Spiritual crops

A short collection of stories, articles and poems of spiritual and moral content, adapted to a publicly accessible explanation of the most important truths of the catechistic teaching of the Orthodox Church. Preface to the 2nd edition Preface to the 3rd edition Preface to the 4th edition Having published in 1890 a book entitled: “Lessons and examples of Christian faith, hope and love” (as a manual for church pastors, for teachers of the law, parents and educators and as a collection for lovers of spiritual and edifying reading), which, due to the keen sympathy for it from readers, soon sold out and caused in 1892 a second - revised and significantly (more than twice) expanded edition of it in three separate and independent volumes, which was subsequently repeated in 1894 with a third edition, and has now been reprinted by the Publishing Commission of the Holy Synod, we have received many statements from persons who have become acquainted with these books about the need to compile a short and affordable book, adapted to popular understanding in the family and school, of this kind, which would include articles of an exclusively public spiritual and moral nature. Taking into account statements of this kind on the one hand, and on the other, bearing in mind that in Russian spiritual literature until now there have not appeared books for the common people of exclusively spiritual and moral content with the exact tasks that our book has - to present a number of articles adapted to a publicly accessible explanation of all the most important truths of the catechistic teaching of the Orthodox Church; thirdly, without losing sight of the fact that a bare and abstract enumeration and communication of information and provisions from the field of teaching about Christian faith, hope and love, as the main and fundamental virtues of a Christian, leading him to achieve eternal life, is too insufficient to influence the mind, heart and will of those ordinary people who have only simple literacy - to incline them consciously, with love and readiness to recognize the saving Christian truths of faith and piety, to heartily assimilate them, as priceless treasure, and actively implement them in our lives - we decided, due to the above motivations, to compile the proposed book, calling it: “Spiritual Sowings.” With this task in mind, we included articles with the following content in the “Spiritual Sowings”: a) Brief church historical stories and the same stories from the lives of saints. Distinguished by their deeply edifying character, clear, lively and visual presentation, they, in their simple and entertaining form (the form of a story), are accessible to the most unprepared readers from the common people, who have long been accustomed to them, loved them passionately for the spiritual benefit, edification and consolation that he always receives from them, and considers them the best spiritual food for himself. Living and deeply edifying examples of Christian faith, hope and love for God and people, irresistibly acting on the entire spiritual being of the reader, especially on his heart - the source of a person’s spiritual and moral life, without labor and strain of thought, which not everyone is inclined and capable of, will quickly and firmly teach him all the most important truths of Christian faith and piety. According to the testimony of our famous modern teacher S.A. Rachinsky, the lives of saints provide constant food for the mind, imagination, and moral thirst of our literate peasant. (See the excellent book about this by A. Yakhontov: “The Lives of the Saints as an Educational Tool”, p. 151, etc.). It is not for nothing that the ancient book people spoke about the benefits of reading the lives of the saints: “the lives of the saints instill the fear of God in the soul, drive away fearlessness, suppress the evil, introduce the acceptance of the good... for the lives of the saints are light and enlightenment to our souls.” (Prof. Klyuchevsky: Lives of the Saints... 432 pp.). b) Thoughts of St. fathers about certain truths of Christian catechism, necessary for every Christian, no matter what stage of development and position in life he stands. The sayings of the God-bearing fathers and teachers of the church, in whose works there is the best and truest interpretation of the divine teaching - the words of these luminaries of the universal church, who for their holy lives were honored to be partakers of the Holy Spirit, will no doubt be read by everyone with great spiritual benefit and moral edification and will be the best explanation of those truths of Christian teaching that are necessary for every Christian to please God and save his immortal soul. c) They are accompanied by short excerpts from the works of the most famous spiritual writers, for example. Philareta, Metropolitan Moscow, reclusive bishop Theophan, Innocent, archbishop. hers., prot. Rodion Putyatin, prot. Kronstadt Fr. Ioanna Sergiev and some. other spiritual writers who, in a publicly accessible presentation, full of deep and pure truths of Christian teaching, in living and visual expressions (especially with the help of comparisons), in strict accordance with the spirit of the teachings of the Orthodox Church, explain this or that subject from the field of Christian doctrine and moral teaching. d) Stories borrowed from reliable, especially ancient church-historical, and partly modern strictly verified records, about manifestations in the life of the human race of divine Providence, either saving a person from imminent death, or admonishing those who fail to fulfill the divine commandments, or threateningly punishing and stopping evil where there is no place left for either mercy or the long-suffering of God. We think that these stories, read with faith, which they fully deserve, will arouse the fear of God and teach us to walk in the paths of God’s commandments. e) We allowed ourselves to include brief excerpts from the symbolic books of the Orthodox Church (for example, from the “Orthodox Confession”, definitions of ecumenical councils, etc.) into this book because they present in more detail and detail those aspects of Christian teaching that are mostly taught in the lessons of the law of God (mainly the catechism) in the most general and therefore insufficiently clear words and provisions. f) Further, to further substantiate the Orthodox teaching about the three main Christian virtues - faith, hope and love - we have introduced several biblical texts, grouped in a system, citing them mostly from the Russian Bible. g) Finally, in the third, significantly expanded edition of “Spiritual Sowings,” on the advice of some experienced teachers, we included several spiritual poems written by the best spiritual writers, developing and depicting Christian thoughts and moods in living images. From what has been said, it is already clear that the plan according to which we arranged all the material in the book is the plan of the “Long Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Church,” which is divided into three parts (we have three sections): the teaching of faith, the teaching of hope and the teaching of love. It has the following two advantages over all other systems for arranging material in collections of spiritual content: firstly, it concerns all the most important aspects of Christian doctrine and moral teaching, therefore eliminating randomness, one-sidedness, incompleteness and gaps in the arrangement of selected articles; secondly, it is well known and for the most part everyone is accustomed to it, which gives the reader the opportunity to easily and quickly, without wasting time, find the required article in the book. And in order to further facilitate the reader in this regard, we separated one group of articles from another with asterisks (***): and in addition, in the table of contents, in a special font, we indicated the particular content of each group of articles. After what has been said, it is easy to see how our book, as a collection of articles with spiritual and moral content, differs from other books of this kind: a) it all consists, as we think, of short articles and mainly stories that are publicly available, strictly adapted to the understanding of the common people and school-age children, unprepared for reading and mastering articles of a large volume, of a strictly scientific nature and abstract presentation; b) in it, in a strict system of catechistic teaching with the help of living, visual church-historical stories, testimonies of St. fathers and teachers of the church and other similar authoritative excerpts and articles, each of which represents a complete whole and is by no means in the nature of an excerpt, set forth all the most important truths of the catechismal teaching of the Orthodox Church; c) further, it contains only such articles that substantiate, develop and explain the truths of the Christian faith and morality, helping them to penetrate the mind and heart of the reader, but it does not at all contain such articles that would repeat in the same form what could have been known to them from generally accepted textbooks of the law of God during their stay in public schools; d) in it, except for a few parables, as they are called, all the information reported is true, borrowed from church historical works, lives of saints, or from the writings of completely authoritative persons (for example, Philaret and Innocent, Metropolitans of Moscow, Bishop Theophan, Bishop Hermogenes, Archpriest I. Sergiev of Kronstadt, etc.); e) all its articles from the first to the last are imbued with a religious and moral character, and it does not provide any information about earthly interests and objects and does not concern them: to clarify the living, heartfelt faith in God the Father, the Creator of the world and Provider, in our Lord I. Christ and the Holy Comforter of the Spirit, to arouse love and reverence for St. mother - the church and all her saving institutions - to show by revealing from the positive side all the inconsistency, all the destructiveness of the errors of heretics, schismatics and sectarians, turning inexperienced Christians away from obedience to their mother church - to remind a person not to cling to one earthly, vain and fleeting life, but to direct his thought and heart to another, undying, eternal life: blessed for for the righteous and painful for sinners, - to strengthen and comprehend the living hope in God in all cases of human life, - to show what the true prayer of a Christian should consist of, - to explain the New Testament commandments leading to the achievement of eternal bliss, - to simply and intelligibly explain that a true Christian must be humble in heart, lament his sins, be meek, patiently bear his cross, be thirsty for the truth of God, a merciful, pure-hearted, peacemaker, ready to suffer for the truth of God and his Savior even to the point of death - to show what a person’s love for God and neighbor should consist of, how he should serve God, move away from his sinful habits, passions and vain earthly attachments and hobbies that form spiritual idolatry in the heart of a person - how he must revere the holy, great and terrible name of God - to sacredly honor Sundays and holidays, - to honor parents, elders and God-established authorities, - to spare and protect the life, peace, honor and property of one's neighbor, - to be careful with the gift of speech and not to condemn one's neighbors, and not only not to do or say anything hostile against him, but not even to desire anything harmful and sinful in relation to him, - to be content with one's lot, not to envy the rich or the famous land - this is the content and task of this book and, at the same time, what distinguishes it from other books of this kind, pursuing other, perhaps broader goals. As for the sources and aids that we had at hand when compiling “Spiritual Sowings,” they are all indicated at the end of each article. These are: Chetyi-Minea, Prologue, Patericon (skete, ancient, Kiev-Pechersk, Athonite), "Lavsaik", Memorable tales about the exploits of St. and blessed fathers, works on church history (especially Metropolitan Macarius, Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov), works of St. fathers: Basil V., Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Blessed. Augustine, blessed Theodoret, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Tikhon of Zadonsk and other fathers and teachers of the universal and domestic church; works of bishop Feofan, Philaret, Moscow, Innocent and Demetrius, architect. hers., and friend. hierarchs, sermons by Rev. Genus. Putyatina, Rev. Kronstadt Ioann Sergiev (“My Life in Christ” - “Complete Works” of him); "Orthodox Divine Experience" Ep. Sylvester; spiritual magazines, especially “Sunday Reading” and “Soulful Reading” and many others indicated in their place. Only a very limited number of articles (less than 1/10 of all included in this book) and, moreover, for the most part in abbreviation and other presentation, we borrowed from the books we published: “Lessons and Examples of Christian Faith, Hope and Love.” In view of this, “Spiritual Sowings” can be partly considered as an addition to the named books, since they contain completely new articles that, except for a few, were not included in the composition of the named books. Arranged on the same plan as the named books, and differing in almost the same nature of articles as they, “Spiritual Sowings” can give some idea about the above-named books. Then, regarding the purpose of this book, we must say that, due to the general accessibility of the articles contained in it, it, in our opinion, would be a useful book for public reading, for adolescence in general, for women's parish schools teaching future educators in the spirit of the Christian faith and piety of the younger generation, and even for children of lower and middle age, for a Christian family, without distinction of classes and conditions, and then for all those persons who, loving spiritual and edifying reading, they have neither the time nor the habit of reading long articles of strictly scientific, abstract presentation. Finally, regarding our participation in the compilation of the proposed book, we must say that it was expressed in a careful selection from the vast spiritual literature of articles and stories corresponding to our purpose, in shortening or supplementing them, in correcting, if anything was necessary, in terms of language, presentation and arrangement of thoughts and content in them, if it was distinguished by any inaccuracies, in compiling several from one extensive article and vice versa, i.e. in combining several articles into one whole; in the arrangement of the compiled and selected articles in the most harmonious order of catechistic teaching, in the compilation of many articles anew, and finally in supplying most of the articles with the necessary footnotes. God grant that our “Spiritual Sowings” fully correspond to their name and purpose and abundantly sow spiritual seeds in the field of human hearts. In the second edition we omitted several articles; to replace them, a very significant number of new articles, mainly short stories, were introduced. Everything that required correction was carefully reviewed and corrected in this edition. The font, book format and paper have also been significantly improved. In the 3rd edition of “Spiritual Sowings” the following changes were made: several articles that turned out to be not entirely accessible to the understanding of the common people and younger children were omitted or replaced by others; More than a hundred new articles have been introduced, mainly short stories, which, distinguished by their lively, completely understandable and interesting presentation, at the same time reveal the lofty truths of faith and piety; words and expressions that required clarification are explained either in the text or in footnotes. On top of this there are a sufficient number of poems of spiritual and moral content, small in volume, but rich in the power of feeling and the depth of Christian thought. We believe that they will be beneficial, especially for children who, as experience shows, quickly grasp the rhythmic structure of speech and more firmly imprint it in their memory. And to provide at least some benefit in the matter of religious and moral education of our society and together to compile a book suitable for reading by the people, schools (middle-aged children and even younger than middle-aged children) and families is the cherished desire of the compiler. In the fourth edition the present book has undergone the most thorough revision; it omitted everything that seemed in any way inaccessible to the understanding and assimilation of children or ordinary readers from the people; more than two dozen interesting and accessible stories for ordinary readers have been reinserted; some have been slightly abridged, others are provided with explanatory notes that give the simplest explanation of words or expressions. Otherwise, there are no changes compared to the 3rd edition. Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko. The sea of ​​life - human life with its worries is very often likened to the sea. Famous Russian scientist and writer (born in 1711, died in 1765). The proposed story is taken from pagan life, but it perfectly prepares the reader to understand what the Christian feeling of friendship consists of; that's why we present it here. We are convinced that schools and families will read it with pleasure. Prot. Gr. D-ko. This is a beautiful transcription of the prayer of St. Basil the Great is placed in the Shower. Thurs. for 1897 Sept. month. You might be interested in: