Письмо 204

Your words, Mother K., relate, I think, to a feeling of sorrow; where to give from them? As long as we have passions as our masters and serve them diligently, then there will be no peace in heaven itself; besides, sorrows are sent from God, for various reasons unknown to us, either to punish us for sins, or to deter us from sins, or to test the faith and love in us for God; but the fathers also say that he who has no sorrows is forgotten by God and passes his days without sorrow; and St. Isaac writes: “And by this we know that man is a man, that we have provision from God, when he shall send him ever sorrow.” Look into the holy books yourself more often, and remind yourself that there is nowhere to escape from sorrows, and when we want to bear them more comfortably, let us bow ourselves under the strong hand of God, and gratefully bear the sorrows of life. In every letter I remind you of this, although I myself make mistakes in such cases; but I also repeat everything and ask you to listen to the fatherly writings. St. Marco the Ascetic writes: “Those who have not completely been put on the cross with the wisdom of the humble and humiliated and have not been cast down under everyone, we trample and humiliate and despise and offend, and we mock and mock to be, and all this with the joy of the Lord for the sake of enduring, and not taking revenge at all on human glory or honor, or praise, or sweet food and drink and garments, a Christian cannot be true.” You see how important bearing the cross is! without which, unless we bear sorrows, we cannot be true Christians. Also, look at your weaknesses, that is, sometimes we are guilty, and we are accused of some kind of annoyance or contempt for our neighbors; but through the veil of pride we look only at our own righteousness, and this further aggravates our grief, reproaching our neighbors, and torturing them to fulfill the commandments, but we ourselves do not want to touch them with a finger. Be that as it may, no matter who does evil to us, whether through guilt or innocently, they are only instruments used by God to punish us, and can only do what the right hand of the Most High allows them to do. Therefore, we must bend ourselves under the strong hand of God, confess to Him that we are worthy of the punishments sent, and that we are worthy more than them; but the mercy of God spares us and awaits our repentance. Read from St. Isaac in 51 words, with what understanding to accept sorrows: when we grumble and reproach others, then they are burdened, and when we blame ourselves and repent, then they are bearable. And you could still write about this, but I already wrote a lot about this in my first letters, and I repeat almost everything the same. You, Mother N., also grieve and imagine your sorrows as unbearable: I offer you the same points of St. father; strengthen yourself with this life-saving medicine. If you do not have man, you have God; pour out your soul before Him, and expect a change of affliction when it pleases Him. You are too cowardly, you mistake even that for sorrow, which is a shadow of sorrow; You believe that I, insignificant, can console you, and you can reveal your sorrows to me. If it were God’s will for this, it would be so; otherwise, apparently, not at all; Do not place your hope in a mortal: man is like grass (Ps. 102:15), weak, weak, foolish and a playground of passions; I’m not moving away from this. When you have some kind of faith, you can boldly describe your sorrows and weaknesses to me, the indecent one; the letters arrive correctly, you don’t even have to write your name, but after reading them, I can destroy them: and whatever God instructs you to write, I will write. I am writing this without forcing you, but I am leaving it to your will. I ask you all, even though you are sorrowful yourself, to console the sorrowful N.N. with sound reasoning and advice. You yourself remember how you first walked this road, show others the path where it is bad: dirt, swamp, wilds, depth, mountains, animals, robbers, move away from there; whoever understands. It would be desirable to know whether you received prosphora from me? Not so that you would thank me, but just did I get it right? What more can I tell you? We have little news, you have more; You don’t write anything about R—e, how she, poor thing, spends her days; yes, it is advisable to know about mothers N.N., N.N.; I don’t know anything about them, are they alive and well? I thank you for delivering my letters to Father M, and now I am enclosing them, and the only thing I receive from him is through you; other letters disappeared, and this was only from him; I receive all other letters regularly; I don’t know what will happen next. I conclude this letter by wishing you God’s mercy and blessings and giving you complacency and patience, and asking you to pray for me, a sinner, I remain poor I.M., your unworthy pilgrim. August 13. You might be interested in: