Проповедь о добродетелях и противоположных им страстях

Having sowed a seed into the plowed ground, everyone will reap exactly what he sowed. If a person plants trees or sows wheat, what he sows or plants will multiply and bear fruit. If the land remains unplowed and uncultivated, if seedlings or seeds are not planted in it, then not only useless herbs will grow on it, but even thorns and thistles. If you imagine a human soul in place of the earth, then exactly the same thing happens. Whatever inclinations and dispositions are implanted in the human soul, such fruits grow in it. I, my brothers, do everything possible, working for you both in word and in spiritual teaching. I teach both those who come to me in the metropolis, and I proclaim the teachings publicly in the church. And this teaching will help you uproot the evil growth from your soul, make the passions and depths of sins obvious, so that you can perceive saving knowledge and follow the right path. The Church of Christ, and especially the Church of this great city of Thessalonica, has as its members not only noble and wise people, but also simpletons. And any person, no matter who he is, if he is attentive to the word of Christ and listens to it without being distracted, will be able to understand what I say and apply it in his life. Fulfillment of the teaching offered to you will protect the soul from all malice and preserve every heart that has received the word of God. I will show you both evil passions and virtues. It will become clear to you that passions have one root, and virtues have another, and, having understood this, you will be able to uproot one and take care of the other. The root and beginning of any virtue is love for God, while the cause of all malice is love for the world. Christ’s beloved disciple John says: “Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world; if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father, but is from this world” (1 John 2:15–16). The reason that a person loves the world is love for his own body. We love the world because we want to take more care of the weakness of our body and everything that has to do with it. But the reason that a person loves God is that a person loves the spirit living in him, that is, the soul. From this love for one’s own soul grows love for God. Truly believing people easily sense this truth within themselves. They feel in themselves the fear of endless torment that a soul that has moved away from God experiences. This torment is like a strong fire that burns a person. A believer in God wants to extinguish this fire with his strong aspiration for the Kingdom of God and for the eternal joy triumphant in this Kingdom. That is why true believers move away from lusts and, through a tough struggle, free themselves from passionate and condemnable earthly connections. With trembling impatience, they hasten to cleave to God and offer Him their long prayers. They do this because they are confident: He alone has the power and authority sufficient to free a person from the pain of sin and give him joy - a gift that follows our love for God. Then God begins to act in man, then, by His grace, any virtue grows in man. If God does not begin to act in us, then any of our own actions will be sin. Those who spiritually work for a virtuous life do not selfishly consider any of their achievements to be theirs. On the contrary, they joyfully humble themselves and glorify God. According to the holy Apostle Paul, true believers are the fragrance of Christ, Christ emanates from them (See 2 Cor. 2:15). With their lives and their virtues they preach the One who called them out of darkness into His wonderful Light. A God-loving soul, striving towards its goal, uses the instrument of unceasing prayer and supplication with fear and trembling. Then the soul becomes sweet, and it tastes the only true pleasure. Now let's talk about those who love the body. The body desires earthly, temporary and connected to the world. Those who live as slaves of their body accept pleasure, which begins to act in them through the senses and passions. There are different passions: the passion of sight, the passion of hearing, the passion of smell, the passion of touch and the passion of taste. And we can’t do without a concrete example. The cause of passions associated with taste is not in food, but in the lack of measure of food. Passion is the pleasure that a person seeks when enjoying delicious food, overeating or getting drunk. And a person who gives himself over to the passions of the womb is easily carried away into any other insatiable and passionate sin. And so, soon such a body-loving soul, which is looking for where else it can get sensual pleasure, begins to feel the urge to other passions, for example, to accumulate money and property, in order to gradually get rich and indulge in other pleasures and passions, among which will be selfishness, exaltation, boasting, people-pleasing and vanity. The pleasure that God gives to the soul is genuine joy, pure and dispassionate. People who have tasted this joy are distinguished by inner peace, wherever they are: in their own home, in the city, or in the church of God. They do not strive for a worldly perception of things, thoroughly saturated with irony, ingratiation, flattery and hypocrisy. They clearly see the error and deception of this world, they see how much evil this world is filled with and how easily this diverse evil can become an obstacle between man and God. Just please don’t think that the evil one rules over heaven and earth. No. This world is not under the absolute power of the evil one. There is One who measures everything with His hand and holds everything in His hands. He is the Only Creator of the world. The cause of all evil is our own abuse, as well as the passionate disposal of our inner freedom. And if we say that today the world is under the power of the devil, then this means only one thing: we ourselves mismanage the freedom of our own will, we ourselves use the world incorrectly. Therefore, the world that we ourselves create with our free choice is naturally under the domination of Satan. We created this world according to our sin-loving ideas, and the devil helped us in this. Those who have not freed themselves by repentance and confession themselves, and by their own preference, elevate the devil to the throne of the ruler of the world. We, who have been united to Christ, must desire the Heavenly world and the Kingdom of Christ. Let us stay away from pleasures that split and destroy the unity of our soul. Let us avoid pleasure, drunkenness, fornication, debauchery, covetousness, pride, hatred, anger and unkind treatment of our brothers. Let us turn away from this seduced and seducing world and from the world ruler the devil. By our good deeds we will show that we, of our own free will, have surrendered ourselves into the all-good hands of God. By doing this, we will live in anticipation of true joy and, without abusing all the benefits that the world brings us, we will learn to use them correctly. And at the same time, let us not doubt that in due time, when God calls us to Himself, we will enjoy eternal blessings.