Слово 3. О странничестве, то есть, уклонении от мира

1. Wandering is the irrevocable abandonment of everything in the fatherland that resists us in the pursuit of piety. Wandering is an insolent disposition, unknown wisdom, undeclared knowledge, hidden life, invisible intention, undetectable thought, desire for humiliation, desire for oppression, the path to Divine lust, abundance of love, renunciation of vanity, the silence of the depths. 2. In the beginning, as if by divine fire, the lovers of the Lord are usually strongly and continuously disturbed by the thought of moving away from their own people, prompting lovers of such goodness to do so with the desire for badness and cramped conditions. But no matter how great and praiseworthy this feat is, it requires so much reasoning; for not every pilgrimage undertaken to the extreme is good 18. 3. If every prophet is without honor in his own country, as the Lord has said; then we must be careful that deviation from the world does not become a reason for vanity. For wandering is separation from everything, with the intention of making one’s thought inseparable from God. The wanderer is a lover and doer of incessant weeping. A wanderer is one who avoids all attachment, both to relatives and to strangers. 4. When hastening towards a solitary life or wandering, do not wait for peace-loving souls, for the thief comes unexpectedly. Many, having attempted to save the careless and lazy along with themselves, died along with them when the fire of their jealousy died out over time. When you feel the flame, run, because you don’t know when it will go out and leave you in darkness. We are not all subject to an answer about the salvation of others, for the divine Apostle says: therefore, every one of us, brethren, will give a word about himself to God. And again: “When you teach others, do you not teach yourself?” (Rom.2:21). As if to say: whether we should all take care of others, I don’t know; We must take care of ourselves in every possible way. 5. When traveling, beware of the idle and voluptuous demon; for wandering gives him a reason to tempt us. 6. Impartiality is good, but its mother is deviation from the world. One who has renounced everything for the sake of the Lord should no longer have any connection with the world. So that it does not turn out that he wanders to satisfy his passions. 7. Having withdrawn from the world, do not touch it anymore: for passions conveniently return again. 8. Eve is involuntarily expelled from paradise, but the monk voluntarily leaves his fatherland; for she would again want to eat from the tree of disobedience, and this one would certainly be exposed to trouble from his relatives in the flesh. 9. Those places that give you an opportunity to fall, run away like a whip; for when we do not see the forbidden fruit, we do not desire it so much. 10. Let the following cunning and flattery of invisible enemies not be hidden from you: they advise us not to separate ourselves from the worldly, suggesting that we will receive a great reward if we see the female sex and restrain ourselves. But one should not submit to them in this, but do the opposite of their suggestion. 11. When we, having separated from our relatives for a year or several years, acquire a little reverence, or tenderness, or abstinence, then vain thoughts, having begun, prompt us to go again to the fatherland for edification, they say, and example and benefit to many who once saw our lawless deeds; and if we are still rich in the gift of speech and have some spiritual intelligence, then, as saviors of souls and teachers, they advise us to return to the world, so that what we have safely collected in the refuge will be disastrously squandered in the abyss. Let us try to imitate Lot, and not his wife; for the soul, turning back to where it came from, will become like salt that has lost its strength and will become motionless. Flee from Egypt forever; for the hearts that turned to him did not see Jerusalem, that is, the land of dispassion. Although for those who at the beginning, for the sake of spiritual infancy, left their own and managed to be completely cleansed, it is possible to return to them with benefit, with the intention that, just as they themselves were saved, so they could save some of their neighbors; however, Moses, the Seer of God and sent by God Himself to save his fellow tribe, suffered many troubles in Egypt, that is, darkness in the world. 12. It is better to offend our parents than to offend the Lord, because He both created and saved us; and they often destroyed their loved ones and subjected them to eternal torment. 13. A wanderer is one who stays everywhere with reason, a foreign speaker among a foreign language people. We move away from our loved ones, or from places, not out of hatred for them (let that not be), but to avoid the harm that we can receive from them. As in all good deeds, so in this, our teacher is Christ Himself; for we see that he also repeatedly left his parents according to the flesh, and when some said: “Your mother and Your brothers seek You” (Mark 3:32), our good Lord and Teacher immediately showed dispassionate hatred towards them, saying: “My mother and My brothers are those who do the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 12:49). 14. Let the one who can and wants to work with you to overthrow the burden of your sins be your father; and matter - tenderness that can wash you from defilement; brother - a collaborator and competitor in the pursuit of heavenly things; the inseparable cohabitant acquired the memory of death; let your dear children be filled with heartfelt sighs; Let your body be your slave, and make friends in the heavenly powers, which during the exodus of your soul can be useful to you if they are your friends. “This is the generation (i.e., kinship) of those who seek the Lord” (Ps. 23:6). 15. God's love extinguishes love for parents; and whoever says that he has one and the other deceives himself, for it is said: “No one can work for two masters” (Matthew 6:24), and so on. “I have not come,” says the Lord, “to bring peace upon the earth” (Matthew 10:34), that is, peace between parents and their sons and brothers who want to work for Me, but warfare and sword to separate the God-loving from the world-loving, the material from the immaterial (carnal from the spiritual), the lovers of glory from the humble; for the Lord rejoices at the division and separation that occurs out of love for Him. 16. Beware, beware, lest, because of your addiction to your beloved relatives, everything appear to you as if engulfed by waters, and lest you perish in the flood of peace. Do not bow to the tears of your parents and friends; otherwise you will cry forever. When relatives surround you like bees, or better yet, like wasps, mourning you: then immediately turn your spiritual eyes to death and to deeds (your 19), so that you can repel one sorrow with another. These are ours, or better yet not ours, slyly promising to do for us everything that we love; Their intention is to hinder our good aspirations, and then to attract us to their goal. 17. When moving away from the world, we must choose places to live that are devoid of opportunities for consolation and vanity and that are humble; if not, then we act out of passion. 18. Conceal your nobility and do not boast of your nobility, lest you be one in word and another in deed. 19. No one gave himself up to wandering to such an extent as the Great One, who heard: “Get out from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house” (Gen. 12:1), and, moreover, was called to a foreign and barbarian land. 20. Sometimes the Lord greatly glorifies the one who becomes a wanderer following the example of this Great One; but although this glory is given from God, it is good to turn it away with the shield of humility. 21. When demons or people praise us for our pilgrimage as for a great feat, then let us think about Him who for our sake descended to earth in the form of a wanderer and we will find that we cannot repay for this forever and ever. 22. Predilection for one of the relatives or strangers is very harmful; it can little by little attract us to the world and completely extinguish the fire of our tenderness. Just as it is impossible to look at the sky with one eye and the earth with the other, so it is impossible not to be subject to mental disasters for someone who has not completely withdrawn in thoughts and body from all his relatives and non-relatives. 23. A good and well-ordered disposition is acquired through much labor and heroism, but you can lose in an instant what was acquired through much heroism. “For good customs are corrupted by evil conversations” (1 Cor. 15:33), worldly and obscene. Whoever, after renouncing the world, deals with worldly people, or stays near them, will, without a doubt, either fall into their affairs and snares, or will defile his heart by thinking about them; or, although not defiling, yet condemning those who are defiled, he himself will become defiled with them. About dreams that happen to beginners 24. It is impossible to hide the fact that the concept of our mind is very imperfect and in every possible way filled with ignorance; because the larynx distinguishes food, the ear recognizes thoughts; when looking at the sun, the eyes become weak; and words reveal the foolishness of the soul. But the law of love compels us to stretch beyond our strength. So I think (though I don’t claim) that after the word about wandering, and even in this word itself, we should say a little about dreams, so that we can know about this treachery of our evil enemies. 25. A dream is a movement of the mind while the body is motionless. Dreaming is a deception of the eyes in the lull of thought. Dreaming is a frenzy of the mind while the body is awake. Dreaming is seeing something that is not there. 26. The reason why, after the previous word, we decided to talk about dreams is obvious. When we, for the sake of the Lord, leaving our homes and relatives, give ourselves up to a hermit’s life out of love for God: then the demons try to disturb us with dreams, presenting us with our relatives or mourning, or being held in prison for us and suffering other misfortunes. Therefore, whoever believes dreams is like a man who runs after his shadow and tries to grab it. 27. Demons of vanity are prophets in dreams; being cunning, they infer the future from circumstances and announce it to us, so that when these visions are fulfilled, we are surprised and, as if already close to the gift of insight, are lifted up in thought. Those who believe the demon, for those he is often a prophet; and whoever despises him always turns out to be a liar before them. As a spirit, he sees what is happening in the air and, for example, noticing that someone is dying, he predicts this to the gullible through a dream. Demons know nothing about the future by foreknowledge; but it is known that doctors can also predict death for us. 28. Demons are repeatedly transformed into angels of light and into the image of martyrs and represent to us in a dream that we are coming to them; and when we awaken, they fill us with joy and exaltation. Let this be a sign of delight for you; for the angels show us torment, the Last Judgment and separation, and fill those who awaken with fear and lamentation. If we submit to demons in our dreams, then they will scold us while we are awake. He who believes in dreams is not at all skilled; and whoever has no faith in them is wise. So, believe only those dreams that announce to you torment and judgment; and if they lead you to despair, then they too are from demons. This is the third degree, equivalent to the Holy Trinity. Let him who enters it not look back “to the right hand or to the left” (Deut. 5:32) Either because it is undertaken arrogantly and boldly, or beyond one’s strength and capabilities. In Greek In Paisiy Velich. Acts. To Novgor. Per. Athanasius Crit.: to the judgment of God. You might be interested in: