out of themselves or under the influence of rejected and evil spirits. They present the possibility of repentance in old age or at the end of life, and thereby keep them in sin. They point to the multitude of mortals who sin and to the insignificant number of mortals who abstain from sins, and thereby diminish the significance of sin. They excuse a voluptuous life by the demands of nature, youth, the quality of the physique - by this they strive to lighten the severity of sin before the conscience of the sinner. They falsely explain both the mystery of God's mercy and the mystery of repentance - by this they distract from true repentance and do not allow the goodness of God into the fatherly embrace. By their fruit you will know them, the Savior of the world said about false prophets: they come in sheep’s clothing, in hypocrisy and flattery, with this mask they cover up corruption of the spirit and malicious intent. The fruit of the Prophet of God, a thought inspired by a Guardian Angel or born in a nature submissive to the word of God, is the moral structure and salvation of people; the fruit of a false prophet, a thought that arose under the influence of the fall and evil spirits, is moral disorder and the destruction of people. I fled from the world early; I fled from the world, I had just learned from the Holy Scriptures and from church teachers about the dangers that life in the middle of the world is filled with; I retired to the monastery fence, not tasting any vain and sinful pleasure; I brought the firstfruits of my days and all my abilities to God; I hoped that I would quickly be transported through the field of earthly life, that neither my way of thinking nor my ardent aspiration would change. I was afraid to remain among the world; I was afraid of getting stuck in the nets of sin; he was afraid of being deceived and entangled in his machinations; I was afraid of temptations like wild beasts; like a tree from the dogs chasing him, I flew to the monastic monastery; within the walls and vows of monasticism I hoped to probably save my soul. What happened, what happened to me? The fear that I was terrified of came, and the fear of which I was afraid of, seized me in the bosom of desert life. Sin found a hole in the walls of the holy monastery: the saint shot an evil arrow into the depths of the monastery, mortally wounding me. When any one mortal sin strikes a person’s soul, then the entire accumulation of sins approaches the person and declares their right to him. This gathering refers and relies on the spiritual law. According to the spiritual law, one who voluntarily submits to one type of sin also involuntarily submits to sin in general, and therefore to all its types. There is a natural connection between sins, as well as between virtues. One virtue, performed sincerely, attracts all the virtues into the soul; and mortal sin, when it is fulfilled, introduces with it into the soul all sinful ailments. This happened to our forefather Adam: he, after transgressing one commandment of God, suddenly felt in himself the action of all passions: shame, and wickedness, and pride, and timidity, and carnal lust. This is done to all the children of Adam when they fall into sin. This happened to you too: by opening your mouth against you, you smote your enemies, squealing and gnashing your teeth and deciding: Let us devour you. This day, as expected, was found by him. The destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people of Israel, mourned by the Prophet, depict the mysterious crushing of the soul by mortal sin, after which it is subjected to the predominance of the passions and spirits of the rejected. The reckless actions and iniquities of the Jews, acting out of free will, were the cause of their civil disaster; but the Prophet attributes the disaster to the Lord, who allowed the disaster. The Lord, he says, do what He thought, ending His words, even the commandment from the first days: destroy and do not show mercy, and make the enemy rejoice over you, lift up the horn of him who is cold. The misfortunes of the Jews were the consequences of their arbitrary activities. This happens to every person. The ailments of the human body are natural consequences of damage to the nature by sin and abuse of the body; the ailments of the soul, its disorder, the violence of the passions over it are the natural consequences of the same damage to nature by sin and a sinful life. This is the decree of the spiritual law, a decree that depicts in all its greatness the accuracy of God’s truth. Contemplating this wonderful law, perplexed by it, the Prophet attributes to God all the misfortunes that befell the Jews as a result of their free will and as a result of the sinfulness common to all humanity. Illuminated from Above, the Prophet does not seek human protection for his ill-fated people, does not call strong and rich kings to his aid, does not call on other nations, numerous and warlike, does not beg for mercy from the victors who are favorable to the Prophet: alone, in the desert, on the ruins and ashes of Jerusalem, he cries before God; he pours out his soul and his prayer before God; his hope is in God; he expects deliverance from the one God; he submits reverently to the judgment of God. The behavior of the Prophet is a model for our behavior. Let us resort to God with selflessness! we recognize, open, confess our sins before Him; let us expose the ulcerated, scab-covered soul; Let us mourn over our sins and our sinfulness. – By abusing freedom, we can infect and kill ourselves with sin; God alone can cleanse a person from sins and heal from sinful infection. The Prophet offers repentance as a means of salvation for Israel, languishing under the yoke of barbarians. He concentrates the feat of repentance in crying and tears; Let the walls of daughter Sioni, he says, pour out tears day and night like a stream. Walls signify the feelings of the heart that have been petrified by mortal sin: such feelings become a wall that does not allow the word of God to act on the heart. The prophet calls the heart to tenderness. Reject the bitterness that has afflicted you, reject the deadness that has afflicted you, be quickened; cry out in weeping, say a humble prayer to the Lord, do not give yourself rest, and let not the apple of your eye be silent. Make this apple of yours speak; put into it the word characteristic of it: tears. The lacrimal font is given for the cleansing of sins committed after washing in the baptismal font. Continually immerse all the members of your soul in the tearful font; Wash your body, defiled by sin, in this font. Reject carnal peace and carnal pleasures: seek peace and pleasure in crying. By thorough, persistent repentance, imitate the repentance of David, a repentance crowned by the forgiveness of sin and the returned gift of the Holy Spirit. If I go into the village of my house - this is how David depicts the thoroughness and persistence of his repentance - or if I go up to my bed, if I give sleep to my eyes, and slumber everywhere, and peace to my soul, until I find in my soul the place of the Lord, a village for the God of Jacob. How can I be sure of the success of my repentance? In this knowledge, my Lord, because you have desired me, because my enemy will not rejoice over me: I will be convinced of the success of my repentance, when all sinful thoughts and dreams, which mark the invasion of me by enemies - demons - will remain fruitless and vain. This can only happen when the Lord descends upon the army of Israel. Acquire constant sobriety, constant vigilance over yourself. Without strict vigilance it is impossible to excel in any virtue, said some great Father. Beg God to grant you strength and wisdom in the fight against adversaries invisible to sensual eyes; beg God to grant you to see your enemies with the eyes of your soul, mind and heart; beg God to grant you to quickly spot thieves and murderers before they creep into your soul and take up residence in it. Praying to God, take courage yourself, and force yourself to be prudent and prudent; by your own efforts, prove your will to receive strength and wisdom from God. Wisdom in the fight against demonic thoughts and dreams lies in not talking to them at all when they appear to the mind, not at all listening to them. Conversation with demonic thoughts, examination of their picturesque dreams reveal in the monk a trust in his own strength and intelligence that he does not understand, they reveal arrogance and conceit, they reveal pride, they reveal double-mindedness, sympathy for sin, and a disposition to betrayal. Controversy with demonic thoughts and the hope of defeating them through one’s own efforts and tricks are inspired by carnal wisdom; they are inspired by ignorance of spiritual achievement; they are inspired by insidious demons, who count on certain victory when they draw the ascetic into conversation with themselves and debate with words. Just as a weak baby runs into the arms of its mother, in them it seeks salvation from everything that frightens it: so a monk, from the midst of invisible temptations, when hellish dogs and robbers surround him, must rush with all his soul to God, pray to Him for deliverance from adversity - must seek salvation not in himself, but in a single prayer, in the one God. See, O Lord, and look, whom have you cut off from the dead? Will you kill the priest and the prophet? So Saint Jeremiah cried out in prayer, pointing to the ruins and ashes of his beloved city, chosen by God; Thus cried Saint Jeremiah, pointing to a people who, alone of all nations, were called the people of God. Among this people there was no interruption in the tribe of priests and priests of the true God; Among this people, men of grace appeared, like a miracle, proclaiming the word of God revealed to them, denouncing vice and wickedness, seeing and predicting the distant future. Let the cry of prayer be heard about the mysterious Jerusalem, about the mysterious priest and prophet, about the soul that was united with Christ, that put on Christ, that accepted Christ into itself through Holy Baptism. The omnipresent Lord is present everywhere, sees everything equally everywhere; but He reveals Himself to rational creatures, appears as a phenomenon accessible to them in heaven. He descended from heaven to earth, without leaving heaven; became man on earth, without ceasing to abide in heaven; He ascended to heaven accepted by humanity and commanded us to cry out to Him in heaven. Lord, our Lord! look from Thy heaven, look from the throne of Thy unapproachable glory, from the throne surrounded by thousands of thousands and darkness of those Angels, look on Thy weakest creation, languishing in the earthly vale, cast into its weakness, into its helpless powerlessness, poisoned by the poison of sin, ulcerated with countless wounds, trampled and tormented by a frantic and inhuman enemy, dragged by him into the abyss of hell. Remember Your great mercy towards the human race! remember the redemption You have accomplished for us! remember Your all-holy blood, shed for us! appreciate this price given for us, a price that exceeds any price! Have mercy on the fallen, extend Your all-powerful right hand to help him! He was struck by a terrible defeat; he is bound with indestructible shackles; he groans in captivity and unbearable slavery; he was killed by eternal death. Lord almighty and all-merciful! You alone can help the fallen. Will you consign to final destruction the one who from youth has been in the arms of the Holy Church and the Holy Abode, who has been nourished by the Divine word, sung with Divine prayers, hymns and praises! Will you kill by complete abandonment the soul that has renounced the services and pleasures of the world to serve You? Will you completely despise the soul that is doomed to work for You alone, that has desired to become Your city, church, altar, priest, sacrifice? In the midst of my current I stumbled over sin! On my way to God I met a misfortune! I was striving for God with all my soul, when suddenly I felt a terrible wound, I saw an arrow in my chest, in my heart. The arrow was shot at me by an enemy who was not noticed by me in time. All my desires flew to God; I longed for the one God; I breathed God, consigning everything earthly to deep oblivion, recognizing everything corruptible and transitory as vain, unworthy of attention. Now, alas! I relaxed. Criminal lusts have entered my heart; thoughts and dreams of fierce temptation took over the mind. A sudden fall awaited my life. On that day, when I became infected with passionate lust, on that very day and hour, the power of the Almighty, which had hitherto protected me, retreated from me. I felt naked, changed. My entire spiritual being was clothed in thick darkness; a terrible emptiness entered into him, terrible as death. And this darkness, this emptiness was like death, the death of the human spirit. The human spirit dies this death when the Spirit of God departs from it. The death of the spirit was communicated to the body; the body felt this death; it took part in the death of the spirit. Disorderly movements appeared in the body, passionate movements, violent movements; they were unknown to the virgin body. A large crowd of enemies rushed into the empty spiritual church with burning torches in their hands, corrupted the splendor of the church, filled the church with a whirlwind, flame, smoke, stench: various sinful aspirations that I had never known before; I didn’t even understand that they existed, that they could exist. My feelings and thoughts, hitherto subtle and light, suddenly became white and heavy; they crawl like vermin in the dust of the earth, in the stench of sin. I learned from experience that the whole person is made flesh by the action of sin in him. I have learned from experience that evil spirits enter the church of the heart, abandoned by the Spirit of God, and make a person’s life either a death that does not feel itself, or an uninterrupted martyrdom. I have learned from experience that eating a forbidden fruit, once allowed to oneself, introduces evil into a person, poisons a person, perverts his properties, distorts his very being, takes away the ability to enjoy the bliss of paradise, puts him in a state and mood opposite to the state and mood of the inhabitants of heaven. The prison of hell or the threshold of this prison - suffering on earth - becomes the most logical consequence, the natural consequence of forbidden, criminal, proud and daring eating. “Once upon a time, the righteous Job was struck by a fierce, extraordinary illness, incomprehensible to doctors, rebellious to earthly medicine. The devil struck him, struck him with purulent scabs from head to toe, struck him by God's permission. There was no place on the body without an ulcer: the body was one continuous ulcer. Before his illness, Satan plundered all of Job’s rich property and killed all his children with cruel death. Job was formerly a king, lived in magnificent chambers, sat on a bright throne; illness and poverty robbed him of his royal dignity. A heavy stench spread around him: the former king was carried out of the city. There was no shelter or bed for him; The bed was a pile of rubbish and sewage thrown out of the city. Behind the walls and gates of the city, in the open air, among all the hardships, on a dungeon—that’s what Job’s bed is called in Scripture—he spent a long time. Three of his friends, the kings of neighboring countries, came to him to visit and console the sufferer. Seeing him from afar, seeing him covered with sores and scabs, seeing him half-naked, defeated, abandoned by everyone, they did not recognize him; They stopped in bewilderment, not approaching him - they exclaimed in a loud and pitiful voice, began to sob, tore their clothes to pieces, and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then, going up to him, they sat down, silently, near him. For seven days they could not utter a single word; Job did not say a single word to them. After seven days had passed, a thoughtful conversation began. The subject of the conversation was to find the reason why the unprecedented temptation was allowed. Job's friends presented the reason for his guilt before God; Job, in refutation of them, picturesquely depicted his virtuous, godly life that preceded temptation. The wondrous and spiritual controversy was resolved by the appearance of the Lord to Job, resolved by the revelation to the righteous man of the knowledge of the incomprehensibility of God’s destinies, knowledge that, before the cleansing of great sorrow, remained inaccessible to Job. Having received the revelation, he uttered a humble prayer to God, saying in it: We know that you can do everything, but you can do nothing. Who will tell me, of whom I do not know, great and wondrous things, which I do not know? Listen to me, Lord, and I will speak. With the hearing of the ear I heard Thee first, but now my eye sees Thee: the same I reproached myself, and faded, and thought of earth and ashes for myself.” Temptations were for the righteous a ladder to the highest perfection and virtue: this perfection consists in perfect submission to God. Perfect obedience to God is acquired by a person when a person ascends to the highest degree of knowledge of God and knowledge of his insignificance. Come to me, my friends! Visit me; comfort me. Do not be disgusted by the stench of sin coming from my ulcers, by the worms swarming from them; do not be disgusted by my ugliness and state of rejection: weep for me. Do not torment your garments - share my sadness with me. Do not sprinkle ashes and dust on your heads, but discuss my situation with a sound judgment, a judgment based on the word of God. I was subjected to severe grief not for the same reason as the righteous man was subjected to: he was subjected to progress in virtue, to prepare for the reception of abundant gifts of grace - I was subjected to it for my arbitrary sin, for my negligence and frivolity. I am a man seeing my poverty in the rod of God’s wrath against me. Turn your hand on me all day long, wear away my flesh and my skin, break my bones. I accept what is worthy of my deeds: remember me, Lord, in Your Kingdom. I lie on the rot of lawless deeds, thoughts and feelings: I myself have cast myself into this rot. The rod of punishment hits me incessantly, strikes me day and night, gives me no rest: I myself called, directed the cruel rod at myself. I was expelled from the paradise of innocence: I left it myself. Through my own fault, I was carried away from the Promised Land, from the land of serving God, to the land of Babylon, to the land of serving idols. The arm of Nebuchadnezzar and his stony-hearted commanders weighed down on me: I, with my insane behavior, attracted the formidable king of Babylon, his fierce army; I myself arranged for myself a shameful captivity, a painful enslavement. I see that my falls do not stop; I see no limit or end to them: passion has prevailed over me. Despair surrounds me on all sides; it closes the hope of salvation from me. So the sun is covered with a thunderous black cloud, when the cloud, on a hot summer day, in a vast arc, as if in an embrace, covers the outskirts of the earth and sky. The spectacle of my poverty and weakness, my insignificance, which I did not understand clearly and in detail, and had not previously known experimentally, opened before me; but I’m afraid of despair—ultimate destruction. I’m afraid that death will not appear to me unexpectedly, suddenly, will not precede my correction, will not make correction and salvation impossible. I am in the region of eternal death, although I live a sensual, material life. Such a life is a reason for the greatest crying, not for joy. It is worse than the life of the dumb, who live unconsciously and without purpose. I am aware of my life: I realize, clearly understand and see that this life is at the same time death, that death develops and develops through this life, that at the end of life eternal death must come - endless life in hell. My stomach disappeared in illness, and my years in sighs: the feeling of salvation disappeared; it seemed to be drowned in the multitude of my iniquities, in suffering and crying, which have not yet been crowned with the desired fruit. My strength has disappeared, and my bones have been crushed. My bones are crushed, and my soul is greatly troubled. There is no healing in my flesh from the face of Your wrath, there is no peace in my bones from the face of my sin. The residence of the ascetic of God is here called flesh; bones are the name given to his way of thinking, the thoughts that constitute his day-night teaching are named. The physical makeup of a person rests on his bones: and his life rests on his way of thinking; activity, visible and invisible, is completely dependent on the thoughts that the mind has acquired and in which it exercises. Because of my sin, my very way of thinking was shaken, constancy and harmony in thoughts were lost, the holy direction was lost: they were replaced by hesitation, heteroglossia, changeability. Because of constantly restless thoughts, feelings are agitated, the soul has become in a state of confusion, life is indignant, upset. What should I name my condition? Is it insanity? Is it demonic? Both names are infallible. I am imprisoned in pitch darkness, and there is no way out of it. My shackles are constantly acquiring greater heaviness and greater hardness. For those imprisoned in the darkness, which the Gospel designated as pitch-black, there is no God: prisoners plunged into terrible darkness do not feel His presence. They cry out to Him, but He does not listen to them; their prayer constantly remains unheard, careless, rejected. They cannot recognize the existence of God by any sign other than by the torment to which they are subjected for failure to keep the commandments of God, which was foretold by the word of God. I carry within me the guarantee of God’s wrath; I feel it; this anger is obvious to the eyes of my mind. He who has received a pledge of rejection, a tangible pledge, recognizes himself, of necessity, as condemned to the prison of the underworld, sentenced to the cruel punishments of hell; he seems to be standing at the very doors of hell, ready to dissolve every hour. How can I blame my enemy and the enemy of all men for the misadventure that befell me? How can I completely blame this source and the beginning of all human sins? The enemy's action is obvious; but he was encouraged, inspired by frantic audacity, by my arbitrary deviation from the commandment of God, my arbitrary obedience to the demonic suggestion and advice. The enemy strengthens my relaxation, my stagnation in vicious living. My sin shackled me: it took away my strength, took away my freedom, deprived me of the ability to move spiritually. I do this if I don’t want to, but if I hate it, I do it. I serve as a stationary target for the enemy’s arrows: not a single arrow flies past; each one causes a deep ulcer. I serve as a laughing stock and plaything for the outcast spirit: he turns me around according to his all-evil whim. He recognizes my death as certain, my fate as decided, and me as his prey. “The kinship of hell has multiplied,” he exclaims and proclaims in frenzied joy; The flock of Jesus was diminished by a new lost sheep.” My exhaustion and suffering are inexpressible in words: a clear concept of them is taught by one sorrowful experience. My spiritual progress ceased: it turned into a chain of stumblings. I am floating along the agitated, foaming, bubbling sea of ​​passions, having lost sight of the harbor of longed-for dispassion and God-loving holiness; I rush across the vast sea, not seeing the shores, I rush at the will of violent and gusty winds, which raised a fierce storm at sea. They breathe from all sides, without stopping, without subside for a short time. I do not have the strength to take the direction that I would like to take; I have no strength in my soul, I have no strength in my body: I ​​am constantly overcome by the power of sin that overcomes me. I will only make a good start to living a virtuous life, with the intention of following the Law of God in everything, and not deviating from it in anything; As soon as I enter into the feat of repentance, into reading the Scriptures, into night vigils, into diligent prayer with kneeling and tears, some irresistible power brazenly approaches me, overthrows the begun building of repentance, scatters the very stones laid at the foundation of the building. The means used by this power are numerous: it uses vain cares as its tools, giving them the meaning of necessity, and fierce temptations, the meeting with which becomes inevitable, and oblivion, and various bewilderments, and exhaustion of the soul, and even bodily illnesses. I taste, constantly taste, the cup of eternal death. It contains various poisons: sadness, despondency, doubt, unbelief, hopelessness, anger, grumbling, carnal lusts, lack of sympathy for everything spiritual, holy, and other sensations of countless, murderous passions. The Lord has renounced my soul from the world: I have forgotten my blessings and said: My victory and hope from the Lord are lost, said the Prophet on behalf of the devastated, desolate Jerusalem. Oh, what a true saying! The state of rejection has become familiar to me; I forgot about the state of God's favor towards me. This state was once blissful; it has long, long ago moved away from me. The traces of the wonderful calm in which all the feelings of soul and body rest when the peace of God overshadows them, surpassing all minds, both human and angelic, have been erased in me. Just as the blue, clear sky with its luminaries is reflected in the mirror of quiet, transparent waters, so in the soul, well-ordered by the world of God, the word of God is reflected with the wonderful sensations corresponding to this word. The Word of God is light: light is the sensations excited by the word of God. The traces of this state have been erased from me: it does not exist for me - it seems to have never existed. Devastation accomplished in one blow! it was accomplished by the first fall. My bliss disappeared instantly, just as the mirroriness of water disappears from the first blow of the wind. My hope is lost! I exclaim involuntarily. The incessant defeat by sin brings me to a sad conclusion. My victory and hope are lost! the cause of destruction is abandonment by the Lord. The Lord, the only Lord, delivers and grants victory to His chosen servants and servants. In victory over sin, the hope of salvation is mysteriously and essentially present. If only triumph over the sin that crushes me were restored to me; if I trampled on him like an abomination; if he ran away from me, disappeared into that unknown and dark region from which he arose and came out: hope would be revived in me; it would descend into me from heaven as a joyful, life-giving, Divine ray. My soul aches within me from the contemplation of my poverty and misfortune, from the grief with which I am constantly fed. I am horrified when I remember that the soul must certainly leave temporary life and the visible world, leave everything that it loved, what it enjoyed, what it was addicted to, to which it sacrificed both life and abilities; she must leave the body, about which she cares so much, to which she indulges and yields so much, to her own detriment, to the obvious destruction of herself and the body itself. I will leave everything earthly on earth, leaving the earth - my sins, my passions will go with me to the vast region of eternity. Righteous judge! Great God! How will I appear before Your face, dressed in the disgusting rags of sins and passions? What will I say to justify myself before You? How can I hide my uncleanness and shame from the Omniscient and All-Seeing! The holy Angels will also see that they will retreat from me with disgust and lamentation. The gloomy demons will see them - they will approach me with triumph, with glee, they will lay villainous hands on me, they will scold me, they will take possession of the forcibly enslaved arbitrarily, they will not allow me before the face of God, they will not allow me before the face of heaven, they will drag me into the dark abyss of hell... So I think - and I shudder from the terrible reflection. The soul trembles, the body trembles, bones and joints tremble, as they usually tremble in convicted criminals, sentenced to execution, brought to the place of execution... My existence has not ceased! I am still wandering on the earth's surface. This wandering is given to people, it lasts so that each person, within a certain period of time, looks around, brings repentance for sinfulness and sins, proves the sincerity of repentance by abandoning sin and correcting himself. The time given to me continues! the field of wandering, which has been covered considerably, has not yet been completely exhausted! I will put this in my heart, for this sake I will endure. The mercy of the Lord do not forsake me. The proof is that I am not yet delighted with death. I am given time to repent. Hitherto my prayer had been fruitless; at least, I have no notice of its reality, no fruit that would testify to this reality. But the judge of my prayer is not me; the judge of my prayer is God. Until now, I am a widow in relation to Divine grace, which is hidden from me, but is present in me, according to the holy teaching of Christianity. Until now, my heart is like a den in which robbers and villains of all kinds hover. Until now, my opponent freely inflicts grave insults and insults on me, mocks me viciously, plays with me, like a predatory beast plays with prey before tearing it to pieces and devouring it. Until now, the Lord has been patient with me, according to the word of the Gospel, does not avenge me, does not curb my opponent, does not tame the stormy sea of ​​passions, does not lead me into the harbour. This pier is dispassion; this pier is the perfect fear of God; this pier is humility, alien to exaltation, and therefore not having the opportunity to fall; This pier is love, which, having clung to God, never falls away from Him. This pier is on earth; This pier is a heavenly pier: it belongs to the future eternal life. Thus, material piers belong together to the sea, being its bays, and to those cities near which they enter and go deeper into the earth, serving as a safe refuge for ships from the winds and waves of the sea. He who has entered the spiritual haven already has residence in heaven with thoughts and sensations, although his body still wanders on earth. In relation to such a blessed guest, the earth loses the power of attraction with which it attracts the sons of the world to itself, draws them into its bowels, and absorbs them forever. When a person loses sympathy for the earth, the earth loses its influence on the person. I contemplate this, I contemplate it in the unattainable distance, at an inaccessible height; I contemplate by faith. I have become assimilated to God through Holy Baptism; the sacrament of repentance is based on the sacrament of baptism; through repentance the assimilation to God is returned, granted to the tuna by baptism, which is lost after baptism by life in the realm of the fallen nature. One who was born and then died can come to life through repentance; One who has not entered into existence by birth cannot be quickened by repentance. My part is the Lord! He became my part, my belonging. This was accomplished by my faith in Him! This was accomplished by baptism in His name! My part is the Lord, my soul says: for this reason I will wait for Him. The Lord is good to those who hope Nan: the soul that seeks His goodness is, and hopes in silence for the salvation of God. It is good for a husband to bear the yoke in his youth. This consolation and instruction is pronounced by Saint Jeremiah after the crying and lamentation he uttered; pronounces in the midst of crying and lamentation. Consolation and instruction were spoken and taught by the Holy Spirit of God. The infinite goodness of God is an inalienable property of the infinite in the goodness and perfections of God; trust in this goodness is a completely true, completely saving feeling; doubt in it is a false, destructive feeling. Warrior of Christ! From your youth you entered the army of Christ. A life entirely devoted to the exercise of the art of warfare produces proven warriors; many of them become capable of becoming the head of a regiment, they become capable of leading their new brethren in battles and to victories. For this, the enemy was furious with you, the enemy of God and the enemy of men hated you. He lay in wait for you and inflicted a serious wound on you. This is the nature of abuse. In this battle, the warrior of Christ is not always victorious: in it victories are replaced by victories and victories by victories, as sometimes again, sometimes differently, the sword devours: strengthen your battle against the city, and dig up and! With these words the holy king of Israel encouraged his commander, who was besieging a city of foreigners and suffered failure under the walls of the city. The mysterious leader of Israel - the mind of the ascetic - is bequeathed and commanded by the King Christ to be generous during the revolutions of military happiness: perseverance in the struggle is bequeathed and commanded. In your patience gain your souls: having endured to the end, he will be saved. Such perseverance is characteristic of a soul that sincerely seeks God; God always crowns such perseverance with success—and His triumph over sin often descends from God to the ascetic already at the end of the race, during which it wavered for a long time, leaning first to one side or the other. The triumph over sin fluctuates among all people, fluctuates throughout their entire earthly life; it wavers among the great saints of God; He is not shaken by venial sins alone, he is often wavered by mortal sins. The righteous man will scarcely be saved, Scripture testifies; the righteous shall fall sevenfold and rise through repentance. Repentance is a feat, it is a life taught and commanded by God to all humanity, without exception. The Prophets and Apostles recognized the need for repentance for themselves: they recognized the need for repentance not only for the cleansing of their venial sins, but also for the cleansing of the sins of their mortals; They recognized it as necessary for the goodness of God to extend a helping hand to them and pull them out of the perilous abyss. The Lord looked with a Divine gaze at Peter, who had fallen into apostasy, and Peter, excited and instructed by the Divine gaze, came to his senses and indulged in tears of repentance. After a year had passed since the commission of two terrible sins by the king and the prophet David, another Prophet, sent by God, exposed the careless David, who had fallen asleep and was deadened in spirit, and drew him to confession of sin and to weeping about sin. - Humanity, of course, could not resort to repentance: it is called and is called to it by the infinite goodness of God. Shut up, shut up! be silent not only with your lips, be silent with your mind and heart. Be silent out of a feeling of reverence before God and humility before Him; be silent out of a sense of consciousness of your sinfulness. Combine all the words into a word of heartfelt crying and prayer. Act through prayer, inspired by crying. Such prayer is a fiery weapon, scorching passions, driving away the spirits of the outcast. Having endured the Lord, says the great worker of repentance, he listened to me and heard my prayer: and raised me from the pit of passions and from the clay of the mire, and set my feet on stones and straightened my steps, and put in my mouth a new song, singing to our God. He will sit alone and become silent, having awakened in himself, by falling into mortal sin, the violent action and predominance of passions and demons. Protecting oneself with silence in solitude is necessary for the fallen. By withdrawing into solitude, communication with the temptations with which the world is filled is interrupted, the impressions made by them are erased from the heart, and the memory of them is erased from the memory. In the deserted desert, soldiers from the host of Israelites died and were buried, constantly rebelling against the Lord and leading the people into rebellion. They came out of Egypt with six hundred thousand men able to wield weapons, and they all fell in the desert, struck with death by the Lord. Like these warriors, passionate impressions acquired through life in the midst of temptations die in unity from the action of God’s grace, impressions that produce internal warfare, oppose the Law of God, desecrate and destroy a life pleasing to God. Temptations, when a weak person stands face to face before them, kill him with eternal death and support eternal death in him, constantly feeding and kindling passions. The Prophet depicts the harmful influence of temptations - he says: Death is coming through your windows, through your feelings, and coming into your land, in your heart, to destroy the youth from the outside and the young men from the hundred, newly planted virtues that have not had time to mature and become stronger. This is how the deadly crime of God’s commandment crept into the soul of our foremother, Eve: it crept in as she gazed intently at the forbidden fruit. Protecting from submission to the influence of temptation, God forbade not only eating the fruit, but also touching the fruit; Eve touched the fruit first with her eyes, then with her hands; touch was followed by unhappy taste. – The power of temptations weakens and is destroyed when the ascetic stands far from them: the rays of the sun do not warm them, ice and snow do not melt from them, when in winter the sun moves away from the earth, when its rays only glide across the surface of the earth. Let solitude be combined with silence. The fruit of solitude is meager; tares grow in its fields instead of wheat, if solitude is not associated with silence, if invisible, spiritual rumors, produced by worldly cares and addictions, are introduced into solitude. True silence consists in renunciation of the world and self-sacrifice, performed in the center of a person, in his spirit. True silence consists in completely abandoning the practice of thinking about vanity, in directing all thoughts into the service of God. The entrance into such silence is achieved through faith. Vain worries, many worries are replaced by a single concern for repentance and salvation. He who has acquired this exclusive care will moderate and moderate even soul-saving conversation, even conversation with like-minded and like-minded friends, so that the soul is not plundered, so that it constantly deepens into self-conception. Constant self-contemplation leads to an uninterrupted feat of repentance and crying. The Lord will not forever reject you; having humbled you, He will have mercy according to the abundance of His mercy. The reasons for the actions of the all-perfect God are known and can be known completely and accurately to the only God; they are known to men as much as God reveals them. God reveals to us His purpose in those allowances to which a person who has free will in choosing good and evil is arbitrarily subjected, which, however, could not have been accomplished if they had not been allowed by the autocratic and omnipotent will of God. God's purpose in allowing punishment is our humility. Without the virtue of humility, all other virtues cannot be true and pleasing to God. So that we learn humility, we are allowed various misfortunes, misfortunes from demons, from people, from various deprivations, from our nature perverted and poisoned by sin. God did not reject His servants from His heart, did not reject His servants with final rejection for their insufficient service, riddled with errors, for pursuits of passion, when these servants retain the intention of pleasing God. God, with temporary permission, humble the sons of men. The Scripture called the sons of men those servants of God who, feeling their strength and abilities, performing virtues and deeds, place their trust in them, in themselves. Arrogance and conceit are always combined with a subtle, often unnoticed, contempt for one’s neighbors. Distracting from conceit, arrogance, from humiliation and condemnation of neighbors, from the state of husbands to the state of infants, God allows His servants to experience by experience the weakness and damage of the fall of human nature. Arrogance and conceit are so alien to Christianity, so contrary and hostile to the Holy Spirit, that the Lord commanded conversion from them on a par with conversion from idolatry and dissolute life. Amen, I say to you, He said, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Knowing yourself is precious knowledge! It leads to a living and extensive knowledge of God, leads to faithful and correct management and disposal of oneself. A person who has recognized his meaning also sees his purpose. The purpose of man is to be a vessel and instrument of the Divine. Only by fulfilling this purpose can virtuous living be truly virtuous and pleasing to God. Without it, all human activity is distorted, and man, thinking of doing abundant good, acts according to the beginnings and in the area of ​​fall, acts to his own detriment, to his destruction. God, looking from the height of Divine perfection at human stumblings, allows these stumblings, allows them as an antidote that drives out the most deadly poison. This poison is pride, selfishness. Knowing the purpose of God in the temptations that befall us, let us join in our direction and activity to the purpose of God, let us assist it: with all our souls we will seek humility. Humility brings forgiveness of all sins and healing from all passions. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, so that in time you may be exalted: this is how the Apostle exhorts Christians undergoing tribulation. Temptations are allowed by God precisely in order to humble under His nose all the prisoners of the earth, and to evade the judgment of a man before the face of the Most High. Temptations are allowed precisely so that every Christian, despite his virtuous life, despite the merits brought to the Church and humanity, enters into unconditional submission to God, decisively rejects the opinion of his righteousness and all justifications, makes sure that before God everyone will not be justified alive, that the greatest righteous person is saved only by the grace of God, that all people with all justice are called in Scripture prisoners of the earth. We are prisoners! Overthrown from heaven, overthrown from paradise, we remain on earth as in an external prison; our bonds are the many infirmities of soul and body. Those prisoners in prison who recognize their sinfulness, confess and accept the Redeemer, receive forgiveness, liberation, heaven and paradise; unrepentant sinners are transferred from the outer prison to the inner, from temporary to eternal, into the abyss of hell. Temptations and sorrows are God's judgment. Let us hasten to justify ourselves at this trial by rejecting excuses, recognizing ourselves as worthy of punishment, and true repentance. This judgment was established on our earthly pilgrimage with the goal of delivering us justification at the final Judgment of God, on the brink of time and eternity. The Lord does not speak of condemning a person, always putting him on trial, says the Prophet in his inspired, sacred Lamentation. Why does a living man, a man, complain about his sin? Have you fallen into sin? Don’t be disheartened or bewildered by this. Our nature is infected with sin: it is already natural for it to give birth to unnatural sin. So it is natural for an illness to arouse its characteristic instincts and demands in a suffering body, harmful to the health of the body; so it is natural for the earth, subjected to the curse of the Creator, to sprout tares from itself. No one sows tares: they conceive and grow by themselves; they are a consequence and expression of the morbidity with which the earth is poisoned. Conceived in iniquities, born in sins, we naturally produce sin out of ourselves; We produce it not because it is natural to our nature, which came from the immaculate hands of the Creator, but because it is natural to the illness that has infected nature. An experienced farmer does not give in to despondency and cowardice when he sees that his field is covered with tares: with patience, constancy and labor, he plucks them out and plucks them out. In due time, the wheat will strengthen, cover the earth thickly, draw all the earthly juices into itself, and the tares, which are not allowed to strengthen, will weaken, and, of necessity, give way to good fruit. The behavior of a farmer in relation to the tares should be similar to the behavior of an ascetic in relation to sin. Let us not be discouraged, surprised, horrified, bewildered, seeing various sins arising in ourselves, let us not consider this a strange phenomenon: “from my youth many passions have overcome me,” confesses the Holy Church on behalf of each of its members; Until death, a person is subject to the influence of sin. In constant vigil over ourselves, we will purge from ourselves the most initial manifestations of sin in thoughts and feelings, not allowing them to develop and intensify. If, through our negligence or due to a combination of unforeseen and compelling circumstances, we happen to actually commit a sin, then there is no room for relaxation, hopelessness and despair. The medicine of repentance is omnipotent, as medicine taught by the omnipotent physician - God. It heals from all sins and from all passions. Remaining in mortal sin, remaining in enslavement to passion is a condition for eternal destruction. A difficult feat against passion; It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to heal her with repentance. It is necessary to undertake this feat; it is necessary to submit to painful healing: without them there is no salvation. Every passion is criminal love, it is the criminal assimilation of some type of sin. Only those who have thrown off the yoke of passions, those who have truly repented, will enter the gates into the holy city, the new Jerusalem, into the Heavenly Jerusalem; outside - psychos and sorcerers, fornicators and murderers, and idolaters and everyone who loves and commits lies; outside this city - everyone bound by passions, unhealed by his love. There is no place for any other love except the love commanded by God; there is no place for any other love except Divine love. Other love cannot live in the cool, spiritual, blissful flame and light of heaven: a different flame is characteristic of it and is destined for it, a dark flame, a burning flame, but not burning, the flame of hell. By the sweat of your brow, bear away your bread until you return to the land from which you were taken. Cursed is the earth in your deeds: bear it in sorrow all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles will grow for you, and take down the grass. This is the definition spoken by God over fallen man. It does not cease to be fulfilled throughout the visible universe; it never ceases to be fulfilled mysteriously in the soul of every servant of God. Instead of heavenly pleasure, he was given the field of repentance; the whole person is depicted by the earth, but mainly his heart; thorns and thistles - passions; sadness is called crying with all its branches and initial causes; bread is salvation. This bread is obtained by the sweat of the brow, that is, with great mental and physical labor, with numerous sorrows and deprivations. The feat of repentance and struggle against passions is destined to last a lifetime. Having sought out our path and tested it, God looked at our life and examined it. It turned out to be insufficient. We have sinned and committed impiety, for this reason you did not have mercy on us, our Lord: You gave us over to the cleansing fire of repentance; You arranged our external situation so that it would help us bring satisfactory, full-fledged repentance; the external position is like a heavy oppression, the pressure of which extracts the most pleasant juice from the ripe berries of fragrant grapes. Let's turn to the Lord! Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God high in heaven: let us offer complete repentance. In order for it to receive this dignity, it is necessary to combine the cry of the heart and the prayer of the heart with the corresponding bodily feat, with the corresponding bodily deprivations: repentance is impossible in the depths of pleasure, relaxation, and excess. In Scripture, physical deeds and hardships are called hands. I am the resurrection and the life, said the Lord: believe in Me, even if you die, killed by mortal sin, you will come to life through My action, which is the action of Life. It is impossible for a believer in Christ to die; It is impossible for a believer in Christ to die an eternal death except by renouncing Christ. Renunciation of Christ is accomplished by confession of renunciation with the lips, which is certainly and immediately followed by renunciation of the heart and whole being; a renunciation of Christ is committed by living a life that is deliberately contrary to the will of Christ; it is accomplished by despair, which is the rejection of faith in Christ. Behold, I, says the Lord, will open your graves and bring you out of your graves, O My people, and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you will know that I am the Lord, I will always open your graves, and I will raise you up from your graves, O My people: and I will put My Spirit in you, and you will live, and I will establish you in your land, and you will know that I am the Lord, and I will do things. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put My Spirit in you, that I may walk in My commandments, and keep My judgments. I do not do this for you, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations, and I will sanctify My great name. What could be firmer, more joyful than this promise? Already one promise, breathing with supernatural power, provides an anticipation of revival. If we were to rise from the death of sin by our own power, the hopelessness of one who fell into mortal sin, who was killed by mortal sin, would be just. Our almighty Creator, who at creation gave us, along with natural being, grace-filled existence, returns to us a gracious existence. When He created us from nothing, we could not precede the creation with any gift, any expression of free will. The grace-filled existence is lost by us arbitrarily; with the disastrous loss, natural existence was perverted into undying death: before the return of grace-filled existence, the truth of God requires us to express our free will. A person’s will to be resurrected into a life of grace is expressed by sincere repentance. Repentance, being an expression of human will, is also and primarily an expression of the will of God. Repentance is by no means a human invention; repentance is God's gift to humanity. The all-good and all-wise God has given man a natural ability to repent: this natural ability is aroused by God, and, having entered into obedience to God, it is overshadowed by Divine grace; a natural action is transformed into a grace-filled action, and the Spirit of God Himself intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Repentance is preached throughout the Holy Scriptures: it is proclaimed by the Old Testament; taught by the Gospel in its entirety, in its unlimited abundance. The sons of the house of Israel said in bewilderment: our charms and our iniquities are in us, and we melt in them, and how can we be alive? To these words the Lord commanded His Prophet to give the following answer: Say to them: As I live, the source of life, says Adonai the Lord, I do not want the death of a sinner, but to turn the wicked from his way and live to be him. By conversion, turn, with a decisive appeal, turn away from the path of your evil. How are you dying, O house of Israel? Why do you arbitrarily die an eternal death, rejecting repentance? Whenever I say to the wicked, “You shall surely die,” and he will turn from his sin and do justice and righteousness, and the wicked will walk in the commandments of life, without committing unrighteousness, he will live and will not die: even if his sins are sinned, they will not be remembered: until he has done judgment and righteousness, he will live in them. Repentance is given for cleansing from all sins, without exception; but then it is only accepted by God, then it only has a saving effect, when sins and a sinful life are abandoned and replaced by a life pleasing to God. – The initial sermon of the Gospel was a sermon about repentance. The sermon was announced both by the holy Forerunner of the Savior, and by the Savior Himself-the God-Man, and by the Apostles of the Savior. A sermon on repentance was preached; The Church is commanded to forgive all sins by passion, no matter how many times they are repeated; forgiveness is given for sinful life and mortal sins with the condition of abandoning them; It is declared that sin is possessed by those people who outwardly appear righteous, but have rejected healing themselves by repentance. Repentance alone forms the righteous, pleasing to God; Only through repentance can one accept the Gospel and assimilate the Gospel. Repent and believe in the Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ tells us. Repentance requires the cooperation of the human will with the will of God; resurrection from the death of sin is an action of the sole will of God: by this action of the will of God, the favor of God is poured out on people who acted according to the instructions of the will of God, who bowed to the good and saving yoke of repentance. Let us obey the calling of God! Let's believe the promise of God! let us fulfill our duty, the duty of slaves and creatures, in relation to God - and He, the faithful God, will certainly fulfill His great promise towards us. What distracts us from true, decisive repentance? Our disbelief. From unbelief comes double-mindedness; from double-mindedness - weakness, failure in the work of God. No one can lay his hand on the forehead and in vain be led back into the Kingdom of God. Doubt is like the turbulence of the sea, tossed and tossed by the winds. The husband is double-minded, unsettled in all his ways: let him not imagine that he will receive anything from God. Let us reject unbelief, believe in the Gospel, demonstrate faith through works: let us repent. The Heavenly Father, our God, sets times and seasons in His power. “It is not yours,” the Lord answered the question of the Apostles, who were curious to know the time of the establishment of the kingdom of Israel, “it is not yours that means times and years.” The Father has placed times and seasons in His power. Hidden from human knowledge is the life span of the visible world, the day and hour of its transformation; the period of his earthly wandering, the day and hour of his relocation to the afterlife are hidden from every person; Hidden from every repentant is the period of his repentance, the day and hour in which repentance will be crowned with the notification of the final remission of sins, will be crowned by clear for the heartfelt release from the bonds of sin, from passions, will be crowned by the overshadowing of the grace of God, clear to the entire human being. The grace of God, having overshadowed the repentant, destroys the kingdom of sin in him, establishes the Kingdom of God, and becomes a reliable guarantee for receiving eternal benefits. The pledge, being the betrothal of bliss, is itself bliss. The period of repentance for each repentant is assigned by God according to His all-holy, unknown judgment. This period lasted for some many years, for some a few hours. Some bore the burden of the day and age, others labored in the helicopter city of the Son of God for a very short time. The long period of repentance is picturesquely depicted by the transformative shadows of the Old Testament: it is depicted by the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt for four centuries; He is depicted as captivating them in Babylon for seventy years. Enslavement in Egypt marks the state of the Christian, destined for the service of God, but kept by the world in the service of the world; Captivity in Babylon marks admonishing punishment for sins committed in a life already devoted to worship. When the Israelites left Egypt, they, at the command of God, begged from the Egyptians a lot of gold and silver: similarly, the servant of God, gradually leaving life according to the flesh, brings out precious, experimental knowledge about the meaning of the world, about the fall of man, about the action of sin in him, about the influence of rejected spirits on him. The commandment of God given to the Israelites signifies God’s wise vision, according to which even evil promotes good in relation to Christians whose goal is to please God. Sin for your sake, if you have sinned before God, you will be taken into captivity in Babylon, the Prophet wrote at the command of God and on behalf of God to the Jews, whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, resettled from Jerusalem to Babylon. Having entered into Babylon, you will be there for many years and a long time, until seven generations: then I will bring you out from there in peace. For My angel is with you, this one will seek your souls. At a time when the ascetic is apparently abandoned by God; at a time when apparently God was covered with a cloud, so that the prayer of distressed Israel would not reach Him; at a time when, outwardly, Israel is struck by blindness, rejected, cast into the midst of people, that is, passions and demons: at this time of indulgence and punishment, the grace of God, hiding its action, does not cease to act. It brings significant prosperity to the servant of God. Not noticing success, especially at the beginning, struggling with the waves and whirlwinds of the sea of ​​the heart, being every hour in danger of perishing in the boiling abyss, the servant of God sharpens his strength, learns the art of fighting sin, descends into the depths of humility, there he finds the treasure of spiritual reason and sensation, and ascends to heaven with spiritual reason and feeling. Servants of God! do not lose heart, do not relax in your pious deed. Build churches in the land of your captivity, and move in, and plant grapes and eat their fruits, and marry wives and have sons and daughters, and bring your wives and your daughters to husbands, and let them give birth to sons and daughters, and multiply, and do not decrease, those who suffer according to the will of God, for I will return to the Creator, and give up their souls own in charity. Servants of God! During the misfortunes that are allowed to you, externally from people, internally from the indignation of passions, surrender to the will of God, strengthen yourself, and be inspired by faith in God. During this blessed time, take special care to perform all God-loving virtues. The earth, cultivated with iron tools and fertilized with rotten substances, is especially capable of fertility: so the heart, cultivated by sorrows, filled with humiliation, is especially capable of the most sublime virtue. The time of adversity is the time of God’s predominant remembrance of us; the time of adversity is the time in which God builds our souls. Blessed is not only the one who is innocently exposed to temptation; Blessed is the one whom the Lord punishes for sins and pushes with sorrows from the broad path to the path of God’s commandments. The Divinely inspired Holy Scripture reveals to us these deep, most comforting secrets of God’s looking at us. When the Israelites left Egypt, they headed to the shores of the Red Sea, to the vast Arabian desert. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, repenting that he had let the Israelites go and wanting to return them to Egypt and enslavement, pursued them and overtook them by the sea. But God made a way for the Israelites in the middle of the sea, and Pharaoh and his numerous army were drowned in the sea. The Israelites entered the desert. There they were met with various hardships and misfortunes, which they had to overcome by faith, because only the power of God overcame them; there, on Mount Sinai, God gave them laws and statutes for civil and private life. At the foot of this mountain, the robber tribe of Amalek set out to block the chosen people's path to the Promised Land. Between Egypt and Palestine lies a vast desert, through which the nomadic families of Ishmael wander. God did not choose the shortest path through this desert for His people, but led them along a long, difficult path, and assigned them a long journey through the desert. Life in the desert is needed so that life in Egypt is erased from memory, so that the skills of Egypt are erased from the heart, so as not to bring into the Promised Land these skills that are not native to the inhabitants of the Promised Land. Pharaoh's pursuit of Israel signifies the passion of the man who has left the world: these passions are intensified to return to the world the one who has recently left it. The hardships and sorrows that met the Israelites in the desert represent those hardships and sorrows with which ascetic life was filled. In this life, God actively teaches His law to His true ascetic, transferring it from the book to the soul. In the desert, the ascetic learns that behavior, those customs in which the Law of God can be preserved inviolably. The first hostile people who met the Israelites with hostility and attempted to prevent them from entering into the inheritance given by God were the wild sons of Amalek. By the name Amalek, the Fathers mean thoughts, dreams, and carnal sensations. Voluptuousness and voluptuousness initially come into battle against the warrior of Christ, who has again joined the monastic regiment. Israel met Amalek with their chosen soldiers under the leadership of Jesus, and Moses, the ruler of the entire people of Israel, accompanied by the high priest Aaron and Hur, the wife of the prophetess, sister and ruler and high priest, ascended to the top of the mountain, to the top of high Horeb, to act in prayer on Israel, who fought under the footsteps of Horeb. When Moses raised his hands to the mountain, Israel prevailed; when, tired, he lowered them, Amalek began to overcome. Noticing this, Aaron and Hur supported Moses' hands constantly raised - and by sunset Jesus defeated Amalek and carried out his terrible bloodshed among the upset crowds. The cruciform, strengthened outstretching of Moses' hands depicts that in order to conquer carnal lusts, crucifixion of the flesh is necessary. The crucifixion of the flesh is associated with bloodshed: because not only flesh, but also blood is incapable of inheriting the Kingdom of God. Crucifixion and bloodshed are carried out by the new monk with the help of church sacraments, with the help of thorough confession of all sinful manifestations, with the help of church and cell prayers, as if with the help of the high priest Aaron; they are accomplished with the help of fasting, vigils, kneeling and other pious works, as if with the help of Or, related to Moses and Aaron, the spouse of the prophetess of God. Imitating the divinely inspired ruler of the Israelites, who built an altar after the victory over Amalek and made a sacrifice to the Lord, build a mysterious altar, say the Fathers, in your soul: offer on it a constant sacrifice of praise and prayer. Know that the Lord is your refuge, that He fights against Amalek with a secret hand from generation to generation. Your feat is necessary. Your feat is an active expression of your will. But the defeat of Amalek and all other foreign tribes is accomplished solely by the power of the King of kings - God. He grants salvation to those people who sincerely desire to be saved. Righteous Sarah, the wife of the great righteous man, Patriarch Abraham, languished under the yoke of infertility throughout her life; Sarah's barrenness was not allowed, despite God's repeated promises to give Abraham numerous offspring. The holy wife has already grown old; the ability to bear children had already died in her: at this time the promise was again announced with particular clarity and with the appointment of a one-year period, at the end of which Sarah was supposed to have a son. The Lord Himself pronounced the promise, appearing to Abraham and Sarah at the oak of Mamre, where their tent was spread out, appearing in the form of a man, accompanied by two Angels, whose appearance was that of men. The promise seemed so unrealistic to Sarah that when she heard it, she laughed. The Lord convicted Sarah and confirmed the promise: He pointed to the omnipotence of the word of God as the validity and certainty of the promise. Saint Sarah gave birth to a holy son, Isaac. Sarah said in joy: The Lord make me laugh; if anyone hears, he will rejoice with me. Who will tell Abraham that Sarah fed the boy with milk, that he gave birth to a son in my old age? Sarah mysteriously portrays a soul that is always faithful to the Law of God. And for such a soul, the feat of repentance is necessary due to the sinfulness with which all humanity is infected; and such a soul often languishes for a long time, struggling with passions, given over to bewilderment and uncertainty about God’s mercy towards itself, about its salvation; and such a soul is left for a long time before the closed doors to the palace of dispassion and holiness. In vain she prays before them, in vain she cries, in vain she knocks on them, as if with her hands, with various deeds and virtues. Hopelessness is already taking possession of her; She already sees in herself the final exhaustion of both abilities and life; already recognizes the state of grace as not his lot, and then, suddenly, the doors of the palace open. The Bridegroom-Christ appears in ineffable glory, in the ineffable light of the Divine, takes into his arms the bride-soul, a soul exhausted by the sufferings of asceticism, who has proven fidelity through constancy and long-suffering. Then he runs away, the crying disappears; sighs and other forms of expression of sadness are deeply forgotten: the soul drowns in the infinite Divinity, drowns in infinite bliss. Having tasted supernatural life, it seems to lose its own, loses that life that is also death: without ceasing to exist, it begins to live a different, new life, a life without measure, abundant and all-encompassing; having grown old and tormented by barrenness, then having given birth, beyond her dreams, to a spiritual fruit, she says, like Sarah: “The Lord created for me laughter, that is, he gave me unexpected, inalienable joy - the betrothal of eternal joy. My youth, worn out in sins and passions, was renewed like an eagle. My flesh, like the flesh of Naaman the Syrian, became like the flesh of infants after I was immersed in the Jordan of Divine grace. My mind has gained independence: it is not carried away by the many different seductions of evil and vain malice: it has become assimilated to God, cleaved to God, has gone deep into God, and remains inseparably in God.” You ask: how is this wondrous change accomplished? The Holy Fathers instruct us to answer this question like this: “It is said in Scripture: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Where the Spirit comes, do not look for natural order and law. The worshiped Holy Spirit is omnipotent, and do not be surprised if He accomplishes in you what did not exist, if He makes a mind that was previously conquered victorious. From above there is a coming Comforter over all. He makes you ruler over natural movements and demonic slander.” “If you ask God for something by prayer, and He hesitates, not fulfilling your request, do not grieve about it: you are no smarter than God. This is done either because the mood of your heart does not correspond to your request, or because you have not achieved the proper measure to accept the gift. We should not strive for great measures prematurely, so as not to abuse the gift of God as if it were received quickly. Everything obtained easily is easily lost; Everything purchased with heart disease is stored carefully. For this reason, God first exposes us to temptation and languor, and then bestows the gift. Glory to the Lord, who gives us the pleasure of health through strong medicine!” Saving for us, deadly for sin - the memory of death born of sin. This memory acts both against sins and against sinful illnesses: it stops you from falling into open sin by any illegal act; it, dulling the sting of the passions, frustrating the seductive dreams drawn by the passions, curbs the sin that secretly lives in the soul. This memory protects our spiritual achievement from arrogance and exaltation, to which fallen man is so inclined, into which he conveniently falls even because of gifts of grace; this memory constantly keeps the soul in God-loving sadness, preoccupies it with the inevitable Judgment of God, preoccupies it with the multitude of sins committed in the field of earthly life in knowledge and ignorance; this memory cools one to all the vain activities of the transitory world, encourages one to all the pious exercises by which bliss in eternity is prepared and arranged. When night falls, it says: “Do not rush to indulge in sleep: you will have time to get enough of it in the grave. Shed your warmest prayers and warmest tears before God: try to bend God to mercy on you with humble prayers, many genuflections, and copious tears; try to lighten with sincere repentance the burden of sins weighing on your shoulders. It is completely unknown whether the day that comes after this night will belong to you. Perhaps this night death will unexpectedly creep up on your bed and delight you suddenly, as it has delighted many. She resettles people in a distant land, in another world. There, repentance, crying, prayers, and heart disease no longer bring any benefit: they are fruitlessly accompanied by eternal torment.” When the day comes, the memory of death again appears to the worker, bringing to his attention the saying of Scripture: Do not refuse to do good to the one who requires, when your hand is to help. Do not exclude yourself from the number of those who demand: you need many things, mainly repentance. Do not tell the thought of repentance that has come to you: when you go away, return, and in the morning I will give you the power to do good: do not think about what the coming day will give birth to. The memory of death urges us to fulfill all the commandments of God without omission: because the measure of our earthly journey is hidden from us; lost time is irreversible; of a lost good deed, a lost feat, recompense is also lost. Tell me, Lord, my death and the number of my days. Tell me, explain to me, by what measurement, by what calculation You measure, calculate, determine my life? I would like to foreknow my death in order to extract from my stay in this world, from wandering through this seductive desert, all possible benefits for myself, without wasting in vain or to my detriment, not a single day, not a single hour. – The measure of human life on earth and the number of its days is short-term, there is the fastest moment, there is a feature that is not noticeable on the vast tablets of eternity. He has received accurate information about his death who expects this death every day, every hour. He learned the measure of his earthly life, he took a correct count of the days of this life, who understood that this life is a movement that does not stop for a minute, in which the future continually becomes past, and the past continually and forever descends, as into a grave, into non-existence. Constant movement does not allow any position to acquire strength or constancy: everything passes in its own course, everything changes, everything flies away. The present is a line that moves continuously, an elusive line, a line between the future and the past. On the verge of this, the future is constantly transformed into the past. He gave the true value of earthly life, who does not exhaust attention to it, does not become attached to it with his heart, who does not allow himself to be deceived by its charms and vanity, who does not recognize constancy in impermanence, positivity in incessant, indefinite movement, who behaves and acts like a wanderer, who uses earthly, temporary life to study and acquire true, eternal, heavenly life. My composition is like nothing before You, His holy Prophet confesses to God, confesses on behalf of all people. My body is not some kind of unchangeable, independent entity: it is a strange combination of elements according to laws unknown to me; it is some kind of phenomenon, an incomprehensible phenomenon, beginning with birth or conception, passing from state to state, ending with death. How and when did I come alive with existence? I don’t remember and I don’t know. What force gives me life, calls me into existence from non-existence? what force develops life, transforms a baby into a youth, a youth into a youth, a youth into a man? Why does this force, developing for some time, then gradually begin to become scarce? Finally she leaves the body, and the body crumbles to dust. What is the connection between this invisible and incomprehensible force and the visible body? What is my soul? The essence of the soul is as incomprehensible to me as the essence of the body. The powers and abilities of the soul are obvious: they confirm its existence. My own experience proves to me that the body is the lowest part of my being, that it, in its highest powers and abilities, is only an instrument of the soul. I find myself, both in soul and in body, unknown, incomprehensible to myself. My existence on earth was preceded by non-existence; and the end of my existence on earth has the image of the destruction of the finite. My composition is like nothing before You. Before my birth, my mother’s womb served as a prison for my soul and body: after birth, the body serves as a dark mother’s womb for the soul. I am born into eternal life through the death of the body. What does a person’s earthly life mean? She is the shadow of life, a step to life, the threshold to true life; it is a wandering and journey, equally short and equal for everyone in comparison with immeasurable eternity. All numbers and measures, so different from each other, come into equality when they stand before an infinite magnitude and become equal to it. I do not have any property on earth, and I cannot have it. Everything is given to me for a while, for maintenance; everything is taken away by death. I inherit someone else's property; What I acquire myself, I leave, I leave not when I want, when and how it happens. All earthly bonds, the closest bonds, the bonds imposed by nature and law, are broken mercilessly by death; they are torn apart without my knowledge or consent, most contrary to my will, most unexpectedly, as if untimely. Between all objects, between all earthly relationships, I am a guest. Recently I found myself between them, recently I saw them, never having seen them before; I will soon leave their midst, I will leave forever, I will never see them: the veil, just removed by birth, will be covered by death and will separate me forever from those whom I recognized after countless centuries. Why do I cleave with all my soul to the earth, to my position on it, as if it were a permanent resident? Why don’t I think at all, don’t want to think about eternity? This exposes the blindness of my mind and heart; This exposes my self-delusion; This exposes me to the fact that I am stricken with a sinful illness, stricken with eternal death at the center of my being. Deep is the fall of man. A sea of ​​tears is not enough to mourn a terrible fall. In the abyss of this fall, our Lord extends to us an almighty helping hand, a hand that reaches the bottom of the abyss: He draws out of the abyss and raises to heaven those people who will to be saved and to be disciples of the Lord. Pointing to the world that seduces and destroys weak people, pointing to the deadly sinful infection operating within us, the Lord proclaims: Anyone from you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple. If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and also his own soul, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not wear his cross and comes after Me cannot be My disciple. One day his beloved brethren visited one of the great monks. They found the monk crying and began to beg him to tell them the reason for the crying. They begged the Reverend for a long time, and for a long time the Reverend answered questions and convincing requests with silence. Finally he told them: “In my spirit I stood near the Lord crucified on the cross, as the Mother of God and the beloved disciple once stood. I stood and cried. I would like to always stand at the cross of the Lord and cry.” The Ever-Virgin Mother of God and the virgin John stood at the cross of the Lord, as representatives of the highest human holiness and purity. Genuine human virtue is evidenced by the fact that it is all in Christ, that in its earthly position it approaches the suffering position that the God-Man chose for Himself during His sojourn on earth. And repentance had representatives at the cross of the Lord. The representative of repentance was Mary Magdalene, from whom the Lord cast out seven demons; the representative of repentance was the thief crucified at the right hand of the Lord. Sinners! let us be encouraged: there is a place for us at the cross of the Lord; the place is indicated and given to us by the great love of the Lord. He became man for the salvation of sinners; He endured cruel torture and death on the cross for sinners. Let us cry at the cross of the Lord. For the most abundant crying we have two motives: each of them is worthy of the most abundant crying, unceasing crying. When we raise our eyes to grief, before your eyes is the Lord crucified for us; when we lower our gaze into ourselves, we see before our eyes the dark, immense abyss of our sinfulness. I stand before this intense spectacle, I stand with a heart of stone. I understand that crying should be my property, my constant exercise; but I don't have it. Coldness and indifference control me. I need teachers for crying. Who will instruct me when I cry? who will put crying into my heart? – The Lord Himself instructs us to cry; All people who have pleased God well are instructed to weep: they have all ascended into a life pleasing to God, we weep. Crying loves to be lonely in the heart. Drive away vain worries and addictions from your heart, and crying will appear in your heart by itself. By crying, the Spirit of God, implanted in a Christian during Holy Baptism, reveals His presence in a Christian; crying reveals the revival of the soul for spiritual sensations, just as the birth of every baby is marked by its crying. Crying is the beginning of life. My Lord! My Lord! You have gratified the crying, promised it consolation: You also grant me a blessed, comforting cry. How could crying be bliss, being naturally the result of misfortune, how could it be consolation, being naturally the fruit of grief, if it were not imbued with Your gracious action, the cry of repentance commanded by You? Such crying arises from poverty of spirit, just as rain is formed from thick clouds. Poverty of spirit comes from seeing and realizing one’s sins and sinfulness. My Lord! My Lord! grant me the sight of my sins and sinfulness; grant me vision of the sins that I have actually committed through thoughts, sensations, words and bodily actions; grant me vision of my fall, common to all people, a fall that serves as the source of all human sins. Remove from me my superficial, cold view of my disastrous state: with this view, I spend my life as if sinless, not in any need of repentance. Grant me the correct view, so that it will lead me into a life appropriate to my distressed state, so that it will lead me to cry. Grant me to stand with my whole being at Your cross; grant me to constantly stand at Your cross with constant remembrance of it, constant sympathy for it. Grant me to weep and cry at Your cross. Alas, my Lord! You are on the cross: I am drowning in pleasures and bliss. You fight for me on the cross, hanging between heaven and earth; You are pierced with nails; You are pierced by a spear; You are completely tormented by the torment that preceded the crucifixion; You are crowned with thorns; already crowned with a crown of thorns, You ascended to the throne of victory and dominion, to the cross; from this throne with your hands nailed to the cross, You bound the spirits of the air; with your feet nailed to the cross, You trampled death: I lie in laziness, in relaxation, looking for peace everywhere and in everything, running away from deprivation and crucifixion, remaining in eternal death. You, prostrate and raised on the cross, You, who accomplish the redemption and rebirth of men on the cross, are showered with reproaches and ridicule by the glorious and powerful lands, slandered by all the people, a people blinded, maddened by the charm of malice: I try to catch the vain praise and approval of men, I thirst for them insatiably; Deprived of them, I indulge in grief; As soon as any insignificant, offensive word reaches my ears, violent rage begins to boil within me. On Your cross You unfailingly fulfill the will of Your natural Father and Your Divine will, one with the will of the Father, subordinating to the Divine will the will of Your suffering humanity: I strive to constantly satisfy my damaged will, a will hostile to the Law of God; I stubbornly defend my will, I argue about it with bitterness and anger. Suffering on the cross, You pray for the crucifiers, for Your murderers; to alleviate the guilt of the evildoers, You represent their ignorance: I, taking advantage of prosperity, am constantly subjected to grumbling, expressing dissatisfaction, with grief I fight not only against my enemies, I fight against my friends, deceived by my vicious heart, my vicious imagination. Dying on the cross, You hand over Your human spirit into the hands of the Father, although, equal in dignity to the Father, You have equal power with Him and the same power over Your human spirit, although in humanity You received power from the Divinity united in You unfused with humanity, the power to lay down Your soul and receive Your soul: I, darkened by carnal wisdom and unbelief, seek to arrange in all the contingencies of life myself with my weak mind, my consideration, according to the suggestions of carnal wisdom and deceit; I do not want to surrender myself to the right hand of my God, I do not want to call on this right hand to help me, although the omnipotent right hand of God contains me completely and embraces me from everywhere. When one of the warriors, a representative of humanity hostile to God, pierced with a spear Your all-holy body, already abandoned by your soul, then Your dead body, which continued to live in God and perform miracles, emitted from itself a stream of blood and a stream of water. You gave water for washing to Your enemies, blood for drinking; Your tormented body was offered to Your enemies as slaughtered food, prepared for consumption. Almighty and All-Good! while people were exhausted in their atrocities against You, You were completely exhausted to save them, You gave yourself all to them in order to transform enemies and murderers into sons and friends, in order to deliver Your enemies from eternal torment in the abysses of hell, in order to bring them eternal blissful residence in the villages of heaven. Even before the crucifixion, the crucifiers took off Your clothes and left You naked: They tore Your vestments into pieces and divided them among themselves; They cast lots about Your unsightly sap, which attracted their special attention. Naked, they brought You to the cross. You gave everything, everything to people: they seemed to have exhausted all Your goodness. This was done according to Thy most holy will, although people acted according to their free will: they became blind instruments of Thy will, without understanding it - they became instruments of Thy will according to infinite wisdom, according to Thy boundless power. My Lord, my Lord, grant me to understand the meaning of Your cross; draw me to Thy cross by Thy destinies; kindle in me the love of Your cross; grant me permission to renounce at the foot of Your cross from vicious attachments to the world and to myself; open my eyes, as You opened them to the blessed thief, so that I may see in You the Lord and my God; send weeping into my heart, so that I can constantly weep at Your cross; send a prayer into my heart, so that I, crucified on it at Your right hand, may remain constantly directed toward You with all my being and, intoxicated by the remembrance of You, forget even about the existence of the world and sin; With the water that flowed from Your side, cleanse the filthiness of my soul and body; May Thy hands, outstretched on the cross, receive me, a lost sheep, into the embrace of Thy Divinity. Allow me to Your wondrous table: having nourished me with Your all-holy flesh, having filled me with Your all-holy blood, filling me with Your Holy Spirit, unite me with You forever. My Lord! My Lord! You came to earth in the humble form of a servant, in the humiliated form of Your weak creation, man; You came to earth to save lost people, to take upon Yourself the ulcer that killed them, in order to destroy this ulcer with Yourself. You revealed to people in detail the will of God in the commandments and teachings of the Gospel; You offered Yourself to God as a propitiatory sacrifice for criminal humanity; You satisfied the justice of God, you removed the barrier that prevented the goodness of God from pouring out on people in immeasurable abundance. You will come again, you will come as the Judge of the universe, you will come in the unapproachable glory of the Divine - you will demand from people an account of the use of Your good deeds. All generations of men will rise from their graves, revived by Your creative voice and command; All people will appear before You in a countless multitude, they will appear in fear, in trembling, they will appear at an unparalleled and inimitable Judgment. Such a Judgment has never happened and, once it is completed, there will never be. It is impossible for anyone to evade it: everyone will be drawn to it by an irresistible force. Research, evidence, mutual accusations and justifications are not needed at this Court; no bewilderment can arise from it; guile, denial, and deception cannot have the slightest success or place. The Judge, according to His unlimited perfection, sees all human secrets - and all the sins of all people are stored without the slightest omission in His memory, as if written in a book. The accuser and accuser of each defendant will be his conscience, suddenly healed of blindness, from the fascination with sin, suddenly gifted with the subtlest self-perception. The extensive Judgment will be carried out with speed and satisfaction corresponding to the perfection of the Judge. The verdict will be pronounced decisively: it will determine the fate of everyone forever. Living, rational vessels of God will ascend to heaven for eternal bliss: living tares, rational and free vessels, who arbitrarily transformed themselves into vessels of sin, will be thrown into a burning furnace, which does not cool and does not go out through all eternity. I too will appear at this Judgment, in the midst of a countless gathering of people. What stock of thoughts and words, what report have I prepared? What can I say about myself, about my earthly life? Both thought and word are taken away from me from one idea in my weak and dull imagination of an impartial and terrible Judgment; From just the presentation of this Court, I clearly feel that as soon as I appear at the Court, I will enter into the unlimited power of the Judge. I made my earthly journey like a madman, like a man in a frenzy. At first, the solidity of reason and activity was taken away by ignorance; then it was taken away by superficial knowledge; Finally, activity and the way of thinking inextricably linked with it were shaken by arbitrary sins of passion; they are overthrown, completely perverted by mortal sin. The most significant part of my earthly journey has been accomplished by me. Already when I deviated from true Christianity into a distant and terrible crossroads, after severe shocks and opposition, with the greatest difficulty, or solely by the ineffable grace of God, I learned in more detail, more precisely about the meaning of Christianity, about the duties of a Christian. This knowledge leaves me bewildered and horrified. With Holy Baptism I stood up, independently of myself and without knowing it, in a sacred church, majestic as the sky, in Christianity; Almost the same time, independently of me, unknown to me, I found myself outside this church, in the terrible desert. The transformation was accomplished by a life according to the elements of the world, a life hostile to Christianity, a life that all human society, at least the majority and flower of it, now lives. I see myself on a broad path leading to destruction! I see myself in habits, customs, and sinful habits, as if in shackles, in iron chains! I see myself as a dead man, lying in a coffin and grave for a long time, a stinking dead man! A stone is rolled against the coffin: my heart is hardened like a stone. My Lord! My Lord! You alone, Almighty, can save me. All-merciful and Almighty! save me. Take me away from the path, from the desert path to the city and country of foreigners, from the path of serving sin; set me on the path that leads to Your Kingdom. I left You: You seek me. Wandering among the barren, rocky mountains, overgrown with thorny thistles, dug by rapids and abysses, I spent my strength, exhausted from hunger and thirst; I am covered with countless wounds, I have become completely exhausted: You, who came down from heaven to earth for my sake, take me on Your shoulder, return me to the flock of those you flock. I have killed myself with my madness, with my sins: You, being the source of life and life itself, revive me with the life flowing from You. Tell my soul, drowning in sorrow and hopelessness, those comforting, sweetest words that You spoke to Martha, the sister of Your resurrected friend Lazarus: Your brother will rise again. Strengthen my weak wisdom: out of its weakness, it dares to argue with You, the Almighty, and oppose You, to Whom everything is possible, with the objection to the possibility of resurrection for the dead. Lord, my dead man already stinks: for he is four days old, said Martha to the Savior of the world about the dead and buried Lazarus. A judgment similar to this is heard in a soul that has learned faith only from Scripture, that has not yet been worthy to learn faith from holy experiences, that has not yet been worthy to receive living faith, the faith of God, from God. You, Savior of the world, answered Martha, who was shaken by doubt and bewilderment: If you believe, you will see the glory of God. You, the All-Good One, have called the resurrection of men Your glory. The resurrection of men is their secondary creation, and You, the Savior of the world, are in the resurrection of men their Creator and God. You created us from nothing - you resurrect us from scattered dust, you resurrect us in a wonderful, incorruptible newness, you resurrect us in our own nature and together in a changed nature, melted in the fire of corruption from a carnal state to a spiritual state. My savior! plant faith in me, living faith, proven by deeds, by all behavior, so that I become capable of resurrection in my spirit. Resurrect me, my Lord, in the mystery of my soul: revive me with Your Holy Spirit, resurrect me with an essential, saving resurrection, the resurrection of my spirit, a resurrection that takes place from the overshadowing of the human spirit by the Spirit of God. Preface this holy resurrection with my visible death, by which the soul is separated from the body; precede with this resurrection my resurrection by the body by which all men will be resurrected equally. Grant me to die already risen; Grant me to be resurrected in body after the resurrection of the spirit, so that my spirit does not ascend dead into the resurrected body. Woe to me if the spirit, when separated from the body, turns out to be slain by eternal death! Woe to me if the spirit, being in a state of death, enters, during the general resurrection, into the resurrected body! Then the resurrected body will become, together with the spirit, a victim of eternal death; then eternal death will be aggravated by the revival of the body, the union of the resurrected body with the spirit, which did not die, like the body, and was not revived by its own resurrection. My Lord! My Lord! At the end of my earthly journey, full of sorrows, suffering, fears, resurrect me with the longed-for resurrection in my spirit. Blessed and holy are those who have a share in the first resurrection: on them the second death - eternal life in rejection of God and in the torments of hell - will not have a portion, but will be priests of God and Christ and will reign with Him: this was proclaimed by the son of thunder, chosen from the Apostles, called the Theologian. Having received the guarantee of eternal salvation, I will rejoice with spiritual joy, inexpressible, unknown and incomprehensible for the state of the flesh and soul. This joy is a foretaste of the joy and pleasure of heaven. Transformed by the right hand of the Most High, I will see bodily death coming to me without embarrassment; In the face of death that has come to me, I will say the words of the Prophet: God of my righteousness: you have spread me out in tribulation. The right hand of the Lord has exalted me, the right hand of the Lord has created strength. I will not die an eternal death, but I will live and carry on the work of the Lord. While the Lord punished me, He did not give me over to death. The light of Your face shines upon us, O Lord, You have given joy to my heart. Open the gates for me! In peace, I will fall asleep together and rest: I will fall asleep in the sleep of temporary death in the tomb, together with my soul resting in those heavenly abodes in which all the servants of God await the general resurrection. Having separated the body from the soul, into the earthly grave with the body, into the heavenly abode with the soul, You, Lord, have infused me with the hope of eternal bliss. Beloved brother! You invited your friends, invited those who love you, so that they remember you, visit you, take part in the sorrow that has befallen you, so that they bring you consolation not from the deadly cup of enchantment with which the world consoles, intoxicating with self-forgetfulness and preparing for incurable and eternal sorrow - so that they bring you consolation from the life-giving word of God. Your invitation is thorough: it is approved by the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. There is salvation in much advice for all ascetics in general; in particular, advice, instruction, guidance are necessary for one who intends to move from a carnal life to a godly life, from enslavement to sin to spiritual freedom. Thus, the divinely inspired Moses turned out to be necessary to extract the Israelites from Egypt, to show them the way through the desert to the Promised Land. Your holy monastery is inhabited by a numerous brotherhood. In his midst, see a father enriched in spirit by the word of God, leading a life in accordance with this all-holy Word, pronouncing the teaching not from himself, but from the all-holy word of God. Reveal to such a father the state of your soul, and daily reveal to him your mental warfare, all the visible and invisible attempts of sin and spirits of malice against you. Nothing, nothing helps as much in obtaining healing from the ulcer caused by mortal sin as frequent confession; nothing, nothing helps so much to mortify the passion nesting in the heart as a thorough confession of all its manifestations, all its actions. You also wished for my participation, active participation; You wished for a personal conversation with me. I cannot come to you, held at my place of residence by my duties: I come to you with these meager lines. In them I set forth what the Holy Scriptures taught me, what the men and elders who spent their lives in the service of God taught me. All mortal sins, except suicide, are cured by repentance. Repentance is only recognized as true and valid when its consequence is the remission of mortal sin. Without this consequence, repentance is fruitless. If, upon repentance, mortal sin is not abandoned due to attachment to it, it is not abandoned by choice; If the repentant does not remove the causes of sin from himself or does not remove himself from them voluntarily, then such repentance, weak, double-minded, superficial repentance, is ranked among the acts of hypocrisy. It is a disastrous attempt to deceive both God and oneself. Repentance is a village where the priceless treasure of salvation is hidden. A person who has acquired this knowledge will rejoice over the acquisition of essential knowledge. Inspired by joy and zeal, in which the calling of God mysteriously acts, he goes and sells everything he has, and buys that village. Only for this price is the village of repentance sold! This is the only price you can buy it for! Necessary, necessary for entering into the feat of true repentance is renunciation of the world and renunciation of oneself, of one’s lusts and addictions. A small well takes away from the vessel the ability to hold the myrrh poured into it, and with an insignificant addiction all the dignity, all its power is taken away from repentance. Those who truly repent are made true servants of God. Repentance refines and regenerates them. Those who entered the cave into the womb of repentance as slaves come out of it as sons and friends of God. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, calls Christians who have satisfied the will of God, who have been cleansed by true repentance, who have been illuminated by the true knowledge of God, His brethren. All the Angels of God, all the saints of God rejoice over those who have entered into the correct feat of repentance. Because of such repentance, by which the lost sheep returns to the fold and the lost drachma to the ark that kept it, a holiday is established in heaven: I tell you, says the Savior, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Acquire repentance, and all the blessed inhabitants of heaven will become your brothers and friends. The Holy Angels will descend to you invisibly, bringing you venerable thoughts and sensations; the holy people who stand before the face of God in the abodes of paradise will enter into conversation with you through the sacred scriptures they left on earth. Your heart will be comforted, pacified, delighted, and healed by grace-filled conversation. For you, an impenetrable veil is removed from these writings, which covers their holy meaning, their holy beauty, from minds blinded by carnal, sinful life. The veil is removed by repentance; the veil is removed by humility born of repentance; the veil is removed by the spiritual mind, born of humility, the mind that has entered into the comprehension of the meaning given by God to the supernatural, Christian virtues: repentance and humility. The fall into mortal sin of a servant of God, carried away by weakness, a combination of circumstances, and then repenting of sin, is counted among God's allowances for admonition, and not as the final abandonment by God for deliberate malice. The falls of the two apostles, Peter and Judas, were infinitely different, although in appearance renunciation comes close to betrayal. I have risen in repentance and am still with You, says, struck with surprise, says David, who has fallen into grave sins and repented, says, having seen in himself, beyond his expectations, the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, which, after committing sin, when the smoke and stench of sin spread throughout the entire being of fallen man, hid itself, which, perhaps, was recognized as lost forever. God, who has the ability, according to His unlimited perfection, to destroy sin - which, as a lack and damage to the good planted in rational creatures by God, cannot be destroyed by any limited being - God, who takes away the sins of the world according to His infinite goodness and power, takes upon Himself the reasons for His permissions, permissions associated with human falls. What could be more reassuring, what could be more joyful than this news! The Lord, as Holy Scripture testifies, kills and gives life, brings down to hell and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich, humbles and exalts, raises up the poor from the earth and raises up the poor from the rot. He creates pain and again inflicts pain: strike, and His hand will be healed. Perplexed by the long-lasting wrath of the Lord, and severe punishments often follow one after another, like links in a chain, Zion, the servant of God, said: “Lord forsake me and God forget me.” To this response, filled with deep sadness, an answer is heard from heaven from the Lord through the great Prophet: When will the wife of her child forget to have mercy on the offspring of her womb? Even if the woman forgets these, I will not forget you, says the Lord. Behold, your walls are written in My hands: your strength is concentrated and preserved in My omnipotence. You are always before Me, and soon you have been rewarded, and from them you are ruined, and the passions that have devastated you and the evil spirits will come out of you. Your house will be in the world, but your church will be a dwelling without sin. You will go into the grave like wheat that is ripe in time, reaped, or like a stack of threshing floor brought down in time. The God-inspired Prophet menacingly turns his speech to foreigners, to the enemies of the human race, to rejected spirits, to spirits cast out from heaven, trampled upon the dust of the earth, to spirits who attribute God's permission to the action of their power and their wisdom, to spirits intoxicated with madness and pride who do not understand that they serve unconsciously as instruments of God in the punishments and temptations that He subjects His servants. God is with us! proclaims the Prophet. Understand, pagans, and repent! hear even to the last of the earth: he who is able, according to his own erroneous opinion about himself, repent! Even if you are able again, you will be defeated, and even if you take counsel, the Lord will destroy you, and the word that you speak will not abide in you, for God is with us. I poured myself out in my weeping, I uttered my cries, I ended my sobs, I drank in the drink of tears, I was satiated with groans and sighs. With a heavy word, filled with deep sadness, I struck my chest, and I felt joy in my chest. In mourning your sin, I mourned my sin; calling you to repentance, he called himself to it; Depicting the sad state produced by mortal sin, I confessed and described my condition. If painting had not been removed from experiments, it would not have had brightness, strength, or fidelity. Once you receive these lines, read them often. Do not cease to amaze, to soften a hardened heart with them, do not cease to awaken a despondent heart from sleep, do not cease to call to life a mortified heart. These lines both mercifully convict and shock us with powerfully saving fear—fear is dissolved by the consolation of faith. These lines lead to self-reflection, explain the mystery of the struggle with which the ascetic of Christ argues with sin and with rejected spirits, with which he proves his loyalty to Christ, with which he works out his salvation and glory in eternity. These lines proclaim the omnipotence of God and His infinite goodness. The hope of all those who are saved is concentrated in God: the hope of those who overcome sin by the power of God and the hope of those who are temporarily overcome by sin by God’s permission, by their own weakness, ignorance, carelessness, by passion, not by intention. These lines are unnecessary for someone who leads a sinful life arbitrarily, who seeks and finds the only pleasure in it, who sacrifices all the abilities of soul and body for it, who justifies such a life with excuses according to the principles of this world. Despite the unlimited goodness of God, repentance, given to all sinners for salvation, brings salvation only to those sinners who cast out their sins through sincere and decisive confession, alien to self-justification, and replace a lawless, insane life with a pious, humble life. Amen. Note: “The Lament of the Monk” was originally written by novice Dimitri Aleksandrovich Bryanchaninov in 1830, in the Assumption Semigorod Monastery of the Vologda Diocese, - significantly corrected and expanded by Bishop Ignatius in 1866, in the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery of the Kostroma Diocese. You might be interested in: