Ladder of Divine Ascension

Contents Preface to the second edition Chapter 1. About Divine Grace Chapter 2. About sin, repentance, crying and tears About sin and repentance About crying About tears of repentance Chapter 3. About vanity and death Chapter 4. About the law and commandments of God Chapter 5. About sorrows, asceticism and labors About sorrows Asceticism and labors Chapter 6. About freedom, pleasures and peace of the body Chapter 7. About temptations Chapter 8. About passions Sinful passions Passion of self-love Passion of pride Passion of vanity Passion of love of money Non-covetousness Poverty Passion of condemnation Passion of fornication Envy Ingratitude Gluttony Passions generated by despondency Chapter 9. About worries and cares Inconstancy Chapter 10. About reading the Holy Scriptures Chapter 11. About silence Chapter 12. About the world Chapter 13. About the soul, darkness of the soul, purification of the soul Chapter 14. About ethereal forces Chapter 15. About monastic life, virginity, wandering and obedience Chastity Removal from the world Submission Abstinence Chapter 16. Mind. Vision and purity of mind Vision of the mind Purity of mind Chapter 17. About contemplation Chapter 18. About thoughts. Confusion and wandering thoughts. Discrimination of thoughts. Purity of thoughts Confusion of thoughts Wandering of the mind Discrimination of thoughts Purity of thoughts Chapter 19. About the mind. Decency and disorder in the mind Chapter 20. About the heart. Fervor and purity of heart Purity of heart Chapter 21. About visions and revelations Chapter 22. About idle talk and boldness Chapter 23. About perfection Chapter 24. About faith, hope and patience About hope About patience Chapter twenty-five. About prayer About the Jesus Prayer About spiritual prayer Chapter twenty-six. About virtue Chapter twenty-seven. About bodily and mental virtues Corporal virtues Fasting Works of mercy Vigil Physical purity Physical labors Mental virtues Love of God About zeal for God Love for one's neighbor Humility Forgiveness of one's neighbor Prudence About humility Chapter twenty-eight. About the fear of God and the wisdom of God Chapter Thirty. About silence Chapter thirty-one. About management Chapter thirty-two. About dispassion Chapter thirty-three. About God's Providence A Necessary Reminder Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee! ...Come to Christ by faith and you will be saved With the help of our Christ, through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, St. Isaac the Syrian and all the saints, after long prayer and persistent deep study, after diligent work for about four years, the Most Merciful Lord vouchsafed us to divide the “Ascetic Words” of St. Isaac the Syrian the Inspired into about 900 questions and answers. These questions and answers constitute the second volume of the work. At the same time, we have arranged 900 questions and answers according to the passions and virtues, as well as other spiritual topics, according to the model of the Ladder of St. John of Sinai, resulting in a kind of New Ladder according to St. Isaac the Syrian. The questions and answers have been distributed across 33 chapters, with questions arranged accordingly within each chapter and chapters. The New Ladder constitutes the first volume of the work. It also includes 26 diagrams, 25 staircases and one drawing, along with a short life of the saint and four colored icons. The title of the works is “Divine Ascent”. With all my heart I thank my spiritual daughter, nun Mikhailia, for the careful editing of all the work on icons, stairs, diagrams, frame colors and other corrections. I heartily thank for the humble assistance of my brothers in Christ Mr. Evangel S., who unselfishly printed two volumes for a long time, with Mr. Christos M., Mrs. Ioanna Solakidi and Mrs. Polyxenia A., who obediently, tirelessly and with divine zeal, arranged the questions and answers of two volumes, Mr. Konstantin Kotsanis, a mathematician, who with great diligence selflessly over a long period of time and after numerous corrections, he drew according to the instructions of the ladder and diagram. Finally, it is necessary to remember and sincerely thank the ascetic and obedient warrior of our Christ, Mr. Dimitri Solakidis, who made so many sacrifices for me and put in so much work. I also warmly thank the brothers and sisters in Christ from the printing house. May the Lord bless you all, may the Most Holy Theotokos be your intercessor, may Saint Isaac the Syrian and all the saints continually intercede for the salvation of your souls! May the prayer of my elder cover you! I pray that by the grace of God we will be worthy of salvation. Preface to the second edition The most reverent monk Maxim of Katunak, a severe ascetic from Katunaki, located on the Holy Mountain, living and asceticizing in fasting, prayer and vigil, gives and devotes all his strength to vigil and to the study and research of the sober theology of the holy fathers and venerable monks of the desert and the sacred experience of Orthodox monasticism, in order, together with others, to convey and offer to everyone the testimony of the desert life, the testimony of the Orthodox monasticism of the East, which is expressed in constant prayer, divine liturgy and round-the-clock divine service, in constant reading and study of the word of God, Holy Scripture, the apostolic and patristic tradition of our immaculate faith and piety, in severe feat leading to ascension, to contemplation, to overcoming the time and place of this century, which the saints, martyrs, reverends, fathers who “teared their with the currents of the desert they cultivated the fruitless and from the depths with their sighs they brought forth fruit in a hundred labors” and “having saved the hedgehog in the image of the deed, they teach to always despise the flesh, for it passes away. be diligent about souls, things more immortal” and who, by the power of Christ, “overthrew the tormentors, crushed and demons of weak insolence” and in fact showed and show that a person can, by the power of the Lord, with the help of the Church, defeat the world, sin, carnal wisdom and death itself. The saints lived and testified to this philosophy of life, true life, “who by faith conquered kingdoms, did righteousness, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the sharp sword, was strong from weakness, was strong in battle, put to flight the armies of strangers: having received women from the resurrection of their dead: and but the beatings were not received, but they received a better resurrection, but the friends received the temptation with abuse and wounds, and also with chains and prison, with a stone, with a stone, with a stone, with the temptation, with the murder of the sword, they died, they went through the cold in goat skins, deprivation, sorrow, embitterment: the world in the desert is not worthy of them. wandering in the mountains and in dens and in the pits of the earth” (Heb. 11:33–38). The knowledge of Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection, and the communication of His passion (cf. Phil. 3.10) in exploit, in the honesty of life, and torment, and fellowship, the renewal of life in Christ, extending into eternity, all this is the testimony of thousands of holy martyrs and saints of the Church, who through suffering passed to resurrection, through death to life, endless life and the great mercy of God. This power of life in Christ is expressed and preached by the venerable fathers of the desert with their severe asceticism, spiritual experience, exploits of desert living and ascetic writings and works. The spiritual fruit of unceasing prayer, asceticism and study and research into the divine experience, exploits and writings of the venerable fathers of the desert is the present volume, which was worked on by Father Maxim, a monk from Katunak on the Holy Named Mountain, who spends his life in severe ascetic deeds. These are the “Ascetic Words” of St. Isaac the Hermit, helping to succeed in spiritual life, divided by the monk Maxim after prayer and in-depth research into 900 questions and answers. This division and arrangement of questions and answers from the 86 words of St. Isaac the Syrian constitutes the second volume - “Ascetic Words” of the monk, edited by the monk Maxim. After dividing and arranging the questions and answers, Father Maxim further advanced in a thorough and deep study of the “Ascetic Words” of St. Isaac the Syrian and, following the model of the Ladder of St. John of Sinai, arranged the entire text into chapters devoted to passions and virtues, and compiled 33 chapters of questions and answers on the topics of passions and virtues in order to make the text of the monk understandable and bring both theoretically and practically great benefit and spiritual edification to Christians who strive in the faith - monks, clergy and laity. This arrangement of chapters in accordance with the themes of virtues and passions constitutes the first of two volumes of the “Ascetic Words” of St. Isaac the Syrian, on which Father Maxim labored with prayer and attention and which so clearly presents St. Isaac’s instructions and writings on our spiritual life. In this volume, Father Maxim has placed, for a visual representation of spiritual life, 26 diagrams, 25 stairs and one drawing depicting spiritual states and ascents of the soul, a prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos and, instead of an afterword, the prayer of St. Isaac the Syrian for repentance, in which we all feel an urgent need. Father Maxim saw the purpose of his work, volumes one and two of the “Ascetic Words” of Saint Isaac the Syrian, division and arrangement of the entire text in accordance with chapters, topics and questions: – present the New Ladder according to Isaac the Syrian; – with the help of questions and answers, immediately give spiritual medicine to every monk and cleric, as well as to every believing Christian ascetic for the healing of all spiritual illnesses of his soul; – to give a Christian the opportunity to make a timely diagnosis of his spiritual illness; – provide time of life to restore the spiritual health of the soul with the help of spiritual medicines of repentance from the spiritual pharmacy of St. Isaac the Syrian. Thus, the reader of this work can understand that we are talking about an important study by the most reverent monk Maxim Katunakskog, which is the fruit of long prayer and sweet study of the spiritual exploits of the reverend fathers of the desert and is offered to us for daily reading, enjoyment and help in the spiritual life of Christians, in their success and ascent in spiritual feat, in their acquisition of eternity and inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, we congratulate and warmly thank Monk Maxim for his exemplary spiritual work, which is his new offering to the vineyard of the Lord, and archpastorally bless the work and diligence of his research and exploits, which go beyond the boundaries of his cell and strive to cover with spiritual feat and attract to conversion to God and the salvation of the soul for the sake of the glory of God, the testimony of the Church and Orthodox monasticism and the consolation of the people of God. We wish him strength and strength from God. Today, a person is looking for support and is in dire need of spiritual leaders. He feels abandoned and lives with a feeling of unreliability and instability. Consumer hysteria, trade in flesh and sensual pleasures of life, exploitation of the weak, the uncontrollable pursuit of profit and lawless gain, uncontrolled fraud and fear of fraud, the search for well-being and enrichment that overwhelm modern man, tend to deprive him of moral strength and values ​​of life and force him to bestial behavior. In this state of apostasy and evil against God, the Church offers the message of the resurrection: “As we were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death... so that as Christ has risen from the dead in the glory of the Father, so we also will begin to walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4) and gives the example of thousands of saints, saints and martyrs, whose exploits, spiritual experience and writings serve as spiritual consolation and help in spiritual life Christians This spiritual encouragement and consolation is brought by the real work of Father Maxim, whose goal is to spiritually help a Christian in the feat of spiritual life in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we wish and pray that the Risen Lord will always strengthen, support and preserve the ascetics of the desert in the monastic ideal and bless their ascetic labors and exploits, so that their asceticism and prayers will bear fruit for the sake of spiritual benefit and protection of believers and ascetic Christians. We also pray and call upon everyone the generous blessing of the Risen Lord and the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. Sacred Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary January 30, 2011 Metropolitan Chapter 1. About Divine Grace Question 1. What is Divine Grace? Answer: Divine Grace is those Divine energies that the All-Holy Trinity delivers to the Church for the salvation of people from sin, death and the devil and for eternal life in the Trinitarian God 1. Question 2. When does Divine Grace come? a) When we reject all worldly help, b) every human hope and c) let us surrender ourselves to God with unshakable faith. A) What does the Grace of the Holy Spirit bring to a person? Answer: Brings cleansing from passions. Answer: Because it removes the hardness of the heart and opens the eyes of the soul. Question 4. How do we achieve the grace of God? A) What comes first: first Divine Grace and then tears, or first tears, and then Divine Grace? Answer: Divine Grace comes first and is followed by tears. B) When do the tears stop? Answer: When the mind rises from the created. A) What does an Orthodox Christian see then? B) How does he understand the mysteries of God? Answer: With the help of the Grace of God. A) What is the reward for lips that always give thanks? Answer: Blessing from God. B) What happens to the heart when it is in thanksgiving? Answer: It is overshadowed by Divine Grace. 1st ladder: DIVINE GRACE Chapter 2. About sin, repentance, crying and tears Question 1: Should we hate the sinner? Answer: No. We must hate his sins. We must pray for him in order to be imitators of Christ, who was not angry with sinners, but prayed for them. Question 2: What does it mean to hate a sinner? Answer: That we do not have love. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails (1 Cor. 13:7–8). Question 3. What do those suffering from severe mental illnesses and infirmities need? Answer: In compassion, not in harsh treatment. Question 4. When does the body experience peace from carnal affairs? Answer: When it is enslaved by sin. A) Should we pay attention to minor sins? Answer: Of course, and first of all, and most of all. Answer: To avoid falling into more difficult ones. Question 6. What do bad thoughts, evil thoughts and natural bodily movements cause in a person’s heart? Answer: Sinful pleasure. Question 7. What does sinful pleasure hinder? Answer: A person’s feeling of the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. A) Is there an unforgivable sin? Question 9. What raises our heart to heaven? Answer: Deep awareness of our sins. Question 10. Who is higher before God: the one who raises the dead with his prayer, or the one who feels his sinfulness? Answer: The one who feels his sinfulness is superior. Question 11. Does a person who leads a life displeasing to God move away from God, or does God move away from him? Answer: God inseparably abides in the world, is motionless and unshakable, existing everywhere and fulfilling everything, and never moves away from any of His creatures. Question 12: What must we do to avoid sin? Answer: Move away of your own free will from the causes of passions. Question 13. What are the causes of passions? Answer: For example, wine, women, money, bodily strength, etc. Question 14: Is all this sinful in nature? Answer: No, but because of this, human nature easily deviates into sinful passions. Question 15. How can a person get rid of the habit of sin? • With the help of enmity towards him, • through hatred towards him, Question 16. What is enmity towards sin? Answer: Showing true humility. Question 17. What is confession of sin? Answer: Manifestation of repentance and tenderness. A) What is a person’s sense of his sins? Answer: By the gift of God. B) When does a person receive this gift of God? Answer: When God sees that we are exhausted from various temptations, He sends it to us so that we do not depart from this life without benefit from troubles and sorrows. A) What is the queen of virtues? B) Is there a limit to repentance? Answer: No, for even the perfection of the perfect is imperfect. Question 20. What cleanses the soul? Question 21: What is repentance? – Second spiritual birth, Question 22. What is the ladder leading to repentance? Question 23. What do good deeds and repentance produce? A) What should accompany repentance? Answer: Good will. Answer: Because it is worthy of reward and brings great joy. Question 25: Where does repentance reach perfection? A) Do lustful thoughts come with perfect repentance? Answer: Because perfect repentance is combined with humility. A) What is achieved through contrition of heart? Answer: Because a person in a state of heartfelt contrition despises thoughts of pride. Question 1. Who is the one who cries? Answer: One who spends his entire life in hunger and thirst for the hope of future benefits. A) Do passions bother someone who is constantly crying? Answer: Because only the dispassionate receive the gift of crying and tears. Q) Where is the mind of a person who is not disturbed by passions? D) What is required for silence? Answer: Patience, patience and more patience. Question 1. What is the first fruit for the inner man? Answer: The mediastinum between the action of passions and purity. B) When does a person achieve the gift of tears? – When he completely and with contempt rejects the bodily affairs of this temporary world – When he comes into deep humility and contrition of heart because of his sins; – When he loves God with all his soul, passionately and more than anything in the world. Question 3. What precedes tears? - liberation from earthly thoughts, - thoughts about future benefits. Question 4: Where do tears come from? – From pure and undistracted thoughts, – From attention and tenderness when reading divine Scripture, Question 5. What benefits do tears bring to the soul? Answer: Thanks to them, the soul acquires peaceful thoughts. Question 6. What follows peaceful thoughts? Answer: Calmness and tranquility. Question 7. What follows calm and tranquility? Answer: A person’s mind begins to contemplate the mysteries of God, the Holy Spirit reveals heavenly things to him and God dwells in him and cultivates the fruit of the Spirit in him. Question 8. What do tears of repentance free the soul from? – They remove the veil that lies on the heart – And they eradicate the darkness and confusion of passions in the soul. Question 9. What is born from tears and crying? Question 10. What do the righteous sacrifice to God? Answer: Tears from your eyes and sighs during the vigil. Question 11. Why is the gift of tears lost? Question 12: What is the sign of tears during prayer? Answer: A sign of God's mercy. Question 13. With the help of what signs and signs can a person determine that he has begun to see the fruit hidden in his soul? Answer: Through the grace of tears. This is a true sign that the human mind has rejected the bodily affairs of this world with contempt and has completely withdrawn from them. The more a person’s tears involuntarily multiply, the more he succeeds in loving God. A) What does it mean for a person to stop crying? Answer: That the human mind is completely nailed to the world, and he spiritually dies in passions. B) How many types of tears are there? Answer: There are two types of tears: 1) tears that scorch and dry up the body; 2) tears, cheering and nourishing the body. Q) What gives rise to the first type of tears? Answer: It is generated by the contrition of a humble heart for sins. D) What gives rise to the second type of tears? Answer: It is generated by knowledge and intelligence. D) Which of these two types is higher? Answer: Above is the second type of tears. Answer: Because a person experiences joy during these tears and receives divine mercy. A) What do tears of repentance lead to? Answer: They lead to purity of soul and perfect love for God. B) When are tears completely lost? Answer: When a person’s mind is entirely in this, and not in the spiritual world, and is drowning in passions. Who is higher before God: the one who benefits the whole world with his teachings or the one who spends one hour crying for his soul? Answer: Above is the one who spends one hour crying for his soul. Chapter 3. About vanity and death Question 1. How can we acquire contempt for the vanities and pleasures of this world? Answer: With the help of mortal memory. Question 2. When does a person despise death for the sake of love of virtue? Answer: When the grace of God greatly increases in the heart of a Christian. Question 3. Who is sad about the fear of death? The presenter has a bad life and those deprived of spiritual knowledge. Question 4. Does mortal memory benefit us? Answer: Yes, because it generates contempt for this world. Question 5: What does Satan mortally hate? Answer: Thought and memory of death. Question 6. What is death for the soul? Question 7: What is life without God? Chapter 4. About the law and commandments of God Question 1. What is the name of the Law of God? Question 2. What did God give to man in the beginning? Answer: Natural law. Question 3: What is natural law? Answer: In contemplation of God's creatures. Question 4. What did God give to man subsequently after Adam’s crime? A) What is more precious than all the treasures in the world? Answer: Because God dwells in them. Question 6. What is the purpose of God's laws and commandments? Answer: Purity of heart. Question 7. What does the cross of Christ call for? Answer: To death and crucifixion, that is, to the readiness of the will for all sorrow and hardship. A) What are God’s commandments for us? Answer: A purifying medicine for fallen passions. B) What are the consequences of keeping God’s commandments? Answer: To healing from passions and health of the soul. Q) How does this happen? Answer: Each commandment heals a passion that has power over the soul, D) What is the fruit of a healthy soul? Question 9. Do all Christians keep God's commandments according to their own free will? Answer: No. There are three reasons why Christians keep God's commandments: 2) desire to receive future benefits Question 10. What does keeping God’s commandments bring to a person? Answer: It brings to the human mind: - the grace of mysterious contemplation and - revelation of spiritual knowledge. Question 11. Who suffered death to keep the commandments of God? Answer: Martyrs, as well as all those who gave their lives for faith in CHRIST. Chapter 5. About sorrows, asceticism and labors A) What does the cross of Christ call for? B) What does it mean to renounce oneself? Answer: This means to hate your life in this world for the sake of tasting the future blessed life, which will be received by the one who can endure the trials, sorrows and hardships that happen without complaining and win. Question 2: What are hardships and sorrow? Answer: The cause of virtue. Question 3. How should we accept sorrows and hardships? Answer: With gratitude, joy and patience, glorifying God. Question 4. What does the absence of sorrows and hardships bring? A) What do the weak and sorrowful souls need? Answer: Words of mercy and encouragement. B) How can we show concern for the sorrow of our neighbor? - Sympathizing with him heartily and - constantly praying for help to be sent to him. Question 6. What causes sorrow to the flesh? Answer: The action of the irritable part of the soul. Question 7. What serves as consolation for Orthodox Christians in sorrows and hardships? Answer: Love for God, that is, divine communion. Question 8. Who knew the truth better than others? Answer: One who endures the sorrows and hardships of this temporary life with complacency, since the true Life - Christ - and the glory of His victory are hidden in them. Question 9: Who can be said to have an enlightened mind? Answer: One who has known the bitterness hidden behind the “sweets” of this world and is constantly concerned about the salvation of his soul. A) Is it possible to neglect good deeds because of temptation? – sorrows and hardships generated by temptations lead us to God, – and good deeds cultivate virtue Question 1. What is asceticism for the Orthodox Church? Answer: Mother of sanctification. Question 2. What does a person need to acquire the skill for a martyr’s ascetic life? - Leave the world and all its affairs, – do not see pleasures and reasons for peace - and live in poverty and need without worries and cares. Question 3. What are all the virtues without labor like? Answer: A stillborn baby. Question 4. What promotes labor? Answer: Hope and fear of God. A) What benefits do bodily labors bring? – They keep a Christian from lusts and deliver him from the delusion of demons. B) Do bodily labors bring peace and serenity to the soul? A) When do bodily labors and exploits bring peace to the soul and calm from thoughts? Answer: When they are done in silence. Answer: Because in silence the external senses calm down from confusion and remain in divine activity. Question 7. Why do we need handicrafts? - to maintain silence. A) Is it appropriate to engage in small handicrafts while remaining silent? Answer: To drive away negligence. A) What is needed for active asceticism? Answer: Attention to feelings. B) What is required for active asceticism? Question 10. What should precede the commission of any business? – Prayer and appeal to God asking for help, - investigation of the circumstances of the case. Question 11. What is required for spiritual work? Answer: Attention and silence of the heart. Chapter 6. About freedom, pleasures and peace of the body A) What binds freedom? B) What do they turn freedom into? Answer: In the slave of crafty slaves - passions. Question 2. What are bodily rest and idleness? Question 3. What do peace and pleasure lead to? Question 4. What do we need to do to drive away the enemy? Answer: Banish your pride. Question 5. How do bodily pleasures enslave the soul? -Through kindling and passionate movements of bodily and – through violent coercion to bodily arousal. Question 6. What do bodily pleasures lead to? Question 7: What does human nature love? Question 8. Does nature or the devil awaken the soul to this? Answer: In some cases, nature strives for this, and in others, the devil encourages it. Question 9. What fuels passions? Answer: Peace and pleasure. A) How do carnal people live? Answer: In peace and pleasure. B) What lives in the hearts of carnal people? Question 1. What do temptations teach? Question 2: Where do temptations come from? – or from people (that is, from the world), – or from one’s own body (that is, flesh). A) What is the purpose of temptation? Answer: Improvement in virtue. Answer: Because temptations are a reason for improvement in virtue. A) Is it right for us to desire temptations? Answer: Because without temptation we are outside the path of God and do not follow in the footsteps of the saints. Sorrows and hardships are God's BLESSING and SALVATION for our soul. Question 5. What are sorrows, burdens and temptations for a Christian? Answer: By God's providence for the Christian, instructing him to constantly take care of virtue. Question 6. Are good deeds of virtue acquired without temptation? Question 7: What does it take to endure temptation? Answer: Mental courage. A) What helps us endure sorrow? B) How is the severity of sorrows eased? Question 9. When does the soul despise temptation? Answer: When a Christian has faith and firm trust in God. Question 10: Do we benefit from intense afflictions? Answer: They are very beneficial because: – cleanse our hearts from evil passions and - force us to resort to God and turn to Him with prayers and requests for help. Question 11. What do strong temptations mean for the soul? Answer: Sending her greater grace, Question 13. Why are the sorrows of worldly temptations allowed? Answer: To curb their depravity. Question 14: Does temptation come first and then grace, or grace first and then temptation? Answer: The grace of the Holy Spirit comes first, followed by temptation. Question 15. What sensation does a person experience at first, a feeling of temptation or a feeling of grace? Answer: At first he experiences a feeling of temptation. A) What feelings should we experience during temptations? Answer: We should experience two different feelings: B) Why should we experience joy? Answer: Because we walk the sorrowful and narrow path of our Lord. Q) Why should we feel fear? Answer: Fearing that these temptations come to us because of our pride. Question 17. Who and how can recognize such temptations? Answer: They can be recognized by the humble through divine grace. Question 18. What temptations are sent by the spiritual rod of God to perfect the soul and its growth in virtue? – relaxation of body parts, – fear of bodily illness, – temporary loss of hope in God, - deprivation of help from people – lack of what is necessary for the body. Question 19. What temptations arise due to God’s permission due to our arrogance? - obvious demonic temptations, - temptations that exceed the strength of the soul, – an acute feeling of attack by prodigal thoughts (intended to teach us humility), - sudden boiling anger - the desire to insist on one’s own, – the desire to scold and punish others, – neglect of your heart and soul, - contempt and dishonor from people, - crazy and laughable thoughts, - transformation into an object of shame and secret and open reproach for demons, – desire to meet and communicate with worldly people, - verbosity and idle talk, - inventing innovations and false prophecies – doing things beyond our strength, Question 20. What is the reason for numerous temptations? Answer: In negligence and laziness. Question 21. For what reason does the most merciful and merciful God not accept our prayers during temptations? Answer: Because our sins separated us from Him and our iniquities caused Him to turn His face away from us and not hear us. Question 22: Who endures temptation with joy and thanksgiving? Answer: The one who died for the world. Question 23: Who is sad, angry, and confused when tempted? Answer: One who loves peace and is overcome by vanity. A) When does our body not notice sorrows? Answer: When we have a zealous love for spiritual things. Answer: Because we are waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven, Question 25: How was the love of the saints for Christ tested? Answer: Through sorrow, not peace. Question 26: Why does God allow the saints to endure great tribulation? - So that they may experience His help and providence for them and – thanks to temptations, they acquired wisdom and understanding and did not remain untrained without undergoing training in the patience of good and evil. Thus, through experience, they acquire knowledge of all His creations and avoid demonic deception. Question 27. What is a matter without labor? Answer: The virtue of worldly people. A) Should we neglect good works because of temptations? - sorrows and hardships lead us to God, - good deeds cultivate virtue and Question 29. The harm done by evil people to others and the suit of demons are entirely dependent on their will or are within the limits that God allows? Answer: They are within the limits that God allows. Question 30. How many types of temptations are there? Question 31. What are spiritual temptations? – Sad and unspeakably difficult circumstances of life, – constant clashes with evil and wicked people, – being in complete power of one’s oppressors and oppressors, - a causeless movement in the heart caused by divine fear, - deprivation of heartfelt consolation, All these temptations are beyond our strength. Question 32. What are the beginnings of these temptations? Answer: Confidence in your wisdom and intelligence. Question 33: How do these temptations arise? Answer: As thoughts of pride intensify. Question 34. What temptations does the spirit of madness cause? - moving from place to place. A) Why is the body afraid of temptations? Answer: Because because of them he may be subject to suffering and death. B) Does it help spiritually? Answer: No. Because he is a friend of sin. Question 36: What does a Christian gain through temptation? - courage in times of temptation. Question 37. Why does God allow ascetics temptation? Answer: So that they increase their spiritual wealth. Question 38. When does the devil approach a person and bring temptations upon him (by God’s permission)? – When a person falls into negligence – When one relaxes and gets carried away by shameful thoughts due to being highly intelligent and arrogant – When he has thoughts of doubt and double-mindedness. Question 39. What should we do when we want to do some godly deed? Answer: Prepare yourself for future temptations. Question 40: What do we gain through temptation? Question 41. What do temptations give rise to? Answer: Strengthening faith in God. Question 42: When does a Christian recognize his own weakness? Answer: When God allows him to fall into mental and physical temptations. Question 43: What are spiritual cures for temptation? Question 44. When does the body not notice sorrows? Answer: When a person’s heart completely strives for the spiritual. Question 45. What is the root and principle of all virtue and kindness? Answer: Knowing our weakness. Question 46. What benefit does understanding the need for God’s help bring? Question 47. When does a person receive God’s help? -When he hates sin, -does deeds of virtue. Question 48. How does God instruct those with weak wills to virtue? Answer: He instructs them to virtue through involuntary sorrows. Question 49. How do true servants of God live? Answer: In sorrows and suffering. 1. Pride and self-esteem. A) What are passions in essence? – because of them, natural insight and prudence cannot operate, - they are a disease of the soul and - an obstacle and a wall for hidden spiritual virtues. Question 2. What will destroy this obstacle? Answer: Active virtues. Question 3. From what is the sinful world, that is, passions, born? Question 4. What are passions in general? Answer: Some dark entity that prevents the eyes from seeing clearly and preventing them from distinguishing the properties of things. Scheme 4. SINFUL PASSIONS A) Are passions inherent in the soul by nature? Answer: Because illness appears later than health. Question 7: How can we recognize our passions? Answer: In two ways: – avoiding communication with the world and – struggling with distraction of thoughts. Question 8. How can you get rid of many passions? Answer: By four means: 1) prayer and great attentiveness, 2) removal from the causes of evil (that is, passions), 4) zealous abstinence. Question 9. What mortifies passions? Answer: Sorrow, suffering and prayer. Question 10. Does every good desire that arises in our hearts come from God? Answer: No, not all, but only those that are useful. Question 11. What sets passions in motion? Answer: Imagination or memory. Question 12. How can we know the spiritual state of our soul? Answer: With the help of vigilance and sober attention to the action of passions, that is, to the imagination and memory that set them in motion. Question 13. What passions are natural? A) Do all passions attack the soul through thoughts? B) What passions do not attack the soul through thoughts? Answer: Negligence, despondency and sadness. A) How do these passions fight with the soul? Answer: They cause her suffering and sorrow, that is, they cause a feeling of painful heaviness in her soul. Q) How is the power of the soul tested? Answer: When she overcomes the passions that attack her through thoughts, that is, lust and love of glory. Question 16. What does a person need in this mental battle? Answer: A keen mind and some signs. Question 17. What is the world? Answer: The world is passions, that is, carnal life and a carnal way of thinking. Question 18: How can we leave the world? Answer: Having gotten rid of passions, Question 19. What passions exist? – bodily pleasure and fornication - love of fame, which is the cause of memory malice. A) What bodily passions exist? B) Should we avoid everything that excites passions? Answer: Of course, yes, and first of all, it is necessary to cut off the causes of passions and remove from oneself the objects through which they act and intensify. Question 21. How should a monk deal with passions in the above case? 1) avoid arousing passions, 2) avoid stimulation of feelings, 3) keep your mind inside yourself and continuously engage in hard work of your mind and heart. Question 22. Who fights passions when a person's mind is confined within him? Answer: Grace of the Lord. A) Who is a slave to passions? Answer: One who loves the occasions and causes of passions. Answer: Reasons and reasons for passions. Question 24: What are the characteristics of a corrupt person? Answer: Saint John Chrysostom says that they represent a serpent with seven heads: We need to run away from this seven-headed serpent so that it does not devour not only our flesh, but also our bones. Question 25. How should one eradicate passions and get rid of them? Answer: Through constant reflection on God, that is, prayer. Question 26. What is more useful: to die fighting passions, or to live having been defeated in the fight against them? Answer: Die fighting passions. Question 27: Should we love sinners? Answer: Of course, yes. But their deeds we must hate. We should not despise sinners because of their passions, so that God does not allow us to fall into the same passions. Question 28. What does abandoning the sacrament of sacred confession, abandoning (divine communion, abandoning prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures) lead to? Answer: To the fact that passions, that is, demons, enter the heart of a person and subjugate him to their power. Question 29. What is the purpose of the ascetic life? Answer: Cleansing the heart from sinful, deadly passions. Diagram 5. SEVEN-HEADED DRAGON Question 30: When does a person receive spiritual gifts from God? Answer: When his heart is cleansed of passions. A) Why did God allow our soul to accept passions? Answer: For our benefit. B) What benefits does the ability to accept passions bring to the soul? Answer: It hurts our conscience. However, to be stuck in passions and allow them to act is shameless and daring. Question 32. What does it bring to Christ if we mortify our body? Answer: Purity of thoughts, which is a sacrifice to the LORD. A) When does a person’s desire for good weaken? – When he does not withdraw from worldly affairs and – does not strive for complete renunciation of the world. B) When does our heart feel sick and heavy? Answer: When our heart half leaves the world and follows Christ and half remains in the world. Question 34. What irritates passions and lusts? Question 35. Where do passions live? Answer: Where there is fickleness of thoughts and darkness. Question 36: How can we recognize our passions? 1) avoiding communication with the world and 2) struggling with distraction of thoughts. Question 37. How can you get rid of many passions? 2) removal from the causes of evil (sin), Question 38. What is the matter of internal virtue? Answer: In cleansing the heart from passions. Question 1. What is the first of the passions? Question 2. What is self-love? Strange and beyond common sense love for one’s body (according to Saint Maximus) and the beginning and cause of all evil (according to Saint Theophylact of Bulgaria). Question 3. What are the means of combating pride? – abstinence (according to Saint Maximus). Question 4. What does a proud person have? According to the Orthodox Confession, Gabriel Philadelphiaskan and Nicholas Voulgaris Question 1. Who is ungrateful? Answer: The man is hard-hearted, deceitful and unjust. Question 2. What follows hardness of heart? B) What precedes brokenness? Q) When does God reject us? Answer: When we have the thought that we are showing mercy to God, whose servants we are. D) Do we fall into a mess of passion? Answer: In pride and passion of dishonor. A) What follows a proud thought? Answer: The strongest temptations. - For a person to fail, Question 4. What follows pride? Answer: Charm (seduction). Question 5. When does our guardian angel leave us? Answer: When we have pride. Question 6. What precedes punishment? Question 7. Is it permissible for monks to investigate the dogmas of the Church and argue about them? Question 8. How can we drive away the thought of pride if it attacks us after long deeds and labors and the acquisition of many virtues, so that it does not defile our soul? – With the help of the thought that in spiritual exploits it is not we who win, but the Lord, and we receive victory for free, and - with the help of gratitude to God for these great blessings to us, His unworthy, lazy and careless servants. Question 9. What are the signs of evil will towards our neighbors? Question 10: What does God hate? Question 11: What should we avoid and fear? Answer: We should avoid vanity and be afraid of pride. A) How should we behave with arrogant and envious people? Answer: With great caution. B) Why is it harmful to live with proud people? Answer: Because it deprives the soul of the action of the Holy Spirit and turns it into the home of all evil passions. Question 1 3. Why does the Lord hide His holy will from the proud? Answer: Because they do not want to follow the path of the humble. Question 1. What is vanity? Answer: Handmaid of fornication and daughter of pride. A) What precedes punishment? B) What sins does a proud person fall into? Answer: Blasphemy and fornication. Question 3: How should we deal with arrogant and envious people? Answer: With great caution, Question 4. Why does the Lord hide His holy will from the proud? Question 5: What does God hate? Question 6: What should we avoid and fear? Question 7. Why is it harmful to live with proud people? Question 1: Who is an unreasonable person?' Answer: One who constantly works to acquire as much as possible for temporary life. A) How should we bear grievances? Answer: With joy and gratitude. Answer: Because at the same time we receive from God the consolation of faith. Question 1. How does the light of Christ come into the soul? Answer: Along with carelessness about earthly affairs. Question 2. What is prepared for the one who cares about his spiritual affairs? Answer: Everything necessary for the body is prepared for Him without hard work or worry about it. B) Why should we love the poor? Answer: To receive mercy from God for their sake. Question 4. What does non-covetousness bring to a person? Answer: She frees his soul from confusion of thoughts. Question 5: What does one who becomes poor for God’s sake find? Answer: Inexhaustible treasures. A) What does non-covetousness and desert living bring to a person? Answer: They cut off the causes and motives of passions, since a person’s feelings do not find ways to communicate with the enemy. B) How can one acquire non-covetousness? Answer: This day must be loved by sorrow. Question 1. Which is higher: the level of free poverty or the level of mercy? Answer: Higher level of free poverty. Question 2. Why is poverty higher than mercy? 1) thanks to freedom (freedom from begging) and 2) nobility of mind (that is, equanimity of mind). Question 3. What is poverty combined with silence? Answer: Supreme perfection. Question 1. What happens to us when we judge someone? Answer: We become spiritually dead, and all our works are in vain, even if we were prompted to utter words of condemnation by the desire to bring edification. Question 1. Why should you beware of communicating with young men? Answer: Because in this case the mind is polluted by unclean thoughts. Question 2. What does the memory of fornication sew into our thoughts? Answer: It creates shameful lust in our thoughts. A) What serves as reproof for fornicators? Answer: The virtue of the people around them. B) What serves as a reproof for the shameless? Answer: Downcast gaze of those next to them. A) What does carnal burning mean when abstaining from food? Answer: That we have a passion for fornication. B) What helps to heal from it? Answer: Abstinence from seeing women. Question 5. What helps to get rid of carnal thoughts? Question 6. What should a monk do when he is troubled by the passion of fornication? – Visit sick monks and help them in their needs and - to visit monks who have dried out their bodies through strict abstinence. Question 7. What is characteristic of the demon of fornication? – Laughter and mockery and - cheeky jokes and witticisms. Question 8. What follows pleasure? Answer: Set on edge and bitterness. Question 9: Where do carnal thoughts most often arise from? Answer: From the memory of carnal deeds. Question 10. Do obscene thoughts defile our mind after we have been granted divine grace and dispassion of the soul? Answer: Yes, they defile and cause confusion. - sadness because of the good of one's neighbor. Question 1. Why did John the Baptist call the Jews a generation of vipers? Answer: Because this animal gnaws the womb of its mother and thus comes from it, as they did, killing their teachers and prophets out of envy (as interpreted by Athanasius the Great). Question 2. Who is controversial? Question 3. Is it useful to live and communicate with an argumentative person? Answer: No, because it takes away purity and brings darkness and confusion into the heart. Question 4: Should we associate with argumentative people? Answer: No, because it robs the heart of purity and fills it with darkness and confusion. Question 5. What should we do when someone speaks evil of his brother in front of us? Answer: Show sorrow on your face. If we do this, God will save us from the vice of slander. A) What is ingratitude towards divine Providence? Answer: Spiritual fall and death of the soul. B) Is devoting oneself to God (that is, monastic life) a divine gift and a gift from God? - So he separated the monks from other people and – He vouchsafed them the knowledge of His innermost secrets. Question 2. What is required to understand these secrets? - Continuously thank God - love Him with all my soul and - be extremely attentive to thoughts of pride and arrogance. Question 1. What does excess food and drink lead to? causes thoughts to wander. A) What follows the saturation of the belly? Answer: Bodily kindling. B) Are the latter preceded by annoying carnal thoughts? Question 4. What should we be afraid of when our belly is burdened with a large amount of food and drink? - Insolence towards ourselves and – curiosity about your body. a) What is the fruit of filling the belly? Question 6. What is born from gluttony? Question 7. What are the fruits of gluttony? – heaviness and relaxation in the body, - laziness and darkness of thoughts and – a feeling of despondency when doing spiritual things. Question 1. What causes anger and rage? - desire to fulfill one's will, – desire to teach and impress people - confidence in your wisdom and intelligence. A) What are the cures for anger and rage? B) Are there other remedies for healing anger and rage besides those listed above? Question 3: What spiritual weapons are there against the spirit of blasphemy? – refusal to read heretical books and become familiar with heretical teachings. Question 4. What is the heart of a furious person like? Answer: Deprived of knowledge of divine secrets. Question 5. What is the prayer of the vindictive person like? Answer: Seed sown on a stone. Passions born of despondency – sadness and murmur that arises when it is necessary to do something good - justification for one's sins - laziness and neglect of good deeds that could be done A) What causes despondency? B) What causes mind wandering? - From idleness and reading, A) What fruits does despondency bring? Answer: Mental strangulation. B) What is born from mental strangulation? Question 3. Who is relaxed? Answer: Negligent in relation to: - all ascetic deeds for the sake of saving your soul. Question 4. What gives rise to internal negligence? – From neglecting one’s duties, - from neglecting vigil and - from neglecting reading. A) What is the reason for this? Answer: Because of our internal negligence. A) What is a careless person afraid of? B) What is born from negligence, laziness and fear? Q) What gives rise to negligence in the mind? D) When does negligence disappear? Answer: When we become zealous spiritually according to the will of Jesus Christ. A) What should we do when we become careless? Answer: Arouse jealousy in yourself. Answer: Because jealousy awakens the heart and warms the thoughts of the soul. Q) What else should we do when we become careless? Answer: Be angry with yourself. Answer: Because anger helps our nature to fight lust and drives away mental coolness. Question 8. Is it possible to neglect small things? Answer: No. Do not hope that he who neglects small deeds will succeed in numerous great deeds, as the great Basil says. A) What is the mother of hellish torment? Answer: A sign of negligence. Q) What is the mother of cowardice and negligence? Question 10. What is born from cowardice? Question 11: What should we do when we become slack and lazy? ' - remember the first time of our diligent asceticism, - zeal for God and hatred for our enemy, which we had then, and former sighs and tears for our sins. Question 12: What spiritual benefits do the above memories provide? - the soul is strengthened by fiery jealousy, – with God’s help, rises after a spiritual fall and - with hatred and courage he rushes to fight the devil and sin. Question 13. How can we drive away our enemy? Answer: By banishing your pride. Question 14. What is the devil trying to deprive monks and all Christians of? - Unceasing heartfelt prayer, – specific times of prayer and – fulfilling the rule received from the confessor (small and great bows). Question 15. What is a dream? Answer: The image of true death. 6 ladder. DONANCE OF THE MIND A) What causes relaxation during sleep? B) What causes sleep and coolness in the mind? Answer: They quench the holy fervor in the soul and kill its desire for God. Question 17: What should we be careful about while sleeping? Question 18. What does laughter lead to? Answer: Because relaxation and carelessness turns into a habit. Question 19. What do jokes and witticisms lead a person to? – To cool the warmth of love for Christ in his soul, - to the fact that he becomes the cause of spiritual decline for others, prepares sharp thorns of temptation for himself. Chapter 9. About worries and cares Question 1. What does excessive care for the physical lead to? Answer: To move away from God's love. A) What brings a lot of worries? B) What gives birth to courage of the heart? Answer: From hatred to temporary life. Question 3. How can you get rid of care? Answer: Through carelessness. Question 1: What are the fruits of impermanence? - cooling of zeal for the works of God, - leaving the prayer rule, – return of forgotten vices Chapter 10. About reading the Holy Scriptures A) What should we do when our mind becomes distracted? Answer: Read soul-helping books. B) Are all spiritual books useful to every believer? A) What is the reading of the divine Scriptures? Answer: A nourisher of good thoughts. B) What is reading spiritual books? Answer: The source of pure prayer. A) Does reading the divine Scriptures and the lives of saints bring spiritual benefit? Answer: Yes, and very large. Answer: Because thanks to it, subtle contemplations are revealed to the reader, the thoughts contained in them are imprinted in his memory, and he gradually achieves purity. Question 4: Is constant reading of the divine Scriptures beneficial? Answer: Yes, because it strengthens a person’s desire for good and preserves his soul from subtle sin. Question 5: What is the benefit of reading the divine Scriptures? Question 6. What drives the reading of the divine Scriptures? A) What is the reading of divine Scripture? – imprints useful thoughts in the soul, - protects her from passions, – supports zeal for God and – brings purity of prayer. Question 8. What fruits does the love of reading divine Scripture bring? – It expels from a person’s soul thoughts of his former intemperate life, - erases the emerging memories of her, which rebel against the flesh and kindle the flames of shameful lust. Question 9. What does the study of the divine Scriptures lead to? However, if a person is taught by the Holy Spirit, his mind remains intact. Question 10. How can we comprehend the words of the divine mysteries of Holy Scripture? - petitions for God’s help to be sent down to us. Question 11. How can the soul understand the spiritual meaning of a word? Question 12. What is required for words of virtue (that is, words that have a spiritual meaning) to bear fruit? Answer: This requires a heart that has left worldly affairs and participation in them. Question 13: What happens when the power of the Holy Spirit takes possession of the soul? Answer: Instead of the law of the divine Scriptures, the commandments of the Spirit take root in the heart, and after that a person no longer needs the tangible substance of the divine Scriptures. A) What is required for us to enjoy the prayers of a church service? Answer: To do this, you need to read them as carefully as the rosary prayer. B) What benefits does careful reading bring to us? A) Does reading the Divine Scriptures and the lives of saints help the soul in prayer? Answer: Yes, because thanks to him a person begins to pray without laziness and embarrassment. B) Does prayer help the soul in reading? Answer: Yes, because prayer enlightens the soul. Q) Why don't we read the divine Scriptures? Answer: Because we have not yet tasted the sweetness contained in the words of God. D) When a person cannot cry incessantly due to a physical illness, what work should he do to preserve his mind so that passions do not attack him? Answer: Engage in reading the divine Scriptures. Through this the mind can soar towards God. A) Where can the heart remain silent without daydreaming? B) When is the heart silent? Answer: When it is free from dreams. Q) When is the heart free from dreams? Answer: When the bodily senses are not occupied with any objects. Question 2: What are the fruits of silence? – bodily passions fall silent and - evil thoughts disappear. Question 3. When does the soul see God? Answer: When she is silent and not busy: Question 4. What path leads a Christian to light and life in Christ? – and constant thinking about God and pleasing Him. Question 5. What does this path lead to? - finding their peace with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven. Question 6. What are the two virtues of silence and fasting for a Christian? – The beginning and foundation of the divine work of his soul and - the door and path leading to Christ. Question 7: What are the consequences of neglecting these two virtues? Question 8: What is silence? Answer: According to the teachings of the pillar of Orthodoxy, Saint and Great Basil, silence is: A) What benefits does silence bring? – Silence kills the external senses and – stimulates the inner movements of the soul. B) What provides silence (i.e. the desert)? – It drives away nearby temptation, - keeps the senses in subjection and – strengthens love for God. A) What does it mean to remain silent in your cell? Answer: Divine gift. B) What is the love of silence? Q) How can one acquire silence? Answer: With the help of non-covetousness. Question 11. What are the grounds for sinlessness? – “Run”, that is, moving away from people. - “Be silent”, that is, silence and - “Be silent”, that is, silence. A) Is patience and staying in solitude and silence beneficial? Answer: Because through this the mind remains constantly bright through continuous and unceasing prayer. Q) What is a person like who remains silent for the sake of God? Answer: Such a person is blessed because he always talks with God. A) What is the condition for silence? Answer: Deep silence. B) What virtues should the practice of silence be associated with? Answer: With tears and humility. A) What should we do when we cannot perform the sacred duty of silence? Answer: Make up for this deficiency with active virtue, that is, with bodily labor. B) Why should we do this? Answer: So that our freedom does not serve as a reason for the subordination of the spirit to the flesh. Question 15. What spiritual gain and benefit does silence bring? – It cuts off reasons from reasons; - causes thoughts to decay and wither Question 16: What are the grounds for silence? A) Is small handicraft acceptable during silence? Answer: Because it drives away negligence. A) Is it possible for those who are silent to combine the work of silence with other, bodily cares? Answer: Because it causes disturbance and distracts the practitioner of silence from the unceasing remembrance of God. A) Can a monk do two things in silence, that is, have in his heart both concern for pleasing God and some other concerns? – Because it would mean that he has no spiritual wisdom, - and because worries about worldly affairs will lower his mind and distract him from standing before God. Question 20: What is the work of a monk who remains in silence? Answer: Continuous prayer. A) What thoughts and activities should an ascetic who remains in silence have? Answer: Making tears and crying. Answer: Crying, that is, grieving at heart. Q) What gives a monk consolation? D) What are crying and tears? Answer: By the gift of God and the property of the dispassionate. Question 22. What does the feat of silence lead to ascetics? Question 23. What passions harm silence? A) What is born from the silence of bodily feelings? B) What is born from silence in the human mind? A) Is freedom from care useful for the silent? Answer: Because numerous worries and worries are a sign of their relaxation and carelessness about fulfilling the commandments of Christ. A) Is seeing people and communicating with them useful for the silent? Answer: Because the chastity of the soul is polluted and darkened by the sight of A) What should a silent person do in a gathering of many people? Answer: Prefer silence. B) What should a silent person be wary of? Answer: To frequent meetings and communication with people. Q) What should he be especially afraid of? Answer: He should be more afraid of meeting vicious people than of meeting his enemies. Question 28. What are the works of silence? – carefully performing the all-night vigil – a large number of bows at the third, sixth and ninth hours. Question 29. When do the labors of the silent bear fruit? Answer: When the grace of tears comes to them. Answer: Let's take a field for spiritual achievements. B) What is the present time? Answer: A time of spiritual warfare. Question 2. What is the world? – Darkness, delusion and deceiver, - a harlot who tries to lure us to her and strip us of all virtues, and at the hour of death throws us out of her house, A) What do we need to do in order to understand the world? Answer: Strive to break out of the darkness and snares of the world. B) What harm does the world bring to those who love it? Answer. Leads them to spiritual destruction. Q) Does the world have power over the non-covetous and the ascetic? Answer: Of course not. But if they do not move away from the causes of vices, then, of course, he has power over them. Question 4. What can you find in the desert? – Removal from the causes of vice, - killing external feelings, – stimulation of internal mental movements, - fervor of abstinence, - removal from most passions and - according to the great Vasily, the beginning of the purification of the soul. Question 5. What is withdrawal from the world? Answer: Happiness, since the prudence of one who has withdrawn from the world is capable of discerning good. Question 6. Who is dead to the world? Answer: He who does not love those who honor him and does not despise those who dishonor Question 7. What is called the external man? Question 8. What is called the inner man? A) When do our will and desire for good weaken? – When we do not leave worldly affairs - and we do not have a complete renunciation of the world. B) When does our body become overwhelmed by illness and heaviness? Question 10: What should the laity do? Answer: Take care of the virtues characteristic of the laity. Chapter 13. About the soul, darkness of the soul, purification of the soul Question 1. What are the properties of the soul? Answer: According to Saint John of Damascus, the soul is living, simple, incorporeal, invisible to bodily eyes, possessing reason and intelligence, having no form, although it uses the body as an instrument and gives it life, free, having will and action, changeable, that is, prone to change, created. Question 2. Who can be called enlightened? Answer: One who works diligently and persistently for the salvation of his soul. A) Is virtue immutable? B) What cultivates virtue? - constant temptations. Question 4. What is the nature of the soul, passionate or dispassionate? Answer: The soul is dispassionate by nature and filled with light. A) What is the natural state of the soul? Answer: Knowledge of the sensual and intelligent creatures of God. B) What is the unnatural state of the soul? Answer: According to Saint and Great Basil, this is a movement towards the passions. Q) What is the supernatural state of the soul? Answer: Movement towards contemplation of the supernatural Deity. D) Are the passions of the soul inherent in it by nature? A) What is the kingdom of the soul? Answer: Purity and health of soul. B) When does the soul acquire purity? Answer: When she conquers passions and frees herself from them. Q) What does purity of soul lead to? Answer: Because the mind gains boldness during prayer. Question 7. How can you acquire health of soul? – Through healing the passionate part of the soul – Through soul renewal – Through the secret sanctification of the soul by the action of divine grace. Question 8. When do all the thoughts of the soul move in accordance with the nature of this world (that is, new and incorruptible)? Answer: When the spirit is renewed and the heart of a person is sanctified. Question 9. Can a soul truly love God while remaining passionate? A) Are passions inherent in the soul by nature? Answer: Because health precedes illness. Q) What is a natural and healthy state of mind? D) Where does virtue come from in the soul? Answer: It is inherent in her by nature. D) What was originally put into your soul? Answer: Health, that is, virtue. E) What appeared in your soul subsequently? Answer: Illness, that is, passions. A) What is the cleansing of the soul from hidden passions? B) What is the resurrection of the soul? Answer: The exodus of the old man from slavery to sin into a new life in Christ with a new heart and a new spirit, as the Apostle Paul says, “If you have been raised with Christ, then seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God” (Col. 3). Q) Is the soul by nature dispassionate and filled with light or passionate and dark? Answer: She is by nature dispassionate and filled with light. A) Can the soul be cleansed while outside the cell? – Because under the influence of feelings, the thoughts of the old (that is, sinful) person, which are always vicious, are renewed, and - a person cannot distinguish the hidden passions of his soul. Question 13. When is the soul in its natural state: when are its desires captivated by divine objects, or when are they directed toward earthly and corporeal things? Answer: When they are captured by celestial objects, because virtue is a natural healthy state of the soul, and passions are its disease. A) How can one achieve internal mortification? Answer: By stopping the action of the bodily senses. B) What is idleness? Answer: The beginning of the darkening of the soul. Question 15. What are idleness and bodily rest? Question 16. What do extremes bring to the soul? Question 17. What do open doors of feelings bring to the soul? A) Who can be considered free? B) When is the soul calm and free? Answer: The soul is calm when it thinks about its duties towards God. A) What is a change of soul? Answer: A change in her spiritual state. Answer: Its outcome is from the power of decay. This occurs when an Orthodox Christian enters into union with Christ and acquires a new heart and a new spirit, which means new desires and spiritual aspirations. A) What force directs the soul to divine objects? Answer: The action of the Holy Spirit. B) What happens when this happens? Answer: They become unnecessary; Question 21. What does a person need to cleanse his soul? - First of all, seek God’s help, – leave old desires and habits, - stop the external struggle, - get to know your passions and, with the help of prayer, attention and diligence, begin to fight them. Question 22. What are the signs and signs by which a person can determine that he has begun to see spiritual fruits hidden in his soul? Answer: The grace of tears. It is a true sign that the human mind has abandoned the bodily affairs of this world with contempt. The more tears flow without coercion, the more a person succeeds in the love of God. Question 23. What ranks does the soul see when it returns to its original state? Answer: She sees three ranks: 1) the order of angels located above her, 2) the rank of demons located below her and ) the rank of other souls similar to themselves. Question 24: How do souls see? Answer: Through their own natural property, corresponding to their spiritual rank, that is, clairvoyant eyes. A) When a person does something good for the sake of cleansing his soul, and others are tempted, should he leave his spiritual life in order to avoid temptation or not? Answer: No. The blessed Apostle Paul says: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). And he writes: “I do not want to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). Blessed is the one who diligently strives for the purity of his soul. The purity of our soul is the first gift of our nature. When the soul is freed from sinful diseases and passions, then it is healed and acquires health and purity, which it lost after the crime of its ancestors. B) When the soul is healthy, what happens to the mind? Answer: The mind receives tangible joy through spiritual feeling. Q) How should this be understood? Answer: A person becomes a son of God by grace and a brother of Christ and, as a result, ceases to feel the good and bad things that happen to him. Question 26. Does a person who leads a life displeasing to God move away from God, or does God move away from him? A) Do souls see each other? Answer: When they are cleansed, they see each other not physically, but spiritually. B) Do souls defiled by sin see each other? Answer: No, they do not see themselves or each other. Q) What do those suffering from severe mental illnesses and infirmities need? A) What generally gives rise to darkness of the soul? Answer: From a chaotic life. B) How can you fix a disordered life? A) How long can the darkness of the soul last? Answer: No more than one day. B) If it lasts longer, what does this indicate? Answer: About changing life and activities. Question 30. What can you do during mental darkness? - do not leave your home. A) Who is primarily subject to the temptation of darkness? Answer: Mostly those who want to live a life pleasing to God. B) What does darkening of the soul lead to against one’s will? - doubt about the resurrection of the dead on the last day and - other terrible sins. A) What serves as medicine and healing when tempted by darkness? Answer: Silence, which is the only consolation during it. B) Is it possible to completely get rid of this temptation? Answer: No, because the all-good God has deigned that we, who want to walk the narrow and sorrowful path of silence, should live in this way. Chapter 14. About ethereal forces A) How do the feelings of human nature achieve contemplation of the nature of ethereal forces? Answer: There are three types of contemplation of the nature of ethereal forces: 1) in “gross hypostasis and essence”, 2) in “the subtlest hypostasis and without essence” and 3) through true contemplation. B) What works in the first case? Q) What works in the third case? Answer: The power of the nature of the mind. A) Through which of these three types of contemplation can unclean demons influence us? Answer: Through the first two types, that is, the first and second, through the third - no. Answer: Because they cannot evoke natural thoughts in our minds. A) What do angels bring to us? Q) What do demons bring to us? A) Who enlightens the angels? Answer: They are enlightened in the order of their rank by the Holy Spirit (that is, divine grace). B) What gifts do the holy angels (of course, not all) have from the Holy Spirit? Answer: The speed of your purest mind and the light of knowledge. Answer: They do not have the light of knowledge. A) Are the mysteries of God revealed to all orders of angels? B) Can the nature of the human or angelic mind ascend to the contemplation of God without divine grace? Answer: No, because the contemplation of God is accomplished not by nature, but by grace. Question 6. Did the holy angels have the grace of contemplation and visions before the manifestation of the economy of Christ in the flesh? Answer: No, they did not. As the divine apostle says, the doors were opened by God the Word after His incarnation. A) Can we humans learn the mysteries of God without the help of angels? Answer: Because the human mind does not have the same power as the higher angelic powers. A) What does Divine Scripture call intelligent natures? Answer: Nine spiritual names. B) How many ranks does it divide them into? Question 9. Which angels are included in the first rank? 1) Great, highest and most holy thrones. The name thrones means revered (God sits and rests on them). The name cherubim means bearers (that is, rich in knowledge and wisdom). The word seraphim means sanctifying (that is, hot and scorching). Question 10. Which angels are included in the second rank? 1) Dominions having power over all kingdoms. 2) Forces that have mighty power. 3) Powers that rule over nations and over every person. Question 11. Which angels are included in the third rank? 1) Principles that control the air. 2) Archangels, vigilant guardians. 3) Angels sent to serve. Question 12: When and how were these nine intelligent natures created? Answer: On the first day, in silence and through one word “light”. Question 13: What was created on the second and third days? Answer: On the second day the firmament of heaven was created, and on the third day God created the orders of the seas and plants. Question 14: What was created on the fourth day? Answer: The division of light, that is, the sun, moon and stars. Question 15: What was created on the fifth and sixth days? Answer: In the fifth - birds of the air, reptiles and fish, and in the sixth animals and MAN. Question 16. How do demons differ from angels? Answer: They are ruder by nature and rank. Question 17. When does our guardian angel not move away from us? Answer: When we ourselves do not reject the reasons for help, that is: labors for the sake of acquiring virtues and A) Who is the teacher of the first order of angels? B) Who is the teacher of the angels following them (that is, the second angelic rank)? Answer: Their teachers are the angels of the first order. A) How is each dispensation and manifestation of the mysteries of God transmitted to all the angelic ranks? Answer: In order of their rank, from one rank to another. B) Does this apply to all the mysteries of God? Answer: No, because many secrets are revealed only to the first order and are not transmitted to others, or are revealed only to the second order of angels, which keeps them in silence. Q) Why don’t they open themselves to other orders of angels? Answer: Because the other angelic ranks cannot perceive the greatness of the mystery without the teaching and help of the first rank. Chapter 15. About monastic life, virginity, pilgrimage and obedience Question 1. What is monastic life? This life is equal to the life of angels, – The lives of people who are praise and landing of the Church of CHRIST, – The lives of God’s chosen ones, called by God to be PARTICIPANTS in the sufferings of Christ and His glory. Question 2. How do those living in silence help the world? – and advice at the right time A) Can a monk who leads an ascetic life in silence have concerns about pleasing God or any other concerns? Answer: Because monks are chosen by God to serve Him. They have the boldness to be in constant mysterious communion with God through prayer. Through prayer and silence they serve and please God. Question 4. What cools the soul of a monk? Answer: Communication and conversations with people and verbosity. A) If a person completely renounces the world and communication with people and settles in a terrible and deserted place, will he die due to lack of food? – followed Christ with simplicity and without doubt, - refused the rest of the flesh, - surrendered himself into the hands of God, - loved life in obscurity, purity and humility, – fulfilled the commandment “seek... first the Kingdom of God... and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33), and – The Lord cannot abandon His creation, much less His chosen ones and those who fear Him. A) What is the root of monastic life? Answer: Attentive psalmody. B) What brings more spiritual benefit: physical labor, reading psalms, or sadness of mind? A) Who is God's friend? Answer: One who has left everything and cares only about the state of his soul. B) What should a monk do? Answer: To succeed in deeds by which monks please God. Question 8: What are the virtues of a monk? - complete disregard for the flesh - respect for the bodily senses – perfect cutting off of contentiousness - simplicity and kindness of heart - obscurity for people – lack of friendly attachment to people – diligent and constant reading - hatred of praise and honors – patience and courage in temptations - spiritual love for people A) How should a monk spend the days of this life? B) Is communication and frequent conversations with people harmful for a monk? Answer: Because verbosity clouds the mind. A) What does seeing worldly people lead to? Answer: To confusion in the monk's soul. B) What is required for physical activity? Q) What is required for spiritual work? Question 11: What should a monk avoid? - Causes and disturbances of passions, – frequent conversations with people and – temptations due to everyday affairs. Question 12. When can a monk be considered blessed? - When he diligently cares about the purity of his soul, - walks the spiritual path with great prudence and – patiently endures sorrows, hardships and illnesses. A) What thoughts and activities should an ascetic who remains in silence have? Answer: Making weeping and tears. Q) What brings a monk comfort? D) What are tears and crying? Answer: By the gift of God and the property of the dispassionate D) What do tears and crying bring? A) What is a cell for a monk? Answer: A spiritual field, a great teacher, a place of tears and repentance, light, life and resurrection. Answer: She teaches us everything. Answer: The ardor of the heart, generating tears that bring peace of thoughts, from which come: D) Why should we sit in a cell? Answer: So as not to learn the evil deeds of people. D) How does this benefit us? Answer: Thanks to this, we look at everyone as saints. Answer: One who stays away from the world and constantly prays to God to obtain future benefits. B) What is the wealth of a monk? Question 16. What happens to a monk when he leaves his cell? Question 17. Why is the love of communicating with people dangerous for a monk? - Praise from them and A) How should a prudent monk spend the days of this life? Answer: In nakedness and non-covetousness, until he finds pearls in his soul - Jesus Christ. B) When does a monk's heart get damaged? Answer: When he communicates with many people and has long conversations with them. Question 19. Where does the fruit of monastic life grow? Question 20. When does the soul of a monk rejoice? – When he moves away from people and lives in a silent place. Question 21. What does seeing worldly people bring to a monk? Answer: Confusion in his soul. A) Is it possible for a monk to be in a meeting of angry and hostile people? Answer: Because from this his heart can be filled with anger, and his soul can be taken over by the darkness of delusion. Question 23. What helps a monk when the passion for fornication ignites in him? – Visiting sick monks and helping them with their needs and - visiting monks who have dried out their flesh through strict labors. A) What is dedication to God and a virtuous life? Answer: One of God's greatest gifts. B) When does God reject us? Q) What passions do we fall into? A) What commandment of God does the unmerciful monk violate? Answer: The commandment of mercy. B) Which monk is not obliged to give alms? Answer: Not busy with caring for bodily needs and not caring about the body, but non-covetous, like the birds of the air. Question 26. Who is better: a layman, entangled in worldly concerns, or a monk, carrying out spiritual feats, but living with the laity? A) Is it possible for the silent to combine the work of silence with other, bodily cares? - and because care about worldly affairs will lower his mind and distract him from standing before God. Question 29: What is the work of a monk who remains in silence? Question 30. What should a monk’s cell be like? – deprived of all desirable bodily peace and Question 1. What is the glory of the body? Answer. Submission to God with chastity. Question 2. How is chastity acquired? – constant prayer, driving away shameful thoughts. Question 3. What enhances the beauty of chastity? A) Who is the friend of chastity? B) What does relaxation lead to during sleep? Answer: It inflames lust. Question 5. How can you keep your youth pure? Answer: With the help of exercise. Question 6. Who is a virgin? Answer: He who not only has kept his bodily virginity undefiled, but also when he sees one of the members of his body naked in solitude, is ashamed of himself. Question 7. What enhances the beauty of virginity? - patience with hunger that drives away sleep, and A) What do we mean when we say that someone has withdrawn from the world? Answer: We mean that he has not physically withdrawn from the world, but has completely withdrawn from the affairs of the world, that is, his mind experiences indifference to worldly affairs. B) What is the indifference of the mind to worldly affairs? Question 2. What causes withdrawal from the world? Answer: It gives rise to the virtue of patience, that is, enduring insults with joy and thanksgiving. Question 3. What most strongly weans us from the world and mortifies our passions? A) Why does communication with parents and relatives bring harm to a monk? Answer: Because it cools the love for God in his heart. B) What is mortification for the world? – Bodily removal from communication with the world and - lack of desire for worldly goods in the mind. Answer: One who has acquired humility in his heart. B) Who died for bodily passions? A) What precedes removal from the world and the beginning of monastic life? Answer: Renunciation of the world. B) What wealth does one who withdraws from the world acquire through his moral life? Answer: He finds in his soul the secret of eternal bliss and is awarded divine grace. Question 7. What precedes hatred of the world? Question 8. When does the soul see God? Answer: When she is silent and not busy: Question 9. Who is free from the duty of serving people? - One who is completely deprived of communication with people, - deprived of all the things of the world and - completely attached to God. A) What is true submission? Answer: It is twofold. B) What is true submission? - Tolerating reproaches and contempt. A) Which comes first to God, the body or the mind? B) What is the chain of command? Answer: First the body submits to the mind (that is, the kingdom of the mind is a crucifixion for the body), and then the mind submits to God. Q) What is free will subject to? B) What benefits does it bring? Answer: Restraint of feelings. Question 2: What should we be mindful of when eating? Answer: We should eat and drink with chastity and modesty, as children of God. A) Is it useful for a monk to have a lot of unnecessary things and enjoy food and drink in his cell? Answer: Because it drives out continence. Q) What does a lot of unnecessary things and a lot of food lead to? Answer: To intemperance. Question 4. What follows the abandonment of abstinence? Answer: Intemperance and fornication. Chapter 16. Mind. Vision and purity of mind A) What are the wings of the mind? Answer: The virtue of contemplation. Answer: Because with its help a person is elevated from earthly objects to heavenly ones. Question 3: When does the mind lose freedom? Answer: When the Holy Spirit rules the mind. Question 4. What is purity of mind? Answer: Saint Gregory the Theologian says that this is a “high procession to mental objects.” Question 5. What do we call a desert? Answer: Indifference of mind to worldly affairs. Question 6. When does the mind fall into delusion? – When a person has no fear of God Question 7. When does prayer and love for God enlighten the mind? Answer: When a person has love for his neighbor. Question 8. How is the grace of revelation and contemplation given to the human mind? - Or by grace, for the ardor of his faith, like the apostles, - or for fulfilling the commandments and purity. Question 9: What brings extreme serenity to the mind more than anything else? A) What does absent-mindedness lead to? B) What do passions lead to? Answer: When he does not have spiritual work and prayer. B) Why does the mind become darkened? Answer: Because he loses divine help and falls into a demonic state. Q) What is the beginning of mental darkness? Answer: Because emotional conversation creates confusion in the mind. A) How is the mental activity of the mind accomplished? Answer: Through the lustful part of the soul. B) What is the rapture of the mind? Answer: The prayer of the mind taken captive and feeling itself. A) How does the mind become sharp? - Through carelessness, - hopes for future benefits and B) What does the human mind learn when it meets these conditions? Answer: See God in a divine way, not in a crude and human way. Question 14: What is pure mind? Answer: The mind which, after performing active virtues, rises and meditates on divine things. Question 15. How is purity of mind different from purity of heart? Answer: Initially, the mind is one of the spiritual feelings, and the heart contains feelings and is their root. Therefore, when the heart is pure, then all feelings are pure. The difference lies in stability, time, sorrow, labor and hardship. The mind is quickly purified, but it is also quickly defiled. The heart is difficult to defile, but it is also difficult to cleanse. A) What does the contemplative mind see? Answer: He sees the hidden mysteries of the Spirit and beholds the glory of Christ. B) What types of contemplation of natures exist through which the mind is elevated, Answer: There are three types of contemplation of natures. The first two types are contemplation created natures, that is: 3) The third type is contemplation of the Holy Trinity. A) Does the mind of one who strives in active virtues differ from the mind of a contemplator? B) What can the rank of contemplatives be compared to? Answer: With the rank of priests. Question 19. What is truth? Answer: Divine feeling, which is depicted in the feelings of the spiritual mind, tasting it in itself. Question 20: What is mental impurity? A) What is perfect health of mind? Answer: Unreasonable jealousy. A) What does the mind lack in an unhealthy state? Answer: Because he loses the ability to discern spiritual matters. Question 3. What does clouded mind lead to? Answer: To fear. And fear leads us to humility and repentance. A) What gives rise to the light of reason? B) What does confusion of mind lead to? - To the darkness of the soul that causes A) What should precede a battle with a mental enemy? B) What strengthens hope and fear in the mind? Answer: Removal from people and unceasing prayer. A) What gives rise to the sight of the mind? B) Where does the vision of the mind capture ardent thoughts? Q) What is the name of the sight of the mind? Question 1. What is purity of mind? Answer: He has a pure mind who, after performing virtues, rises to contemplation of divine objects. A) What does a person gain through purity of mind? Answer: He begins to see the mysteries of God. B) What causes clouding of the mind? Answer: From unmercifulness and laziness. Question 3. How can one acquire boldness before the Gods through the exercise of the mind? Answer: By withdrawing from communication and conversations with people. A) What are bad changes in the mind? Answer: Divine providence while living in silence. B) How does the mind die to the world? Answer: Through abstinence from worldly affairs and the assistance of divine grace. A) What does peace of thoughts bring? B) What does purity of mind bring? Answer: Revelations and heavenly signs. Q) When does the mind rush to explore the hidden mysteries of God? Answer: When he achieves serenity of thoughts. A) What cleanses you from vain thoughts? B) What is the life of the mind? Answer: In deeds of the heart. A) What intensifies hidden passions in the mind? Answer: Shameful thoughts. B) What is purity of mind? Answer: The perfection of heavenly contemplation. Q) How does contemplation occur: through the senses or without the participation of the senses? Answer: It occurs without the help of the senses through the spiritual power of the highest decorations of the innumerable wonders of the heavenly world, the knowledge of which is transmitted by invisible action to those disembodied who do not have divine revelations. Question 8: How is purity of mind maintained? – With the help of bodily labors and - reading the divine Scriptures. Question 9. What is the difference between purity of mind and purity of heart? Answer: Purity of mind is quickly acquired through reading the divine Scriptures, prayer, fasting, silence and vigil, but it is unstable and does not last long. And purity of the heart is achieved through sorrow, deprivation, tears and the killing of everything worldly, a property of that world, which is why it is difficult to be desecrated. Answer: Frenzy following prayer, like a soulless body. A sense of divine secrets hidden in things and causes. B) What is the nature of contemplation? Question 2. Is the rank of contemplatives similar to Kam? A) What effect does contemplation have? Answer: It frees the mind from the sensation of the world. B) How does a person ascend to the cross? Q) What are these two ways of crucifixion? Crucifixion of the body through acts of active virtue and ascent to contemplation through the mind. A) What part of the soul does contemplation purify? Answer: The action of love in the soul. B) What is the action of love in the soul? Answer: Natural desire. Q) What is characteristic of spiritual contemplation? Answer. Measure and distinction of talents. Chapter 18. About thoughts. Confusion and wandering thoughts. Discrimination of thoughts. Purity of thoughts Question 1. What is confusion of thoughts? Answer: Captivity of thoughts, chariot of the devil. Question 2. What does confusion of thoughts deprive? – understanding the words of prayer. Question 3. How should we deal with the hostile thoughts instilled in us? 1) a humble prayer to God to send us help and Question 4. Where does the movement of thoughts come from in a person? Answer: It occurs for three reasons: 1) due to the natural will of the flesh, 2) due to the imagination in the mind of material objects of the world and Question 5. Why should you be wary of communicating with young men? Answer: Because because of it, our mind can be polluted by unclean thoughts. Question 1. When does the confusion of thoughts go away? Answer: When the mind comprehends the great meaning of divine providence and tastes its sweetness. Question 1. What does communication with people lead to? Question 2. What causes wandering thoughts? Answer: From laziness, due to which coldness takes possession of the mind and heart. Question 3. What helps the mind focus and stop wandering? – Prayer to the Lord for enlightenment of the mind, – reading troparia (with understanding of their meaning), - hope for future benefits. Question 4. What does idleness of mind lead to? Answer: To the desecration of inner vision with alien lustful thoughts. Question 5. What does excessive concern for bodily needs lead to? Answer: To distance from the love of God. Question 6: What should we do when our minds become distracted? Question 7: What causes mind wandering? A) What is born from distraction of the mind? B) What is born from passions? Q) What is born from sins? Question 1. Who is the inner man? A) Do all good desires and thoughts come to our hearts from God? Answer: No, but only useful ones. B) What should we do when we have a good desire? Answer: Pray often, not only because we need God’s help, but also so that God will show us whether our desire is in accordance with His holy will. Question 3. What helps to distinguish good from evil? Question 1. What does killing the body for Christ bring? Answer: Purity of thoughts, which is a sacrifice to the LORD. Question 2. What gives rise to purity of thoughts? - careful preservation of the mind. Question 3. What does purity of thoughts lead to? Answer: To the light of prudence. Question 4: What does the light of prudence lead to? Answer: To the point that the mind begins to be guided by divine grace. Question 5. From what is born the orderliness of thoughts? Chapter 19. About the mind. Decency and disorder in the mind What brings more spiritual benefit: physical labor, reading psalms, or sadness in the mind? Answer: More spiritual benefit comes from sadness in the mind. A) What is born from good deanery, that is, order? B) What is born from the world in the mind? Q) When does the mind become enlightened? Answer: When there is order and measure in life. Answer: Because it stops the embarrassment. Question 3. What fruits does a good life bring? Question 4. What rein holds the order of the mind? - the doctrine of the future life. Question 5. How can one reach the limit of wisdom and its perfect knowledge? Answer: It is impossible to reach the limit of wisdom, even striving for virtue. The wisdom of God is infinite, because wisdom is God Himself. A) What does disorder lead to? B) What does embarrassment lead to? Answer: To the darkness of the mind and soul. Question 7. What is born from heartfelt tenderness? Answer: Self-knowledge in the soul. Question 8. How is decency of life acquired? Chapter 20. About the heart. Fervor and purity of heart A) What is the house of the mind? B) What is the human heart? Answer: The mental altar of God. Question 2: How can we see heavenly treasures? Answer: By entering the treasury of our heart. Question 3. Who killed Diaval? Answer: One who has killed his heart for the works of the devil. Question 4. What do feelings do when the heart lives? Question 5. What happens to the heart when feelings rebel? Answer: It dies to God. Question 6. What ties bind a person’s heart and hold back his desire for sin? - thinking about the future life. A) What gives rise to great fervor of the heart? Answer: From self-compulsion and labor in performing virtues. B) What fruits do mindfulness and fervor of the heart bring? A) Can ardor and contrition of heart be present in the soul at the same time? Answer: No, because when the soul is given ardor, crying leaves the heart. B) Why is ardor given to the soul? Answer: So that she feels joy. A) What is purity of heart? – Clarity of the mental air of the spirit, in the depths of which our spiritual nature takes wings – Forgetting the knowledge of unnatural things happening in the natural world, – A person’s achievement of simplicity and gentleness of his primordial nature, that is, his transformation into a baby, without the shortcomings characteristic of babies. B) What is the limit of purity of heart? Answer: liberation from worldly knowledge and worldly morals. A) What is a sign of purity of heart? – A person who looks at everyone as superior to himself has a pure heart. The prophet Habakkuk says about this: A pure eye cannot see evil (Hab. 1:13). – He is also pure in heart who considers all people to be good and to whom no one seems unclean and nasty. B) How can we acquire purity of mind and heart? Answer: With the help of asceticism. 22. HARDNESS AND CONTRIBUTION OF THE HEART Question 3. What is a person’s pure heart? Answer: Church of the Living God. Question 4. What helps us acquire purity of heart? . renunciation of worldly knowledge, - good and virtuous deeds, - incense of pure heartfelt prayer, Question 5. What is better: talking about God or purifying yourself for God? Answer: Better, according to Saint Gregory the Theologian, Patriarch of Constantinople, A) Who is internally pure? Answer: One who joyfully endures hardships for the love of God. B) When does a person receive the gifts of God? Answer: When his heart is pure. Question 7. When are a person’s feelings pure? Question 8. How do tears affect the heart? Chapter 21. About visions and revelations A) Is there a difference between vision and revelation? – Vision is also called revelation, but revelation is not called vision. – The vision appears in deep sleep or in reality, – Often vision occurs through vision and face-to-face conversation. – Visions are sent by God mainly to hermits and ascetics. – Revelations are received by those who are perfect for the sake of their purity. Question 2. What are the reasons for the sending of visions and revelations? Answer: There are two reasons for the sending of visions and revelations: 1) sometimes they are sent for the sake of the people of God, 2) and in other cases to console, inspire and teach the weak. A) To whom does God’s immeasurable mercy send them? 1) people are very simple and kind, 2) perfect and holy people, 3) people who have an ardent zeal for God and do not care that they may die of hunger and incurable diseases. Question 4: Who does not receive visions and revelations from God? - Having worldly comforts and Question 5. For what purpose are visions and revelations sent? - For the benefit of the common people, - to inspire those who strive – and in general, by God’s immeasurable mercy towards people. Question 6. How is the grace of revelation and contemplation given to the human mind? - or for fulfilling the commandments and purity. A) What is spiritual vision? Answer: Spiritual entities. Chapter 22. About idle talk and boldness Question 1. What leads to the cessation of continuous conversation with God? Answer: Conversations with brothers. A) What does idle talk prevent? B) What does idle talk lead to? Answer: To the darkness of the soul. Question 3. What do verbosity and disorderliness lead to when communicating with people? Question 4. What do communication and conversations with people lead to? - To confusion and clouding of mind Question 5: What spiritual damage can come from communicating with many people and talking about different topics? - the human mind becomes unfree – and he does not have time to remember his sins and purify his thoughts, his attention and spiritual vigil weakens – and against his will the prayer loses its power. Question 6. Is boldness useful in relationships with people? Question 7. Who can teach his children with boldness? Answer: One who puts into the ears of those who listen a teaching based on his own virtues. Question 8. How is boldness before God acquired? – Through deeds of virtue - Through a good conscience. Question 1. What is perfection like? Answer: The Promised Land, that is, the grace of the Holy Spirit indwelling the human heart. Question 2. How does a person see the truth? Answer: In accordance with the measure of your spiritual strength. A) When will human nature reach perfection? Answer: In the heavenly fatherland of freedom. Answer: Because there our nature will not be subject to negative changes and will not be afraid of enemies. Question 4: What is the perfection of the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Answer: Perfect love for God. Question 5: What is the sign that a person has achieved perfect love? Answer: Only when the thought of God and His countless benefits, visible and invisible, fills a person’s eyes with abundant tears, can one be considered to have achieved the perfection available in this life. Answer: Become like God through perfect love for your neighbor. B) Who achieved perfection? Answer: One who endures slander with humility. The heart of an Orthodox Christian, which is the abode of the Holy Trinity A) What instructs a person to the perfection of life in Christ? Answer: Enlightenment of divine grace. B) Who is far from perfect? Answer: One who is always in fear. Question 7. How was the soul created, passionate or dispassionate? Question 8. What is perfection in all the paths of virtue? Question 9. What are the signs of the perfection of true servants of God? Answer: They are joyfully ready to even accept death out of love for their neighbors for the sake of their salvation. A) How can we achieve the perfection of numerous spiritual fruits, that is, love, joy, peace and others? Answer: Through perfect love for God. B) What does someone without humility lack? Q) Who lacks perfection? Answer: Always in fear. Chapter 24. About faith, hope and patience A) How should we walk along the path of our lives? Answer: Because simplicity follows faith. Question 2: Who cannot understand faith? – having a corrupt mind that does not accept the truth. Question 3. To whom is the testimony of faith given? Answer: Having an enlightened soul. A) Does God leave His servants in their bodily needs? Answer: Because He Himself said: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things, will be added to you (Matthew 6:33). A) What guides us to eternal life? Answer: Because they attract God's mercy and help. Question 6. What is faith? – Childish thoughts and thoughts and a simple heart, as the Lord says:... be like children (Matthew 18:3), and as it is also said:... breaking bread from house to house, you ate your food with joy and simplicity of heart, praising God... (Acts 2:46). – The door leading to the mysteries of God. Question 7. What, first of all, strengthens faith? Question 8: What does faith require? A) What gives rise to courage of the heart? B) What helps you gain faith? Question 11. What strengthens faith in God? - the will of man and – readiness to endure even the cutting off of members of the body for God’s sake. A) How many spiritual eyes do we have? Answer: Two, as the fathers say. B) What do we see with the first spiritual eye? Answer: The hidden glory of God, which is in the nature of creation, that is: Diagram 24. SIMPLICITY AND FAITH What do we see with the second eye of our soul? Answer: The glory of God's holy nature after He leads us to the knowledge of spiritual mysteries. A) What does the Orthodox and firm faith lead to? Answer: To victory and trampling on enemies. B) How do we understand faith here? Answer: As a mental force that strengthens the heart with the light of reason and, with the help of conscience, leads the soul to immeasurable devotion to God. Answer: Purity and simplicity of mind, far from any guile. A) What can be said about faith in general? Answer: That she has treasures that heaven and earth cannot contain. B) What can be said about a person who has faith? Answer: That he is the richest man in the world. Answer: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain; If the Lord does not guard the city, the watchman watches in vain” (Ps. 127:1). “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). “...for with God no word will fail” (Luke 1:37). Answer: Faith always wins. Answer: Because faith has great power. What does faith hide within itself? Answer: Humility, since faith attributes all its deeds to divine grace, as it is said: “... I have labored more than all of them: not I, however, but the grace of God, which is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). Answer: Through the spiritual thoughts of the soul and above the senses. What is more subtle: faith, knowledge or material objects? What kind of mental ladder do they together form? – Knowledge is subtler than material objects. – Faith is subtler than knowledge and material objects. How do we understand faith here? Answer: As faith arising from divine grace and through the testimony of conscience strengthening the heart in hope. What should we hope for: God’s help or the mercy of people? Answer: We must hope with all our souls and completely for God’s help. Question 2. What happens when a person’s heart has firm hope in God? - The human soul can be light, - the mind rises above the earth, inspired by reflection on divine objects, – enjoys the immortal and eternal mysteries of God. A) What does hope in God give rise to? Answer: Peace and strength of heart. B) What brings us the greatest spiritual benefit? Answer: Doing all our deeds with the hope of future eternal benefits. A) What gives rise to hope in God? Answer: From heartfelt faith. B) How does hope in God manifest itself? Answer: In deeds of virtue. Why is hope so sweet and its deeds easy? Answer: Because the thought of God in the hearts of ascetics is, according to the word of the prophet Jeremiah, “like a burning fire” (Jer. 20:9), so that they become intoxicated with the hope of future blessings. A) Is unchanging peace useful on the path of asceticism? Answer: No, it is far from the right path. B) When is a person's heart safe? Answer: When he gains hope in God. Question 1. What does increasing patience in a person indicate? Answer: That he secretly received grace-filled consolation. A) How is patience given to a person during disasters? Answer: According to his humility. B) What do we gain from patience? A) Where does consolation come from? B) What is the mother of consolation? A) What accompanies patience, which is born from love for God? B) What do active feats require? Answer: Attention to feelings. B) What is born from enduring contempt? Answer: Boldness before God. A) What precedes renunciation of the world? B) What precedes patience? Question 6: What does prolonged patience lead to? Answer: To humility. Humility leads to health of soul. Health of the soul leads to the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God leads to the LOVE of God, and the love of God leads to joy. Chapter twenty-five. About prayer Question 1. What is prayer? – Asking for something, caring about something, wanting something, getting rid of temptations, getting rid of future hellish torments, wanting to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. – A refuge of help and joy. – The source of salvation, sending thanksgiving to God. – Light for those in darkness. – Strengthening for the weak. - Veil during temptations. – A shield that protects in invisible warfare. – An arrow directed against demons. – Refuge and treasure of all Orthodox Christians. – As Saint Gregory the Theologian says, prayer is the purity of the mind, receiving with amazement the light of the Holy Trinity. Question 2. How should we stand in prayer to God? Answer: With humble thoughts, looking at ourselves as ants, lizards, A) What are the benefits of prayer and vigil? B) What should accompany prayer? Answer: Spiritual almsgiving. Question 4: What helps you gain confidence before God? – Constant, lengthy and fervent prayer, Question 5: What is the key to prayer? Answer: Movements of the tongue and heart. Question 6. When is prayer soulless and like a stillborn baby? – When the body does not work, - and the soul does not experience sorrow. A) What is the highest limit for all types and methods of human prayer? B) What types of prayer are there? B) Is there any other prayer higher than pure prayer? A) What should precede each case? B) What happens to a person when he falls in spiritual life and prayer? – His soul is deprived of God’s help and - falls into the hands of his enemies. Question 9. What is a petition? Answer: Prayer in which a person asks for God's help. Question 10. How can we comprehend the meaning of the words of the divine mysteries? A) Who feels the sweetness of prayer? B) What is higher and more valuable: the sweetness of prayer or contemplation during prayer? Answer: Contemplation during prayer. Q) What should be our first petition to God? Answer: About the Kingdom of God and about the truth of God. A) What is the human heart? Answer: The mental altar of God? B) How does impure prayer differ from pure prayer? Answer: By connecting some other person’s thought or someone else’s thoughts with the mind. A) What is the Jesus Prayer? Answer: Mortification of the thoughts of the carnal will. - one who truly prays is equated to one who died for the world, – his mind is freed from thoughts about material objects, and his heart is completely directed to the desire and hope of future benefits, - thanks to which he can talk with God. A) What brings a person closer to God? B) What is the purpose of the Jesus Prayer? – Acquiring the grace of tears – Acquiring love for God. Q) What is the origin of the Jesus Prayer? Answer: From a good hermit life. A) Where can you mainly pray the Jesus Prayer successfully? B) What is necessary in case of silence? Answer: Practicing the Jesus Prayer. Q) What does the Jesus Prayer lead to? A) What are tears during prayer evidence of? Answer: Evidence of God's mercy. B) What is higher before God: the Jesus Prayer or alms? B) What causes the loss of ongoing conversation with God? Answer: Because He Himself said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). A) How is heart activity performed? Answer: Through unceasing prayer. B) What does the Jesus Prayer protect from? Answer: From hidden passions, so that any of them does not penetrate into the hidden and spiritual area of ​​the heart. B) What is this activity of the heart called? D) What is the doing of the life of the mind called? Answer: By spiritual work. Question 1. What is spiritual prayer? – Freedom of the mind from attention to foreign objects (that is, from communicating with thoughts) – Spiritual movements caused by the action of the Holy Spirit in those who have true sanctification and purity, A) What happens to a person during spiritual prayer? Answer: He rises and his nature ceases to operate. B) Does the soul pray during spiritual prayer? Answer: Because at the same time she purely senses the spiritual objects of the Future Age. D) How does the soul comprehend these spiritual objects? Answer: By the power of the Holy Spirit. A) What is the purpose of God's laws and commandments? B) How do practicing Orthodox Christians acquire purity of heart? Answer: Through love for the laws and commandments of God and their observance. A) How does impure prayer differ from pure prayer? B) What is spiritual vision called? Answer: The transition from prayer to contemplation. Question 5: What makes a person worthy of spiritual prayer? – Accurate observance of the commandments of the Lord, – long, unceasing prayer and Question 6: What prayer should we recite? Answer: Lord, grant me reason and a sense of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, A) What do the Holy Fathers call prayer? Answer: All good movements of the mind and spiritual activities. B) What do the Holy Fathers call spiritual prayer? Question 9. Are there names that reveal the meaning of prayer? Answer: No. But, as Saint Dionysius the Areopagite says, for the sake of feelings we use comparisons, combinations of sounds and names in relation to divine objects. A) When does the prayer of the mind stop? Answer: When he comes into a state of contemplation. B) When does the mind lose the ability to discern its own movements during prayer? Answer: When he achieves pure prayer. A) What do we mean when we say that the mind has gone beyond prayer? Answer: That he moved on to contemplation (that is, pure prayer). B) What follows pure prayer? Answer: Amazement and wonder, not prayer. Answer: Because then the effect of prayer ceases and the mind is in a state contemplation, not prayer. A) What force turns the mind to divine objects? B) What does this action lead to? Answer: Become redundant: A) When does the mind become immersed in prayer? Answer: When he is in a state of mind. B) When does the mind stop praying? Answer: When he goes into a state of contemplation. Answer: Because in this case the Holy Spirit possesses the mind and nature loses freedom, that is, the mind is guided to this bliss not by its own will, but by the action of the Spirit. A) In what state is the mind then? Answer: In a state above prayer. B) What is happening to him at this time? Answer: He remains silent due to his ignorance and frenzy. B) What do we call this ignorance? Answer: Ignorance, inseparable from prayer. A) What gives rise to contemplation during prayer? Answer: From true silence. B) What happens during prayer? Question 16. What does the soul experience during darkness during prayer? – extreme fear and doubt – loss of hope in God and Chapter twenty-six. About virtue A) What is virtue? Answer: Work of the heart, generated by hope in God. B) What is virtue called? B) What is any virtue? D) When is virtue a cross? Answer: When done according to the commandment of the Holy Spirit. D) What is the law of God called? Question 2: What are the bodily virtues? Question 3. What are the spiritual virtues? - love for God and neighbor - care for good deeds - forgiveness of neighbor's sins - keeping the soul from passions – exploration of the divine secrets hidden in the divine Scriptures – occupying the mind with the Jesus Prayer and thinking about the affairs of God and spiritual subjects. A) What is the power of virtue? B) What virtue can be considered genuine? Answer: TU, the acquisition of which requires sorrows, difficulties and exploits. A) What virtue is considered perfect? Answer: One that a person does of his own free will. B) What fruits does it bring? - She deserves a reward from God and A) What restores the thought of good deeds? Answer: It restores virtue. B) What is forgiveness of other people's sins and tolerance of insults? Answer: The greatest virtue. Question 7: Who is truly wise? Answer: One who has stopped sinning and is making every possible effort to live this life holy and so that his soul at the hour of death turns out to be pure and immaculate. Question 8: Who truly loves virtue? Answer: One who accepts sorrow with joy for the sake of virtue. A) What is the point of virtue? Answer: In keeping the commandments of Christ. B) Does pata bring us grief for a person who is mentally or physically sick? Answer: Very large. Through this we become martyrs. Question 10: Is grief for bad people and good deeds shown primarily to sinners a virtue? Answer: Yes, they are the greatest virtue. As the Apostle Paul says, All our deeds must be preceded by chastity of body and purity of conscience. A) What should precede each of our affairs? 2) research into his circumstances. Answer. Because God values prudence in virtue, not recklessness. Question 12. What is the first virtue? Answer: Contempt for the peace of the body. Question 13: What is the practice of virtue? - Sorrows, labors and illnesses, - obedience to the will of God and A) What comprehensive virtue makes the soul a partaker of the deity? Answer: The virtue of love. B) What does spiritual love represent? Answer: The invisible image of God. A) Which virtue is reprehensible. Answer: Every virtue performed in peace (according to Saint Mark the Ascetic). Answer: Because, according to him, every virtue is called a cross when performed according to the commandment of the Holy Spirit. Question 16. What are virtues for the soul? Question 17. What is the beginning of God's holy path? – and unceasing prayer (Jesus Prayer). Question 18. What is characteristic of each type of life (spiritual age)? A) How many orders of virtuous life are there? Question 20. What is characteristic of the rank of novices? Answer: The mind of beginners is inclined towards good, and their mind is driven by passions. Question 21. What is characteristic of the rank of ascetics? Answer: Those who strive are between a passionate and dispassionate state. Question 22. What is characteristic of the order of the perfect? Answer: The Perfect remain in dispassion, having accepted in their hearts the GRACE of the Holy Spirit. Question 23. How many types of virtues are there? 1) spiritual virtues and 2) active virtues. A) How are spiritual virtues accomplished and fulfilled? Answer: They are accomplished through contemplation and are fulfilled through the commandment kept for its sake. B) Is spiritual virtue visible to bodily eyes? Question 25. How are bodily virtues performed and what are they? Answer: They are accomplished through bodily works and are complex. A) How many kinds of life are there that lead a person to eternal life? Answer: Two. The first of these is active virtue, and the second is contemplative. B) Does the action of feelings interfere with the performance of active virtues? Chapter twenty-seven. On physical and mental virtues – occupying the mind with the Jesus Prayer and thinking about spiritual things. Question 1. Who is afraid of communicating with a fasting person? Question 2. What is fasting? - the commandment of God and the beginning of the path of Christian life, - a source of chastity and wisdom, - the guardian of all virtues, - a mentor of all good deeds, – a mediator between the Old Testament Mosaic Law and the new Gospel grace given to us by the Savior of souls Christ, - a means that makes our mind unyielding to evil. Question 3. What happens to a Christian who has placed the seal of fasting on himself? - His mind meditates with emotion on divine objects, - the heart says the Jesus Prayer, – and shameful thoughts disappear. Question 4. What fruits does fasting bring? - He preserves and protects all virtues, – supports the beauty of virginity and purity, – provides prayer, chastity and wisdom, - instructs in all good deeds. Question 5. Who doesn’t like a faster? Question 1. What is mercy? Answer: Mental sadness, aroused by the action of divine grace, which treats everyone condescendingly, with sympathy and favor and does not punish those worthy of punishment, but bestows all blessings on those worthy of praise. If mercy is characteristic of righteousness, then justice is characteristic of malice. A) Can mercy and justice reside in the same soul? B) Does God’s mercy overcome human malice? A) What brings a person’s heart closer to God? B) Does mercy require prudence? Question 4. What is the mercy of monks like? Answer: Raising children among the laity. Question 5. What should someone do who is unable to give alms? 1) Have love for the brothers, 2) Have mercy in your soul. A) What is a person like who has mercy but lacks righteousness? B) When can a merciful person be considered perfect? – When he has mercy on all people without distinction, distributing the fruits of his labors, - has mercy on his offenders. A) What spiritually develops mercy? Answer: It develops soul awareness. B) What arouses the gratitude of the recipient? Answer: It stimulates the generosity of the giver. B) How should alms be given? - With generosity, generosity and A) What should mercy be combined with? B) What does he who has mercy on a beggar gain? Answer: God's care for himself. c) Who is deprived of the wisdom of God? A) What path leads a person to spiritual love? B) What gives birth to mercy? A) Who is merciful? Answer: He who has mercy on everyone without distinction. B) What helps to acquire mercy? Answer: Contempt for temporary goods. B) What shows mercy? Answer: Patience and willingness to endure grievances. Question 11. What is born from the faith of charity? A) What should accompany good deeds? B) What is the opposite of mercy? Question 1. What fruit does silence, reading the divine Scriptures and vigil bring to a person? A) What is the most important spiritual work of a monk? B) What does one gain in vigil? Answer: Great gifts and cherubic eyes, allowing one to constantly remain in heavenly contemplation. Question 3: What are the benefits of vigils in general? - expels earthly thoughts from the heart and – brings amazement and contemplation. A) Is prudence required when performing a vigil? Answer: Because vigil must be done with prudence. Question 5: What are the benefits of constant vigil? – It helps to put off the old man and – renews, enlightens and cleanses the mind. A) What should one who performs vigil avoid? Answer: Communication and conversations with friends. Answer: Because it is necessary to preserve the grace of God. Question 7. What does he lose who keeps vigil at night and does not pay attention during the day? Question 1. What is cleansing the body from filth? Answer: Holiness and sanctification of the body. A) What deeds are called bodily? Answer: Performed for the sake of cleansing the flesh. B) How is the flesh cleansed? Answer: Through active virtues (that is, external exploits). Question 1. Where does asceticism lead a person? Answer: In the first order of knowledge of the Holy Spirit. A) What does the cross of Christ require of a person? Answer: Readiness of the will for any sorrows, hardships and labors. B) What is the time of real life? Answer: A time of spiritual warfare, A) What do labors, exploits and prayer with vigil lead to? Answer: To purification from passions. B) What is the voluntary fulfillment of penance for the crime of divine commandments? Question 4. What do voluntary hardships and labors bring to a person? - the cover of God's providence and Question 5. What does labor for God bring to a person? A) Who stands most firmly in the truth? Answer: One who secretly performs works of virtue. B) What do the works of virtue hide in themselves? Answer: Life and victory of the resurrection. B) What do pleasures hide? Answer: Stench and death of the soul. Question 1. What is the beginning of God's holy path? - unceasing prayer (Jesus Prayer). Question 2. What is a person like who gives his life for Christ? - intact in eternal life. Question 3. What is dedication to God and a virtuous life? Question 4. What is born from thinking about God? - The ardor of the soul to please God and – disappearance of vain thoughts. Question 5. What is God's way? Answer: Daily cross and death, since sorrows, hardships and deprivations lead to humility, and humility leads to heaven. And relaxation and peace lead to death. Question 6. How many ways are there to bring the soul closer to God? A) What does a person who approaches God fear? Answer: Hours of Judgment. Such a person is reasonable. B) What does a person who deeply loves God fear? Answer: Nothing, since the fear of death and Judgment is absorbed by the love of God. Such a person is the son of God. A) How does love for God manifest itself? Answer: In the renunciation of the soul from itself and from life, as it is said:... let him deny himself (Matthew 16:24). B) What causes the divine fire to flare up in a person’s heart? Answer: Through imitation of the humility of Christ. Question 9. What does one who becomes intoxicated with the love of God gain in this world? - forgets about all sadness - and becomes indifferent to all sinful passions. Question 10. What does suffering for the sake of God lead a person to? Answer: To peace of mind, while it is among the vain worldly objects. A) How does God punish a person? B) What is God's punishment? Answer: Simple, without vengeance. B) What is the purpose of God’s punishment? Answer: Healing the image of God. A) Should we avoid those of different faiths? Answer: The fruit of prayer, the contemplation of which leads the mind to an insatiable desire for it, when a person remains in it without despondency and is silent in mind, praying with fiery thoughts and great ardor. Question 13. How many kinds of life are there that lead a person to eternal life? 1) The first of them is active virtue, 2) The second is contemplative. Question 14. Who is free from the duty of serving people? Question 15. If a person completely renounces the world and communication with people and settles in a deserted place, will he die due to lack of food? Answer: No. The Lord will not abandon His servant who followed Him with simplicity of heart and fear of God. A) Where does the soul that loves God find peace? B) When does a person’s heart become attached to God? Answer: When he is freed from all external attachments. Question 1 7. Who dwells in the hearts of the true servants of God? A) What can serve as a sign that in our heart lives love for Christ, and dislike for our own body? Answer: Perseverance in various temptations and tribulations B) When does love for Christ overcome sadness of mind? Answer: When the body is overcome by temptations and sorrows. Question 19. What are the visible signs of the action of God's love? – a person’s face turns red, like light, and causes joy with its appearance - he looks at death with joy – constantly thinks about celestial objects and speaks to people in a frenzy. Question 20. Who has experienced this spiritual intoxication from the action of love for God? Answer: Holy apostles, martyrs and all holy fools for Christ's sake. Question 1. How should we fight the devil in order to please God? If we do not voluntarily die a sensory death for the love of God, then we will die a mental death for God against our will. Question 2. For what virtues did the holy martyrs receive crowns of confession? Answer: For two virtues: A) What gives rise to zeal? B) What is the effect of jealousy? Answer: It makes the soul fearless. Question 4. What part of the soul does zealous deed purify? Answer: The passionate part of the soul. Question 5. What gifts does an ascetic Orthodox Christian receive? - divine grace and A) What follows every good thought and desire? Answer: Jealousy, hot as fire. B) What is this jealousy directed towards? Answer: It protects thought and drives away all doubts and objections. A) What does jealousy protect the soul from? Answer: From an attack of relaxation. Answer: Thought excited by the action of the irritable force of the soul inherent in in us by God for our benefit. A) Is jealousy a virtue? Answer: Because without it nothing good can be done. Question 9. What is the effect of jealousy in general? Answer: It encourages, motivates, and strengthens a man in times of trouble and great temptation, and often encourages him to spare his life and fearlessly resist the power of the enemy in order to accomplish the work which his soul sorely desired. Question 10. What does St. John Climacus call jealousy? Answer: Watchdog and guardian of God's law. A) How many reasons are there that cause an increase in the power of jealousy? 1) Fear, excited by the action of divine providence and forcing a person to be very attentive. This fear excites and inflames jealousy. Thanks to the fact that it awakens spiritual jealousy, the ardor and vigor of our nature does not weaken. (In such cases they say: fear arose in the soul and aroused jealousy). 2) An increase in the soul’s desire for virtue. A) How many reasons are there that cause the strength of jealousy to weaken? 1) Doubts and disbelief in divine providence, because of which a person forgets that God cares about him. David says: “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous” (Ps. 33:16) and again: “The Lord is the power of those who fear Him” (Ps. 24:14). And the Lord said: “No evil will come to you, and no wound will come near your body” (Ps. 90:10), that is thoughts of insolence and arrogance. 2) Loss or weakening of the desire for virtue in the soul, A) What happens in the second case of cooling of jealousy? Answer: The purity of holy knowledge in the soul is polluted. B) What causes it to become dirty? Answer: Because a subtle thought of pride penetrates the soul. Question 1. How is sanctification acquired? Question 2: Should we hate the sinner? Answer: No. We must hate his sins. We must pray for him, so that we may become imitators of Christ, who was not angry with sinners, but prayed for them. Question 3. What does it mean to hate a sinner? Answer: That we do not have love. “Love... covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails" (1 Cor 13:7-8). A) What is punishment without love? B) Should we cover someone who sins? Answer: Because in this way we do not allow him to fall into despair, and for this we are tolerated by the mercy of God. Question 4: Should we love sinners? Question 5: What did the saints desire? Answer: Become like God through perfect love for your neighbor. Question 6. What does it mean for a person to acquire love? Answer: That, together with love, he put on God. Question 7. What is a manifestation of compassion for one's neighbor? Answer: Forgiveness of his sins. Question 8. What is the sign that a person has achieved perfect love? – Constantly thinking about God and - tears poured out from his eyes because of the thought of God. Question 9. How does God’s love act towards people through the power of God and the power of its very nature? Answer: He punishes sinners, but makes happy the righteous. Question 10: How can God punish while being LOVE? Answer: Those who have been subjected to the torments of hell suffer in Gehenna from the torment of God’s love, since grief due to repentance for unbelief in God’s love never leaves them, as exemplified by Judas. Question 11. When does prayer and love for God enlighten a person’s mind? Answer: When he has love for his neighbor. Question 12. What should someone do who is unable to give alms? - Have mercy in your soul. A) What is born from virtue? B) What is born from sadness? B) What brings humility to a person? Question 2: How is sanctification acquired? Question 3. What precedes gifts? Question 4. What helps to acquire humility? – Frequent confession and divine communion, – poverty and withdrawal from the world and A) To whom is the grace of God close? Answer: To the humble. B) What does a humble person gain? B) What do humility and self-reproach bring us? A) What kind of people do you need to communicate with in order to benefit? Answer: With those who have humility. Answer: Because if one glance at them brings benefit, then even more so does their teaching. Question 7. How does God enter into us and cleanse and sanctify us? Answer: Under the guise of the humble substance of bread and wine, that is, through divine communion. A) To whom do people not hate, who is not offended and whom people do not despise? Answer: Because Christ and all people love them. Question 9. What is contempt for the humble? Answer: Blasphemy against God Himself. Question 10. What makes a person broad? – The power of divine communion - and the perfection of all virtues. Question 11. To whom are the mysteries of God revealed? Answer: Only to the humble. A) What is born from the submission of the soul to God? B) What is true humility? Answer: A product of knowledge. B) What comes from humility? Question 13. Is a person given a reward for the works of virtue for the sake of the works of virtue themselves or for the sake of his humility? Answer: For the sake of his humility. Question 14: What is the benefit of exhausting the body through fasting and humility? Answer: Strengthening the soul through prayer. Question 15. What is the heart of the meek and humble? Answer: The source of the secrets of the Future Age. Question 16. What precedes divine grace? A) What is human nature? Answer: The ability to accept opposite qualities. Therefore we turn from virtue to vice, B) What fruits do humility and tears of repentance bring us? Answer: Forgiveness of various sins. Question 18: Why does God often deprive a Christian of His divine power? Answer: So that a Christian acquires humility, draws closer to Him and is even more diligent in prayer. Question 19. Why are temptations sent? - For the manifestation of divine Providence, - to test our love for God and - for us to acquire humility A) Why does God allow temptations to the careless? Answer: To protect them from objects harmful to them. B) Are bitter medicines good for us, that is, temptations that God allows? Answer: Of course, they are very useful. Glory to the name of Christ, for thanks to them our soul acquires spiritual health. A) Are sins forgiven without works? Answer: Thanks to humble thoughts. B) What does God want from every Orthodox Christian? Answer: Humility in mind. Question 22. How many types of humility are there? 1) humility that comes from the fear of God and 2) humility that comes from love for God. Question 23. What does humility that comes from the fear of God lead to? - heartfelt contrition at all times. Question 24. What does humility that comes from love for God lead to? – To the ever-growing and uncontrollable jealousy of the heart. Question 25. What pleases the All-Good God first of all? Answer: Humility and chastity. A) What is perfect humility? Answer: In patience with the joy of false accusations. B) Who is truly humble? – is not embarrassed by insults, – accepts false accusations as true, and Question 27. How can a person become a god on earth? Answer: With the help of good deeds and humility. Question 28: What leads us to eternal life? A) What is achieved through heartfelt contrition? Answer: Because heartfelt contrition rejects thoughts of pride. Question 30: What is the perfection of humility? Answer: In the knowledge of your weakness. A) What makes a soul perfect? Answer: Knowing the truth through humility. B) Who had such knowledge? - and many other saints. A) What benefits does humility bring? Answer: It makes the soul perfect through divine contemplations. B) What can we call a Christian who has acquired humility? Answer: Because he constantly kisses the chest of Christ and mentally hugs Him. A) What can stop the mind from wandering? B) What does humility bring with it? B) When is a person’s heart filled with joy and faith? Answer: When he feels divine help. Answer: One who has not recognized his weakness. Question 34: When does a person’s heart calm down? Answer: When he has humility. Question 35: How can we achieve humility? Answer: With patience. Question 36. What is the highest joy for the humble? - Divine Communion, - reading the divine Scriptures. Glory to You, God! Glory to You, God! Glory to You, God! A) What does he who corrects his brother secretly gain? Answer: He is healed of his own wickedness. B) Who is the one who accuses his brother secretly? A) What are the signs of compassion? Answer: Forgiveness of every person's sins. B) What is a sign of bad mental will? Answer: Argument with the fallen. Question 3. What is forgiveness of other people's sins and patience with offenses? A) What do the lips receive for giving thanks? Answer: God's blessing. B) What is asceticism in the Orthodox Church? Question 1. What is prudence? - Honor for rational nature and - the greatest of all virtues. Question 2. What is the human mind? Answer: The king who controls the senses. Question 3. What is called natural prudence? Answer: Knowledge that distinguishes between good and evil. A) Is severe bodily exhaustion useful in spiritual life? Answer: Because because of it, negligence increases, causing spiritual cooling. Question 5. What is the path of prudence? Answer: Moderate and diligent work. Weakening of zeal in doing leads to voluptuousness, and immoderation to madness. Question 6. What is force? Answer: The gift of the virtue of prudence, standing between natural light and contemplation. Question 1. Who does not love the humble and meek? Answer: Slanderous and proud. A) What is humility? Answer: The robe of a deity. Answer: Because God puts on it and, under the guise of the humble substance of bread and wine, descends to us, enters into us and sanctifies us. B) Why does everyone love the humble? Answer: Because Christ loves him. A) What sin does he commit who despises the humble? Answer: He blasphemes God Himself. B) What are the words of the humble? B) What happens to the malice of demons in the faces of the humble? A) What makes an Orthodox Christian humble? Answer: The Power of the Most Pure Mysteries. B) Who can be considered and called truly humble in wisdom? Answer: Someone who has hidden talents that one can be proud of, but is not proud of, but looks at them in thought as if they were dust. Question 5: How does a humble person consider himself to be? Question 6. To whom are the mysteries of God revealed? Question 7. What are the signs (fruits) of humility? - obscurity for people, – removal from human gatherings and embarrassment, – removal from care and tasty food, – dislike of conversations with people and distraction of thoughts, - love of solitude and silence, - love of poverty and non-covetousness, - love of carelessness, – absence of anger and fear, - patience, modesty and reverent attitude towards everyone, – lack of interest in worldly affairs, – joy from people’s contemptuous attitude, – frequent tears, - keeping the secrets of chastity, - memory of death and the Last Judgment, - compassion and chastity of feelings, - meekness, mercy and love for poor clothing, - a contrite and humble heart and tears of repentance. - deep reverence and piety, - removal from the world and worldly affairs. - modesty and boldness before God in prayer. Question 8. What brings humility to a person? Question 9. What does the humble man desire? - having nothing, beggars, and Question 10. What is the pleasure and joy of the humble? Answer. Eating the Most Pure Mysteries of the Lord Christ. Question 11. What distinguishes a humble person (that is, what fruits does a humble person acquire)? - self-contempt - ignorance of what is happening in the world. A) What is the prayer of the humble man? Answer: Lord, may Your all-holy will be upon me. B) What is the humble person free from? Chapter twenty-eight. About the fear of God and the wisdom of God A) What is the fear of God? B) What gives rise to the fear of God? Question 2. What is born from the fear of God? Answer: Repentance and good deeds. Question 3. When does the fear of God come to a person? Answer: When his mind knows God and through knowledge comprehends His divinity. Question 4. What does fear and an inquisitive mind lead to? 26. WHAT IS REPENTANCE BORN? Question 5. What do modesty and fear of God interfere with? Answer: They prevent the human mind from wandering into aimless wanderings. Question 6. Who is a true philosopher? Answer: A true follower of the wisdom of God. A) What is higher: worldly wisdom or spiritual wisdom? Answer: Spiritual wisdom. Answer: Because silence reigns in the souls of people who have spiritual wisdom, and verbosity reigns in the souls of people who have worldly wisdom. Question 8: What comes from spiritual wisdom? - meekness and peace of mind, - the silence of the body and the absence in it of indignation and the disorder of fornication. Question 9. What comes from worldly wisdom? - confusion in the mind and various thoughts inexpressible in words, Question 10. What is the first way to help us achieve or approach wisdom? Answer: An ardent desire to make the wisdom of God your teacher. Question 11. Who is reasonable? Answer: He who wants, at any cost, to leave this life to acquire eternal life. A) Does wisdom have a limit? Answer: Because wisdom is God Himself. Q) What is a sign of wisdom? Answer: The rise of man and his union with God. Question 13. What is a sign for a person to receive wisdom from the Holy Spirit? Answer: Wisdom, which teaches him secretly and openly humility and shows itself in his mind. A) Which soul has spiritual wisdom? B) What soul is devoid of spiritual wisdom? Question 15: Should we seek advice from anyone? Answer: No, but only to someone who leads the same lifestyle as us. A) What is the doctrine that comes from works? Answer: Treasury of hope. B) What is the teaching that comes from external worldly wisdom (that is, from wisdom without works)? Question 17. What is the beginning of wisdom from God? Answer: Meekness and forbearance. And the Apostle Paul says: “You who are strong, bear the infirmities of the weak” (Rom. 5:1). Question 18. What is a sign for a person to receive wisdom from the Holy Spirit? Question 19. How can a person be sure that he has achieved this wisdom? Answer: When his soul feels disgust for the world, for communication with the world and for the worldly mind, and his eyes hate the glory of this world. Question 20. How can you maintain the health of your soul? Answer: By observing the law of sobriety (that is, mindfulness) and maintaining diligence and prudence (in charge). ABOUT THE LOVE OF FAME AND THE DIS-LOVE OF FAME. A) Does he who seeks human glory have humble thoughts? Answer: No, because he has no humility. B) What does human glory hinder? Answer: Humble thoughts. Question 2. What does a person receive for neglecting human glory? Answer: For this he is rewarded with the position of God. Question 3. What follows worldly honors? Question 1. What does neglecting human glory bring? - the glory of the body along with the soul. A) What is the glory of the body? Answer: Submission to God with chastity. B) What is the glory of the soul? Answer: True contemplation of the mysteries of God. B) What does the words “we will see God” (1 John 3:2) mean? Answer: That we will have true knowledge of Him. Chapter Thirty. About silence A) What is silence? Answer: By the prayer of the perfect and the language of the Future Age. B) Why is silence a prayer? Answer: Because the thoughts of those who keep silence are divine movements, and the movements and actions of the pure heart and mind are meek voices with which they sing to God. B) What do silence and prayer lead us to? Answer: They make us like angels. A) What fruit does silence bring? Answer: The grace of heartfelt tenderness. B) What is born from tenderness of the heart? B) What benefits does keeping a tongue bring to a person? Answer: Thanks to the storage of language, man - sees the state of his soul and – becomes a partaker of the joy of the Holy Spirit. Question 3. What benefits does silence bring to a person? – It elevates a person’s mind to God, – gives great strength to perform bodily labors and Question 4. For what reasons do people remain silent? - Or for the sake of human glory, - or for the sake of jealousy of virtue, - or because of some divine work being performed in the heart. A) Is stopping external conversations beneficial? B) What should we love dearly? - over time, it gives birth to sweetness in our hearts, which makes the body – and brings us to profuse tears. Question 6. Who does not love the silent servant of Christ (because he strives in the virtue of silence)? Answer: Taken by demons into captivity of talkativeness, jokes and wit. Chapter thirty-one. About maintaining Question 1. What is leading? Answer: The step through which a person ascends to the height of faith. When he approaches this height, guidance becomes unnecessary. A) What is true knowledge? – The generation of temptations and - the feeling with which a person feels immortal life. B) What is immortal life? Answer: Feeling in God. Consolation in God. A) How many types of management are there? 1) The first type is natural guidance, A) What is the difference between them? Answer: One precedes faith, and the other is born from faith (that is, follows B) What knowledge precedes faith? B) What knowledge comes from faith? Question 5. What is the human mind? Answer: The king who rules over the senses. A) What is natural guidance? Answer: Discrimination between good and evil. B) Where does natural knowledge lead us? Question 7. What is natural knowledge? Answer: In the perception of visible objects through the bodily senses. Answer: Maintains natural limits. B) What is human knowledge in general? Answer: It is poor and insufficient, although it appears rich. A) Should human knowledge be condemned? Answer: No, but faith is higher than him, B) Can the knowledge of external worldly wisdom help the soul in difficult circumstances? Answer: Sometimes it can, but in difficult cases it does not bring any benefit. Answer: Because he is weak. A) From what is spiritual knowledge born? Answer: From the fear of God and love of God. B) What brings a person to spiritual knowledge? A) Is worldly knowledge useful in spiritual life? Answer: In many cases no. B) How should we treat him? Answer: We must reject worldly knowledge in order to gain spiritual knowledge. Question 12. From what is the contemplation of God born? A) What is spiritual knowledge? Answer: In the comprehension of mental objects by the spirit. B) Who is perfect in spiritual knowledge and healthy in soul? Answer: One who does not care about food, drink and clothing. A) How does human knowledge relate to faith? Answer: Hostile because faith violates his laws. B) What does leading lead to? Question 15. How many ranks of leadership are there and what are they? A) What does the first leading lead to? Answer: To carnal lust. B) How is the first knowledge acquired? Answer: Through constant study and training. Question 17. What is characteristic of the rite of first knowledge? - the study of external worldly wisdom that governs worldly affairs and invents new achievements of art and science. A) What is this leading called? Answer: It is hostile not only to faith, but also to all works of virtue. B) What is the measure of this management? Answer: It completely rejects divine providence and believes that everything in the world depends only on its own action and intervention. It is unanimous with atheists. Question 19. What fruits does the first knowledge bring? - prevents her from performing godly deeds of virtue. Question 20. What is characteristic of those who have this knowledge (omniscient)? - fear of poverty and deprivation. Question 21: Why are they subject to all this? Answer: Because the rank of first knowledge is not able to place its cares on God with firm faith in Him, but tries to do everything on its own. Question 22. What do people who belong to the rank of first knowledge suffer from? – pride, because they consider themselves, and not God, to be the cause of all good things. Question 23: What are the characteristics of omniscient people? A) How do they live and what do they hope for? Answer: They live according to the will of the flesh and trust in their own works. B) What happens to those who move away from the knowledge of the Son of God and deviate from the truth? Answer: They follow the path of the first knowledge. Question 25: What is the knowledge of visible creatures? A) What is the rank of the second knowledge? Answer: This is a rank that has bodily complex knowledge, following a path that leads to FAITH and transfers it into its hands. B) What helps to acquire second knowledge? Answer: Pure life and faith in reason. Question 27. How does the second knowledge affect the human heart? Answer: It arranges the paths that lead it to faith. Question 28. What are the good works of the rank of the second knowledge, which the Holy Spirit brings to the degree of perfection? - reading the divine Scriptures and Question 29. What is the limitation of the rank of second knowledge? Answer: Material objects, comprehended through the bodily senses. Therefore this knowledge is called knowledge of things. Question 30. What fruit does the second message bring? - helps her succeed in matters of faith. A) What is the rank of the third knowledge? Answer: This is the order of the perfect. B) How can one acquire the third knowledge? Answer: Only through faith. In the face of faith, knowledge is idle and ineffective. Question 32. When does a person’s soul become subtle and acquire spirituality? Answer: When his faith absorbs knowledge and then gives birth to another, new knowledge, so that a person becomes completely spirit. A) How are spiritual mysteries learned? Answer: Through a simple and subtle mind. B) What happens thanks to the simple and subtle mind? Answer: The inner feelings of a person’s soul begin spiritual work according to the order characteristic of immortal and incorruptible life. B) What happens during this glorious sacrament? Answer: A kind of mental resurrection for true evidence of the resurrection of all people. Question 34. What do the God-bearing fathers call these three orders of knowledge? Question 35. What fruits does the third knowledge bring? – It brings peace to a person - and leads him to the region of the Future Age. Question 36. What is supernatural knowledge? Answer: This is knowledge aimed at knowing God. Question 37. How does the soul come to contemplation under natural and spiritual knowledge? Answer: She receives knowledge of things from the outside (that is, through external objects). Question 38. How does the soul come to contemplation with supernatural knowledge? Answer: It appears unexpectedly within her as a gift from God. A) What is spiritual knowledge? Answer: By feeling the mysteries of God. B) What is born from the sensation of the mysteries of God? Question 40. What is born from subtlety of knowledge? A) What are the obstacles to acquiring spiritual knowledge? Answer: Habit of worldly conduct. B) Can spiritual knowledge be acquired through teaching and learning? B) What kind of thinking is characteristic of spiritual knowledge? Answer: Infant, simple. Chapter thirty two. About dispassion Question 1. How did God create man in His image? A) What kind of person is free? Answer: Having left the world of passions, dispassionate. B) What do you call an impassive person? Answer: A spiritual person. Question 3. What does it mean for a person to mortify his passions? Answer: The fact that a person does not allow himself to grieve because of the sorrows of this life, nor to rejoice because of its joys. A) What is human dispassion? Answer: “It’s not about not feeling passions, but about not accepting them,” - this is how the holy and blessed Mark the Ascetic answers us B) What arouses passions in the soul? B) What removes thoughts from a person’s heart and weakens them? – long-term habit of attentiveness and patience, – purity and exercise in virtues, purifying the mind and making it bright. Question 5. What do passions control in a person’s soul? Answer: Spiritual feelings of the soul. Chapter thirty-three. About God's providence A) Is there a person to whom God’s providence does not apply? B) What feeds God’s providence? Answer: Just as the wind nourishes the fruits of trees, so God’s providence nourishes the fruits of souls. Question 2. Who can see the covering and providence of God? Answer: One who has cleansed himself from all sin and constantly thinks about God. A) When is God’s providence most clearly visible? Answer: During great temptations Answer: Because God, through the clearly visible action of His providence, encourages ascetics to courage and perseverance. B) Do you know any examples of this? Answer: Job, Joshua, the three youths in the furnace of Babylon, the Apostle Peter and the forty martyrs. Question 4. What kindles divine consolation in the heart? A) Does trusting the heart in God bring any benefit? Answer: Because it evokes in the heart: - firm faith in God's providence, O man worthy of shame and all hellish torment! You have wasted all the days of your life in foolishness, but take care of yourself, at least on this day, which is the last of the days of your life, which you spent in vain, without doing a single good deed, and which were enriched by vice! Be ready to endure all slander, all insult, ridicule and annoyance, accept all this with joy, as truly worthy of it. Endure all labor and all sorrow and danger arising through the fault of demons, whose will you fulfilled with joy. Endure courageously every need, everything that happens naturally reasons and everything is bitter. Endure with firm faith the deprivation of what is necessary for the body (if God allows), that which will soon turn into manure. Want to accept all this with hope in God, not expecting liberation or consolation from anyone else, but cast your cares on God and condemn yourself and everyone temptations, since you yourself are their culprit. Do not be tempted by the affairs of others and do not blame anyone who has saddened you, since you ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and acquired various passions. Now accept the bitter fruits with joy, so that they may bring you sorrow for a short time, and after that you will feel the sweetness. Woe to you and your stinking thoughts! Although you are full of sins, you did not care about your soul, as if you were not subject to judgment, and condemned others by word or thought. Leave the food of pigs that you have been eating until now! What do you and people have in common, O foul and unclean one?! Don't you be ashamed communicate with them, although he lived like a dumb animal?! If from now on you take care of yourself and do all this, then with the cooperation and help of God you will be saved, but if not, you will go to a dark hellish dungeon devoid of any consolation, to the dwelling of demons, whose will you shamelessly carried out. Behold, I tell you firmly: if God wants to punish you and reward you for all the reproaches, dishonors and insults that you have collected and uttered against Him over many years, then the entire visible and invisible world will rise up against you and crush you. Do not repeat this at least in the future and endure the sorrows that befall you as retribution for the evil you have committed! God, cleanse me, a sinner, and save me! Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Glory to Thee, God, our hope, glory to Thee! Saint Justin (Popovich). Orthodox Church and ecumenism. Chapter: Man or God-Man P. 162.