Письмо 289

I’m very glad that M. M... has calmed down; I wish that the Lord will continue to strengthen her; I send her my unworthy blessing. You remembered the gift of humility to you: you also have pity on me, meager of this treasure, I do not have it; and I ask you to pray for me too, that the Lord may grant me at least a little glimpse of His paths; humility is what it’s all about; Just as all evil came from pride, so through the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ, all good is achieved. The more holy the holy fathers were, the more humble they were, and they saw their own badness, they had themselves under all creation; May the Lord vouchsafe us, even though through our true poverty, to humble ourselves and accept from the hand of God everything that is sorrowful, as we are worthy of it, so that we may not thereby be freed from the debt of our sins. “Humility is a breed of temptation, but true reason is a breed of humility,” writes St. Isaac the Syrian. Now I think that you have already been honored to receive a blessing from your archpastor in your monastery, and, truly, a decision has been made for those seeking honor - on one side or the other; what to do? Some suffer from one thing, and others from another; and you and I suffer even more bitterly from insensibility and petrification; The Lord is patient with us too. The fathers say about honor: “Whoever runs from it, she chases after him; and whoever chases her, she runs away from him.” The treasurer died in the B...m D. monastery, and the monastery was without rule for a month; the bishop ordered the spiritual board to elect some nuns and entrust the management of the monastery; the archpriests and the abbot, the Zh...ky dean, elected M.P.; - There was a noise, indignation from all the nuns that they preferred her, and left the elders. Last week, on August 22, the bishop visited them, all the nuns gathered in church, he asked: are you dead? P... replies: “Thank God, they are dead,” not a single nun said a word; he had tea with P. and gave instructions; seeing him off, all the nuns invited themselves to come to her for tea and were very affectionate, only one of the nuns did not go, but went to bed out of grief. The next day P... visited the bishop, stayed for about an hour, he was very supportive; if it is God’s election for her to be, then even though it is difficult, His will be done; and when not, then it is better to listen to yourself; only on her part there seemed to be no inclination, but only submission, and that not to the abbess, but to the provisional government. For a brother who lives in the world and adheres to its rules, we must pray to the Lord: but it is difficult for us to turn away from worldly customs and decency; and whenever customs, and even today sophisticated philosophy refutes everything, believes nothing: may the Lord deliver from following it, and there are many of them, especially learned youth. Yu... is still young; maybe he will come to his senses; you try to intimidate her into the world - how will it affect her? And when there is no desire to live, then there is no need to force her - it will be neither monastic nor secular; Let her go through worldly suffering better, she indulges in the monastery. Mnogohreshny I.M. August 28, 1848. You might be interested in: