Письмо 47

You write on June 30 about O-na’s unpeace towards you and about the desire, on your part, to pacify yourself: but you find all means to achieve this unreliable; but when you look for guilt in yourself, you don’t find it. I wonder if the kind of pacification that St. used would not serve as a means of pacification. Zosima. Having not been guilty of anything before the deacon, and when he justified himself, he could not pacify him; and when he truly accused himself of something he had not done, but attributed to oblivion, he saw him himself falling at his feet. You can’t have yourself completely right; but you don’t see your guilt because you see their guilt. If not in the present, then in the past, how much you were guilty of with your tongue (the insolence of which one cannot help but admit), and if you had free access, then even now you could not restrain yourself from reproaching your neighbors with insolence. Probably, they don’t want this and are afraid (even if only because of their passion), so that they don’t get involved in business and don’t give advice; but, apparently, by the sight of God, for your benefit, you are being made holy. Blaming yourself, thank God, who saves you through involuntary sorrows. The thought of leaving the monastery is unfounded and harmful to the soul; Your mind imagines that you will immediately find peace there, but you are deluded by this; But on the contrary, imagine that you can meet the deepest sorrows, and test yourself: are you ready for them? According to the elders: whoever seeks peace moves away from it; and whoever gives himself up to sorrow and considers himself unworthy of peace finds it. But where will you go if your health is weak? And do you know how long your journey here will continue? Leave this thought, do not come down from the cross, blame yourself, not others, and the Lord will calm you down. You mention that you do not have pure prayer, but floating thoughts. It is not our business to give the price to our prayer, but to the One who searches the hearts and wombs and the Giver of prayer to the one who prays. Pray, but humbly, as the soaring thoughts involuntarily compels us to do. – You need to force yourself to more than one prayer, according to the word of St. Macarius, but also to all virtue. You find in yourself a sin leading to death - laziness: but aren’t anger and rage in the same category? Mnogohreshny I.M. July 14, 1845. You might be interested in: