Часть 1

In the original of this book, in its title it is stated that the book was compiled by another person, a certain wise man, but Elder Nicodemus only revised it, corrected it, supplemented it and enriched it with notes and extracts from St. fathers, ascetics. Therefore, it belongs to Elder Nicodemus more in spirit than in letter. When translating this book, it was considered more suitable to include notes and paternal testimonies into the text, and because of this, it was sometimes necessary to change the words of the book to improve its style, which was sometimes allowed without this. Therefore, the proposed book should be considered not so much a translation as a free transcription. This truly soulful little book rightly bears the name given to it, “Invisible Warfare.” How many of the sacred and inspired books of the Old and New Testaments received their name from the very objects about which they teach (the Book of Genesis, for example, is so named because it announces the creation and arrangement of all things that exist from non-existence; Exodus - because it describes the exodus of the sons of Israel from Egypt; Leviticus - because it contains the charter of sacred rites for the tribe of Levi; the books of Kings - because they tell about the life and the deeds of the kings; the Gospels - because “they preach... great joy... as if Christ the Lord was born... the world” (Luke 2:10, 11) and show everyone the right path to salvation and the inheritance of an ever-blessed life); So who will not agree that this book, judging by its content and the subjects with which it deals, is appropriately called “Invisible Warfare”? For it teaches not about any sensual and visible warfare and not about enemies, obvious and physical, but about mental and invisible warfare, which every Christian will accept from the hour he is baptized and makes a vow before God - to fight for Him for the glory of His Divine name even to death (which is why it is written in the book of Numbers: “For this reason the War of the Lord is spoken in the book” (Num. 21:14) - allegorically written about this invisible warfare), and about incorporeal and invisible enemies, which are various passions and lusts of the flesh, and evil and man-hating demons, who do not cease to fight against us day and night, as Blessed Paul said: “Our warfare is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities and powers and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, to the spirit of wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12). The warriors who fight in this invisible battle, she teaches, are all Christians; their military leader is depicted as our Lord Jesus Christ, surrounded and accompanied by commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that is, all the orders of angels and saints; the battlefield, the battlefield, the place where the struggle itself takes place, is our own heart and our entire inner man; the time of war is our whole life. What are the essence of the weapons with which this invisible warfare equips its warriors? Listen. For them, complete self-disbelief and complete lack of hope in themselves serve as a helmet, and daring faith in God and firm trust in Him serves as a shield and chain mail; armor and breastplate - teaching in the suffering of the Lord; belt - cutting off carnal passions; shoes - humility and weakness of one’s constant recognition and feeling; spurs - patience in temptations and driving away negligence; with a sword, which they constantly hold in one hand, - prayer, both verbal and mental - heartfelt; with a three-edged spear, which they hold in the other hand, - a firm determination not to agree at all to the fighting passion, to tear it away from themselves with anger and hate it with all their hearts; the means and food with which they are strengthened to resist their enemies is frequent communion with God, both sacramental from a mysterious sacrifice and mental; a bright and cloudless atmosphere, giving them the opportunity to see enemies from afar, - the constant exercise of the mind in the knowledge of what is right before the Lord, the constant exercise of the will in the desire for only that which is pleasing to God, peace and tranquility of the heart. Here, here, in this Invisible War (i.e. in the book) or, better to say, in this “War and the Lord”, the soldiers of Christ learn the knowledge of various delights, various intrigues, unimaginable cunning and military cunning, which mental adversaries use against them, through feelings, through fantasy, through deprivation of the fear of God, especially through the four excuses that they bring into the heart at the time of death, - I mean the excuses of unbelief, despair, vanity and the transformation of themselves into Angels of Light. By learning to recognize all this, they themselves learn how to destroy such machinations of enemies and resist them, and they learn what tactics and what law of warfare they should adhere to in what cases and with what courage to enter the fight. And I will say briefly that through this book every person who desires salvation learns how to defeat his invisible enemies in order to acquire the treasures of true and divine virtues and for this receive an incorruptible crown and an eternal pledge, which is unity with God both in the present age and in the future. Accept, therefore, Christ-loving readers, this book joyfully and graciously, and, learning in it the art of invisible warfare, try not only to fight, but also to fight lawfully, to fight as one should, so that you may be crowned, because, according to the Apostle, it happens that although someone strives, he is not crowned if he labored unlawfully (2 Tim. 2:5). Put on the weapons that she shows you, so that you can kill with them your mental and invisible enemies, which are soul-destroying passions and their organizers and causative agents - demons. “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:11). Remember how, at Holy Baptism, you promised to remain in renunciation of Satan and all his works, and all his service, and all his pride, that is, lust, love of fame, love of money and other passions. Strive as much as you can to reverse it, disgrace it and defeat it in all perfection. And what rewards and rewards can you receive for such a victory?! Very many and great. And listen about them from the lips of the Lord Himself, Who promises them to you in the Holy Revelation word for word like this: “To him who overcomes I will give food from the tree of the living, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Apoc. 2:7). “He who overcomes shall not be harmed by the second death” (Apoc. 2:11), “to him who overcomes I will give food from the hidden manna” (Apoc. 2:17). “To him who overcomes and keeps My works to the end, I will give him authority over the nations... and I will give him the morning star” (Apoc. 2:26,28). “He who overcomes him will be clothed in white garments... and we will confess his name before My Father and before His Angels” (Apoc. 3:5). “Having overcome him, I will create a pillar in the church of My God” (Apoc. 3:12). “To him who overcomes I will give to sit with Me on My throne” (Apoc. 3:21). “He who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son” (Apoc. 21:7). See what awards! See what rewards! See this eight-part and multi-colored imperishable crown, or, better yet, these crowns that are woven for you, brothers, if you defeat the devil! This is what you are now concerned about, strive for this and abstain from everything, “so that no one may receive your crown” (Apoc. 3:11). For it is truly a great shame that those who strive in the lists in bodily and external labors abstain five times more from everything in order to receive some perishable crown from a wild olive, or from a palm branch, or from a date, or from laurel, or from myrtle, or from some other plant; and you, who are destined to receive such an imperishable crown, spend your lives in negligence and carelessness. Will not even the word of St. awaken you from this sleep? Paul, who says: “Do you not know that they all flow into disgrace, but only one receives honor? Take this, and you will comprehend it. For everyone who strives will abstain from everyone else: and they will receive an incorruptible crown, but we are incorruptible” (1 Cor. 9:24-25). If, inspired by zeal, you are worthy of such a victory and such bright crowns, then do not forget, my brothers, to pray to the Lord for the forgiveness of sins and the one who helped you in obtaining such a benefit through this book. First of all, do not forget to lift up your eyes to Heaven and give thanks and glory to the first Source and Performer of such your victory, your God and Leader Jesus Christ, speaking to Him each of Zerubbabel’s words: “From You, O Lord, is the victory... and Yours is the glory, but I, indeed, Your servant” (2 Ezra 4:59), and another, spoken by the prophet David: “To you, O Lord, is majesty... and glory, and victory, and confession, and strength” (1 Chronicles 29:11), now and forever Amen. All evil boldly enters the human race through the dominance of passions. Just as God leads us to life by every possible means, so Satan uses every means to kill us. But the devil does not have anything so harmful for which we would not find a counteracting remedy. There is no such secret network that we do not have information about. What does Christian perfection consist of? – Invisible Warfare – Venerable Nicodemus the Holy Mountain Chapter 1. What is Christian perfection? - To acquire it, warfare is necessary. – Four things that are extremely necessary for success in this battle All of us, naturally, desire and have a commandment to be perfect. The Lord commands: “Be ye... perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48); St. Paul urges: “Be childish in malice, but have perfect minds” (1 Cor. 14:20); in another place we read from him: “that you may be perfect and fulfilled” (Col. 4:12), and again: “let us be led to perfection” (Heb. 6:1). This commandment was also prescribed in the Old Testament. Thus, God says to Israel in Deuteronomy: “You shall be perfect before the Lord your God” (Deut. 18:13). And St. David commands the same to his son Solomon: “And now, Solomon, my son, that you may know the God of your fathers and serve Him with a perfect heart and spiritual will” (1 Chron. 28:9). After this, we cannot help but see that God demands from Christians complete perfection, demands, that is, that we be perfect in all virtues. But if you, my beloved reader in Christ, want to reach such a height, you need to know in advance what Christian perfection consists of. For, without recognizing this, you can deviate from the real path and, thinking that you are flowing towards perfection, head in a completely different direction. I will say frankly: the most perfect and greatest thing that a person can desire and achieve is drawing closer to God and remaining in unity with Him. But there are many who say that the perfection of Christian life consists of fasting, vigils, kneeling, sleeping on bare ground and other similar bodily austerities. Others say that it consists of performing many prayers at home and standing through long church services. And there are those who believe that our perfection consists entirely of mental prayer, solitude, hermitage and silence. The greatest part limits this perfection to the exact fulfillment of all the ascetic works prescribed by the rules, not deviating either to excess or to lack in anything, but sticking to the golden mean. However, all these virtues alone do not constitute the sought-after Christian perfection, but are only means and methods for achieving it. That they are means and means effective for achieving perfection in the Christian life, there is no doubt about it. For we see very many virtuous men who practice these virtues as they should, with the goal of obtaining through this strength and power against their sinfulness and badness, in order to draw from them the courage to resist the temptations and deceptions of our three main enemies: the flesh, the world and the devil, in order to stock up in them and through them with spiritual aids, so necessary for all servants of God, especially for beginners. They fast to tame their violent flesh, they keep vigils to sharpen their intelligent eye; they sleep on the bare ground so as not to be weakened by sleep; they bind their tongues in silence and seclude themselves in order to avoid even the slightest reason for doing anything that offends the All-Holy God; they say prayers, attend church services and perform other acts of piety, so that their attention does not depart from heavenly things; They read about the life and suffering of our Lord not for anything else, but in order to better understand their own badness and the merciful goodness of God, in order to learn and be disposed to follow the Lord Jesus Christ with selflessness and the cross on their shoulders, and in order to more and more kindle in themselves love for God and dislike for themselves. But, on the other hand, these same virtues can cause more harm to those who place the entire foundation of their life and their hope in them than their obvious omissions - not in themselves, because they are pious and holy, but through the fault of those who do not use them as they should - precisely when they, heeding only these virtues, externally performed, leave their hearts to their mother-in-law in their own wills and in the wills of the devil, who, seeing that they have strayed from the right path, does not prevent them from not only joyfully striving in these bodily exploits, but also expanding and multiplying them according to their vain thoughts. Experiencing some spiritual movements and consolations, these workers begin to think about themselves that they have already risen to the state of the ranks of angels and feel the presence of God Himself in themselves; sometimes, deep in the contemplation of some abstract, non-earthly things, they dream of themselves as if they had completely stepped out of the realm of this world and were caught up to the third heaven. But how sinfully they act and how far they are from true perfection, anyone can understand this, judging by their life and their character. They usually want to be preferred to others in any case; they love to live according to their own will and are always persistent in their decisions; they are blind in everything that concerns themselves, but are very vigilant and diligent in examining the deeds and words of others; if someone begins to enjoy the honor of others, which they think they have, they cannot tolerate it and clearly become unpeaceful towards him; if anyone interferes with them in their pious pursuits and ascetic deeds, especially in the presence of others, God forbid! - they immediately become indignant, immediately seethe with anger and become completely different, unlike themselves. If God, wanting to lead them to knowledge of themselves and direct them to the true path to perfection, sends them sorrows and illnesses or allows them to undergo persecution, with which He usually tests who are His true and true servants, then it will be revealed what was hidden in their hearts and how deeply they are corrupted by pride. For no matter what sorrow may happen to them, they do not want to bow their neck under the yoke of the will of God, resting in His righteous and hidden judgments, and do not want, following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who humbled Himself for us and suffered, to humble themselves above all creatures, considering their persecutors as dear friends, as instruments of Divine kindness to them and accomplices of their salvation. Why is it obvious that they are in great danger? Having their inner eye, that is, their mind is darkened, they look at themselves with it, and they look incorrectly. Thinking about their external deeds of piety, that they are good, they think that they have already achieved perfection, and, becoming proud of this, they begin to condemn others. After this, it is no longer possible for any of the people to convert them, except for the special influence of God. It is more convenient to turn to the good of an obvious sinner than a secretive one, hiding under the cover of visible virtues. Now, having learned so clearly and definitely that spiritual life and perfection do not consist only in those visible virtues that we have spoken about, learn also that it does not consist in anything else other than drawing closer to God and in unity with Him, as was said at the beginning - in connection with which consist of a heartfelt confession of the goodness and greatness of God and the consciousness of our own insignificance and inclination to all evil; love for God and dislike for ourselves; subordination of oneself not only to God, but also to all creatures out of love for God, rejection of all our own will and complete submission to the will of God; and at the same time, the desire and accomplishment of all this from a pure heart, “for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31), only for the sake of pleasing God, only because He Himself wants it this way and that this is how we should love Him and work for Him. This is the law of love, inscribed by the finger of God Himself in the hearts of His faithful servants! This is the self-denial that God requires of us! Behold the good yoke of Jesus Christ and His light burden! This is submission to the will of God, which our Redeemer and Teacher demands from us both by His own example and His word! For did not our Author and Finisher of our salvation command the Lord Jesus to say in his prayer to the Heavenly Father: “Our Father... Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 6:10)? And He Himself, entering into the feat of suffering, did not He proclaim: “Not Mine, Father... but Thine will be done” (Luke 22:42)? And didn’t he say about all His work: “I came down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 6:38)? You see now, brother, what’s the matter. I assume that you are ready and striving to reach the heights of such perfection. Blessed be your zeal! But get ready for work, sweat and struggle from the very first steps of your course. You must offer everything as a sacrifice to God and do His will alone. But you will encounter within yourself as many wills as you have strengths and needs, which all require satisfaction, regardless of whether it is in accordance with the will of God. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal you desire, you must first suppress your own wills, and finally completely extinguish and kill them; and in order to succeed in this, you must constantly resist yourself in the bad and force yourself to do the good, otherwise you must constantly fight with yourself and with everything that favors your wills, excites and supports them. Prepare yourself for such a struggle and such a war, and know that the crown - the achievement of your desired goal - is not given to anyone except valiant warriors and fighters. But just as much as this battle is more difficult than any other, since when we enter into battle with ourselves, we also encounter opponents within ourselves, so the victory in it is more glorious than any other and, most importantly, most pleasing to God. For if, inspired by zeal, you conquer and mortify your disordered passions, your lusts and desires, then you will please God more and work for Him more magnificently than by beating yourself to the point of bleeding and exhausting yourself with fasting more than all the ancient desert dwellers. Even if you, having redeemed hundreds of Christian slaves from slavery from the wicked, give them freedom, will not save you if you yourself remain in slavery to the passions. And no matter what kind of work, be it the greatest, you undertake and with no matter how hard and what sacrifices you complete it, it will not lead to the goal that you wanted to achieve, if at the same time you ignore your passions, giving them freedom to live and act in you. Finally, after you have learned what Christian perfection consists of and that in order to achieve it you need to wage a constant and cruel battle with yourself, you must, if you truly want to become a winner in this invisible battle and be worthy of the crown worthy of it, install in your heart the following four dispositions and spiritual activities, as if putting on invisible weapons, the most reliable and all-conquering, namely: a) never rely on yourself for anything; b) always carry in your heart complete and all-absolute hope in the one God; c) strive unceasingly; d) always remain in prayer. Chapter 2. You should never trust yourself in anything and rely on yourself Not relying on ourselves, my beloved brother, is so necessary in our battle that without this, rest assured, not only will you not be able to achieve the desired victory, you will not be able to withstand even the slightest attack on you by the enemy. Impress this deeply in your mind and heart. Since the time of the crime of our ancestor, we, despite the weakening of our spiritual and moral powers, usually think very highly of ourselves. Although everyday experience very impressively confirms to us the falsity of such an opinion about ourselves, we, in an incomprehensible self-delusion, do not cease to believe that we are something, and something important. This, however, our spiritual weakness, which is very difficult to notice and recognize, is most of all disgusting to God in us, as the first offspring of our selfishness and pride and the source, root and cause of all passions and all our downfalls and indecencies. It closes that door in the mind or spirit through which alone the grace of God usually enters us, preventing this grace from entering inside and dwelling in man. She retreats from him. For how can grace for enlightenment and help enter into that person who thinks of himself that he is something great, that he himself knows everything and does not need any outside help? May the Lord deliver us from such Luciferian disease and passion! God strictly reproaches those who have this passion of conceit and self-worth through the prophet, saying: “Woe, who are wise in themselves and understand themselves” (Is. 5:21). That is why the Apostle Paul instills in us: “Do not be wise about yourself” (Rom. 12:16). Hating this evil conceit in us, God, on the contrary, loves nothing so much and does not want to see in us so much as the sincere consciousness of our insignificance and the complete conviction and feeling that every good thing in us, in our nature and in our life, comes from Him alone as the Source of all good and that nothing truly good can come from us; neither a good thought nor a good deed. Why does He Himself providentially seek to plant this heavenly sprout in the hearts of His beloved friends, arousing in them a lack of self-esteem and affirming a lack of self-reliance, sometimes through the influence of grace and inner illumination, sometimes through external blows and sorrows, sometimes through unexpected and almost irresistible temptations, and sometimes in other ways that are not always understandable to us. With all this, however, although this lack of expectation of anything good from ourselves and lack of reliance on ourselves is God’s work in us, we, on our part, must make every effort to acquire such a disposition, do everything we can and what is in our power. And I, my brother, outline for you here four actions, by virtue of which you, with God’s help, can finally improve self-disbelief, or never rely on yourself for anything. a) Recognize your insignificance and constantly keep in mind that you yourself cannot do any good for which you would be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Listen to what the wise fathers say: Peter of Damascus assures that “there is nothing better than to recognize one’s weakness and ignorance, and nothing worse than not to realize this” (Greek “Philokalia”, p. 611). St. Maximus the Confessor teaches that “the foundation of all virtue is the knowledge of human weakness” (Greek “Philokalia”, p. 403). St. John Chrysostom states that “he only knows himself best who thinks of himself that he is nothing.” b) Seek help in this from God in warm and humble prayers, for this is His gift. And if you want to receive it, then you must first establish within yourself the conviction that you not only do not have such a consciousness about yourself, but that you cannot acquire it at all on your own; then, boldly standing before the greatness of God and firmly believing that, out of His immeasurable mercy, He will certainly grant you such knowledge of Himself, when and how He knows, do not allow the slightest doubt that you will really receive it. c) Get used to always fearing for yourself and being afraid of your countless enemies, whom you cannot resist even for a short time, be afraid of their long skill in fighting with us, their all-cunning and ambushes, their transformation into angels of light, their countless intrigues and snares that they secretly place on the path of your virtuous life. d) If you fall into any sin, turn as quickly as possible to the vision of your weakness and awareness of it. In that case, God allowed you to fall, so that you would better understand your weakness and thus not only learn to despise yourself, but would want to be despised by others because of your weakness. Know that without such a desire it is impossible to be reborn in you and for beneficial self-disbelief to take root, in which is the basis and beginning of true humility and which itself has its basis in the said experimental knowledge of one’s powerlessness and one’s unreliability. From this, everyone sees how necessary it is for someone who wants to become a partaker of the Heavenly Light to know himself and how the goodness of God usually leads the proud and arrogant to such knowledge through their falls, righteously allowing them to fall into that very sin from which they consider themselves quite strong to protect themselves, so that they recognize their weakness and may no longer dare to rely on themselves, both in this and in everything else. However, this means, although very effective, but also not safe, God does not always use, but when all other means, easier and freer, which we mentioned, do not lead a person to self-knowledge. Then He finally allows a person to fall into sins, large or small, judging by the greatness or smallness of his pride, conceit and arrogance, so that where there is no such conceit and arrogance, there are no intelligible falls. Therefore, when you happen to fall, hastily run your thoughts towards humble self-knowledge and a demeaning opinion and feeling about yourself, and through tiresome prayer seek from God to grant you true light to recognize your insignificance and strengthen your heart in not relying on yourself, so as not to fall again into the same or even more serious and ruinous sin. I will add to this that not only when someone falls into any sin, but also when he falls into some kind of misfortune, calamity and sorrow, especially a bodily illness, difficult and long-term, he must understand that this is what he is suffering, so that he can come to self-knowledge, namely, the consciousness of his weakness, and humble himself. For this case and for this purpose, God allows all kinds of temptations to come upon us from the devil, from people and from our damaged nature. And Saint Paul, seeing this goal in the temptations to which he was exposed in Asia, said: “We have within ourselves the condemnation of death, so that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). And I’ll also add: whoever wants to know his weakness from the very reality of his life, let him, I don’t say many days, but at least one day, observe his thoughts, words and deeds - what he thought, what he said and did. Undoubtedly, he will find that most of his thoughts, words and deeds were sinful, wrong, unreasonable and bad. Such an experience will make him understand how unstructured and weak he is in himself; and from such a concept, if he sincerely wishes good for himself, he will come to the feeling of how absurd it is to expect any good from himself alone and to rely on himself. Chapter 3. About hope in one God and confidence in Him Although in our invisible battle it is so necessary, as we said, not to rely on ourselves, for all that, if we only put aside all hope for ourselves and despair of ourselves, without looking for other support, then we will either immediately run away from the battlefield, or we will certainly be defeated and taken prisoner by our enemies. Therefore, along with complete renunciation of ourselves, we also need to plant in our hearts complete trust in God and complete confidence in Him, that is, we need to feel with our full hearts that we have absolutely no one to rely on but on Him alone, and from no one else but from Him alone can we expect all good, all help and victory. For just as from ourselves, who are nothing, we expect nothing but stumblings and falls, for the reason of which we put aside all hope for ourselves, so, on the contrary, we will ultimately receive every victory from God, as soon as we arm our hearts with living trust in Him and full confidence in receiving help from Him, according to the following psalm testimony: “My heart trusted in Him, and He helped me” (Ps. 27, 7). The following reflections will help us to establish ourselves in such hope and to receive all kinds of help for its sake: 1) That we seek help from God, who, as the Almighty, can do whatever He pleases, and therefore can help us too. 2) That we seek it from God, Who, as the Omniscient and All-Wise, knows everything most perfectly, and therefore fully knows what is most suitable for the salvation of each of us. 3) That we seek such help from God, Who, as the infinitely Good One, stands before us with indescribable love, always preferably ready from hour to hour and from minute to minute to give us all the help we need to achieve complete victory in the spiritual battle operating in us immediately, as soon as we flow into His arms with firm hope. And how is it possible that our good Shepherd, Who walked for three years, looking for the lost sheep, with such a strong voice that His throat came out of His throat, and walked on paths so difficult and thorny, that He shed His entire blood and gave His life, how, I say, is it possible that He now, when this sheep follows after Him, lovingly turns to Him and confidently calls on Him for help, did not turn His eyes His own on him, did not he take him on his divine shoulders and, having brought him into the host of heavenly angels, would he not have arranged a festive celebration with them on this occasion? If our God does not cease to search with great diligence and love in order to find, like the gospel coin, a blind and deaf sinner, how is it possible to allow Him to leave him now, when he, like a lost sheep, cries out and calls for his Shepherd? And who will ever believe that God, Who constantly pushes into the heart of man, wanting to enter inside and dine with him, according to the apocalyptic word (Rev. 3:20), imparting His gifts to him, who will believe that this very God, when a person opens his heart to Him and calls on Him, remains deaf and does not want to enter into it? 4) The fourth, finally, way to revive firm trust in God and attract His quick help is to review in memory all the experiences of quick help from God depicted in Divine Scripture. These experiences, so numerous, show us most clearly that none of those who trusted in God was ever left ashamed and helpless. “Look at the ancient generations,” cries the wise Sirach, “and see who is the faith of the Lord and is ashamed?” (Sir. 2, 10). Armed with these four weapons, my brother, courageously go into battle and wage it cheerfully, in full confidence that you will be given victory. For through them you will certainly gain complete trust in God, and such hope will continually attract God’s help to you and invest you with all-conquering power. The same and the other will finally deeply root in you a complete lack of self-reliance. I do not miss the opportunity to remind you of this lack of self-reliance in this chapter, because I don’t know who would not need to be reminded of this. This self-esteem is so deeply rooted in us and so firmly attached to us, as if we are something, and something not small, that it always lives secretly in our hearts, like some subtle and imperceptible movement, even when we are sure that we have no hope in ourselves, but, on the contrary, are filled with complete trust in the one God. In order to avoid, as much as you can, such heartfelt conceit and act without any self-reliance, but with sole trust in God, each time tune in so that the consciousness and feeling of your weakness precedes the contemplation of the omnipotence of God, and both precede your every act. Chapter 4. How can you find out whether someone acts with no hope in himself and complete hope in God? It often happens that other arrogant people think that they have no hope for themselves, but place all their trust in God and rest their confidence in Him alone. In reality, this does not happen. They themselves can verify this, judging by what happens in them and with them after they somehow happen to fall. If they, while grieving over the fall, reproaching and scolding themselves, at the same time plan: I will do this and that, the consequences of the fall will be erased, and everything will go as it should for me again, then this is a sure sign that even before their fall they relied on themselves, and not on God. And the darker and more joyless their grief is, the more revealing that they trusted too much in themselves and very little in God: that is why the grief of their fall is not dissolved by any joy. He who does not rely on himself, but trusts in God, when he falls, is not too surprised at this and is not suppressed by excessive sorrow, for he knows that this happened to him, of course, due to his weakness, but even more so due to the weakness of his trust in God. Why, as a result of the fall, does he strengthen his lack of confidence in himself, and even more so strives to aggravate and deepen his humble trust in God; and then, hating the indecent passions that were the cause of his fall, he calmly and peacefully carries out penitential labors for insulting God and, armed with strong trust in God, with the greatest courage and determination he pursues his enemies even to death. About what was said before this, I would like some individuals to think about it, thinking about themselves that they are virtuous and spiritual, who, when they fall into some kind of sin, are tormented and languid and do not find peace for themselves, and, already tired of this sadness and languor, which arises in them from nothing other than self-love, they run, again on the same impulse of self-love, to their spiritual father in order to free themselves from such hardships. And they should have done this immediately after the fall, and done it for no other reason than the desire to quickly wash away the filth of sin that offended God, and to receive new power against themselves, in the Most Holy Sacrament of repentance and confession. Chapter 5. About the fallacy of the opinion of those who consider excessive sadness a virtue At the same time, those who sin are those who consider as a virtue the excessive sadness that they experience after committing a sin, not realizing that this comes from pride and conceit, which is confirmed by the fact that they rely too much on themselves and on their strengths. For, thinking about themselves that they are something no small, they took on a lot, hoping to cope with it themselves. Seeing now from the experience of their fall that there is no strength in them, they are amazed, as if encountering something unexpected, they are restless and faint-hearted, for they see that same idol fallen and stretched out on the earth, that is, themselves, on which they pinned all their aspirations and hopes. But this does not happen to the humble, who trusts in the One God, without expecting anything positively good from himself. Therefore, when he falls into any kind of sin, although he feels the burden of it and is sad, he is not agitated and does not hesitate with bewilderment, for he knows that this happened to him from his own powerlessness, the experience of which in the fall is not unexpected news for him. Chapter 6. Some knowledge that serves to outline the limit and space of self-disbelief and complete trust in God Since all the power with which our enemies are defeated is generated in us from disbelief in ourselves and trust in God, then you, my brother, must stock up on accurate knowledge regarding this, so that, with God’s help, you can always carry and preserve such power within yourself. Know firmly and firmly that neither all the abilities and good qualities, whether natural or acquired, nor all the gifts given freely, nor the knowledge of all Scripture, nor even if we have worked for God for a long time and acquired the skill in this work for Him, nor all this together will allow us to faithfully fulfill the will of God, if with every godly, good deed that is set before us to do, with every trouble that we seek to avoid, with every cross, which we must bear according to the will of our God, unless, I say, in all such and similar cases, some special help from God does not inspire our hearts and gives us the strength to do what is rightful, as the Lord said: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John. 15, 5); So, throughout our entire life, all our days and all our minutes, we must urgently keep within us an unchanging feeling, conviction and mood in our hearts that for no reason, for no thought, are we allowed to rely and rely on ourselves. Regarding trust in God, to what I said already in the third chapter, add the following: know that nothing is easier and more convenient for God, how to make you defeat your enemies, whether there are few or many of them, whether they are old and strong or new and weak. However, He has His own time and order for everything. Therefore, let another soul, overly burdened with sins, let it be guilty of all the crimes of the world, let it be desecrated in a way that only anyone can imagine, and let it, moreover, as much as it wanted and as much as it could, use every means and every feat in order to abandon sin and turn to the path of good, but could not establish itself in anything worthwhile, even the smallest, but, on the contrary, plunged even deeper into evil - let it be like that; with all this, however, she should not at all weaken in her trust in God and retreat from Him, she should not abandon either her weapons or her spiritual exploits, but she must fight, and fight with herself and with her enemies with all courage and tirelessness. For knowing, know that in this invisible battle only he does not lose who does not cease to fight and trust in God, whose help never departs from those fighting in His regiments, although sometimes He allows them to receive wounds. Therefore, everyone fight, without yielding, because this relentless struggle is what it’s all about. God is always ready with healing for those slain by enemies, and with help in defeating them, which in due time He gives to His fighters who seek Him and have firm hope in Him; at an hour when they do not expect, they will see how their proud enemies disappear, as it is written: “The strength of Babylonia has become impoverished” (Jer. 51:30). Chapter 7. About how we should exercise our mind so that it does not suffer from ignorance If self-disbelief and trust in God, so necessary in our spiritual warfare, remain alone in us, then not only will we not receive victory, but, on the contrary, we will fall into even greater evil. Therefore, together with them and with them, we must conduct special kinds of work, or spiritual educational exercises. Among these exercises, exercises of the mind and will should come first. The mind must be freed and preserved from ignorance, which is so hostile to it, since it, darkening it, does not allow it to know the truth - its own subject and the goal of its aspirations. To do this, it is necessary to exercise it so that it is bright and pure and can clearly discern what is required for us in order to cleanse the soul of passions and decorate it with virtues. We can achieve such lightness of mind in two ways: the first, and more necessary, is prayer, with which we must beg the Holy Spirit, that He may deign to pour out the divine light into our hearts, which He will probably do if we truly seek the one God, if we are sincerely zealous to act according to His will in everything, and if in every matter we willingly submit ourselves to the advice of our experienced spiritual fathers and do nothing without questioning them. The second way to exercise the mind is to constantly examine things and deepen their knowledge in order to clearly see which of them are good and which are bad; not as feelings and the world judge them, but as right reason and the Holy Spirit or the true word of the inspired Scriptures, the spirit-bearing fathers and teachers of the Church judge. For when such examination and deepening is right and appropriate, then of course it will make us clearly understand that we must from the heart impute nothing and consider as vain and false everything that the blind and depraved world loves and seeks in every possible way. Namely, that the honors, pleasures and riches of the world are nothing more than vanity and death of the soul; that the reproaches and slander with which the world persecutes us bring us true glory, and its sorrows bring us joy; that forgiving our enemies and doing good to them is true generosity - one of the greatest traits of godlikeness; that he who despises the world shows more power and authority than he who rules over the whole world; that willing obedience is an action that reveals more courage and fortitude than subjugating great kings and commanding them; that humble self-knowledge should be preferred to all other highest knowledges; that to conquer and mortify one's evil inclinations and lusts, no matter how insignificant they may be, is more worthy of praise than the capture of many fortresses, than the defeat of strong hordes well armed, than even the performance of miracles and the resurrection of the dead. Chapter 8. About why we judge things wrongly and how to acquire right judgments about them The reason why we wrongly judge the things that have been said before is that we do not peer into the depths of them to see what they are, but perceive love for them or disgust immediately from the first glance at them and from their appearance. This love for them or disgust for them preoccupies our mind and darkens it, therefore it cannot rightly judge them as they truly are. So, my brother, if you want such delusion not to find a place in your mind, take good care of yourself; and when you either see with your eyes or imagine a thing in your mind, hold on to your desires as much as you can and do not allow yourself from the first to be either lovingly disposed towards this thing or to have an aversion to it, but consider it detachedly with your mind alone. In this case, the mind, without being clouded by passion, is free and pure in its nature and has the opportunity to know the truth, to penetrate into the depths of a thing, where evil often hides under a falsely attractive appearance and where good is hidden under an unkind appearance. But if you have a desire to immediately either love a thing or turn away from it, then your mind will no longer be able to know it well, as it should. For such a disposition that precedes any judgment, or, better to say, this passion, having entered inside, becomes a wall between the mind and the thing and, darkening it, makes it think about this thing out of passion, that is, differently from what it actually is, and through this further strengthens the original disposition. And the more it extends forward or the more it loves and hates a thing, the more it darkens the mind in relation to it and finally darkens it completely. And then the passion for that thing increases to the extreme limit, so that it seems to a person more beloved or hated than any thing he has ever loved or hated. In this way, it happens that when the rule I have shown is not observed, that is, to keep desire from loving or hating a thing before discussing it, then both of these powers of the soul, i.e. the mind and will always succeed in evil, plunging more and more from darkness to darkness and from sin to sin. So, beware, beloved, with all your attention from love or aversion to any thing, by passion, before you have time to look at it well, in the light of reason and the right word of the Divine Scriptures, in the light of grace and prayer and with the help of the reasoning of your spiritual father, so as not to sin and consider the truly good to be bad and the truly bad to be good; as this most often happens with certain deeds of this kind, which in themselves are good and holy, but due to circumstances, precisely because they are done either at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or not to the proper extent, cause considerable harm to those who perform them. And we know from experience what kind of troubles some have been exposed to due to such praiseworthy and holy deeds. Chapter 9. About keeping the mind from useless knowledge and idle inquisitiveness Just as it is necessary, as we said, to guard the mind from ignorance, it is equally necessary to guard it from the opposite of ignorance, knowledge and curiosity. For as soon as we fill it with a multitude of knowledge, ideas and thoughts, not excluding vain, indecent and harmful ones, then we will make it powerless; and he will no longer be able to understand well what is suitable for our true self-correction and perfection. Why should you behave this way in relation to knowledge of earthly things, although sometimes permissible, but not necessary, as if you were already dead; and always collecting your mind inside yourself as concentratedly as possible, leaving it idle from thoughts about all the things of the world. Legends about the past and new information about what is happening may pass you by, and all the revolutions in the world and kingdoms will be for you as if they had not happened at all, and when someone brings them to you, turn away from them and wipe them far from your heart and imagination. Listen to what St. says. Vasily: “May it be a bitter taste for you to hear worldly news and a honeycomb of the legends of the venerable men” (part 5 p. 52); Hear also what the prophet David says: “The transgressors have told me mockery, but not like Thy law, O Lord” (Ps. 119:85). Love to listen only to spiritual and heavenly things and study them and not want to know anything in the world except the Lord “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), except His life and death and except what He requires of you. By acting in this way, you will act pleasingly to God, Who has chosen and beloved those who love Him and strive to do His will. Any other investigation and discovery is the generation and food of self-love and pride; these are the bonds and snares of the devil, who, seeing how the will of those who listen to spiritual life is strong and strong, attempts to defeat their minds with such curiosity, in order to thus take possession of both. To do this, he usually puts into them lofty, subtle and amazing thoughts, especially for those of them who are witty and quick to become highly intelligent. And they, carried away by the pleasure of having and considering such lofty thoughts, forget to guard the purity of their hearts and listen to humble wisdom about themselves and true self-mortification; and thus, being entangled in the bonds of pride and conceit, they make an idol for themselves out of their own mind, and as a result, little by little, without feeling it themselves, they come to the conclusion that they no longer need the advice and admonition of others, since they are accustomed to resort to the idol of their own understanding and judgment in every need. This is an extremely dangerous matter and difficult to treat; the pride of the mind is much more disastrous than the pride of the will. For the pride of the will, being obvious to the mind, can sometimes be conveniently healed by it by bending it under the yoke of what is due. The mind, when it arrogantly establishes itself in the thought that its own judgments are better than all others, by whom can it finally be healed? Can he listen to anyone when he is sure that everyone else's judgment is not as good as his own? When this eye of the soul - the mind, with the help of which a person could recognize and correct the pride of the will, is itself blinded by pride and remains unhealed, who will also heal the will? And then everything inside is upset, and in such a way that there is nowhere and no one to apply a band-aid. That is why you must resist this destructive pride of mind as quickly as possible, before it penetrates to the marrow of your bones; resist, curb the speed of your mind and submissively subordinate your opinion to the opinion of others; be strong out of love for God if you want to be wiser than Solomon. “If anyone thinks he is wise... In all this, let it happen, for he will be wise” (1 Cor. 3:18). Chapter 10. How to train your will so that in all its affairs, internal and external, as the last goal, it seeks one thing to please God In addition to the educational exercise of your mind, you must control your will so as not to allow it to bend to your wishes, but, on the contrary, to lead it to be completely united with the will of God. And at the same time, keep in mind that it is not enough for you to desire and always seek what is pleasing to God, but it is also necessary that you desire this as moved by God himself and for that sole purpose, to please Him from a pure heart. To maintain this goal, we have to endure a stronger struggle with our nature than with all that was mentioned above. For our nature is so inclined to please itself that in all its deeds, even the kindest and most spiritual, it seeks peace and pleasure for itself and with this it imperceptibly and secretly, lustfully feeds as food. This is why it happens that when spiritual things are presented to us, we immediately desire them and rush towards them, however, not as moved by the will of God or not with the sole purpose of pleasing God, but for the sake of that consolation and joy that is generated in us when we desire and seek what God wants from us; Such charm is the more secretive and secretive, the higher in itself and more spiritual is what we desire. This is why I say that we should not be content with wanting what God wants, but we must also desire this, how, when, why and for what purpose He wants it. And the apostle commands us to tempt what the will of God is, not only good, but also acceptable and perfect in all circumstances, saying: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to tempt you, what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2). For if there is a flaw in the matter due to at least one circumstance, or if we do it not with all our will and not with all our might, then it is obvious that it is imperfect and is called. Conclude from this that even when we lust and seek God Himself, then in this matter some irregularities and omissions may take place, and a kind of flattery of our love for ourselves or our pride may creep into it, since in this case we often have in mind our own good for ourselves, rather than the will of God for God Himself, Who is pleased with deeds done only for His glory, and wants that We loved Him alone, we desired Him alone, and we worked for Him alone. So, if you, my brother, want to protect yourself from such hidden obstacles on the path to perfection, if you want to successfully establish yourself in such a good mood so that you can desire and do everything only for the sake of what God wants, only for His glory and for pleasing Him, and for working for Him alone, who wants Him alone to be both the beginning and the end in every action of ours, do the following. When some deed is presented to you, consistent with the will of God or good in itself, do not immediately incline your will towards it and do not lust after it, unless you first raise your mind to God in order to understand that there is the direct will of God to desire and do such deeds, and that they are pleasing to God. And when you are so formed in your thoughts that the very will of God will determine the inclination of your will, then desire it and do it for the sake of what God desires, for the sake of pleasing Him alone and only for His glory. In the same way, when you want to deviate from something that is inconsistent with the will of God or is not good, do not immediately turn away from it, but first cleave the eye of your mind to the will of God and understand for yourself that the direct will of God is for you to deviate from this to please God. For the flattery of our nature is extremely subtle and is recognized by few: it secretly seeks one of its own, and yet, apparently, it conducts business in such a way that it seems to us that its only goal is to please God, which in reality is truly not the case. Thus, it often happens that, wanting or not wanting something for ourselves, to please ourselves, we think that we want or do not want it solely to please God. To avoid such self-delusion, the exclusive means is purity of heart, which consists in putting off the old man and putting on the new. All invisible warfare is directed towards this. If you want to learn the art of how to do it, listen. At the beginning of any undertaking, you must be conscious, as far as possible, of all your own desires and not want to do or deviate from the work, unless you first feel that you are being moved and directed towards it only by the consciousness of the will of God. If in all your external, and especially internal - spiritual affairs, you cannot always really feel this movement from God, be content with the possibility of it in you, namely, always have a sincere mood so that in every matter you have nothing in mind except the sole pleasure of God. In order to effectively feel the movement from God to work, this happens either through divine enlightenment, or mental illumination, in which the will of God is contemplatively revealed to pure hearts, or through the inner inspiration of God, by some inner word, or through other actions of God’s grace, acting in a pure heart, such as animal warmth, inexpressible joy, spiritual leaps, tenderness, heartfelt tears, Divine love and others God-loving and blissful feelings that do not happen by our will, but from God, not spontaneously, but passively. With all such feelings we make sure that what we are seeking to do is according to the will of God. First of all, we must send up the warmest and purest prayer to God, earnestly begging Him once, twice, and many times to enlighten our darkness and enlighten us. Pray three times, say the great elders - Barsanuphius and John, and then wherever your heart inclines, do it. Moreover, you should not forget that with all the internal spiritual movements that have been calculated, the decisions that form within you must be verified by the advice and reasoning of the most experienced. In relation to matters that must be completed either forever, or for a more or less long time: not only at the beginning of approaching them should one have in one’s heart a sincere decision to work in them only to please God, but also afterwards, until the very end, one should often renew such a good mood. For if you do not do this, then you will be in danger of being again entwined with the bonds of natural love for yourself, which, tending more towards self-pleasing than towards pleasing God, with the passage of time often manages to imperceptibly deviate us from the initial good mood and lead us to change the first good intentions and goals. That is why Gregory of Sinaite wrote: “Every hour, pay attention to the mood of your will with careful consideration of where it is heading, whether for God, for the sake of the good itself and for the benefit of your soul, you sit silently, sing, read, pray and undergo other feats, so that otherwise you do not rob yourself without your knowledge” (Greek “Philokalia”, chapter 19, p. 916). Therefore, whoever does not heed this goodness, after he begins to do some work with the sole purpose of pleasing the Lord, then little by little insensitively introduces self-pleasure into that work, finding satisfaction in it for his own wishes, and to such an extent that they completely forget about the will of God. And he is bound by the pleasure of that work so strongly that if God Himself prevents him from fulfilling it, either through some illness, or through temptation from people and demons, or in some other way, he becomes completely indignant against it and often condemns one or the other that served as an obstacle to him in his favorite course of affairs, sometimes he grumbles at God Himself - which is a clear sign that their heartfelt mood is not God’s, but was born from a damaged and rotten root of pride. For anyone who is moved to action by the mere consciousness of God's will and by the desire to please God through it, never desires one task more than another, even if one of them were high and great, and the other low and insignificant, but he has the same disposition of the will towards both of them, since they are pleasing to God. Therefore, such a one, whether he does some high and great work or a low and insignificant one, is equally at peace and contented - because he is fully embraced by his main intention and his main goal - always and in all his deeds to be only pleasing to God, whether in life or in death, as the Apostle says: “In the same way, by what we strive, whether we go in or go out, we must be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5, 9). For this reason, beloved, always be attentive to yourself and focused on yourself, and try in every possible way to direct your affairs towards this exclusive goal. If, when you are moved to do any work by such a spiritual impulse, in order to avoid the torment of hell or to inherit heaven as an inheritance, then you can mentally direct this to your final goal - to please God by walking in His will, because God wants you to enter heaven, and not go to hell. This motivation or this goal is to please God, and it is impossible for anyone to fully know what strength and power they have in our spiritual life. For let any deed be in itself the simplest and last, but when it is done solely to please God and for His glory, then it is incomparably more valuable in the eyes of God than many other high, glorious and greatest deeds that are not performed for this purpose. Therefore, it is more pleasant for God to see you give one denarius to the poor for the sole purpose of pleasing His divine Majesty, than for you to strip yourself of all your property for some other purpose, even to receive heavenly blessings, although such a goal is both good and desirable. This inner feat, which you must maintain in every undertaking, the feat of directing your thoughts, feelings and deeds towards one thing that pleases you, will seem difficult to you at first, but then it will become easy and comfortable if, firstly, you continuously practice such spiritual activity, and secondly, you always kindle in yourself the desire for God, sighing towards Him with a living aspiration of your heart, as for the only perfect good worthy of seeking Him. for Himself, to serve Him and love Him above all else. The more often such a search for the infinite good in God occurs in consciousness and the deeper it penetrates into the feeling of the heart, the more often and the warmer the said actions of our will will be performed and the sooner and more conveniently the skill will be formed in us to do every task out of love for the Lord alone and out of one desire to please Him, who is most worthy of all love. Chapter 11. Some reminders that can move our will to the desire to please God in every action So that you can move your will with greater convenience - in everything to desire one thing to please God and His glory, remember more often that He first honored you in different ways and showed His love for you: He created you out of nothing in His image and likeness and created all other creatures to serve you; delivered you from the slavery of the devil, sending not some angel, but His only begotten Son, so that He would redeem you not with the perishable price of gold and silver, but with His priceless Blood and His death, the most painful and humiliating; after all this, every hour and every moment saves you from enemies, fights for you with His Divine grace; prepares for your nourishment and protection in the Most Pure Mysteries the Body and Blood of His beloved Son. All this is a sign of God’s great honor and love for you, an honor so great that it is impossible to comprehend how such a great Lord of all shows such honor to our insignificance and obscenity. Judging, therefore, what honor and what reverence we should render to such immeasurable Majesty, who has done such wonderful deeds for us. If we cannot restrain ourselves from rewarding the earthly kings who benefit us with thanksgiving, glorification, honor and obedience, then in what immeasurable measure should we, the most insignificant, render all this to the Highest King of all, who loved and benefited us so much that it is impossible to determine the number. Above all this, which has now been said, always keep in mind that Divine greatness in itself is worthy of all honor, worship and sincere service to please Him. Chapter 12. About the many desires and aspirations that exist in man, and about their struggle among themselves Know that in this invisible battle, two wills existing in us are at war with each other: one belongs to the rational part of the soul and therefore is called the rational, higher will, and the other belongs to our sensual part and therefore is called the sensual, lower will, in general it is called the dumb, carnal, passionate will. The highest will always desires only good, and the lower - only evil. Both happen by themselves, therefore neither a good desire in itself is imputed to us as good, nor an evil desire as evil. Imputation depends on the inclination of our free will; Therefore, when we incline with our will towards a good desire, it is imputed to us as good, and when we incline toward an evil desire, it is imputed to us as evil. These desires accompany one another: when a good desire comes, an evil desire immediately comes against it, and when an evil desire comes, a good desire immediately comes against it. Our will is free to follow both, and whichever desire it inclines towards is the victorious one this time. This is what all our invisible spiritual warfare consists of. Its goal for us should be to not allow our free will to incline toward the desire of a lower, carnal and passionate will, but to always follow one higher, rational will, for it is the will of God, following which is the fundamental law of our existence: “Fear God and keep His commandments, as every man does,” says the wise Solomon (Eccl. 12:13). Both desires attract our will and want to subjugate it. Suppress the lower desire and bow to the higher - and victory is yours; but if you choose the lower, despising the higher, you will find yourself defeated. St. Apostle Paul writes that there is a struggle within us: “I have found... the law that I would do good, as evil is due to me. I delight in... the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my hearts, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive by the law of sin that is in my hearts” (Rom. 7:21-23). And he prescribes to everyone as a law: “Walk in the Spirit, and do not commit carnal lusts” (Gal. 5:16). And this cannot be achieved without fighting the flesh. Particularly great feat and hard work should be experienced at the beginning by those who, before deciding to change their worldly and carnal life to a life pleasing to God and indulge in deeds of love and sincere work for God, bound themselves with evil habits through frequent satisfaction of the desires of their carnal and passionate will. In them, around free will, although on the one hand there are the desired demands of the rational will, influenced by God, on the other hand there are still, not without sympathy, the wishes of the carnal and passionate will and, opposing the former, they draw it to their side with such force, as sometimes they draw a snake to a snake; and only the grace of God gives them the strength to persist in the intention once accepted. The time of confrontation with them and failure to concede victory weakens their strength, but this does not stop the struggle. Therefore, let no one dream of acquiring true Christian well-being and Christian virtues and working for God as befits, if he does not want to force himself to reject and overcome all passionate movements of the carnal will, not only large, but also small, which he was previously accustomed to satisfying willingly and lovingly. The main reason why so few achieve complete Christian perfection lies in the fact that, out of self-pity, they do not want to force themselves and deny themselves absolutely everything. For when they, having with difficulty conquered large passionate inclinations, do not want to force themselves to overcome small, seemingly insignificant inclinations, then, since these small ones are the generation and expression of large ones, satisfying them, they feed these latter ones, which therefore continue to live and act in the heart, although they are not revealed in large quantities. Therefore, the heart remains passionate and unclean and, most importantly, not in the least detached from self-indulgence and self-pity, which always leave all deeds of pleasing God in doubtful dignity. For example, there are those who, without appropriating someone else’s property, love their own too much and, on the one hand, rely too much on it, on the other hand, they are too lazy to do good; others, not seeking honors by unkind means, do not, however, value them at all, and often wish that their receipt would somehow be arranged, as if against their will; others, again, observe long-term fasts, but do not refuse to satisfy the desire to eat plenty and sweetly, which completely destroys the dignity of fasting; some live chastely, but continue to maintain relationships and acquaintances with people they like and delight in the fact, without even understanding that through this they are creating a great obstacle in themselves to perfection in spiritual life and unity with God. I will also add here the inattention of some to the natural shortcomings of their character, which, although they do not depend on arbitrariness, nevertheless make him guilty of judgment, when someone, seeing how they interfere with the work of spiritual life, does not care not only to completely destroy them, but also to put them within harmless limits, when this is possible, with the help of the grace of God, with due attention and zeal to oneself. Such, for example, are unsociability, hot temper, impressionability and, as a result, injudicious speed in words, movements and deeds, severity and grumpiness, stubbornness and argumentativeness, and the like. All such imperfections and natural weaknesses should be corrected, taking away excesses from some, adding what is missing to others, transforming both of them into corresponding good qualities. For nothing natural, no matter how wild and stubborn it may be, can resist the will when it, armed with the grace of God, becomes zealous to resist it with all attention and diligence. As a result of the above, it happens that others do good deeds, but these deeds remain imperfect, tempting, intertwined with the lusts that reign in the world (John 2:16). That is why these persons do not in the least succeed on the path to salvation, but rotate in one place, and often return back and fall into previous sins, since, apparently, at first they did not fully love the good life in Christ, were not completely filled with a feeling of gratitude to God, who delivered them from the power of the devil, and did not with perfect determination set out to work for Him alone to please Him. Hence it also happens that such people always remain untrained in goodness and are blind and do not see the danger they are in, thinking that their position is secure and no trouble threatens them. For this reason, my beloved brother in Christ, I urge you to love the difficulty and burdensomeness that inevitably accompany our internal struggle, if you do not always want to be overcome. This is what the wise Sirach also advises: “Do not hate a difficult task” (Sir. 7:15). Because everything in this battle stands on this as the foundation. The more you love this difficulty or merciless self-exertion in exploits, the sooner and more completely you will gain victory over yourself and that which is opposed to the highest good in you, and as a result you will be filled with all virtue and good disposition, and the peace of God will establish itself in you. Chapter 13 Every time the wordless sensual will, on the one hand, and the will of God, expressed by the conscience, on the other, fight your free will and attract it to yourself, seeking to defeat it, you must, if you are a sincere zealot for good, for your part, use appropriate techniques in order to contribute to the will of God to win. For this: 1) As soon as you feel the movements of the lower sensual and passionate will, immediately resist them with all your might and do not at all allow your will to be inclined towards them, even slightly - suppress them, push them away, wipe them away from yourself with a strong tension of will. 2) In order for this to be more successful and bring good fruit, hasten to kindle whole-hearted hostility towards this kind of movement, as towards your enemies, seeking to kidnap and destroy your soul - be angry with them. 3) But at the same time, do not forget to appeal to our Helper, the Lord Jesus Christ, for help, protection and strengthening of your good will, for without Him we cannot have success in anything. 4) These three internal actions, sincerely reproduced in the soul, will always give you victory over evil movements. But this is only driving away enemies. If you want to strike them in the very heart, for this now, if it is convenient, do something opposite to what the passionate movement inspired, and if possible, do it always. This last will finally completely free you from the appearance of the attacks you have experienced. Let's illustrate this with an example. Suppose that someone insulted you with something, big or small, and you began to feel movements of displeasure and irritation with the suggestion to retaliate. Pay attention to yourself and hasten to realize that these movements want to entice you not for good; therefore, take the pose of a warrior and defend yourself: 1) Stop these movements, do not allow them to move further inward, and do not allow your will to take their side as if it were the right one. It will be to resist them. 2) But they are all standing in sight, ready to attack again; Therefore, rise up hostility against them, as against enemies, and be angry with them, out of a sense of self-preservation, while you can sincerely say: “I have hated and detested injustice” (Ps. 119:163) or: “I have hated with complete hatred: I have become enemies” (Ps. 138:22). This is a strong blow to them, and they will move away, but will not disappear. 3) Cry out to the Lord: “God, come to my help; Lord, strive for my help” (Ps. 69:2). And do not stop crying until there is no trace of enemy movements left, and peace is established in the soul. 4) Having made peace in this way, do something to the person who offended you, something that would show your peace and goodwill towards him - a friendly word, a favor at hand, etc. This will be the fulfillment of what the saint commands. David: “turn away from evil and do good” (Ps. 33:15). This kind of action directly leads to the habit of virtue, the opposite of those passionate movements that confused, and this skill is defeating them in the heart or killing them. Try to prevent or accompany this kind of action, or conclude with such an internal decision that would forever make such passionate movements impossible, precisely in the proposed example, considering yourself worthy of any insult, create in yourself a desire for insult and all kinds of unjustifications, love them and become ready to joyfully meet and accept them, as the most salutary medicine. In other cases, try to arouse and confirm feelings and dispositions within yourself. This is what will happen - to expel passion from the heart and replace it with the opposite virtue, which is the goal of invisible warfare. I will offer you general instructions for all cases according to the guidance of the holy fathers. We have three parts or forces in our soul: mental, desirable and irritable. From these three forces, due to their damage, three types of wrong thoughts and movements are born. From mental strength thoughts are born: ingratitude to God and grumbling, forgetfulness of God, ignorance of divine things, recklessness, all kinds of blasphemous thoughts. From the force of desire, thoughts of voluptuousness, love of fame, love of money are born with all their numerous modifications that make up the area of ​​self-indulgence. From the power of irritability are born thoughts of anger, hatred, envy, revenge, gloating, malice and all evil thoughts in general. You should overcome all such thoughts and movements with the methods shown, trying each time to raise and plant in your heart the good feelings and dispositions that are opposite to them: instead of unbelief - undoubted faith in God, instead of grumbling - sincere thanksgiving to God for everything, instead of forgetfulness of God - an unceasing deep memory of the omnipresent and all-containing God, instead of ignorance - clear contemplation or going over in the mind of all saving truths Christian, instead of irrationality - feelings trained in the reasoning of good and evil, instead of all blasphemous thoughts - Praise and glorification of God; in the same way, instead of voluptuousness - all abstinence, fasting and self-mortification, instead of love of glory - humility and thirst for obscurity, instead of love of money - contentment with little and love of poverty; also, instead of anger - meekness, instead of hatred - love, instead of envy - rejoicing, instead of vengeance - forgiveness and peace, instead of gloating - compassion, instead of malice - goodwill. Let me briefly combine all this with St. Maxim in the following provisions: decorate your mental strength with unceasing attention to God, prayer and knowledge of Divine truths, desirable strength - with complete self-sacrifice and renunciation of all self-indulgence, irritable strength - with love; and, my word is true, the light of your mind will never be darkened in you, and the spoken evil thoughts will not be able to find a place in you. If you spontaneously restore in yourself in the morning, evening and at other times of the day the number of good feelings and dispositions, then invisible enemies will not approach you, for in this case you will be like a commander who constantly inspects his militia and organizes it into battle formation, and it is inconvenient to attack such a person - the enemies know this. Pay more attention to the last point - on actions that are opposite to those to which passionate thoughts lead, and on planting in the heart feelings and dispositions that are opposite to passions. Only in this way can you eradicate passions in yourself and become in a safer position. For as long as the roots of the passions remain inside, they will always produce their own creations and with them cloud the face of the virtues, and sometimes completely cover and crowd out. In such cases, we are subject to the danger of falling again into previous sins and ruining all our labors. Know this because you should not only use this last technique once, but you must use it often, repeatedly, continuously, until you break, upset and destroy the passionate habit against which you are arming yourself; for just as this skill took power over the heart by frequent repetition of certain actions to satisfy the passion living in it, so, on the contrary, in order to weaken and destroy such power, it is necessary, in addition to its heartfelt reflection, to use actions that are opposite to the previous ones, contrary to the passion that beats and defeats it. Their frequency will drive away the passionate habit, kill the passion moving in it and root in the heart the opposite virtue and the habit of doing things corresponding to it. At the same time, I will not explain much to you, since it is self-evident that in order to acquire good habits it is necessary to do more good deeds than to acquire bad habits, bad deeds were required, because bad habits are more likely to take root, having sin or self-indulgence living within us as an assistant and accomplice. Therefore, no matter how difficult and inconvenient such actions that are contrary to your passion may seem to you, either because of the weakness of your good will, or because of the resistance of your passionate, self-indulgent will, you should never abandon them, but force yourself to do them in every possible way. They may be imperfect at first, but in every possible way they will support your firmness and courage in battle and smooth your path to victory. I will also add: stand cheerfully and, having gathered all your attention, fight courageously - and fight not only with the great and strong, but also with the small and light movements of each of your passions. Because small things open the way for great ones, especially when they become a habit. Experience has more than once confirmed that when someone pays little attention and care to reflecting small passionate desires from the heart, after having already overcome the great ones, then such a person is subjected to sudden and unexpected attacks from enemies, and so strong that he does not resist the struggle and falls even more bitterly than his previous falls. I remind you, in addition, that you need to cut off and kill all addiction to things, although permissible, but not necessary, as soon as you notice that they weaken the tension of your good will, distract attention to yourself and upset the order of pious life you have established, such as: walks, evenings, conversations, acquaintances, table, sleep and the like. You will receive a lot of good from this - you will prepare to conquer yourself in everything else, you will become stronger and more experienced in the fight against temptations, you will escape many, many snares of the devil, who knows how to spread them among these innocent paths, and, I assure you, you will do deeds that are not displeasing to God. So, beloved, if you follow my instructions and cheerfully enter into the above-mentioned holy deeds, then rest assured that in a short time you will succeed and become spiritual in truth and in deed itself, and not falsely and only in name. But know that self-resistance and self-coercion here are an urgent law that excludes any self-pleasure, even in the spiritual order of life. If you mix in here or exclusively choose activities that are only pleasant, although from a spiritual order, then you will spoil your entire work, you will work, but you will not receive real fruit, you will only receive empty flowers and will not truly and firmly establish yourself in anything spiritual. It will seem that you have something spiritual, but in reality you will not have it. For everything truly spiritual is produced by the grace of the Holy Spirit; This grace dwells only in those who crucified themselves in suffering and arbitrary deprivation without any self-pity and through this were united with the Lord our Savior, who was crucified for them. Chapter 14. What to do when the highest rational will seems completely defeated by the lower will and enemies If sometimes you feel such a strong uprising of sin that it seems to you as if you cannot resist it and as if your very zealous zeal to resist it has dried up, then see, my brother, do not give up, but rise up and stand firm. This is an enemy trick, with the thought of hopelessness to resist, to undermine the opposition itself and force, laying down all weapons, to surrender into the hands of the enemies. Then bring to mind this intrigue of the enemy more clearly and do not give in. For until you voluntarily bend to passionate attraction, you are among the victors, reflectors and destroyers of the enemy, even if even your sympathy has already gone to the side of passion. No one and nothing can force your will or, against your will, snatch victory from your hands and overthrow you, no matter how strong and fierce the battle the enemies of your salvation raise in you. God has given our free will such power that even if all the feelings inherent in man, the whole world and all the demons armed themselves against him and entered into battle with him, they cannot force him; on his side there will always remain the freedom to desire what is offered and demanded by them, if he wants, and not to desire it, if he does not want. For this reason, it is responsible for everything and is subject to trial. Remember this well, that no matter how relaxed you may seem to yourself, you cannot at all excuse yourself if you are inclined towards passionate attraction. Your conscience will tell you this too. Get ready to resist the more zealously, the stronger the fall, and never back down from such a decision, in any such case, proclaiming within yourself the commanding words of one of our commanders-in-chief to us: “stand... take courage, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). Keeping your will in this way unyielding to sinful impulses and standing on the side of the demands of the higher will, put your spiritual weapons into action one after another. The main one is prayer. Inspire yourself with it, saying to yourself: “The Lord is my enlightenment and my Savior, whom will I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, from whom shall I fear? Even if a regiment turns against me, my heart will not fear; If battle arises against me, I will trust in Him” (Ps. 26:1,3). “I do not trust in my bow, and my sword will not save me: I will praise God all day long, and I will confess His name forever” (Ps. 43:7,9). “But I will not fear your fear, enemies; I will be confused. The Lord of hosts, I will sanctify Him, and He will be your fear for me. I will trust in Him, and He will be my sanctification. Even if ... you are able, you will still be victorious: and even if you take counsel, the Lord will destroy you, and the word that you speak will not abide in you” (Is. 8:12–14, 9, 10). Inspired by this, do the same thing that a warrior who is heavily pressed by the enemy sometimes does in visible battle: the warrior jumps back a little in order to choose the best point and take a closer look at how it is more convenient to shoot an arrow into the enemy’s heart; But you, having gathered your thoughts inside and restored the consciousness and feeling of your insignificance and weakness to do what is due at this time, resort to Almighty God and with warm hope and tears call on Him for help against the passion that is fighting you, saying: “Rise up, Lord, help me and deliver me for Your name’s sake” (Ps. 43:27). “Overcome, my Jesus, those who fight me, take up weapons and shields and arise to help me: Let those who seek my soul be ashamed and put to shame, let those who think evil of me turn back and be ashamed” (Ps. 34: 1, 2, 4). Lady Theotokos, do not allow me to give in to my enemies and be defeated by them. My guardian angel, with the blood of your wings protect me from the enemy’s arrows and with your sword strike and drive them away from me. Be patient with such appeals and you will see immediate help. However, pay closer attention to yourself. The enemy knows the power of such appeals to God and is in a hurry to forestall them or to frustrate them with the senseless grumbling they arouse against God, why did He allow one to be subjected to such an enemy attack and such a danger of falling, so that through this the appeals would be prevented or stopped, and made unworthy of God’s help. As soon as you notice such an ungodly movement, hasten to restore that sincere and true conviction that “God... tempts... no one” and that “everyone is tempted, through his own lust he attracts and deceives” (James 1, 13, 14). Then delve into your previous deeds, feelings and thoughts and you will find that from them arose the internal one that brought you into a dangerous situation. storm. The enemy slandered God, and covered up your mistakes. You must, by faith, justify God in yourself and by reasoning remove the enemy’s flattering cover from yourself, expose yourself to self-indulgence and inattention, and, in repentance, confessing this inner sin before God, return to appeals, as indicated, which will return to you God’s help, always ready in such special cases. After this, when the internal storm subsides, the struggle should proceed according to the general rules of invisible warfare, which have already been partly discussed. Chapter 15. That the battle must be waged incessantly and courageously If you want to defeat your enemies as quickly and easily as possible, it is necessary for you, brother, to wage war against all your passions constantly and courageously, especially and predominantly against self-love or unreasonable self-love in self-indulgence and self-pity, because it serves as the basis and source of all passions, and that it cannot be tamed otherwise than by constant arbitrary self-harm and a loving encounter of sorrows, deprivations, vain, oppression from the world and worldly. Losing sight of this ruthless attitude towards oneself was, is and will always be the reason for the futility of our spiritual victories, their difficulty, rarity, imperfection and fragility. So, this spiritual warfare of ours must be constant and unceasing and must be waged with spiritual vigor and courage, which you can easily acquire if you seek it from God. Go out into this battle without hesitation. If a confusing thought comes about the rage and unceasing malice that your enemies - demons - harbor against you, and about the many multitudes of their hordes, then, on the other hand, think about the infinitely great power of God and about His love for you, as well as about the incomparably greater multitude of heavenly angels and the prayers of the saints. All of them do not clearly fight for us with us against our enemies, as it is written regarding Amalek: “For the Lord fights against Amalek with a secret hand” (Ex. 17:16). How many weak wives and how many young children were inspired to fight by the thought of such powerful and everywhere-ready help! And they prevailed and defeated all the wisdom of the world, all the machinations of the enemy the devil and all the malice of hell. Therefore, you should never be afraid when an influx of thoughts begins to bother you, that the warfare of your enemies against you is too strong, that there is no end to it and that it will last your whole life, that you cannot avoid falling and repeating them many times and in various ways. Know that our enemies with all their machinations are in the hands of our Divine Archangel, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose honor and glory you are fighting. As He Himself leads you into battle, He will, of course, not only not allow your enemies to do violence to you and defeat you, if you yourself do not go over to their side by your own will, but He Himself will fight for you and deliver your enemies into your hands defeated, when and how it pleases Him, as it is written: “The Lord your God walks in your army, to deliver you and to present your enemies in your hand” ( Deut. 23, 14). If the Lord hesitates to give you complete victory over your enemies and postpones this until the last day of your life, then know that this will do great things for your own good; Just don’t retreat and don’t stop fighting wholeheartedly. Even if you get wounded sometimes, don’t lay down your arms and don’t take flight. Have one thing in mind and intention - to fight with all the enthusiasm and courage, because this is inevitable. There is no person who has escaped this battle, whether in life or in death. And whoever does not wage war to defeat his passions and enemies will inevitably be captured, whether here or there, and put to death. It is not useless for you to keep in mind the purpose for which God is pleased to leave us in such a military situation. And that's what this is for. As in ancient times, God, leading Israel into the Promised Land, did not order all those who lived there to destroy the nations, but left in place five tribes alien and hostile to Israel: firstly, in order to test whether the chosen people firmly believed in Him and faithfully fulfilled His commandments, and secondly, in order to teach His people the art of warfare (Judges 2, 21–23, 3:1–2) - so He does not suddenly destroy all our passions, but leaves them in us so that they fight with us until death, for the same purpose, namely, to test our love for Him and submission to His will and teach us spiritual warfare. Blessed Theodoret explains this in more detail. “God,” he says, “does this in order: a) so that we do not indulge in carelessness and negligence, but are vigilant, diligent and attentive; b) so that we do not forget about the always ready attack on us and are not suddenly surrounded by enemies and overcome by passions; c) so that we always remain resorting to God and seeking and waiting for help from Him; d) so that they do not be proud, but humbly think about themselves; e) so that we learn to hate from the heart the passions and enemies who so tirelessly attack us; f) to test whether we preserve God’s honor, love and faith to the end; g) to encourage us to more accurately fulfill all the commandments of God and not transgress even the smallest ones; h) to actually know how valuable virtue is, and therefore not agree to abandon it and fall in sin; i) so that constant warfare gives us the opportunity to win greater and greater crowns; j) to glorify God, but most of all to shame the devil and sin with your patience to the end; k) so that, having become accustomed to warfare throughout life, we will not be afraid of it at the hour of death, when the most severe warfare will be against us.” Thus, being always surrounded by so many and such enemies, who hate us so viciously, we cannot expect from them either peace, truce, suppression, or postponement of battle, but at every moment we must be ready for battle and immediately courageously enter into it as soon as our enemies open it. Of course, it would be better if we first did not open the doors of our nature and did not let enemies and passions inside us, into our soul and heart; but after they have once made their way into us, there is no need for us to indulge in carelessness, but we must arm ourselves against them in order to drive them out of ourselves. They are shameless and stubborn and will not come out unless they are driven out with abuse. Chapter 16. How a soldier of Christ should prepare himself for battle in the morning As soon as you wake up in the morning and pray a little, saying: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the first thing you should do is to imprison yourself, as if in some place or disgrace, in your own heart. Having established yourself here, then raise yourself to the consciousness and feeling that that enemy of yours and that passionate attraction with which you are at that time in a struggle are already standing at your back, ready to immediately attack you, and as a result, restore within yourself the determination to either win or die, but not to give in; Realize also that at your right hand, invisibly standing before you is your victorious Archangel, our Lord Jesus Christ, with His Most Holy Mother, and many holy Angels, with Archangel Michael at their head, ready to help you, and as a result, be inspired by good faith. Now the prince of the underworld, the devil, with his hordes of demons, will rise up against you and begin to kindle a passionate attraction in you, persuading you with various flattering promises for your self-indulgence to stop fighting this passion and submit to it, assuring that it will be better and more peaceful this way. But listen to yourself - at the same time, you should hear from the right hand of the country a warning and inspiring voice, which your guardian angel on behalf of all who are on your right hand will not fail to instill in you, saying: “Now you have to fight with your passion and your other enemies. Do not be afraid and do not be afraid and do not run away from the battlefield from this fear. For the Lord Jesus Himself, your Archangel, stands nearby, surrounded by the leaders of thousands and the leaders of hundreds of the Ethereal Ones and all the hosts of holy Angels, ready to fight you against your enemies and not allow them to overcome you and defeat you, as promised: “The Lord will fight for you” (Ex. 14:14).” Therefore, stand firm, force yourself not to give in and strain in every possible way to endure this test that has come upon you, crying out from the depths of your heart: “Do not betray me into the souls of those who afflict me” (Ps. 26:12). Call on your Lord, on the Lady Theotokos, on all the Angels and saints. Help will come and you will win, for it is written: “I am writing to you, young men, encouraged and zealous warriors, because you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:13). Even though you are weak and bound by bad skills and your enemies are strong and numerous, but much greater help is ready for you from the One who created you and redeemed you, and God is your Defender in this battle, incomparably stronger than anyone, as it is written: “The Lord is strong and mighty, the Lord is mighty in battle” (Ps. 23:8), Who, moreover, has a greater desire to save you than your enemy to destroy you. So, fight and never be burdened by labor from this battle. For through this labor, self-needing and merciless, despite the pain, tearing oneself away from vicious habits, victory is acquired and a great treasure is acquired with which the Kingdom of Heaven is bought and for the sake of which the soul is forever united with God. So, every day in the morning, in the name of God, begin the struggle with your enemies, with the weapon of non-reliance on yourself and daring hope in God, prayer and merciless forcing yourself to perform appropriate labors and spiritual deeds, especially with the weapon of mental-heart prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me! This name is terrible, like a two-edged sword, when rotated in the heart, it strikes and drives away demons and passions. Therefore, John Climacus said: “In the name of the Lord Jesus, scourge your adversaries.” We will talk about this prayer below in a special chapter. With this weapon, I say, defeat that enemy, that passion and that evil attraction that is fighting, in the order that I indicated in the 13th chapter, namely, first by resisting the passion, then by hating it and, finally, by deeds of virtue that is contrary to it, doing all this, let’s say, in a prayerful atmosphere. By acting in this way, you will do a work pleasing to your God, who, with all the triumphant Church in Heaven, stands invisibly and looks at your struggle. Such struggle is difficult and tedious, do not grieve and do not give up, thinking that, on the one hand, we have a duty to work and please our God, on the other, that, as was said above, we inevitably need to struggle if we want to live, because as soon as we stop fighting, we will immediately be struck to death. Let not the enemy seduce you with the suggestion: “Just give in for an hour.” Let it be for an hour. But who will you become if you retreat from life according to God and indulge in the world and its pleasures and carnal pleasures? It’s scary to become an apostate, not only for an hour, but also for an instant. Besides, is it common for this to happen for an hour? Wouldn’t it be even worse if hour after hour, and then days after days and years after years, flows by in this godless life? What next? If the Lord has mercy on you and allows you to wake up again, to emerge from this devil’s snare and awaken from the sleep of sin, you will still have to enter into the struggle from which you will now run away, seeking a preferential life, with the only difference that then it will be incomparably harder, sharper and more painful for you, and also less successful. If the Lord leaves you in the hands of your will and your enemies, what then? I won’t repeat it, I’ll just say: remember, for who doesn’t know this? After living in the tormenting bonds of evil passions, sometimes in the intoxication of sensuality, but always without true joys, the hour of death will suddenly be experienced, a terribly painful state of the soul, which even the word of God could not depict, but only said: then they will cry: “mountains... fall on us” (Apoc. 6:16). This cry, beginning at the hour of death, will silently continue throughout the entire time after death until the end of the world and will be heard at the moment of the Last Judgment, and it is always useless. Do not be so crazy as to deliberately throw yourself into eternal hellish torment, fleeing from momentary ascetic labors and struggles. But as a reasonable and, I will say, prudent person, it is better now to endure the short labors and pains of spiritual warfare, so that, having defeated those who fight, you will receive a crown and be in unity with God both here and there. Kingdom of Heaven. Chapter 17. In what order should we overcome our passions? It is very useful for you, my brother, to know well in what order you should overcome your passions, in order to do this properly, and not just haphazardly, as some do and have little success, and often suffer harm. The order in which you need to fight your enemies and overcome your evil desires and passions is the following: enter your heart with attention and carefully examine with what thoughts, what dispositions and predilections it is especially occupied and what passion most dominates and tyrannizes over it; then, first of all, take up arms against this passion and try to overcome it. Concentrate all your attention and care on this, with only one exception: when another passion arises by chance, then you should immediately take care of it and drive it away, and then again turn your weapon against your main passion, which constantly shows its presence and power. For as in any struggle, so in our invisible one, we must fight against what we are fighting at the present moment. Chapter 18. How to overcome suddenly rising movements of passions If you, my beloved, are not yet accustomed to overcoming sudden movements and arousals of passions due to, for example, insults or other meetings, I advise you to do this: make it a law for yourself, every day when you are still sitting at home, to review all the cases that may encounter you during the day, favorable and unfavorable, and what passionate movements, lusts and irritations may arise in you as a result - and prepare in advance how to suppress them at their very origin, without letting them go. By acting in this way, you will never be suddenly caught by any movements of passions, but you will always be ready to repel them and you will be able to neither be embarrassed by anger nor carried away by lust. This kind of viewing of accidents should be done especially when you intend to leave the yard and go to places where you will meet with individuals who can either attract or irritate you. Once prepared, you can easily avoid both. A wave of passion, even if it rises, will roll over you or break against you like a solid stone, and will not toss you around like a light boat. May St. assure you of this regarding the wrath of St. the prophet David, saying: “Let us be prepared and not dismayed” (Ps. 119:60). But not everything has already been done with this preparation. The excitement of passion can still arise and also unexpectedly. In this case, here’s what to do: as soon as you feel a passionate movement, lustful or irritable, hasten to curb it with the effort of will, descend into the heart with the attention of the mind and try in every possible way not to let it reach the heart and take care that it is not irritated by what irritates, nor is it attached to what attracts. If it happens to suddenly be born in the heart of one or another, try the first time so that it does not come out, do not reveal it either in a word, or in a glance, or in a movement. Then force yourself to raise your mind and your heart to God and, having reproduced in yourself a clear consciousness and feeling of both God’s boundless love and His impartial truth, try to repress the passionate movement with both, and restore the good opposite to it. At the upcoming meeting, it may be inconvenient to do this completely properly, but in every possible way do not abandon the intention and tension to do it. Even if it is unsuccessful now, you will finish it later when the passionate meeting stops. Take immediate care of the same thing so as not to detect the emerging passion. And this will prevent her from moving forward. But as soon as you free yourself from the unkind influx of impressions, hurry to your heart and try to throw out the reptile that has crept in there. But the best and most effective protection against sudden arousal of passions is the elimination of the causes from which such movements always occur. There are two reasons for everything: love and hatred. If you, my beloved, are captivated by love for any person or are partial to any thing, large or small, then it is natural that when you meet them or when you see that they are insulted and harmed, or they want to distract and steal from you, you immediately become indignant at that, grieve, rebel and rebel against those who do this. Therefore, if you want this kind of sudden anxiety not to happen to you, take care to overcome and purge from your heart such unkind love and such unkind passion, and the further you go in one and the other, the more care you take to be indifferent and to treat things and persons rationally, for the stronger your love and passion, the more violent and sudden the arousal of passion in all these cases. Equally, if you have hostility towards any person or aversion to any thing, then just as naturally you suddenly become indignant or disgusted when you meet them, especially when someone praises them. Therefore, if you want to maintain peace of heart in such cases, force yourself this time to suppress the insurgent bad feelings, and then destroy them completely. The following reasoning will help you with this (regarding persons) - that they too are creations of God, created, like you, in the image and likeness of God, by the all-powerful right hand of the living God, that they too were redeemed and recreated by the priceless Blood of Christ the Lord, that they too are your brothers and fellow members, whom you should not hate even with your thoughts, as it is written: “Do not hate your brother in your mind.” yours” (Lev. 19:17); especially when you - let us assume that they are worthy of dislike and hostility - accept them into good disposition and love, then you will become like God, who loves all His creatures and does not disdain anything, as the wise Solomon praises Him: “love... all that exists, and abhor nothing that you have created: lower than hating what you have created” (Wis. 11:25), and Who, despising the sins of men, “His sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Chapter 19. How to overcome carnal passions? Carnal passions, my brother, must be fought in a special way than others. So that this goes in the proper order for you, know that you should do something else before being tempted by these passions, something else during the temptation, and something else after it ceases. Before temptation, your attention should be drawn to the reasons that usually serve as a reason for generating temptation or arousing passion. Here is the law: avoid in every possible way all cases that could disturb the peace of your flesh, and especially meeting people of the opposite sex. And if sometimes there is a need to talk with some such person, talk for a short time, observing not only modesty, but also a certain severity in your face, and let your words, despite all the friendliness, be more restrained than favorable. “They shall not give faith to your enemy forever,” says the wise Sirach. And never trust your body, for just as copper itself gives birth to rust, so the corrupted nature of the body gives birth to evil, lustful movements. “As copper rusts, so does its malice” (Sir. 12:10). Do not believe, I will repeat to you, do not believe in yourself in this regard, although, let’s assume, you do not feel and have not felt this sting of your flesh for so long. Because this three-condemned malice, which has not done for many years, sometimes does in one hour and in an instant, and always silently usually makes its preparations for an attack. And know that the more she pretends to be a friend and does not give the slightest reason for suspicion, the more harm she then causes and often kills. Everyone should also fear especially those persons of the other sex with whom you consider normal interactions in everyday life to be blessed, either because they are related, or because they are pious and virtuous, because you have received a benefit from them and there is a need to express gratitude to them more often for that. One must be afraid of this because such mutual exchange, without fear or attention to oneself, is always almost mixed with a destructive sensual sweetness, which then little by little insensibly penetrates the soul to the very depths and so darkens the mind that those who have been exposed to this infection begin to attribute all sorts of dangerous causes of sin as nothing, such as: passionate glances, sweet speeches on both sides, attractive movements and body positions, handshakes. hands, which is why they finally fall into sin itself and into other devilish snares, from which sometimes they cannot free themselves completely. Run away, my brother, from this fire, because you are gunpowder, and never dare in arrogance to think that you are gunpowder soaked and completely filled with the water of good and strong will. No no! But think more than that, that you are dry, dry gunpowder and will immediately burst into flames as soon as you feel that fire. Do not at all rely on the firmness of your resolve and your willingness to die rather than offend God with sin. For although it can be admitted that you are therefore moistened with gunpowder, but from frequent communication and sitting face to face, the fire of the flesh will little by little dry up the irrigation water of your good will, and you yourself will not notice how you will find yourself flaming with carnal love to such an extent that you will cease to be ashamed of people and fear God and will begin to regard honor, life and all the torments of hell as nothing, striving for committing a sin. When you run, run as hard as you can: 1) From such communication with persons who can serve as a temptation for you, if you sincerely desire not to fall into captivity of sin and not pay its dues, which is spiritual death. The wise Solomon calls the one who fears and avoids the causes of sin the wise one, and the one who, daring a lot about himself, does not presumptuously avoid them, calls him foolish, saying: “The wise man fears and turns away from evil; Isn’t this what the Apostle Paul also pointed out when he commanded the Corinthians: “flee fornication” (1 Cor. 6:18)? 2) Avoid idleness and laziness and stand cheerfully, looking at your thoughts with all your eyes and wisely arranging and conducting your affairs required by your position. 3) Never disobey your superiors and spiritual fathers, but willingly obey them in everything, quickly and readily doing whatever they order, and especially that which is humbling for you and contrary to your will and your inclinations. 4) Never allow yourself to boldly judge your neighbor, do not judge or condemn anyone, and especially for this very carnal sin that we are talking about, even if someone has clearly fallen into it, but have compassion and pity for him; Do not be indignant at him and do not laugh at him, but from his example, take yourself a lesson in humility and, knowing that you yourself are extremely weak and move for worse, like dust on the way, say to yourself: today he has fallen, and tomorrow I will fall. Know that if you are quick to condemn and contempt others, then God will painfully punish you for this, allowing you to fall into the same sin for which you condemn others. “Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1) and you will not be condemned to the same thing, so that from your fall you may learn the destructiveness of your pride and, having humbled yourself, seek healing for two evils: pride and fornication. But if God, by His mercy, protects you from falling and you keep your chaste thoughts invariably firm, you still stop condemning if you did, and do not be arrogant, and even more so, be afraid and do not trust your constancy. 5) Pay attention to yourself and stay alert to yourself. If you have acquired some gift of God or are in a good spiritual state, do not perceive in conceit vain and dreamy thoughts about yourself, as if you are something and that your enemies will not dare to attack you and you hate and despise them so much that you will immediately repel them if they dare to approach you. As soon as you think like that, you will fall easily, like an autumn leaf from a tree. This is what you should observe before being tempted by carnal passion. During the temptation itself, do this: quickly find out the reason that gave rise to the fight, and immediately remove it. The reason for this can be either internal or external. The external reasons for this are: freedom of the eyes, speeches sweet to the ear, songs of the same content and melody, smart clothes made from delicate materials, perfumes fragrant for the sense of smell, free addresses and conversations, touching and shaking hands, dancing and much more. The remedy against all this is: modest and humble attire, unwillingness to see, hear, smell, speak, or touch anything that produces this shameful movement, especially avoidance of contact with persons of the other sex, as stated above. The reason for the internal is, on the one hand, a life in contentment and peace of the flesh, when all bodily desires find complete satisfaction, on the other hand, shameful thoughts that come either by themselves when remembering what has been seen, heard and experienced, or from their arousal by spirits of malice. As for life in complete contentment and peace of the flesh, this must be hardened by fasting, vigils, hard sleep, especially numerous bows to the point of fatigue and other voluntary bodily embarrassments, as our experienced and prudent holy fathers advise and command. And against thoughts, no matter where they come from, the remedy is various spiritual exercises, consistent with your current state and required by it, such as reading holy and soul-saving books, especially St. Ephraim the Syrian, John Climacus, “Philokalia” and other similar ones, pious reflections and prayer. When shameful thoughts begin to attack you, do your prayer like this: immediately raise your mind to the Lord crucified for us and from the depths of your soul cry out to Him: “My Lord Jesus! My sweetest Jesus! Hasten to my aid and do not let my enemy overwhelm me!” At the same time, mentally and sensually, if you are nearby, embrace the life-giving cross on which your Lord was crucified for you, kiss His wounds often and say to them with love: “The reddest wounds, the most holy wounds, the most pure wounds! Puncture this accursed and unclean heart of mine and do not allow me to shame and insult you with my uncleanness.” Let your reflection, while the shameful thoughts of carnal passion multiply in you, not be directed directly against them, even though others advise this; do not undertake to mentally picture before you the impurity and shame of the sins of carnal lust, nor the remorse that will follow, nor the corruption of your nature and the loss of the purity of your virginity, nor the darkening of your honor and other similar things. Don’t try, I say, to think about this, because such thinking is not always a sure way to overcome the temptation of the flesh, but on the contrary, it can serve to intensify the struggle, and sometimes even to a fall. For although the mind will conduct its mental speech in reproach and opposition to this passion, but since the thought, despite this, will still remain on its objects, to which the heart is so indifferent, it is not surprising that while the mind lavishes such strict judgments on such matters, the heart will rejoice in them and agree with them, which is an internal fall. No, it is necessary to talk about such objects that would overshadow these shameful things and completely distract attention from them, but with their content they would have a sobering effect on the heart. Objects of this kind are the life and suffering of the Lord Jesus incarnate for us, the inevitable hour of our death, the trembling day of the Last Judgment and various types of hellish torment. If, as often happens, these shameful thoughts continue to attack you with particular force and uncontrollability, do not be afraid, do not stop thinking about the objects shown before you and do not resort to that method of struggle in order to rebel directly against them, revealing the disapproving sides of them, as was said above. Don’t do this, but continue to reflect as carefully as possible on the frightening and sobering objects shown before you, without worrying in the least about the thoughts of those shameful ones, no matter how much they are your own. Know that there is no better way to drive them away than to show contempt for them and impute nothing to them. Interrupt this reflection more often with this or a similar prayer: “Free me, my Creator and Deliverer, from these enemies of mine, for the glory of Your passion and Your ineffable goodness.” Conclude your reflection with a similar prayer. Take care, do not at all turn the eye of your mind on this carnal uncleanness, since even the mere idea of ​​it is unsafe; and do not stop to talk with these temptations or about this temptation in order to determine whether you agreed to it or not. Such research, although seemingly good, in reality is truly a wiles of the devil, who in this way is trying to either burden you, or plunge you into cowardice and despair, or keep you as long as possible in these thoughts and through them lead you into sin by deed or according to their kind, or in some other way. Instead of any such research about these thoughts that confuse you, go and confess everything in detail to your spiritual father and then remain at peace in your thoughts and in your heart, not bothering yourself with any questions, resting in the decision of your father. Just reveal to him everything that has confused and confuses your mind and your feelings in this temptation, not hiding anything and not allowing shame to tie your tongue, and even more so, humbling yourself in self-humiliation. For if in any struggle with enemies we need deep humility in order to defeat them, how much more do we need it during carnal warfare? Since this temptation itself, for the most part, is either a product of pride, or admonition and punishment for it. That is why St. says. John Climacus, that whoever fell into fornication or some other carnal sin, first of all fell into pride, and that he was allowed to fall into sin so that he would humble himself: “Where the fall took place, there first of all pride was established, for pride is the forerunner of the fall.” And again: “The punishment of the proud is fall” (Sk. 23, 4, 10). When the shameful thoughts finally calm down and the temptation passes, this is what you should do: no matter how it seems to you that you are already free from carnal warfare and no matter how confident you are in this, in every possible way, however, take care to keep your mind and attention far away from those things and persons that were the reason for the rise of such temptation against you; Do not at all indulge the call to see them under the pretext that they are relatives or that you are pious and benefactors; admonish yourself with a reminder that this too is the sinful seduction of our corrupted nature and the network of our all-evil enemy the devil, who here “transforms himself into an angel of light” in order to plunge him into darkness, as St. Paul (2 Cor. 11:14). Chapter 20. How to overcome negligence? In order not to fall into the disastrous evil of negligence, which will stop your progress towards perfection and deliver you into the hands of your enemies, you must avoid all kinds of inquisitiveness (investigating what is there, what is here, idleness, empty talk, glaring), all clinging to anything earthly and all arbitrary doing or doing something I want that is completely inappropriate for your condition, but on the contrary, you should force you in every possible way yourself to willingly and quickly fulfill every good direction and every command of your superiors and spiritual fathers and to do every task at the time and in the manner they desire. Do not hesitate to start any task that you have to do, because the first short delay will lead you to a second, longer one, and the second to a third, even longer one, and so on. As a result, the matter begins too late and is not completed in due time or is completely abandoned as burdensome. Having once tasted the sweetness of not doing, you will begin to love it and desire it more than doing, and by satisfying this desire, you will little by little reach the habit of not doing or laziness, in which the passion of doing nothing will so master you that you will even cease to realize how incongruous and criminal this is; unless, weighed down by this very laziness, you again take up your affairs with all zeal. Then you will see with shame how careless you were before this and how much you missed due tasks for the sake of empty and useless doing whatever you want. This negligence, having begun barely noticeably, penetrates everything and with its poison affects not only the will, instilling in it disgust from all kinds of work and from all spiritual work and obedience, but also blinds the mind, not allowing it to see all the unreasonableness and deceit of thoughts on which such a mood of the will rests, not allowing it to present to consciousness those sound judgments that would be strong to move this slack will as much as possible. quickly and with all diligence to complete the due task, without postponing it until another time. For it is not enough to do things quickly, but each task must be done in its own time, as required by its nature, and with all attention and diligence, so that it appears in possible perfection. Listen to what is written: “Cursed is everyone; do the work of the Lord with carelessness” (Jer. 48:10). And you expose yourself to such misfortune because you are too lazy to think about the dignity and price of the work before you, in order to motivate yourself to do it in due time and with such determination that would dispel all thoughts inspired by laziness about the difficulties associated with it, in order to deviate you from it. Let the conviction not depart from your thoughts that one elevation of the mind to God and one humble kneeling to the glory and honor of God is incomparably more valuable than all the treasures of the world; and that every time, having driven away negligence, we force ourselves to do our due work with diligence, the Angels in heaven are preparing for us a crown of glorious victory; and that, on the contrary, for the careless, not only does God not have crowns, but that He little by little takes back from them those gifts that He had previously given for their diligent service to Him, and finally, He will deprive them of His Kingdom if they remain in negligence, as in the parable of those who were called to the evening and were too lazy to come, He said: “I say to you, that not a single man of those who were called will taste My supper” (Lk. 14, 24). Such is the fate of the careless; For those who are thorough and force themselves without self-pity to do every good deed, the Lord multiplies His grace-filled gifts here and prepares an ever-blessed life in His Heavenly Kingdom, as He said: “The Kingdom of God is in need, and the needy women delight it” (Matthew 11:12). If an evil thought, trying to plunge you into negligence, begins to imagine to you that in order to acquire the virtue that you loved and desired to have, it is inevitable that you will undertake the greatest work, and for many days at that, that your enemies are strong and numerous, and you are alone and weak, that you must do a lot, and, moreover, great deeds, in order to achieve such a goal, if, I say, the thought of negligence begins to imagine all this to you, do not listen to it; on the contrary, imagine the matter in this way: that, of course, you need to do things, but not much, that the work you have to do is very small and not for many days, that you will meet enemies, but not many, but only one, and this one, although against you alone, would be strong, but with the help of God, which is always inherent in you for the sake of your great hope in it, you are incomparably stronger than him. If you do this, then negligence will begin to recede from you, but instead, under the influence of good thoughts and feelings, little by little jealousy will begin to enter into you, careful about everything that should be done and will finally take possession of all the forces of your soul and body. Do the same in relation to prayer. If, for example, an hour of prayerful labor is required to perform any part of the service, and it seems difficult for your laziness, then when you start this, do not think that you will have to stand for an hour, but imagine that it will last a quarter of an hour, and you will quietly stand, praying for this quarter; Having stood for this, say to yourself: let’s stand for another quarter, it’s not much, as you can see; then do the same for the third and fourth quarters; and in this way you will finish this work of prayer service, without noticing the difficulties and burdens. If sometimes during this you happen to feel such a burden that it interferes with the prayer itself, then leave the prayer for a while and then again, after a little, take up it and finish the unfinished. Do the same in relation to handicrafts and to the works of your obedience. It will seem to you that there are many such cases, you are restless and ready to give up. But don’t think about this multitude of things, but reluctantly take on the first task and do it with all diligence, as if there were no others at all, and you will do it calmly; then do the same in relation to other matters and you will redo everything calmly, without confusion or fuss. Do the same in everything and know that if you do not take hold of your reason and do not begin to overcome the feelings of difficulty and burdensomeness that the enemy presents to you from the duties that are set before you, then negligence will finally overcome you completely, so that not only when any work is set before you, but also when it is still far ahead of you, you will feel as if you have a mountain on your shoulders, you will be burdened by it and tormented, like slaves in hopeless bondage. So even during your time of rest you will not have peace, and without work you will feel burdened with things to do. Know also, my child, that this disease of laziness and negligence, with its poison, invisibly little by little, corrupts not only the initial and still small roots from which virtuous habits could grow over time, but also those that have long since deepened and serve as the basis of all orders of a good life. Just as a worm little by little wears away a tree, so, as it continues, it insensibly consumes and destroys the very nerves of spiritual life. Through it, the devil knows how to spread snares and snares of temptation for every person, which with special care and crafty cunning he tries to arrange for those who are zealous for spiritual life, knowing that the lazy and careless easily succumb to lust and fall, as it is written: “In lust is everyone who is idle” (Proverbs 13:4). Be always vigilant, pray and strive for good, as befits a courageous fighter: “for the hands of the courageous are diligent” (Proverbs 13:4). Do not sit idly by, postponing sewing yourself a wedding tunic until the moment when you need to go out in full adornment to meet the coming Bridegroom, Christ the Lord. Remind yourself every day that “today” is in our hands, and “tomorrow” is in the hands of God, and that He who gave you the morning did not bind Himself through this with a promise that He would also give the evening. Therefore, do not listen to the devil when he whispers to you: give me “today,” and give it to God “tomorrow.” No no; Spend all the hours of your life in such a way that it is pleasing to God, keep in mind that after this hour you will not be given another and that for every minute of this hour you will have to give the most detailed account. Remember that there is no price for the time that you have in your hands, and that if you waste it, the hour will come when you will seek it and will not find it. Consider the day lost on which, although you did good deeds, you did not overcome your bad inclinations and desires. I finish my lessons to you about this by repeating the apostolic commandment: “always fight the good fight” (1 Tim. 6:12). For it often happened that one hour of zealous labor acquired paradise, just as, on the contrary, one hour of negligence deprived it. Be diligent if you want to testify how firm the hope of your salvation is before God. “Whoever trusts in the Lord will be diligent” (Proverbs 28:25). Chapter 21. On the management and good use of external senses A thoughtful and continuous feat for zealots of piety should be strict management and good direction of the use of our external five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Our heart constantly thirsts and seeks comforts and pleasures. He should find them in an internal order, containing and carrying within himself the One in whose image man was created, the very source of all consolation. But when in our fall we fell away from God for our own sake, we could not restrain ourselves, but fell into the flesh, through it we went outside and there we began to seek joy and comfort for ourselves. Our feelings have become guides and leaders in this. Through them, the soul goes outward, tastes things that are subject to the test of each sense, and with those that delight these feelings, it delights itself and, from the totality of them, composes for itself a circle of joys and pleasures, in the tasting of which it places its first good. The order has thus become perverted: instead of God within, the heart seeks pleasures outside and is content with them. Those who have listened to the voice of God: “repent” (Matthew 3:2), repent and consider it a law to restore within themselves the original order of life, that is, to return from without to inside and from within to God, so as to live in Him and by Him, and in this have their first good and carry within themselves a source of consolation. The restoration of such order, although perceived with a strong desire and firm determination, is not achieved suddenly. Anyone who has decided to do this will have to endure the long labor of struggling with the former skills of comforting, delighting, and pleasing himself until they fall away and are replaced by others, according to the type of new life. And this is where control and use of external senses are of great importance. Each sense has its own circle of objects, pleasant and unpleasant. The soul delights in pleasant things and, having become accustomed to this, forms within itself a lust for them. From each feeling, several lusts, or inclinations and addictions, are thus introduced into the soul. They all lie hidden in the soul and are silent when there is no reason to excite them. They are sometimes excited by thoughts about their objects, but most importantly and most powerfully if their objects are presented to the senses and are experienced by them. In this case, lust for them rises uncontrollably, and in the one who has not yet decided not to succumb to it, “it gives birth to sin, and the sin committed gives birth to death” (James 1:15), and the prophetic word is fulfilled on him: “there is no death through your windows” (Jer. 9:21), that is, through feelings, which are the windows of the soul for communication with the outside world, - and in the one who decided, he raises a fight, not safe from falling. Therefore, for this latter, it should be an urgent law to manage and use the feelings so that through them sensual lusts are not aroused, but, on the contrary, such impressions are obtained that would suppress them and arouse feelings opposite to them. You see, brother, what danger your feelings can put you in. Pay attention to yourself and manage to prevent it. Try in every possible way not to let them wander here and there as they please, and do not turn them into eating only sensual pleasures, but, on the contrary, turn them to what is good or useful or necessary. And if hitherto sometimes your feelings broke through to sensual pleasures, then from now on strive in every possible way to curb them and bring them back from hobbies. Manage them well, so that where before they were enslaved by vain and soul-harming pleasures, there after this they receive spiritually beneficial impressions from every creature and every object and bring them into the soul. Such impressions, reviving spiritual thoughts in the soul, will gather it into itself, and on the wings of mental contemplation will lift it to the sight of God and His praise, as Blessed Augustine says: “No matter how many creatures there are in the world, they all carry on a conversation with pious men, in a dumb language, it is true, and silent, but nevertheless multi-effective and for them convenient in thought and easily understood; This is why they perceive good and reverent thoughts and are moved towards the most ardent love for God.” You can do this as follows. When any sensory object is presented to your external senses, whether visible or audible, or smelled, or tasted, or touched, separate in your thoughts what is sensual and material in it from what is in it from the creative Spirit of God, and think that it is impossible for it to have its existence from itself and everything else that is in it, but that all this is in it the work of God, Who is invisible by His power gives him this being and this good quality, and beauty, and a wise structure, and this power to act on others, and this strength to receive influence from them, and everything else that is good in him. Then transfer such thoughts to all other visible things and rejoice in your heart that God alone is the cause and beginning of such diverse, so great and so wondrous perfections revealed in creatures - that He Himself immeasurably combines in Himself all kinds of perfections and that these perfections, visible in creatures, are nothing more than a weak reflection and shadow of God’s boundless perfections. Exercise your mind with such thoughts at the sight of every creature, and you will get used to, looking at visible things, not focusing on their appearance alone, but penetrating inside, to what is divine in them, to their invisible, hidden, speculative beauty. As a result of this, everything that is externally attractive to your sensual side will pass your attention and feeling without a trace, and only their internal content will take possession of your mind, stimulating and nourishing spiritual contemplations in it and moving you to glorify the Lord. So, looking at the four elements - fire, air, water and earth, thinking about their being, strength and action, in great spiritual consolation you will then cry out to their Supreme Creator, who arranged them this way: “Great God, immeasurable Power and exalted Action! I rejoice and am glad that You alone are the beginning and cause of every created essence, power and action!” Looking at the sky and the celestial bodies of light: the sun, the moon and the stars, and thinking that they received their light and their splendor from God, you will exclaim: “Light, brighter than any light, from Whom every light, material and immaterial, was created. Wonderful Light, the first object of joy of the Angels and the rapture of the blessed, in the unwavering contemplation of Which the eyes are immersed in amazement. Cherubim and in comparison with Whom all sensual lights seem like deep darkness! I glorify and exalt You, True Light, who enlightens every person coming into the world! Grant me the gift of always seeing You intelligently, so that my heart may rejoice with complete joy!” Also, looking at trees, grass and other various plants, and in vain with the mind, how they live, feed, grow and reflect from themselves what is similar to themselves, and that it is not from themselves that they have life and everything else that is in them, but from the creative Spirit, Whom you do not see and Who alone gives them life, you can cry out: “This is where the true life is, from Which, in Which and by Which everything lives, is nourished and multiplies! O life-giving Delight of my heart!” In the same way, when looking at irrational animals, you can ascend with your mind to God, who gave them feelings and the power to move from place to place, and say: “O first Mover of all things, Who, setting everything in motion, remains motionless in Himself! How I rejoice and rejoice in this Your mobility and Your steadfast identity!” Looking at yourself or at other people and thinking that you alone have been given a high position, that you alone of all living creatures on earth are gifted with reason and serve as the point of unity and union of material and immaterial creatures, move to glorify and give thanks to your Creator and God and say: “O subsisting Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Soul! May you be blessed forever! How much must I always thank You, not only for the fact that You created me from the earth and made me king over all unearthly creatures, not only for the fact that You naturally honored me with Your image, mind, word, living body, but most of all for the fact that you gave me the power, by my free will, to become like You through virtues, so that through this I could eternally have You in myself and bliss in You! I now turn to each of the five senses in particular and tell you: seeing the beauty and beauty of creatures, separate with your mind what you see from their spiritual meaning, which you do not see, and, thinking that all this beautiful beauty, externally visible, is the work of the invisible and most beautiful creative Spirit, in Whom is the cause of all such external beauty, say, being filled with joy: “Behold, abundant streams from an uncreated source! Behold the all-irrigating rain from the boundless sea of ​​all good things! How joyful I am in the depths of my heart, thinking about the indescribable beauty of my Creator, the beginning and reason of all created beauty! I am filled with what spiritual sweetness when I keep in my mind the thought of the unspeakable and unthinkable beauty of my God, in which is the beginning of all beauty!” When you hear any pleasant voice or harmony of such voices and singing, turn your mind to God and say: “Harmony of harmonies, my Lord! How I rejoice over Your boundless perfections, which all, concentrated in You in supernatural harmony and then reflected in the hosts of Angels in heaven and in countless creatures under heaven, form one unimaginably harmonious symphony! And again: “When my hour comes, O Lord, for me to hear with the ears of my heart Your sweetest voice, saying: My peace I give to you - peace from passions! “For Your voice is sweet,” as the bride sings in the Song of Songs” (Song 2:14)! If you happen to smell some myrrh or the color of an incense, move your thoughts from this external fragrance to the innermost fragrance of the Holy Spirit and say: “Behold the scent of the color of this all-fragrant and inexhaustible Myrrh, which was poured out on all of God’s creation, as it is sung in the Song of Songs: “I am the flower of the field and the flower of the earth” (Song. 2, 1 ), - and again: “Your name poured out in peace” (Song. 1, 2). Behold the spread of the source fragrance, which richly exudes its divine rest on everything, from the highest pure Angels to the last creatures, and everything is fragrant.” So Isaac once, smelling the stench of his Jacob, said: “Behold, the stench of my son is like the stench of the fields, so bless the Lord” (Gen. 27:27). Again, when you eat or drink, think that it is God who gives everything edible a taste that is pleasant to us and, enjoying Him alone, say: “Rejoice, my soul, that while outside of God there is no satisfaction for you, there is no sweetness and consolation, you, having known Him and clinging to Him, can find all pleasure in Him alone, as David invites you to this, saying: “Taste and “You see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 33:9), and as Solomon confirms the truth of this, saying: “His fruit is sweet in my throat” (Song 2:3).” Also, when you stretch out your hands to do some work, bring to mind that God, who has given you the strength and ability to act, is the first cause of every movement, but you are nothing more than a living instrument in His hands, and, ascending to Him in thought, say: “What joy do I experience within myself, the highest God of all, thinking that without You I cannot do any work, and that You are the first and the beginning An agent in every matter!” And when you see in others kindness or wisdom, or truth, or any other virtues, then in this case, separating the invisible from this visible, say to your God: “O rich treasure of every virtue! How great is the joy for me to know and see that all good comes from You alone and that all our good in comparison with Your divine perfections is nothing! I thank You, my God, for this and for every other good that you do to my neighbor, but remember, our Benefactor, both my own poverty and my great insufficiency in all virtue.” And I will say in general, whenever you feel something attractive and delightful in God’s creations, do not focus your attention on them alone, but, passing them, turn your thoughts to God and say: “If Your creations, my God, are so beautiful, so joyful and delightful, how immeasurably beautiful, how immeasurably joyful and how immeasurably sweet You Yourself, the Creative One!” If you do this, my beloved, then you can, through your five senses, learn the knowledge of God, always ascending with your mind from creatures to the Creator, so that the existence and well-being of everything created will be for you a book of Theology, and you, while still in this sensory world, will become a participant in the knowledge characteristic of the supermundane world. For, truly, the whole world and all nature is nothing more than a certain organ, in which, under appearance, the Organizer and Artist of everything invisibly resides, acting and visibly manifesting His artistry, or in the visible and material, presenting to the gaze of rational creatures His invisible and immaterial perfections and actions. Therefore, on the one hand, the wise Solomon says that “from the greatness of the beauty of creatures, their Creator of life is seen” (Wisdom 13:5), and on the other hand, blessed Paul certifies that “the invisible things of God, His eternal power and Divinity, have been visible from the creation of the world through viewing creation” (Rom. 1:20). In the world of God, on the one hand, all of God’s creations are placed, wisely constructed, on the other hand, people are enriched with rational power, with the purpose that with their rational strength, looking at creation and seeing the infinite wisdom in the creation and structure of them, they ascend to the knowledge and contemplation of the eternal and hypostatic Word, “In whom all things were” (John 1:3 ). And we, naturally, know the Actor from actions, so we only need to judge rightly and sensibly in order to find faith in creation (eiz th ctisei thn pistin) and in the created we see the Creator God. Chapter 22. That the same sensory objects that we talked about are means and instruments for the good management of our feelings, if from them we move on to thinking about the incarnation of God the Word and about the sacraments of His life, suffering and death Above, I showed you how we can raise our minds from sensory things to the contemplation of God. Now learn another way to raise your mind from the sensual to the divine - namely, through the transition from it to reflection on the incarnation of God the Word and on the most holy sacraments of His life, suffering and death. All the sensible things of this world can serve as a reason for such reflection and contemplation, if, after first looking at them, you think, as we said above, that the Most High God is the first cause who gave them existence and everything that is in them - powers, perfections, actions, position between other creatures, you think how great and immeasurable is the goodness of this God himself, when He, being the only beginning of every created existence, wanted to descend to such humility and humiliation as to become a man, suffer and die for people, allowing the work of his own hands to arm themselves against Himself and crucify Himself. So, when you see or hear, or touch tools, ropes, whips, pillars, thorn branches, nails, hammers and other similar things, think in your mind how all this once served as an instrument of the suffering of your Lord. When you see poor houses or live in such a house, go in memory to the den and manger of your Lord who was born as a man. When you see that it is raining, remember those bloody drops of sweat that dripped from the divine body of sweet Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and watered the earth. When you see the sea and the boats on it, remember how your God once walked on the waters and, standing in a boat, taught the people. Let the stones you see represent to you those stones that fell apart at the moment of the death of your Lord, and let the earth you walk on remind you of the shaking that shook it then at the conclusion of the Passion of Christ. Let the sun bring to your memory the darkness that darkened it then; let the water remind you of the water that flowed out of the divine ribs of the Lord along with the blood when the warrior perforated Him on the cross of the dead. When you drink wine or any other drink, bring to mind the ocet and gall with which your Master was given to drink on the cross. When you dress, remember that the eternal Word covered itself with human flesh in order to clothe you with His Divinity. Seeing yourself clothed, think about Christ the Lord, Who deigned to be naked in order to be scourged and nailed to the cross for your sake. If any voice seems sweet and attractive to you, transfer this loving attraction to your Savior, in whose mouth all grace and sweetness were poured out, as it is sung in the psalms: “grace is poured out in your mouth” (Ps. 44:3), and because of the sweetness of whose tongue the people persistently clung to Him, not wanting to tear themselves away from listening to Him, as St. Evangelist Luke, saying: “the people... all hold on to Him, listening to Him” (Luke 19:48). When you hear the noise and cry of the people, think about that most lawless cry of the Jews: “Take him, take him, crucify him” (John 19:15), with which the ears of the Lord were then struck. When you see how beautiful the face is, remember that “he who is fairest in kindness is more than all the sons of men” (Ps. 44:3), the Lord Jesus Christ, out of love for you, deigned to appear on the cross “having no form or kindness, being humbled above all the sons of men” (Isa. 53:3). Every time the clock strikes, let that sorrowful swell of heart come to your mind that seized the Lord Jesus when He began to be horrified in the Garden of Gethsemane at the approaching hour of suffering and death; or think that you hear those hammer blows that were heard when the Lord was nailed to the cross. And in general, I will say, in every sad case that comes your way or others, keep in mind that all our sadness, sorrow and suffering are nothing in comparison with the painful torments and wounds that struck the soul and body of the Lord during His saving passions for the sake of our salvation. Chapter 23. How to move from sensory impressions to moral and edifying lessons When you see things that are beautiful to look at and valued on earth, think that they are all insignificant, like rubbish, compared with the beauties and riches of heaven, which you will undoubtedly receive after death if you despise the whole world. Turning your gaze to the sun, think that your soul is more bright and beautiful than it, if it consists of the grace of its Creator; and if not, then it is darker and more vile than the depths of darkness itself. Looking with your eyes at the sky, direct the eyes of your soul to the highest, most heavenly sky and cling to it with your thoughts, since it is prepared for an eternal blissful home for you, if here on earth you live immaculately and holy. Hearing the trills of birds on the trees in the spring and other melodious singing, raise your mind to the sweetest songs of paradise and think how the echo of Alleluia and other angelic praises is constantly heard everywhere, and pray to God to grant you to sing songs to Him forever along with those heavenly spirits, about whom it is written in the Apocalypse: “and according to these hearings a great voice of many people in heaven, saying: Alleluia: Salvation and glory and honor and strength to our Lord” (Rev. 19:1). When you feel that you are carried away by someone’s beauty, bring to mind that under this attractiveness lies an underworld serpent, ready to kill you or at least injure you, and tell him: “Ah, damned serpent! It is you who are standing here as a thief, looking to swallow me! It’s labor in vain, for the Lord is my helper.” Then, turning to God, say: “Blessed are You, my God, who revealed my hidden enemy before me and “who did not let me be caught in his teeth” (Ps. 123:6).” And then take refuge, as in some kind of saving refuge, in the wounds of Him who was crucified for us, devoting yourself to them, with the thought of how much our Lord endured in His most holy flesh, in order to save you from sin and instill in you an aversion to carnal passions. Let me remind you of one more thing as a tool to repel the seductions of carnal beauty, namely: when you fall for this, hasten to kindly immerse your mind in the thought of what will happen after death of this creature that captivates you so much? Foul pus, full of worms. When you go somewhere, with every step and step of your foot, think that your approach to the tomb is moving forward in the same way. Also, seeing birds soaring in the air, or rivers quickly rolling their waters, think that your life is flying at an even greater speed, hastening to its end. When stormy winds rise and in the sky covered with dark clouds, all-shaking thunder begins to be heard and dazzling flashes of lightning begin to shine, then remember the Last Day of Judgment and, bending your knees, worship the Lord your God and pray to Him, may He give you the time and grace to prepare for the shameless stand then in the face of His terrible greatness. When various troubles happen to you, do not forget to exercise your mind with edifying thoughts about them and about them, and most importantly, do this: ascend to the contemplation of the all-ruling will of God and try to restore in yourself the conviction that it is for your good and your salvation that all-good wisdom and the righteous will of God deigned to allow you to endure what you are suffering at this time, and to the extent you can bear it. Therefore, in such cases, rejoicing in the love that God shows you in this way, and in how He gives you the opportunity to show how willingly and lovingly you submit to His will in everything that it pleases Him to send you, say from your heart: “Behold, the will of God is being fulfilled on me, according to which from time immemorial, out of love for me, He laid it down that I should suffer real trouble or sorrow, or loss, or in vain. Blessed be the name of my Most Gracious Lord.” When a good thought comes to your mind, turn to God and, realizing that it was sent by Him, thank Him. When you read the Word of God, imagine that God is hidden beneath every word, and accept them as if coming from His Divine lips. If, while the sun reigns in the sky, you see darkness approaching and darkening its light, as happens during eclipses, be sad and pray to God that He will not allow you to fall into total darkness. Looking at the cross, keep in mind that this is the banner of our spiritual warfare, in which all-conquering power is hidden, and that if you move away from it, you will be delivered into the hands of your enemies, and if you remain under it, you will reach Heaven and enter it in glorious triumph. When you see the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, turn your heart to Her, the Queen of Heaven, and thank Her for the fact that She appeared so ready to submit to the will of God, that she gave birth, nurtured and raised the Savior of the world, and that in our invisible battle Her intercession and help to us never fails. Let the icons of the saints present to your mind how many intercessors you have to God, always praying for you, and how many supporters you have in your unceasing battle, who, having courageously fought your whole life against your enemies and defeated them, have opened and shown you the battlefield, which, having cheerfully passed through with their help, you too will be adorned with crowns of victory in the eternal glory of heaven. When you see a church, then, among other saving thoughts, remember that your soul is also the church of God, as it is written: “you... are the church of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), and that therefore you must keep it pure and immaculate. Every time you hear the gospel, bring to mind the Archangel’s greeting: “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice,” and raise the following thoughts and feelings in yourself: thank God for sending this good news from heaven to earth, which became the beginning of the arrangement of our salvation; enter into rejoicing with the Ever-Virgin about the supernatural greatness to which She was elevated by Her deepest humility; together with Her, the most blessed Mother, and the Archangel Gabriel, worship the Divine Fruit, which was immediately conceived in Her Most Holy Womb. You will do well if you repeat Her song more often throughout the day, accompanying it with the feelings expressed before this; repeat it three times, in the morning, in the evening and at noon, set it as an urgent law. And I’ll tell you briefly: be always awake and attentive to your feelings and do not allow what you perceive through them to excite and feed your passions; on the contrary, use this in such a way that it does not deviate you even an inch from your decision to always and in everything show yourself pleasing to God or standing in His will. And this, in addition to the previously proposed raising of thoughts from the sensory to the spiritual, can be most facilitated by the rule expressed in the first chapters - not to immediately get carried away by anything and not to immediately turn away from anything, but by firm and strict reasoning to determine how one should in a given case relate to the impressions of the senses, so that this is in accordance with the will of God, known to us from His commandments. I’ll also tell you for your information that the techniques I outlined for turning the use of feelings to spiritual benefits were not outlined by me so that you would constantly practice this. No, you must constantly, having gathered all your mind in your heart, abide there with the Lord, having Him both as a guide and as an assistant in overcoming enemies and passions, either by simple internal resistance to them, or by deeds of virtue opposite to them. What I said was said so that you know it and use it when necessary. However, covering with some kind of spiritual cover everything sensual that surrounds us is undoubtedly very beneficial for the purposes of our warfare. Chapter 24. General Lessons on the Use of the Senses It remains for me to offer you general rules on how to use external feelings so that the impressions from them do not ruin our spiritual and moral structure. Take heed! 1) Above all, my brother, with all your might, keep your evil and quick deceivers - “your eyes” in your hands, and do not allow them to stretch out to curiously look at the faces of women, whether they are beautiful or ugly, as well as at the faces of men, especially young and beardless ones. Do not allow them to look at naked bodies, not only those of others, but also their own. For from such curiosity and passionate looking, a voluptuous lust for fornication can conveniently arise in the heart, not innocent, as the Lord said: “Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). And one of the wise wrote: “Lust is born from vision.” Therefore, Solomon, warning us against being captivated by the eyes and from being wounded by the lust of beauty, gives a lesson: “Son, let not the lust of kindness overcome thee; Here are examples of the harmful consequences of free-spirited observation with your eyes: the sons of God, the descendants of Seth and Enosh, were carried away by the daughters of Cain (Gen. 6); Shechem the son of Hamor in Shikim, seeing Dinah the daughter of Jacob, fell with her; Sampson was captivated by the beauty of Delilah (Judges 16); David fell from looking at Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11); two elders, judges of the people, were maddened by the beauty of Susanna (Dan. 13). Be careful also to look closely at good food and drink, remembering our foremother Eve, who, looking with evil eyes at the fruit of the forbidden tree in paradise, lusted after it, plucked it and tasted it, and put herself and her entire family to death. Do not look with lust at beautiful clothes, nor at silver and gold, nor at the shiny clothes of the world, so that through your eyes the passion of vanity or love of money does not enter your soul, for which Saint David prays for deliverance: “Turn away my eyes, lest I see vanity” (Ps. 119:37). And I will say in general: be careful to look at round dances, dances, feasts, pomp, disputes, quarrels, idle chatter and all other inappropriate and shameful things that the senseless world loves and the law of God prohibits. Run and close your eyes from all this, so as not to fill your heart with passionate movements and imagination with shameful images and not arouse in yourself rebellion and warfare against yourself, stopping the continuity of the feat that you should always strive against your passions. But love visiting churches and looking at St. icons, holy books, tombs, cemeteries and all other reverend and holy things, looking at which can have a saving effect on your soul. 2) You must also guard your ears. And firstly, do not listen to shameful and voluptuous speeches, songs and music, from which the soul is filled with desire and softened and the heart flares up with carnal lust, for it is written: “turn away from you slanderous (harmful) words” (Proverbs 27:11). Secondly, do not listen to noisy and ridiculous speeches, empty and fabulous stories and inventions, and if you involuntarily hear them, do not enjoy them and do not approve of them. It is indecent for Christians to find pleasure in such speeches, but only for those corrupt people about whom St. Paul, that they “with scratchy ears... will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). Thirdly, do not listen with pleasure to the gossip, slander and slander that others spread about their neighbors, but either stop them if you can, or move away so as not to hear them. For St. Basil the Great equally considers those who condemn and slander as worthy of excommunication, as well as those who listen to them without stopping them. Fourthly, do not listen to empty and vain speeches, in which the majority of peace lovers spend their time, and do not enjoy them. For it is written in the law: “Thou shalt not receive the hearing of vain” (Ex. 23:1). And Solomon said: “The word is vain and a lie far from Me” (Prov. 30:8). And the Lord judged: “I say to you, that every idle word that men speak will be given back on the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Fifthly, finally, beware in general from listening to any words and speeches that can have a harmful effect on you, among which not the least place is occupied by the flattery and praise of flatterers, as Isaiah said: “My people, those who are blessed flatter you and disturb the paths of your feet” (Is. 3:12). But love to listen to Divine words, sacred songs and psalms, and everything that is honest, holy, wise and soulful; especially love to listen to reproaches and reproaches when someone showers you with them. 3) Guard your sense of smell from all kinds of fragrances that soften and can excite carnal thoughts and movements: do not hold them on yourself, do not smear yourself with them and do not inhale them lustfully and without measure. All this is appropriate for unkind women, and not for wise men, because this relaxes the courage of the soul and arouses carnal passions and lusts, which can lead to falls, so that prophetic threats are often fulfilled on those who use these stimulating incense, which read: “They are cruel to you, who are the first to smear themselves with stinks” (Amos. 6, 1, 6). “You will have a stench instead of a good stench” (Is. 3:23). 4) Guard your taste and your belly, so as not to be enslaved to sweet and fattening various dishes and aromatic drinks that warm you up. For such comforting meals, while you acquire everything necessary to maintain them, can lead you to lies, deception, even theft and many other enslaving passions and evil deeds, and when you acquire and begin to enjoy them, they can plunge you into the ditch of carnal pleasures and bestial lusts, which usually operate under the belly. And you will then fall under the condemnatory definitions of the prophet Amos: “They are cruel to you... those who eat goats from the flocks and those who feed milk from the midst of the flocks... and those who drink strained wine” (Amos. 6, 1, 4, 6). 5) Be careful with your hands to grab, press and embrace not only someone else’s body, whether it be a woman or a man, and an old man, as well as a young man, but also your own; especially, unless absolutely necessary, do not touch famous members. The more voluntary such a touch is, the more sensitive and lively the movement of carnal lust is and the more irresistibly it carries a person towards the very act of sin. And all other feelings contribute to the movement of lust and in some way from afar contribute to the development of sin; but when someone comes to the point of touching what he should not touch, then it becomes extremely difficult for him to refrain from sinful deeds. The temptations of touch also include headdresses, clothing and shoes. Therefore, be careful to decorate your body with soft, multi-colored and shiny robes, your head with precious coverings and your feet with valuable shoes. All this is effeminate and obscene for a man. But dress sedately and humbly, satisfying the need and need to protect your body from the cold in winter and from the heat in summer, so that otherwise you will not hear the same thing that the rich man, dressed in purple and fine linen, heard: “Remember that you received your goodness in your belly” (Luke 16:25), and not experience the threats of the prophet Ezekiel, who said so sentence about people of this kind: they will reach the point that they themselves will “throw off the crowns from their heads, and take off their speckled garments” (Ezek. 26:16). This also includes all other resting places of the flesh, such as: frequent bathing and baths, beautiful beyond measure houses, soft carpets, expensive furniture, luxurious beds and relaxation on them. Beware of all this, as it is dangerous for your chastity and a close cause for the arousal of unclean movements and urges for carnal lusts and deeds, so as not to inherit - “alas” - which the St. threatens. Prophet Amos: “They who sleep on a bed of ivory bones and those who are kind in their beds are cruel to you” (Amos 6:1,4). Everything that I have now told you is the land on which the tempting serpent is condemned to feed; and all this is food that feeds our carnal passions. Therefore, if you do not consider this a small thing and an insignificance not worth attention, but, on the contrary, courageously arm yourself against this and do not allow anything like that to enter through your feelings into your soul and into your heart, then I assure you that you will truly easily exhaust all the power of the devil and the passions, without missing out on food for them, with which they could feed in you, and in a short time you will appear as a valiant winner in invisible warfare. It is written in Job that the moral-willed man died because he had nothing to eat: “The moral-willed man perished, having no food to eat” (Job 4:11). This moral figure depicts the devil, our constant enemy, who flees from a person who does not give him anything to eat, through the rejection and suppression of all passionate movements excited by the impressions of our external senses. He is similar to the marble one in that, as a certain monk Job says in the library of Photius the Patriarch, he always begins to destroy a person by first plunging him into small sins, like a small ant, and then, when he has accustomed him to such small sins, he plunges him into large ones; and he is also similar to him in that at first he seems powerless and small, like an ant, and then he becomes a strong giant, like a big lion. Chapter 25. About how to control the tongue The greatest need lies with us to manage our tongue as it should and to bridle it. The engine of the tongue is the heart; What the heart is full of, it pours out with the tongue. But, conversely, the feeling of the heart poured out through the tongue strengthens and takes root in the heart. Therefore, language is one of the significant figures in the formation of our character. Good feelings are silent. Outpourings through words are sought by more egoistic feelings, in order to express what flatters our pride and what can show us, as we think, from the best side. Verbosity in large cases comes from a certain proud conceit, according to which, imagining that we are too knowledgeable and that our opinion on the subject of speech is the most satisfactory, we feel an irresistible compulsion to speak out and, with copious speech and repeated repetitions, imprint the same opinion in the hearts of others, thus imposing ourselves on them as teachers uninvited and dreaming of sometimes having as students such persons who understand the matter much better than the teacher. What has been said, however, applies to cases where the subjects of speech are more or less worthy of attention. For the most part, multiplicity is unambiguous with idle talk; and in this case there are no words to fully describe the evils that arise from this bad habit. And in general, verbosity opens the doors of the soul, through which the warmth of the heart of reverence immediately emerges, all the more so does idle talk. Verbosity distracts attention from itself, and in the heart, thus not observed, ordinary passionate sympathies and desires begin to creep in, and sometimes with such success that when the idle talk ends, in the heart there will be not only permission, but also a decision for passionate affairs. Idle talk is the door to condemnation and slander, a carrier of false news and opinions, a sower of discord and discord. It suppresses the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for the lack of thorough knowledge. After verbosity, when the fumes of self-satisfaction pass, there always remains a certain feeling of melancholy and laziness. Doesn't this indicate that the soul then reluctantly recognizes itself as having been robbed? The Apostle James, wanting to show how difficult it is for a talkative person to refrain from something unhelpful, sinful and harmful, said that keeping the tongue within proper boundaries is the property of only perfect men: “If anyone does not sin in word, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body” (James 3:2). The tongue, as soon as it begins to speak for its own pleasure, runs in speech like an unbridled horse, and blurts out not only what is good and appropriate, but also what is bad and harmful. That is why this apostle calls it “uncontrollable evil, filled with deadly poison” (James 3:8). According to him, Solomon also said in ancient times: “You cannot avoid sin by speaking too much” (Proverbs 10:19). And let us say with Ecclesiastes that in general, anyone who speaks a lot exposes his own madness, for usually only “a fool multiplies words” (Eccl. 10:14). Do not ramble on in long conversations with someone who does not listen to you with a good heart, lest, having bored him, you make yourself abominable to him, as it is written: “If you multiply words, you will become abominable” (Sir. 20:8). Beware of speaking harshly and in a high-toned manner, for both are extremely hateful and make one suspect that you are very vain and think too much about yourself. Never talk about yourself, about your affairs or about your relatives, except in cases when it is necessary, but at the same time speak as briefly and quickly as possible. When you see that others talk about themselves in excess, force yourself not to imitate them, although their words seem humble and self-reproachful. As for your neighbor and his affairs, do not refuse to speak, but always speak briefly, even where and when it would be required for his good. While talking, remember and try to fulfill the commandment of St. Thalassia, which reads: “Of the five kinds of subjects of speech in an interview with others, use three with prudence and without fear; use the fourth not often, and completely abandon the fifth” (“Philokalia”, 1st hundred, chapter 69). One of those who write the first three understands this: yes, no, by itself or obviously; by the fourth he means doubtful, and by the fifth completely unknown. That is, about what you know for sure, that it is true or false and that it is obvious by itself, speak about it with decisiveness as true or as false, or as obvious; It is better not to say anything about what is doubtful, and when there is a need, speak as if it is doubtful, without prejudging; Don’t talk to you about the unknown at all. Someone else says: we have five techniques or figures of speech: vocative, when we call on someone; interrogative, when we ask; desirable or supplicant, when we wish or ask; definitive, when we express a decisive opinion about what; imperative, when we command with authority and authority. Of these five, always use the first three freely, the fourth as rarely as possible, and do not touch the fifth at all. Speak about God with all your affection, especially about His love and goodness, but with fear, thinking about how not to sin in this too, by saying something unspeakable about the Divine and confusing the simple hearts of those who hear. Therefore, love more to listen to the conversations of others about this, putting their words into the inner storehouses of your heart. When they talk about something else, let only the sound of the voice reach your hearing, and not the thought to your mind, which should stand unwaveringly directed towards God. Even when you need to listen to someone who is talking about something in order to understand what is going on and give a proper answer, and then do not forget, between the speech heard and spoken, to lift the eye of your mind to Heaven, where your God is, thinking moreover about His greatness and the fact that He does not take His eye off you and looks at you sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavorably, according to what happens in the thoughts of your heart, in your speeches, movements and deeds. When you need to speak, think well in advance about what comes into your heart to say before it comes to your tongue, and you will find that much of it is such that it is much better for it not to come out of your mouth. But at the same time, know that even though it seems to you to be a good thing to express, it is much better for others to remain buried in a coffin of silence. Sometimes you yourself find out about this immediately after the end of the conversation. Silence is a great strength in our invisible battle and a sure hope of achieving victory. Silence is very kind to those who do not rely on themselves, but rely on God alone. It is the guardian of sacred prayer and a wonderful helper in the exercise of virtues, and at the same time a sign of spiritual wisdom. St. Isaac says that “keeping the tongue not only makes the mind rise up to God, but also in obvious deeds performed by the body, secretly provides great strength to accomplish them. It also enlightens in secret work, if only one maintains silence with knowledge” (“Philokalia” in Russian translation, verse 31, p. 208). In another place he praises him like this: “When you put all the deeds of this hermit’s life on one side, and silence on the other, then you will find that it outweighs on the scales. There is a lot of good advice for us; but when someone becomes close to silence, it will be unnecessary for him to keep them” (“Philokalia” in Russian translation, verse 41, p. 251). In another place he calls silence “the sacrament of the future age”; words, he says, “are the instrument of this world” (ibid., verse 42, p. 263). Saint Barsanuphius puts it above theology, saying: “If you are almost theologizing, then know that silence is more worthy of surprise and glory” (ibid., answer 36). Therefore, although it happens that “some are silent because they have nothing to say; another... because he is waiting for a convenient time for his word" (Sir. 20, 6), another for other reasons, "for the sake of human glory or out of zeal for this virtue of silence, or because he holds a conversation hidden in his heart with God, from which the attention of his mind does not want to depart" (St. Isaac, f. 76, p. 546), but in general we can say that whoever is silent shows himself to be prudent and wise (Sir. 19, 28, 20:5). In order to get used to silence, I will show you one very direct and simple way: take up this task - and the task itself will teach you how to do it and help you in this. To maintain zeal for such work, reflect more often on the harmful consequences of indiscriminate talkativeness and the salutary consequences of prudent silence. When you come to partake of the saving fruits of silence, then you will no longer need any lessons in this regard. Chapter 26. How to correct imagination and memory Having spoken about managing external senses, we should now talk about how to manage imagination and memory, because, and in the opinion of almost all philosophers, imagination and memory are nothing more than an impression of all those sensory objects that we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched. We can say that imagination and memory are one internal common sense, which imagines and remembers everything that the external five senses had to experience before. And in some way, external feelings and sensory objects are like a seal, and the imagination is like the impression of a seal. Imagination and memory are given to us so that we can use their services when our external senses are at rest and we do not have in front of us those sensory objects that have passed through our senses and are imprinted on them (imagination and memory). Not being able to always have before us objects that we have seen, heard, tasted, smelled and touched, we call them to our consciousness through imagination and memory, in which they are imprinted, and thus we examine and discuss them, as if they were externally inherent to us. For example, you once visited Smyrna and then left there again and no longer see it with the outer sense of your eyes; however, when you want, you imagine Smyrna with your inner feeling, that is, imagination and memory, you imagine and again review it as it is, in its own form, size and location. This does not mean that your soul leaves you and goes to Smyrna, as some ignoramuses think, but you see in yourself the image of Smyrna, imprinted on you. This imagination of sensory objects bothers a lot and causes a lot of anxiety to those who are jealous of always being with God, for it distracts attention from God and directs it to vain things, and between them to sinful things, and thus disturbs our inner good mood. We suffer from this not only in reality, but also during dreams, from which the impression often lasts for more than one day. Since the imagination is an irrational force, acting mostly mechanically, according to the laws of the combination of images, while spiritual life is an image of pure freedom, it goes without saying that its activity is incompatible with this life, and I am forced to offer you several guiding comments on this subject. 1) Know that just as God is beyond all senses and everything sensible, beyond every form, color, measure and place, He is completely ugly and formless, and although He is everywhere, He is above all, He is also beyond all imagination. “No imagination has any place in relation to God, for He is above every thought and abides above all” (Ignatius and Callistus, chapter 65, towards the end in the Philokalia). From here it naturally follows that imagination is such a power of the soul that, by its nature, does not have the ability to remain in the area of ​​unity with God. 2) Know that Lucifer, the first of the Angels, was previously above any unreasonable imagination and beyond any form, color and feeling, as a mental, immaterial, formless and incorporeal mind, when he later dreamed and filled his mind with images of equality with God, he fell from that formless, ugly, impassive and simple immateriality of the mind into this multiform, multi-component and plump imagination, as many theologians believe, and thus, from a formless, immaterial and impassive Angel, he became a devil, as if material, multiform and passionate. But as he became, his servants, all the demons, became the same, about which Gregory of Sinaite reads the following judgment: “Once upon a time they too were minds, but, having fallen from this animosity and subtlety, they acquired a certain material stature, each being corporealized according to his rank, degree and actions that qualified him. As a result of this, they, like people, having lost angelic sweetness, were deprived of divine pleasure and were condemned to find delight in earthly things, just like us, having become, as it were, material through the habit of material passions” (chapter 123 in the Philokalia). For this reason, the holy fathers call the devil a painter, a multi-faceted serpent who feeds on the land of passions, a dreamer, and other similar names. The Word of God depicts him as a calving dragon, with a tail, ribs, neck, nose, eyes, jaws, lips, skin, flesh and other similar members. (See about this in chapters 40 and 41 of the righteous Job). From this, understand, beloved, that since multiform fantasy is an invention and the creation of the devil, it is greatly desired by him and is suitable for our destruction. The Holy Fathers rightly call it a bridge through which soul-killing demons pass into the soul, mix with it, and make it a hive of drones, a dwelling place for terrible, evil and ungodly thoughts and all sorts of unclean passions, mental and physical. 3) Know that according to St. Maximus, the great theologian, and the primordial Adam was created by God without imagination. His mind, pure and formless, being a mind in its activity, did not itself take form or image from the influence of the senses or from images of sensory things; but, without using this lower power of imagination and without imagining either the outline, type, size, or color of these things, with the highest power of the soul, that is, thought, I purely, immaterially and spiritually contemplated only the pure ideas of things, or their mental meanings. But the murderer the devil, just as he himself fell from the dream of equality with God, brought Adam to the point that he began to dream with his mind about equality with God and fell from such a dream of his; and for this reason, from this mental, equal-angelic, pure, rational and ugly life, he was cast into this sensual, multi-component, multi-formed life, immersed in images and dreams, into the state of unreasonable animals. For to be immersed in images or to live in them and under their influence is the property of irrational animals, and not of rational beings. After a person has fallen into such a state, who can say into what passions, into what malice and into what delusions he was led by his imaginative dreams? He filled moral teaching with various deceptions, physics with many false teachings, theology with obscene and absurd dogmas and fables. And not only the ancients, but also the newest thinkers, wanting to philosophize and talk about God and about divine, simple and inaccessible mysteries to imagination and fantasy (for in this work the highest power of the soul - the mind) must work, and having begun this task before cleansing their minds from passionate views and imaginary images of sensual things, instead of the truth they found a lie. And, what is especially disastrous, they have embraced this lie in the arms of their soul and heart and hold it tightly, as the truth expressing reality. And thus, instead of theologians, they appeared as fabulists, abandoning themselves, according to the Apostle, “to an unskilled mind” (Rom. 1:28). (See about this Isaac the Syrian at the end of the letter to St. Simeon, f. 55th). So, my brother, if you want to easily and conveniently free yourself from such errors and passions, if you seek to avoid various snares and snares of the devil, if you desire to unite with God and gain divine light and truth, courageously enter into battle with your imagination and fight it with all your strength in order to strip your mind of all types, colors and shapes, and in general from all imagination and memory of sensory things, both good and bad. For all this is a stain and darkening of the purity and luminosity of the mind, a whitening of its non-substance and a conductor to the sharpening of the mind, since almost no mental or physical passion can approach the mind except through the imagination of the sensual things corresponding to them. Strive to keep your mind colorless, ugly, formless and pure, as God created it. But you cannot achieve this otherwise than by returning your mind to yourself, confining it in a narrow place of your heart and the entire inner man and teaching it to persistently abide there inside, now in secret prayer, crying out with an inner word: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, now listening to yourself and reasoning with yourself, and especially contemplating God and resting in Him. For just as a serpent, when it needs to throw off its old skin, goes and forcefully squeezes itself through some narrow passage, as natural philosophers say, so the mind, squeezing through the narrowness of the heart and mental prayer in the heart, takes off the clothes of imagination of sensory things and bad sensory impressions and becomes pure, bright and fit for unity with God, for the sake of the likeness to Him, which it perceives through this. Again, just as water, the more it is constrained in narrow passages, the stronger it presses and rushes upward, so the mind, the more it is constrained by the teachings hidden in the heart and attention to itself, the more refined and stronger it becomes and, rushing up the mountain, the more inaccessible it becomes for any passion and any pretense of thoughts, and for any image of things, not only sensory, but also mental, since in this case they remain outside and enter inside they can't. I will offer another comparison, even more suitable. Just as the rays of the sun, being scattered in the air and separated from each other, are not so light and warm, but being concentrated at one point through certain glasses, they give a dazzling light and incendiary warmth, so the mind, being collected in the center of the heart by attention and intimate teaching, becomes luminous and scorching, dispersing material and passionate darkness and scorching and destroying all sorts of similar images and movements. This is the first and main way to manage imagination and memory, which you, beloved, must keep continuously. With it you will not only correct these spiritual forces, but you will erase in them all traces and remnants of previously received impressions and images of sensual things that excite and feed passions. But the more effective and fruitful this method is, the more difficult it is, and the more difficult it is, the less now there are those who want to use it, not to say - the less believers in its power, especially among the sages and teachers, not only secular, but also spiritual, who, not wanting to believe the teaching of the Holy Spirit and so many saints. The fathers who indicate this method in the most precious book of every honest stone, “The Philokalia,” are righteously deprived of the fruits of the Spirit, which many uneducated and even illiterate people are privileged to receive. For, according to the word of the Savior, God “hid them from the wise and prudent, and revealed them... to babes” (Lk. 10, 21); because those who do not believe in the power of this clever work and do not accept it, cannot understand how beneficial it is, according to the word of the prophet: “If you do not believe, you will not understand” (Is. 7:9). When you see that your mind is getting tired and can no longer stay inside your heart in mental-heart prayer, then use the second method, namely, let it go outside and have scope in divine and spiritual reflections and contemplations, both those taught by the Holy Scriptures and those to which the creation of God gives the occasion and inspires. Such spiritual reflections, being akin to the mind in its subtlety and insubstantiality, do not cause it to become white and do not chain it in the external, but on the contrary, having satisfied to the extent its thirst for free movement in its area, its content disposes it again to quickly return inside the heart, to unity with God through immersing itself in the mental memory of Him alone. Why does the divine Maxim say that “one act cannot make the mind dispassionate, unless it goes into various spiritual contemplations.” Beware, however, in the creations of God, in material objects and in animals, to dwell on one physical side of them while you are still passionate. Because in this case, the mind, not yet free from passionate looking at sensory things, instead of being transferred from them to the spiritual and immaterial thoughts hidden in them, will be carried away by their external beauty and ostentation alone and, enjoying it, may accept false teachings about them and passionate dispositions towards them, according to St. Maxim, how so many natural philosophers suffered. Or use the third method to bring rest and tranquility to your mind, namely, undertake to reflect on the mysteries of the life and suffering of the Lord, that is, about His birth in the den, circumcision, standing before God at the meeting, baptism in the Jordan, forty days of fasting in the desert, about His preaching of the Gospel, about the various miracles He performed, about the transfiguration on Tabor, about washing the feet of the disciples and teaching them the sacraments at supper, about His betrayal, about His suffering, cross, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven, about the various tortures of the martyrs and the long-term strict deeds of the reverend fathers. In the same way, to contrite your heart and arouse repentant feelings, you can also think about the mystery of the terrible hour of death, about the amazing day of Judgment, about different types of eternal torment, such as: about oceans of unquenchable fire, about dark seclusions in the underworld, about dark Tartarus, about never-ending worms, about cohabitation with demons; think also about the peace and inexpressible joys of the righteous, about the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal glory and unceasing bliss, about the voice of those celebrating, about the most perfect unity there with God, about the eternal coexistence and cohabitation with the angels and all the saints. If you, brother, draw such thoughts and ideas on the chart of your imagination, then you will not only get rid of indecent memories and evil thoughts, but you will also receive great praise on that day of Judgment for such a feat, as St. Basil the Great in his word on virginity, saying that “Every person living in this body is like a painter painting some image in a secret place. Just as this painter, when he has finished a painting and brings it out of hiding to an exhibition, is praised by the audience if a good one has chosen an object for it and painted it well, and, on the contrary, is blamed if he has chosen a bad object and painted it poorly, so every person, when after death he appears before the judgment of God, has to be praised and blessed by God, the angels and saints, if he has decorated his mind and his imagination with bright, divine and spiritual images and ideas, and, on the contrary, has to be shamed and condemned if he has filled his imagination with passionate, shameful and base pictures.” And St. Gregory of Thessaloniki expresses surprise at how, from the influence of sensory things, either intelligent light, the provider of an eternally blissful life, or mental darkness, leading to hellish darkness, is installed in the soul through the imagination (Greek “Philokalia”, p. 969). Know, however, that I don’t want to tell you that you should always be occupied with these thoughts alone, no, but use them only occasionally, until your mind, tired of keeping itself in the confines of your heart, rests. When you have rested, return it to your heart again and force yourself to keep yourself without dreams and images in the heartfelt memory of God. For just as all shelled and skull-skinned animals do not find peace anywhere else than in their shells, in which they take refuge, as in the house, so the mind, naturally, does not rest so much anywhere as in the church of the heart and in the inner man, where, hiding as in a fortress, it successfully wages war with the thoughts, enemies and passions that lie hidden there, although most people do not know this. That passions and thoughts are hidden inside us, in the heart, and come from there and fight us, this is not my thought. Listen to what the Lord says: “from the heart... come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy. This is what defiles man” (Matthew 15:19–20). And the fact that our enemies, demons, hide near the heart is not my invention. This is what the holy fathers teach. Of these, St. explains this with greater certainty. Diadochos, saying that before Holy Baptism, Divine grace moves a person to do good outwardly and Satan hides in the depths of the soul and heart; after a person receives Holy Baptism, the demon hovers outside the heart, and grace moves inside (“Philokalia”, part 4, chapter 76). However, even after Baptism, he further says (ibid., chapter 82), our enemies are allowed to be in the depths of our body, as if on the surface of the heart, to test our will, and from here they smoke on the mind with the wetness of carnal sweets. St. also teaches this in agreement. Gregory the Theologian, interpreting that what the Lord said about how the unclean spirit comes from a person and again returns to him for his greatest harm (Matthew 12:43-45), happens to the baptized when they neglect to remain in the heart. “Expelled by Baptism, the unclean spirit, says, not liking being homeless, seeks peace, wandering here and there, and, not finding it, returns to the house from which it came, because it is shameless. If he finds that Christ, held by the attention and love of the baptized, has established himself and remains in the place from which he was expelled, that is, in the heart, then, again reflected, he leaves without success. If he finds his former place in someone empty, unoccupied by anyone, due to lack of attention to the Lord and memory of Him, then he hastily enters, with greater malice against the former. And the last thing is worse for that person than the first” (Sk. 40th). I deliberately expanded on this in order to more strongly encourage you to remain within your heart with the memory of the Lord the Savior and prayer to Him, if you always want to be a winner in the confusion of thoughts and passionate movements inspired in the heart. When you are there with the Lord, the enemy will not dare to come. Above all this, I tell you, be vigilant over yourself and do not let your imagination and memory remember what was previously seen, heard, smelled, tasted and touched, especially what was shameful and indecent in this. This is what our warfare primarily consists of, and it is more difficult and persistent than warfare with feelings or the use of them. Every fighter knows this from experience. In order not to perceive anything tempting with any feeling, it is easy to cope with this; but according to perception, it is very difficult to control the imagination and memory of it. In order, for example, to see or not see a face, or to look at it passionately or dispassionately, this is not so difficult and does not represent much of a struggle; after you see and look at him passionately, it is no longer easy, but requires great struggle and considerable feat in order to banish the imagination of this face from your memory. And the enemy can play with your soul like a ball, throwing your attention from one memory to another and underneath them stirring wishes and passions and thus keeping you in a passionate mood. Therefore I say to you: stay awake and, above all, watch your imagination and memory. Chapter 27 Just as every Christian has an urgent duty, when he loses peace of heart, to do everything in his power that can contribute to its restoration, so it is no less imperative that he not allow any accidents of current life to disturb this world: I mean illnesses, wounds, the death of relatives, wars, fires, sudden joys, fears and sorrows, memories of previous misdeeds and mistakes - in a word, everything that usually worries and worries the heart. It is imperative to avoid anxiety and unrest in such cases because, having succumbed to them, a person loses self-control and is deprived of the opportunity to clearly understand events and correctly see the appropriate course of action, and both of these give the enemy access to agitate him even more and direct him to some step that is difficult to correct or cannot be corrected at all. I don’t want to say: don’t allow grief, because it is not in our power, but rather: don’t allow grief to dominate your heart and agitate it, keep it outside, outside the heart and hasten to soften and tame it so that it does not interfere with your sane reasoning and the right to act. This, with God’s help, is in our power if we have strong moral and religious feelings and dispositions. Of the sorrows, each has its own characteristics and against each there are its own methods; but I’m talking about them in general, understanding their common property - to disturb and outrage the soul, and having a common goal against this, I have in mind to offer you a remedy. This means is faith in a good Providence, which arranges the course of our life with all its accidents for the personal good of each of us, and complacent submission to the will of God, expressed in our situation, according to which in the depths of our souls we would cry out: God’s will be done! As the Lord willed, so it came to pass and came to pass for our good. This good is recognized and felt differently in different persons. The “other” realizes: it is the goodness of God that leads me to repentance; “the other” feels: the Lord sent this to me for my sins, to cleanse me from them, I bear God’s penance; The “third” comes to the thought: the Lord is testing me to see whether I sincerely serve Him. From the outside, those who look at someone who has been subjected to tribulations may even think “fourth”: this is for him - so that the works of God may be revealed in him. But such a decision can take place only after the end of the sorrows, and precisely with the clear help of God. In the soul of a mourner, only the first three feelings are appropriate. And they are all of such a quality and strength that no matter which of them comes to the heart, each one can greatly calm the rising storm of sorrow and establish peaceful complacency in the heart. And here is a general means for you to pacify your heart when sorrows attempt to disturb it: having restored as strongly as possible faith in the good Providence of God for you and revived in your soul God-devoted obedience to the will of God, bring to your heart the thoughts mentioned above and force it to feel that with this sorrowful accident the Lord is either testing you, or is imposing a cleansing penance on you, or is moving you to repentance, either in general or in particular, about some forgotten, faulty matter. As soon as the heart feels any of this, grief will immediately subside and give it the opportunity to subsequently absorb the other two feelings; nevertheless, together they will most likely establish such peace and complacency in you that you cannot help but cry: blessed be the name of the Lord forever! Like oil on the waves of the sea, these feelings are on a sorrowful heart: the waves subside and there is great silence. So calm the heart when it is alarmed to any degree. But if, through long labor and spiritual achievements, you so inculcate the above-mentioned feelings into your heart that they will fill it relentlessly, then no sorrow will disturb you, because such a mood will be for you the most effective preventive measure against that. It’s not that sorrowful feelings didn’t come up; they will approach, but will immediately retreat, like the waves of the sea from a strong cliff. Chapter 28. What to do when we are wounded in battle When you are wounded, having fallen into some sin due to your weakness or ill-will (there are forgivable sins: an inappropriate word was broken, you had to get angry, a bad thought flashed through, an inappropriate desire arose, and the like), do not be faint-hearted and do not fuss in vain to no avail. The first thing you need is don’t stop at yourself, don’t say: how did I suffer this and allow this to happen?! This is a cry of proud conceit. Humble yourself, on the contrary, and, looking up to the Lord, say and feel: “What else could be expected from me, Lord, so weak and ill-mannered.” And immediately thank Him that the matter only stopped there, confessing: “If it were not for Your immeasurable goodness, Lord, I would not have stopped at this, but would certainly have fallen into something even worse.” However, admitting that you feel this way and feeling this way, be careful not to admit the careless and indulgent thought that because you are like this, you have some right to do something inappropriate. No, despite the fact that you are weak and weak, everything inappropriate that you do is imputed to you. For everything that comes from you, gifted with your will, belongs to your will, and just as good things happen to you for approval, so bad things happen to you for disapproval. Therefore, having realized that you are bad in general, realize at the same time that you are guilty of the bad thing that you have fallen into at the present hour. Judge yourself and reproach yourself, and only yourself, do not look around, looking for someone to blame you on. Neither the people around you nor the combination of circumstances are to blame for your sin. Your evil will is to blame. Reproach yourself. However, don’t be like those who say: “Yes, I did it, so what’s wrong?” No, after awareness and self-reproach, placing yourself in the face of God’s unwashed truth, hasten to kindle repentant feelings, contrition and pain over sin, not so much because of the humiliation of yourself by sin, but because of its insult to God, who has personally shown you so many mercies: in calling you to repentance, in the remission of previous sins, in admitting you to the grace of the Sacraments, in keeping you on the good path and guiding you along it. The deeper the contrition, the better. But no matter how strong the contrition may be, do not allow the shadow of hope of pardon. Pardon is already completely ready, and the handwriting of all sins is torn to pieces on the cross. Only the repentance and contrition of everyone is expected, so that he too may be given the power of the cross to atone for the sins of the whole world. With this hope, fall on your face in soul and body and cry out: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy” (Ps. 50:3) - and do not stop crying until you feel guilty and pardoned, so that guilt and mercy merge into one feeling. This grace finally descends on everyone who repents. But he must be accompanied by a determination, sealed by a vow, not to indulge himself later, but to strictly guard and protect himself from all falls, not only big, but also small, with the addition of fervent prayer for grace-filled help. After such a close experience of the unreliability of one’s strengths and efforts, sighs will naturally come from the heart: “Create a pure heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit in my womb.” And “Let Your good Spirit guide me to the right land” (Ps. 50:12; Ps. 142:10). All this - self-condemnation, contrition, a hopeful prayer for mercy, an inspirational decision to follow in the future and a prayer for grace-filled help - should pass through you inside every time you sin with your eye, hearing, tongue, thought, feeling; and for one moment do not leave sin in your heart unconfessed to the Lord and not purified before Him by heartfelt repentance. If you fall again, do the same thing again, and even if you had to sin many times, cleanse yourself before the Lord the same number of times. In the evening, if possible, retell everything to your spiritual father, and when it is not possible on the same evening, retell it on occasion. Such confession or revelation of everything to the spiritual father is the most beneficial action in the matter of our spiritual warfare. Nothing defeats the murderous enemy and ruins his machinations more than such a method of action. Therefore, he tries in every possible way to hinder it both internally and externally: internally with thoughts and feelings, and externally with the introduction of various encounters and accidents. You will see for yourself what exactly these obstacles are when you get down to business. I’ll just remember one thing: the enemy is trying hard to inspire you not immediately, as a sin is noticed, to begin the task of cleansing yourself internally from it, but to wait a little, not a day or an hour, but a little. But as soon as you agree to this, he will substitute another sin, after the sin with the tongue, sin with the eye and some other feeling, and you will inevitably put off the cleansing of this sin, because you must first cleanse the previous one. And thus the delay will continue for the whole day, and sin after sin will fill the soul. In the evening, until which the work of repentant self-cleansing is usually postponed, nothing definite is visible in the soul - there is noise and confusion, and darkness from the many fallen falls. The soul is like eyes filled with dust, or like water clouded by the amount of rubbish that has fallen into it. As nothing is visible, the matter of repentance is completely abandoned, but at the same time the soul is left clouded and confused. As a result, the evening prayer is not correct, and then the dreams are not good. So never put off internal cleansing for a single moment as soon as you realize that something is wrong with you. The second thing the enemy suggests is not to tell the spiritual father what happened. Do not listen and, in defiance of him, reveal everything, for as much as there are benefits from this revelation, there is just as much, or even more, evil from hiding what happens in us and with us. Chapter 29. What order does the devil follow in waging spiritual warfare with everyone and how does he deceive people of different moral states? Know, beloved, that the devil cares about nothing else but the destruction of each of us, and that he does not fight with everyone in the same way. So that you can see and understand this more clearly, I will present to you five moral states of people and describe the corresponding intrigues, deceptions and deceptions of the enemy. These states are the following: some remain in slavery to sin, and have no thoughts of liberation from it; others, although they think about this liberation and desire it, do nothing to achieve it; There are also those who, after being freed from the bonds of sin and acquiring virtues, fall back into sin with great moral corruption. Of these latter, some, in self-delusion, think that, despite this, they are still moving towards perfection, others, in carelessness, abandon the path of virtue; others turn the very virtue they have into an occasion and cause of evil for themselves. The enemy acts on each of these in accordance with his mood. Chapter 30. How the devil confirms sinners in slavery to sin When the devil keeps someone in slavery to sin, he is primarily concerned with darkening him more and more with spiritual blindness, driving away from him every good thought that could lead him to realize the destructiveness of his life. And not only does he drive away good thoughts from him that could move him to repentance and turn him to the path of virtue, but instead he puts in evil and corrupted thoughts and immediately arranges improvised reasons for his usual sin and entices him to often fall into it or into other, more serious sins. As a result, the poor sinner becomes more and more darkened and blinded. This blinding instills in him a habit and an incessant urge to continue sinning and sinning, so that he, the unfortunate one, drawn from sinful deeds to greater blindness and from blindness into greater sins, spins around as if in a whirlpool, and will spin like this all his life until his death, unless God’s special grace is brought in to save him. Whoever is in such a disastrous state, if he wishes to get rid of it, must immediately, as soon as a good thought comes to him, or, better said, a suggestion calling him from darkness into light and from sin to virtue, immediately accept it with all attention and desire, immediately diligently get to work, calling out from the depths of his heart to the generous Giver of every good: “Help me, Lord my God, help me quickly and do not leave me anymore in this sinful darkness.” Let him not know fatigue, calling out in one word or another; but at the same time, let him seek earthly help, turning to those who know the matter for advice and guidance, as if to more successfully free himself from the enemy bonds of sinful slavery that torment him. If this cannot be done immediately, let him do it as soon as the opportunity opens, without ceasing to resort to the Lord Jesus, who was crucified for us, and to His Most Pure Mother, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, to graciously have mercy on him and not to deprive him of prompt and appropriate help. May he know that in this urgency and quick readiness to follow a good suggestion is his victory and overcoming the enemy. Chapter 31. How the enemy keeps in his networks those who have realized their disastrous situation and want to get rid of it, but do not get down to business. And why are our good intentions often not carried out? Those who have known the thinness and misery of the life they live, the enemy manages to keep in his power for the most part with the following simple but omnipotent suggestion: “After, after; tomorrow, tomorrow." And the poor sinner, seduced by the shadow of goodwill represented by such a suggestion, decides: “Tomorrow indeed; Now I will finish my work and then, with complete carelessness, I will surrender myself into the hands of the grace of God and steadily flow along the path of spiritual life; “Today I will do this and that, and tomorrow I will repent.” This is the enemy’s net, my brother, with which he catches many and many and holds the whole world in his hands. The reason why this net so conveniently cuts us off is our negligence and blindness. Nothing other than negligence and blindness can explain the fact that in such an important matter, on which all our salvation and all the glory of God depends, we do not immediately take on the simplest and easiest things, so that with full determination and energy we can say to ourselves: “Now”! Now I will begin my spiritual life, and not later; I will repent now, and not tomorrow. “Today”, “now” are in my hands, and “tomorrow” and “after” are in the hands of God. But even if it pleases the Lord to give me tomorrow and the next, can I be sure that tomorrow this good and compelling thought about correcting my life will come to me?” Besides, what is the point of saying, for example, when a sure remedy for an illness is offered: “Wait, let me get sick a little longer”? And he who puts off the work of salvation is exactly like this. So, if you want to get rid of the enemy’s charm and defeat the enemy, immediately take up a weapon that is reliable against him, immediately obey the deeds of good thoughts and God’s suggestions to you, calling you to repentance, do not allow the slightest delay and do not allow yourself to say: “I have made a firm intention to repent a little later and will not deviate from this intention.” No, no, don't do that. Such decisions always turned out to be deceptive and many, many, having relied on them, then remained unrepentant until the end of their lives for various reasons. 1) The first is that our own decisions are not based on self-disbelief and strong trust in God. Therefore, we are not alien to a proud opinion of ourselves, the inevitable consequence of which is always the removal of God’s gracious help from us and at the same time an inevitable fall. Because of this, he who decides in himself: “Tomorrow I will certainly abandon the path of sin,” always meets the opposite of that - not an uprising, but a bitter fall, and then again fall after fall. And God providentially sometimes allows this to happen in order to bring the arrogant to the consciousness of his weakness and to encourage him to seek God’s help, the only reliable one, with the rejection and trampling of all hope in himself. Do you want to know, man, when your own determinations will be strong and reliable? When you do not hold any hope for yourself and when your hopes are based on humility and strong trust in the one God. 2) The second is that with such our determinations, we primarily have in mind the beauty and luminosity of virtue, and they attract our will to themselves, no matter how weak and infirm it may be; and, of course, the difficult side of virtue escapes attention. But now it escapes because the desire for the beauty of virtue strongly attracts the will; tomorrow, when ordinary affairs and concerns are brought in, it will no longer be so strong, although the adopted intention is still remembered. With weakened desire, the will weakens or enters into its natural weakness, at the same time the difficult side of virtue will come forward and appear before the eyes, because the path of virtue is inherently difficult, and it is most difficult at the first step. Let him who decided yesterday to embark on this path now begin it; he will no longer have any support in himself to fulfill this: the desire is not tense, the will has weakened, there are only obstacles before his eyes - both in himself, and in the order of his ordinary life, and in ordinary relations with others. He decides: I’ll wait until I gather my strength, and so he will go, wait day by day, and it won’t be surprising if he waits his whole life. And if he had gotten down to business yesterday, as soon as the inspiring desire to improve came, had he done this or that according to the demands of this desire, introduced something into his life in his spirit - now both desire and will would not be so weak as to retreat in the face of obstacles. Obstacles cannot be avoided, but, having support within himself, he would overcome them, even with difficulty. If he had spent the whole day in this overcoming, they would have been much less sensitive on the next, and even less on the third. Further and further - and he would be established on a good path. 3) The third is that good awakenings from sinful sleep not only reluctantly come again, having been left unfulfilled, but even when they come, they no longer produce the same effect on the will that they had the first time; the will is not so quickly inclined to follow them, and as a result, the determination to do so, even if it appears, is weak and not energetic. But if a person was able to put off a stronger impulse until tomorrow and then completely lose it, then the more conveniently he will do the same with the second, and even more conveniently with the third. And so on: the more often the fulfillment of good intentions is postponed, the weaker their effect is; then it comes to the point where they become completely inactive, come and go without a trace, and finally stop coming. Man surrenders into the hands of his fall; his heart hardens and begins to have an aversion to good motives. Thus, procrastination becomes a direct path to final destruction. Let me also note to you that procrastination occurs not only when an internal compulsion is felt to change a life from bad to good, but also when someone leads a good life, namely, when someone has an opportunity to do good and he puts it off either until tomorrow, or indefinitely until another time. And everything that was said about the first type of delay can be applied to this delay, and the consequences from this may be similar to the consequences from that. Know that whoever misses an opportunity to do good, not only loses the fruit of the good he would have done, but also offends God. God sends someone in need to him, and he says: “Go away - after.” Even though he says this to a person, it is the same thing that he says to God, who sent him. God will find another benefactor for him, but the one who refuses him is not irresponsible. Chapter 32. About the machinations of the enemy against those who have embarked on the good path But even if someone has passed the first two obstacles, desires to free himself from the bonds of sin and begins to do so immediately, the enemy does not leave him here and only changes his tactics, and not his evil desire and aspiration to stumble him against the stone of some temptation and destroy him. And the holy fathers depict such a one as being fired upon from all sides: from above and below, from right and left, from front and behind - arrows are flying at him from everywhere. Arrows from above - suggestions of excessive excesses in spiritual labors; arrows from below - suggestions to belittle or completely abandon such works due to self-pity, negligence and carelessness; arrows on the right, when enemies, due to some good undertakings and deeds, plunge into temptation and the danger of falling; arrows on the left, when obvious enemies present temptations and attract to sin; arrows in front, when enemies tempt and confuse with thoughts of what is about to happen; arrows from behind, when they tempt and outrage with memories of past deeds and events. And all such tempting thoughts are attacked to the soul either internally or externally: internally - through images and imaginations, imprinted on the mind mentally or through direct suggestions of evil in the heart, accompanied by ordinary passionate movements; external - through the impressions of external senses, constantly flowing, as already mentioned above. Our enemies are aided by our former sinful habits and our damaged nature in the fall. Having so many ways to harm us, the enemy is not at all embarrassed by the first failures and constantly uses one thing or another in order to stumble or lead astray the servant of Christ who is escaping from his power. The first thing an enemy does, after he decides to leave evil paths and actually leaves them, is to clear for himself the scene of action against him, so that no one will interfere with him. He succeeds in this when he inspires those who have entered on a good path to act on their own, without turning for advice and guidance to the leaders of a godly life that are always inherent in the Church. Whoever follows this guidance and trusts all his actions, both internal and external, to the reasoning of his leaders, in parishes - lay priests, and in monasteries - experienced elders - the enemy has no access to him. Whatever he suggests, an experienced eye will immediately see where he is aiming and warn his pet. Thus all his machinations are ruined. And whoever recoils from his leaders, he will immediately spin him around and lead him astray. There are many possibilities that don't seem so bad. He inspires them. An inexperienced newcomer follows them and is ambushed, where he is exposed to great dangers or completely dies. The second thing the enemy does is to leave the newcomer not only without guidance, but also without help. He who decides to manage in his life without advice and guidance soon automatically comes to the realization of the needlessness of outside help in carrying out his affairs and maintaining godly orders. But the enemy accelerates this transition by hiding himself and not making attacks on the newcomer, who, having experienced such freedom and privilege, begins to dream that this good state is the fruit of his own efforts, and as a result rests on them and in his prayers for help from above speaks as if only through clenched teeth, because only that is what is written in prayers. Help is not sought and does not come, and thus the beginner remains alone, with only his own strength. And such an enemy is already easy to deal with. For some, the consequence of such self-delusion is that they rush into excessive feats beyond their strength and time. The strong stimulation of energy by self-confidence gives them, for the first time, the strength to carry out such feats for some time; then their strength is exhausted and they no longer find enough strength in themselves to carry out the most moderate feats, and often they give up even these. Others, igniting their amateur energy more and more, reach such self-confidence that they consider everything possible for themselves. In this excited state, they take disastrous steps: they rush into dry wells or from cliffs, where they live in a cave, completely refuse food, and the like. The enemy arranges all this unnoticed by those being deceived. For others, the consequence of self-delusion, of attributing their successes to themselves is that they give themselves the right to various indulgences and benefits. There is such beauty that when something new is introduced into a person’s life, as, for example, with a person who has repented, then the days seem like months, and the weeks seem like years. Because of this, for someone who has worked a little in the order of a new life, the enemy easily puts dreams into his head: how much I worked, how long I fasted, how many nights I did not sleep, and the like. You can rest a little. “Rest,” the enemy interprets, “give rest to the flesh; You can have a little fun." As soon as an inexperienced beginner agrees to this, he will receive benefits after benefits, until finally all the orders of a godly life are upset, and he descends into the same life that he left, and begins to live again in negligence and carelessness, carelessly, as they say. However, with such temptations: to shun both the advice and guidance of others, to attribute successes to oneself, to plot excesses and indulgences - the enemy not only approaches at the beginning of a good life, but makes attempts at such suggestions throughout it. Therefore, you can see for yourself how necessary it is for you to do everything you do with advice, never attribute any successes, no matter how small, to yourself, to your own strengths and to your diligence, to avoid all excesses and indulgences and to lead an even, but energetic and living life, always in the order once established and established according to the examples of the saints who lived before, and with the reasoning of experienced people contemporary with you. Chapter 33. How the enemy diverts from good deeds and spoils them The machinations of the enemy indicated above upset the whole good life. Against the one who, having resisted them, flows steadily on a good path, the enemy builds other intrigues and other stumbling blocks. Here he is not armed for life, but acts in fits and starts against every private undertaking that a good Christian according to God begins and does. From the time we open our eyes in the morning after sleep until we close them again at night, we are surrounded by activities that constantly alternate and, following one another, do not leave an empty moment if we pay attention to ourselves and do not suffer from laziness and negligence. At the same time, not only the matter of prayerful aspiration of the heart to God, not only the proper deeds in relations with others in truth and love, not only the matter of organizing the balance in oneself between body and soul, in the feats of self-mortification, but also everyday affairs with civilians must all be turned to the achievement of salvation with strict attention, alertness and zeal. God helps those who are zealous about this to conduct everything properly, assisting them with His grace with their protection by Angels and the prayers of saints. But the enemy is not asleep either. He instigates every undertaking and worries whether it is possible to somehow muddy the flow of our affairs and, instead of what should be, lead or lead to undue actions: then he rushes to interfere with their very beginning; then, when they have begun, attempts are made to stop their flow; then, if he does not succeed in this, he tries to make their execution and completion worthless; when they are put to shame in this too, they maliciously contrive to take away all their worth before God, arousing vanity and conceit. St. John Climacus speaks about this this way: “In all our deeds, with which we try to please God, demons dig three holes for us: firstly, they fight to hinder our good deed; secondly, when they are defeated in this first attempt, they try to ensure that what is done is not according to God; and if these thieves do not succeed in this plan, then, silently approaching our soul, they please us, as if we live in everything pleasing to God. The first temptation is resisted by ardent zeal and the memory of death, the second by obedience and humiliation, and the third by constant self-reproach. “This work is before us, until it enters into the sanctuary, seeking” our fire of God (Ps. 73, 16, 17). Then there will no longer be in us the violence of evil habits, for “Our God is a fire that consumes” (Heb. 12:29) every kindling and movement of lust, every evil habit, bitterness and darkness, internal and external, visible and imagined” (Sk. 26:8). No pen can describe everything that happens. Pay attention to yourself, keeping one measure in mind - to please the one God, both big and small, and life itself will teach you to clearly see and understand the enemy’s machinations. However, I will offer you two or three examples of what kind of troubles the enemy creates in our souls in order to spoil our affairs when they should last a certain time. When, for example, a sick person is disposed to graciously endure his illness and endures it, the enemy, knowing that in this way he will be confirmed in the virtue of patience, comes to upset his goodwill. For this, he begins to bring to mind many good deeds that he could have done if he had been in a different position, and tries to convince him that if he were healthy, how well he would serve God and how much benefit he would bring to himself and others: he would go to church, have conversations, read and write for the edification of his neighbors, and the like. Noticing that such thoughts are accepted, the enemy often brings them to mind, multiplies and colors them, carries them to the point of feeling, arouses desires and impulses to do those things, imagining how well certain things would go for him, and arousing pity that he is bound hand and foot by illness. Little by little, with frequent repetitions of such thoughts and movements in the soul, pity turns into dissatisfaction and annoyance. The former complacent patience is thus upset, and illness is no longer presented as a cure from God and a field for the virtue of patience, but as something hostile to the cause of salvation, and the desire to free oneself from it becomes uncontrollable, still in the form of obtaining through it space for doing good and pleasing God in every way. Having brought it to this, the enemy steals from his mind and heart this good goal of the desire for recovery and, leaving only the desire for health, forces him to look at illness with annoyance, not as an obstacle to good, but as something hostile in itself. As a result, impatience, not healed by good thoughts, takes strength and turns into grumbling and deprives the patient of his former peace from complacent patience. And the enemy is glad that he managed to upset him. In exactly the same way, the enemy upsets the poor man who patiently endures his fate, depicting to him what good deeds he would be adorned with if he had a fortune. Likewise, the enemy often upsets those in the field of obedience in a monastery or with an elder, managing to convince them that, remaining in this order of life, they will not soon reach the desired perfection, and inciting in them the desire for seclusion or desert living. And it often happens that such suggestions are followed. But, having achieved this, they privately indulge in negligence and lose what was previously acquired with difficulty in novitiate. And vice versa, it happens that the enemy manages to drive someone out of solitude and seclusion, convincing him that he sits there without any benefit for himself or for others, whereas in his monastery useful things would flow abundantly like a river, day and night. And when the one who obeys goes to the monastery, he does not have time to do the useful things he wanted, and what he acquired in the desert, he soon spends and is left with nothing. And there are many, many other similar cases when the enemy manages to divert one from one type of activity, luring him to another, as if it were more useful, and frustrating both. One can easily get rid of all such temptations if one, having an experienced leader, adviser and interlocutor, follows their instructions with humble submission. And whoever is deprived of such a good for some reason, let him pay attention to himself and strictly learn to distinguish between good and bad according to Christian principles, by which the lives of all of us should be organized. If the cases that, as it seems to us, prevent us from expanding our good deeds more widely are not from our will, but are sent by God, then accept them with humility and do not listen to any suggestions that deviate you from this humility. Having sent such an opportunity, God does not expect anything from you, except that you behave and act as the opportunity that has visited you requires and gives you the opportunity. Whether you are sick or poor, endure. God does not require anything from you except patience. By enduring complacently, you will continuously be in good deeds. Whenever God looks at you, He will see that you are doing good or are in goodness if you patiently endure, whereas in a healthy person good deeds come intermittently. Therefore, wanting to change your situation, you want to exchange the best for the worse. If the random position in which you are and which, as you believe, restricts the circle of good deeds possible for you, depended on your will, then you probably chose it not without reasoning, and stick to that reasoning, do not allow your thoughts to wander to different possibilities, but having directed all your attention and shackled to the one thing that is before you in your position, calmly do the deeds associated with it, in full confidence that if you dedicate everything to God, and not to self-indulgence, then they will not fruitlessly fill all your time and will be accepted by God as the most complete sacrifice from you. And stay calm. Chapter 34. How the enemy turns the very virtues to harm the doers But let you faithfully and constantly follow the path of virtue, without deviating either on the wrist or on the surface, do not think that the enemy will lag behind you. No, you have already heard that I brought you from St. John Climacus, that the enemy, when he sees that all his attempts to seduce you into evil are unsuccessful, slowly follows you and pleases you as if you were living in everything pleasing to God. This is his last temptation. This enemy’s exaltation of us responds with conceit, well-being and self-satisfaction; from them vanity and pride are generated, from which vanity consumes the entire value of our deeds, if there are any good ones, and pride makes us contrary to God. Pay attention and fight off these enemy pleasures in every possible way, not allowing them to reach your heart, but repelling them from the first moment they touch the ears of your soul. In order not to be exposed to the misfortune that threatens you from this, always keep your mind collected in your heart and always be ready to repel these enemy arrows. Standing there inside, like a military commander in the middle of a battlefield, choose a place convenient for battle and, having fortified it properly, never leave it, but take refuge there and fight from there. This place and its strengthening, and its armament is a sincere and deep awareness of your insignificance, that you are poor, and blind, and naked, and rich only in weaknesses, shortcomings and disapproving deeds, unreasonable, vain and sinful. Having established yourself this way, never allow your mind to leave this fortification outside and especially refrain from wandering through your, as it seems to you, fruitful fields and gardens, that is, your good deeds. If you behave this way, the arrows of the enemy’s destructive gratification will not reach you, and if one falls towards you, you will immediately see it, reflect it and throw it out. But just as warriors, sitting in a fortification, do not spend their time idly, but either practice military combat techniques, or renovate and strengthen their fortification, so do you, hiding in the awareness of your insignificance. Exactly, do this. No matter how you hold your mind, it will keep running away, and it’s not surprising that in these running away it will attack your deeds that seem good. As soon as he attacks them, the enemy will immediately grab him and strike him with conceit, and in such a way that he will willingly take the side of the enemy, returning to himself, and he will begin to pull you there too. As soon as you notice this, call your mind to you and tell it: listen, mind! You explain to me: this is both good and this is not bad. So be it; So what do I care about this? You were going to praise me. Good, praise, I'm listening. But know that justice requires that you praise me only for what you find in me and in my deeds that is actually mine, and what is in me from God and from His grace must be gratefully and laudably brought back to its Source. Let’s figure out what you and I have of our own and what is God’s, and let’s put God’s aside for God’s part, and keep ours to ourselves. Then, whatever remains with us, if it remains, we will determine our weight and our dignity, and we will praise ourselves for that. So let's begin. Let's look at the time before our existence: what were we then? Nothing, and nothing could be done, for which the Source of all existence, as a reward, would deign to grant us existence. It is God’s independent gift to us, God’s blessing to us, the beginning and course of all subsequent blessings of His immeasurable goodness. Let us put it aside for God’s part. Then we began to live. How? And we don’t know ourselves. Many years have passed that you and I did not even know that we existed, but we existed; but even when they found out this, they could not do anything to support their lives. Other hands took care of us, and not on their own, but according to the order of the All-Orderer of all life and being. We were raised, trained, put on our feet. There was nothing of ours here - so put it aside. Then we began to live on our own. What's ours? Let us separate the vital forces and means of subsistence that surround us. They are not ours - God's gift. God's gift is the direct knowledge of God, God's gift is conscience, God's gift is the thirst for heavenly life. These three make up the spirit of our life, which attracts us to grief. You, my mind, are not mine. God gave you to me. The forces that are active within me are not mine, the will with its own energy. Not my feeling, capable of enjoying life and everything around me. Not my body with all its functions and needs that condition our bodily well-being. God has given all this. And I myself am not my own, but God’s. Having given me existence, God clothed me with the complexity of the numbered forces of life and, giving me consciousness and freedom, laid down the law so that I should rule everything that exists in me, in accordance with the dignity of each part of my being. In all of this, there are no reasons for self-praise, but motivations for the awareness of the greatness and burden of the duty that lies on you and me and for the fear of the answer to the question awaiting us: what have we done to ourselves and of ourselves? Let us now turn to the means of life. We have bodily life, mental life and spiritual life. Each of them requires its own means, and we all have them at hand, and all of them are not the fruit of our acquisition, but the gift of God. Air, fire, water, earth with all its treasures: elements, stones, metals, plants and animals, which provide us with everything we need for food, clothing and shelter, were not created by us, but given. We find the sum of the concepts necessary for us about everything around us, the orders of everyday life, social, state, arts and crafts and the rules for action in all these fields, without puzzling over inventing them, but only assimilating them. Everyone who is born receives them as an inheritance from their ancestors. Where did our ancestors get all this from? God sends people with special talents and special willpower, and they make new discoveries and improve human life. But if you asked these discoverers how they got to this or that, they would say: we don’t know ourselves, it came to mind, developed, was built and settled. It has always been so, and so it will be until the end of the century: the means for spiritual life are not ours, but are given. Moreover, this should be said about spiritual, moral and religious life. God implanted in the soul the knowledge of Himself in the mind and of His will in the conscience, overshadowing both with the aspiration of an ever-blessed life. This is the seed of spiritual life. It is sown in us and accepted at the moment God breathes into us His Divine spark of life. Everyone, when born, brings with him and within himself this seed, which then develops and receives certainty from the people around him. What an indescribably great blessing to be born among those who live a true spiritual life! But look around. We have knowledge of the one true God, worshiped in the Trinity; We confess the Son of God, who became incarnate for our sake and arranged everything for our salvation; We also believe in the Holy Spirit, who by His grace revives us and effectively creates spiritual life in us, and we have united ourselves with the Church of God, receiving in it everything necessary for the preservation and elevation of spiritual life and being enlivened by the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century. And we have all this in its purest and unadulterated form, and it is not from us - it is the gift of God. So, these are the rich means you are surrounded by for the life that is characteristic of you, and a comprehensive life, and not one of them is the fruit of your efforts, everything is given to you. You are called to the feast of life, already ready. If it’s appropriate for you and me to boast about anything in this regard, it would be how we took advantage of it all. This, when it is in us in power, is our wedding garment. Should I be proud of her? Shouldn’t we be more afraid, lest the Organizer of the feast, rich in mercy, come and say to us: see, what a feast! What kind of clothes do you have?! Let us now take a closer look at these clothes. The clothing of the soul consists primarily of moral and religious dispositions and feelings rooted in it, and not just deeds. But since they are hidden, they are rarely a reason for vanity and pride; deeds, as if visible, jump into the eye and seem to involuntarily arouse the doer to admiration and self-praise within himself, and the witnesses of his deeds to praise him externally, which strengthen and deepen even more firmly the admiration and trumpeting before themselves. So, let’s consider our deeds, whether there is anything in them that we could unquestioningly boast about. Let us remember that we can only boast in what comes directly from our will and is accomplished by us independently of anything else. But look how our affairs are going? How do they start? Circumstances converge and lead to one thing or another, and sometimes the idea comes to do something - and we do it. But the coincidence of circumstances is not ours, and the idea of ​​doing something is also, obviously, not ours: someone puts in the thought. Thus, the conception or origin of the thought to do something in such cases cannot or should not be a subject of self-praise. How many cases of this kind do we have? If we look at it in good faith, almost everything is quite close. That's nothing to boast about. If we can boast, then only in what we could not have done and, nevertheless, did. For no matter how strong the internal and external compulsions to do things, the decision on them is always a matter of our will. But even here, the decision to do good deeds is not always good. This decision is good when it is established in accordance with the consciousness of the will of God for this and that matter and out of submission to this will. As soon as something extraneous, selfish or human-pleasing is introduced here, then the goodness of the decision in this case becomes dull and darkened. We decide sometimes, fearing what they will say if we don’t do it, sometimes, hoping for some satisfaction and benefit from the work, now or later, and sometimes because it is impossible otherwise: we wouldn’t want to, but we have to do it. All such deeds cannot stand among purely good deeds, and although they seem praiseworthy from the outside, according to their inner dignity before God and conscience they are not worthy of praise. Let's consider how many cases of this kind we have? And again you have to realize that it’s almost all the time. And again, it turns out there is nothing to boast about. So, our good deeds, if we strictly analyze them, will not allow us to open our mouths to praise ourselves before others or to trumpet ourselves within ourselves. If we bring to mind all our disapproving deeds: empty, vain, useless, harmful, lawless, ungodly, of which, of course, there are many, then what should we feel? Maybe someone will say: weigh one side and the other, and whichever wins, judge yourself by that one. But this kind of technique is inappropriate in this case. Things come from within. If there are bad deeds, then it means that our inner being is not in good order, and it is this that determines our price before God - the most essential price. If it cannot be approved, then the whole person is unworthy of approval. I’ll say one more thing: all the things we apparently do in the family, in society, in our work, constitute our behavior. If we look around, we cannot help but say that, in general, our behavior is for the most part correct. But whether the internal one is also in good working order, we cannot say. The eyes of those around us have a strong influence on our plans. These witnesses force us not to give way to the evil that arises in the heart: we abstain from evil - and our behavior is correct. Without them, our behavior would have been completely different. Yes, and it often happens like this, as long as we are sure that someone else’s eye will not see us. And it happens to some that as soon as their external situation changes and they can live more freely, everything that was previously hidden out of fear of prying eyes comes out, and a previously good person becomes a drunkard, a libertine, and even a robber. All these bad urges did not arise now. They were there, but they didn’t have any momentum, but now they have received freedom and manifested themselves. But if all this is only on the inside, then the whole person was like that: a drunkard, a libertine, a robber, despite his appearance not being like that. Take a good look to see if you also belong to this category. If yes, even to some extent, then you should not boast and accept praise. I will conclude: if, following the example of everything that has been said, you now review your life more often, then when the enemy begins to trumpet in your ears how good you are, this trumpeting will not find an echo within you in your well-being and self-approval, but, on the contrary, will be reflected every time by the most humble and humiliating thoughts and feelings about yourself. Chapter 35. Some instructions useful in overcoming passions and acquiring virtue Although I have already told you a lot, indicating the means that should be used to overcome passions and acquire virtue, it remains to teach you something else. And firstly, I tell you: do not follow, brother, in acquiring virtues the example of those who, during the seven days of the week, distribute their spiritual activities so that one serves for one virtue, another for another, etc., without taking into account whether this or that is necessary for them at the present time. No, this is not how you should act, but arm yourself primarily against the passion that bothers you the most, has already overcome you more than once and is preparing to attack you again; Arming yourself against it, try as much as you can to establish yourself in that virtue that is opposite to this passion, using all the deeds and exploits suitable for this. For as soon as you succeed in this, then at the same time you will revive all other virtues in yourself and put on them, like armor that will protect you from all passionate arrows. Our heart is naturally full of good dispositions, but passions come in and suppress them. Not everyone has all of these passions; but one has predominantly one, the other has another, and they are in charge of the others. As soon as you drive away this main one, all the others will weaken and disappear by themselves; when this happens, good dispositions, freed from oppression, will take on their inherent strength in you and will always be ready, standing at the door of your heart, to appear at your service as soon as it is needed. Secondly, do not set aside a specific time for the acquisition of virtues, neither days, nor weeks, nor months, nor years, saying to yourself: I will work, and then I will rest, so that, having rested, I can take up the same work again. No, there is no rest here. Get ready for continuous work, feat and struggle, not allowing even the thought of weakening them, imitating St. Paul, who says about himself: “I flow, I persecute... even if I comprehend... I persecute with zeal” (1 Cor. 9:26; Phil. 3:12, 14). Stopping on the path of virtue to rest does not mean gaining new strength, but wasting the acquired strength and relaxing; and this is the same as going back or ruining what was built with difficulty. By “stop” I mean - having imagined that virtue has already been acquired in perfection, not paying attention to what is missing in it and skipping the opportunities that present themselves for doing good. Don’t be like that, but always be cheerful and zealous. Don’t close your eyes and don’t turn away when you encounter such cases, but on the contrary, look out for them and strive for them. Look at them all with love, especially at those that present any difficulties in doing good in them. The exertion of strength to remove obstacles to doing good quickly instills in us the habit of virtue and embeds its roots deeper in the heart. Only those cases which, while giving an occasion to demonstrate the virtue of chastity, nevertheless expose one to the danger of being inflamed with unclean lust, should be avoided at all costs. It is better not to allow this fire to reach your members, so as not to get burned and burn. Thirdly, be wise and prudent in raising bodily achievements - fasts, vigils, labor and the like. They are essential and without them do not dream of succeeding in spiritual life, but also know and maintain wise moderation in them. This measure is the middle between self-indulgent indulgence of the flesh and merciless exhaustion of it to the point of exhaustion without extreme need. Seek this middle by experience and action, and not by theory, and take gradualism as a rule, going from bottom to top. Seek and you will find. As for the internal, spiritual virtues, such as: love of God, contempt for the world, self-abasement, aversion from passions and sin, patience and meekness, peace with everyone, even those who hate and offend, and the like, then no specific measure is required, and the gradualness of their improvement is itself determined internally. Your job is to constantly and omnipotently force yourself to do every task they require and always do it without delay or slowness. This is all your wisdom and strength. Fourthly: but in the midst of such action, think with all your thoughts, desire with all your desire and seek with all your heart one thing: to overcome that passion with which you are now fighting and which is now fighting you, and in its place, restore in strength that virtue that is opposite to it and is currently suppressed by it. Let this alone be for you - the whole world, all heaven and earth, all your treasure and your last goal, in the confidence that with this alone you can worthily please God. Whether you eat or fast, work or rest, sleep or stay awake, whether you sit at home or are away from it, whether you are engaged in prayer or everyday activities, let all this be directed towards one thing, in order to overcome the kindled passion and restore the virtue that has been driven away by it. I mentioned above about overcoming your main passion, but here, of course, is the passion that is fighting you at the present hour, whether it is the main one or not. Just as in a visible war one sometimes happens to engage in battle with a detachment commanded by the commander-in-chief himself, and sometimes with one controlled by a simple officer, so it happens in spiritual warfare: the main passion is not always fighting; sometimes she puts up her accomplices instead of herself, and at other times she has to deal with these more often than with that one. But your duty to win in these cases is no less than in the first. Fifthly, be an implacable enemy of all earthly joys and sensual pleasures generated by self-indulgence and feeding it. Through this, you will be easier and less likely to be attacked not only by carnal, but by all passions in general, for they are all rooted in self-indulgence, with the suppression and cutting off of which they, having no basis under them, lose their strength, firmness and stability. Do not be tempted by the thought: I will take part in one pleasure, I will taste one sweetness. For even if it is not a sinful thing, but if it is allowed out of sheer self-indulgence, then during this indulgence all the passions will rear their heads and stir like crushed worms when you pour water on them - and it is not surprising that another will flare up among them with such force that the fight against it will be cruel and victory over it is doubtful. Therefore, never let go of the following words of Divine Scripture from your memory: “love your soul,” this is self-indulgent, “he will destroy it; and he who hates his own soul in this world, who does not indulge self-indulgence, will keep it in eternal life” (John 12:25). “In the same way, brothers, we must not live according to the flesh. Even if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; If you put to death the deeds of the flesh by the spirit, you will live” (Rom. 8:12-13). Sixth, finally, the last piece of advice I give you: it is very beneficial, or, better to say, absolutely necessary, that you first of all make a general confession, with all the due attention and with all the necessary actions, considerations and decisions, so that through this your soul will be filled with complete confirmation that you stand in the grace of God, the only Giver of all spiritual gifts, virtues and victories. Chapter 36. About the order of acquiring virtues Although a true warrior of Christ, who with all his heart desires to achieve the fullness of perfection, should not set any limits to his desire to succeed in everything, he nevertheless needs to moderate and kindly direct excessive impulses of spiritual zeal with reasoning. Such impulses, especially at the beginning, usually suddenly flare up with great force and carry us uncontrollably, and then weaken and weaken and completely fade away, leaving us helpless along the way. For not only external - bodily virtues should be acquired little by little, ascending in them, as it were, by steps, but also in acquiring internal - spiritual virtues, one must maintain one’s order and order, since only in this way what is small in us soon becomes large and is established to always remain within us. So, for example, in acquiring the inner virtue of patience, you cannot suddenly lust after wrongs, insults and all sorts of other troubles, rush into them and rejoice in them, although you can patiently endure them when they occur; because such lust and such joy are the highest degrees of patience, before entering which you must go through the lower ones, which are: humble self-abasement, considering oneself deserving of all insults, suppression of urges for revenge, hatred of every thought of revenge, and the like. I also advise you: do not suddenly take on all the virtues, or even several of them, but first establish yourself in one, and then move on to another. With this way of acting, every virtuous habit will take root more conveniently and firmly in the soul. For when you begin to constantly practice primarily one virtue, then your memory will be almost entirely occupied with it, and your mind, being thereby riveted to the thought of it, will sooner become more refined in finding cases and ways to perform it, and your will will more readily cleave to it with greater disposition; and all this in the matter of acquiring virtuous habits is strong progress, which you will expect in vain if you strive for many virtues at once. On the other hand, the very actions of one and the same virtue, being of the same type and similar to each other, due to this sameness of the mode of action, become less and less difficult and are more likely to lead to another. For usually one virtue evokes another, similar to it, and helps it thereby, having established itself in the heart, it predisposes it to accept its likeness, preparing in advance there for her, as it were, a throne to sit on. This calculation expressed by me is correct and true, and we know from experience that whoever practices one virtue well and diligently, at the same time not only learns in advance how to practice in another, but with the increase of skill in it, he arouses, grows and strengthens all other virtues, due to their inseparability from each other, for they are all rays emanating from the same Divine light. Chapter 37. What dispositions are required for success in acquiring virtues in general and how to carry out the task of acquiring skill in one To acquire virtues, a courageous and great soul is required, and a will that is not some kind of weak and sluggish, but decisive and strong, with a faithful foreknowledge of many obstacles and hard labors and with the readiness to lift and endure all of them. Such dispositions should be based on a strong love for each virtue and all virtuous life and a fiery zeal for it. This is the force that moves virtue along the labor path, which must therefore be constantly warmed up so that it does not weaken or become exhausted, since this will inevitably stop the movement itself. So, do not be lazy to kindle your zeal for virtue, reflecting with heartfelt sympathy how pleasing to God a virtuous life is, how beautiful and lofty virtue is in itself, and how necessary and beneficial it is for us, for in it is the beginning and end of our true perfection and success in it. Therefore, every morning, with all your attention, try to consider and foresee what opportunities may likely arise during the day for doing this or that good deed, attaching to it both the desire and the decision to do so without fail, and in the evening test yourself whether and how your good thoughts and desires in the morning are fulfilled; then the next morning, resume again the same intentions and desires, with the liveliest jealousy and desire to fulfill them exactly. Nevertheless, try to direct this to the exercise of that virtue in which you have set out to become accustomed at the present time. Likewise, the examples of saints, and prayers, and reflections on the life and suffering of Christ the Lord, and everything else that is considered suitable and necessary for success in virtues and in spiritual life, should be directed primarily towards the virtue in which you are engaged. But try to take advantage of all the incidents of the day, no matter how varied they are, as much as possible so that through this you not only do not get upset, but, on the contrary, the habit of that virtue about which you are now especially jealous is more established and rooted. Let the limit of such a skill be to reach the point where virtuous deeds, whether external or internal, are performed with the same ease and readiness with which deeds contrary to them were previously done, or, better, with which the natural needs of our nature are usually fulfilled; and this is the same as bringing skill in virtues to the point that they become natural in us. At the same time, let me remind you of what was said before: the more internal or external obstacles we encounter to the acquisition of any virtue, the sooner and the deeper it will take root in our soul if we strive to overcome them with complete determination and without self-pity. Suitable sayings of the Divine Scripture, if pronounced publicly or even just in the mind, have a wondrous power to imprint in the mind the image of the sought-after virtue and to arouse in the heart a disposition towards it; and what great help they give to those who are zealous about acquiring it! Look for such passages of Scripture about the virtue you are looking for and memorize them so that you always have them ready; and then repeat them as often as possible in your mind, especially when a passion opposite to it begins to move. For example, when you are working to acquire the virtue of patience, you can choose, memorize and often repeat the following passages of Scripture: “A man who is long-suffering is wise in understanding” (Proverbs 14:29). “The patience of the wretched will not perish until the end” (Ps. 9:19). “Woe...to those who destroy patience” (Sir. 2:14). “Better is a man who is long-suffering than a strong man, but he who restrains his anger is better than one who takes hail” (Proverbs 16:32); “In your patience you will gain your souls” (Luke 21:19); “Let us strive with patience for the fight that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). “Behold, blessed are he who endures” (James 5:11). “Blessed is the man who endures temptation” (James 1:12). “Patience is a perfect thing to have” (James 1:4). “I will require patience” (Heb. 10:36). To this you can add your short prayer appeals - these and similar ones: “My God! When will my heart finally be clothed in the weapon of patience! “When I finally begin to endure every trouble with a calm heart, may my God rejoice in me!” “Oh, how beloved are you to me, afflictions that make me like my Lord Jesus, who suffered for me!” “My Jesus! Grant me at least sometimes to live peacefully among a thousand sorrows, glory for the sake of Your name!” “Blessed will I be if, even in the midst of the fire of sorrows, I am inflamed with the desire to endure even greater suffering!” Such prayers should be used in order to succeed in virtues, each time applying to the one in which you especially practice, as the spirit of faith and piety inspires in us. It is right to call such short prayers with the prophet “ascents in the heart... placed” (Ps. 83:6), which, erupting from a heart full of faith and hope, ascend to heaven and enter the ears of God. These are “groanings” that never hide (Ps. 37:10) from the eyes of the merciful God. These are “appeals”, always heeded and understood (Ps. 5:2) by the multi-compassionate Lord. Just don’t forget to attach to them the following two certainties, like two wings: first, that God rejoices when he sees us working to acquire virtues, and that, ardently desiring perfection in them, we are not looking for anything else other than to please God. Chapter 38. One must practice virtues with all diligence and unceasingly In the matter of acquiring virtues, it is necessary to act in such a way as to always “extend to what is before” (Phil. 3:13), if we want to quickly and successfully achieve the goal we have proposed. For as soon as we stop, even for a short time, we will immediately go back, because after this suppression of good deeds, through negligence and self-indulgence, passions suppressed by hard work in good deeds, due to our inclination towards sensuality and self-indulgence, will immediately raise their head, come to life and arouse disorderly movements and aspirations, especially when our external environment contributes to them, and such movements always upset and weaken good habits and, what is especially disastrous, they deprive the beneficial overshadowing of grace, without which nothing truly good and spiritual good can be accomplished. Know that the path of spiritual life differs greatly from ordinary earthly journeys. On an earthly journey, when a traveler stops, he loses nothing from the path he has previously traveled; in the spiritual journey, if one who is on the path of virtue stops, he loses many of the previously acquired virtues, as I said. In an ordinary journey, the further the traveler goes, the more fatigue he becomes; During the course of spiritual life, the more someone extends the path, “extending into the foreground,” the greater the strength and ability he acquires for further progress. The reason for this is that by working on the path of virtue, our lower part, that is, the flesh, which, by its rebellion against the spirit, makes the path of virtue cruel and difficult, becomes more and more weakened in its opposition to the spirit; Meanwhile, the higher part, where virtue dwells, that is, the spirit, becomes more and more strengthened and becomes powerful. Therefore, the more we succeed in virtue and goodness, the more the regrettable difficulty that we encounter at the beginning of entering this path is diminished. Moreover, at the same time, a certain hidden sweetness, given by God, dissolves with our heart and increases from hour to hour. As a result of this, stretching into the foreground with more and more desire and strength, we easily ascend from virtue to virtue and finally reach the very top of spiritual perfection, where the soul begins to do all good, no longer as if it were drawn with effort, without any taste, but with willing desire and joy. For, having suppressed and conquered passions and renounced all created things, she now lives in God and in Him, among pleasant spiritual labors, and incessantly tastes sweet peace. Chapter 39 If you want to always stretch into the first virtues on the path, without stopping, you must pay good attention and not allow anything that could serve as a reason for you to acquire virtue to slip away from your hands. Therefore, those who do bad things are those who, as much as they have the strength to do, avoid all kinds of opposition on the path of virtue, which, however, could serve them to progress successfully along it. For example, if you want to acquire the skill of patience, then you should not avoid those persons, deeds and circumstances that most drive you out of patience. But meet them willingly, with a good decision - to surrender yourself to their unpleasant effect on you, being prepared, however, to endure it with unshakable peace of mind. If you do otherwise, you will never learn patience. In the same way, you should treat a task that you do not like, either in itself, or because it is entrusted to you by a person whom you do not like, or because it distracts you from a task that you like, that is, you should not withdraw from it, but, on the contrary, take up it without resting your feet, and then lead it and bring it to the end, acting as if it were the most pleasant thing for you, and not giving in the least to the worries from it heart, especially when you think that if it weren’t for this matter, you would be completely at peace. Otherwise, you will never learn how to experience the sorrows that you encounter; but you will not have the true peace that you are looking for, running away from such cases, obviously out of self-indulgence, because it does not live in self-indulgent hearts. I advise you to do the same in relation to thoughts that sometimes attack you and confuse your mind, when remembering human untruths and other inappropriate things. Do not drive them away and do not suppress them until they themselves fall away, not from resistance to them, but from the patience with which you bear them. Let them confuse and worry you painfully, but at the same time they will teach you how to patiently endure troubles in general. Whoever tells you differently about this, suggesting that it is better to run away from such random anxiety, advises you to stop the desire for virtue, which you are jealous of acquiring. It is true that a novice warrior, not experienced in battle, does better when he runs away from embarrassing accidents, as if despising them, than when he exposes himself to their action and resists them; however, he should not always give up the rear and turn back, but with all attention and prudence, sometimes fight the attackers, sometimes not pay attention to them, depending on his success in virtue and moral strength acquired through this. Only in relation to carnal lust is it inappropriate to do this: here, running away from all cases that can arouse and inflame this passion, due to its indomitability and the flattering tricks of the enemy, with which he knows how to surround carnal movements in order to persuade them to satisfy them. Chapter 40. One must love cases of virtue, especially difficult ones. One should by no means, beloved, run away from what can serve as a reason for acquiring virtue; But most of all, you should always accept it with joy as soon as something like this presents itself to you, considering the most honest and most honorable cases those cases that are unpleasant to your heart and do not arouse any sympathy. I predict to you that with God’s help you will actually do this if you kindly imprint the following thoughts in your mind. “Firstly,” you must realize that the opportunities for virtue that you encounter are the most suitable means for you to acquire it, given to you by God through your prayer. Having desired to acquire virtue, you, of course, prayed to God to grant it to you; Praying for this, you could not help but pray for ways and means to receive such a gift. But God does not give, for example, the virtue of patience without sorrow and the virtue of humility without humiliating cases of humiliation and dishonor. Therefore, after you prayed for these virtues, He sent you cases corresponding to them. What are you doing now, running away from them and turning away from them? You reject God’s help for which you prayed and laugh at God’s gift. So, try to graciously meet the cases of virtue that present themselves to you, and the more graciously the more they put you in difficulty. For in such cases our virtuous deeds evoke great courage and reveal great moral strength; and through this we each time take a significant step along the path of virtue, which is what we should always have as our goal. I will make a reservation, however, that while advising you to take advantage of especially important occasions for virtue, I do not have the idea of ​​inspiring you to despise unimportant occasions and skip them with carelessness. No, we must use both of them unmissably in order to always be in the labors of doing good. For example, one must patiently endure not only impudent abuse and slander, and even blows, if it happens, but also a sidelong glance and a contemptuous expression or a caustic word. Our proper actions in such unimportant cases, which have the opportunity to manifest themselves more often, because there are more such cases, support our moral strength in continuous tension and thereby strengthen us to behave as we should in the most important cases. By carelessly passing over such cases, we weaken our moral strength and make it less capable of important matters. “Secondly,” restore within yourself the conviction and faith that everything that happens to us happens by God’s will for our benefit, so that we may receive some spiritual fruit through this. Although from this about something else, namely ours and other people’s sins, it cannot be assumed that they come from the active will of God, but of course they also happen not without the permissive will of God, for the admonition and humility of us. As for sorrows and suffering, whether due to our fault or due to the malice of others, God Himself sends them, wanting us to suffer and suffer in them, in order to acquire that good of virtue, which we will undoubtedly receive if we adequately endure what is sent to us from Him - and according to His other judgments, hidden from us, but undoubtedly righteous and blessed. Being thus confident that God Himself wants you to endure the hardship and sorrow you encounter, whether it is due to the unkindness of other people or brought upon you by your wrongful deeds, you will no longer think and say, as some do: no, this is not from God, this is unjust and evil, but God does not want evildoing and turns away with disgust from them and from those who create them. By this they want to justify their impatience and outbursts of anger and vindictiveness when confronted with wrongdoing; but they only do that they rebel against God’s determination and attempt to throw off the saving cross that God placed on them for their good, by lifting it and complacently carrying it they would undoubtedly please Him. What do they get? They don’t throw off the cross, they insult God, but they still don’t get peace for themselves; on the contrary, they add unpeace and useless irritation to grief and make their condition unbearable, whereas if they had endured what happened complacently, they would have been peaceful, and would have attracted God’s favor to themselves, and would have richly tasted the spiritual fruit. Take yourself a lesson from this - when you encounter falsehoods, insults and attacks, do not pay attention to how wrong those who inflicted them on you are, but focus on this one thing: that God allowed you to encounter this for your good and that you will deprive yourself of this good if you allow yourself to become impatient, irritable and unpeaceful on this occasion. And before that, don’t inquire why exactly God allowed this to happen to you. Do you believe that God is always righteous and merciful? Believe that in the present case He shows truth and mercy over you, although you do not see how it is, remembering the Lord’s blessing to those who do this: “they who have not seen blessings have believed” (John 20:29). Do you believe that the words of the Lord apply to you personally: “take up your cross” (Matthew 16:24)? If you believe, then take it. The Lord has placed it on you in this unfortunate case. Don't say: it's too hard; God knows the extent of your strength better than you. For some, God sends troubles and sorrows brought upon them by the course of events that are not at all dependent on people: these are easier to endure. For others - those that are inflicted by people: these are more difficult, especially when the grief inflicted on us cannot be recognized as unintentional, and even more so when these people have been benefited by us in some way. The last case is the most difficult. If God sent him to you, then know that he is the one most suitable for you, and attach the following inspiring thought to this: God sees that you are strong to endure this, and expects that you will truly endure it complacently, without grumbling. Don’t miss God’s hopes for you. I will also add that God loves us to endure more those sorrows that arise from the unkindness of people, and especially those who have been blessed by us, than those that arise from unfavorable accidents unknown to us. Why? Because our inherent pride is more successfully suppressed and eradicated by the former than by the latter. And also because if submission to the will of God is the main thing in our spiritual action, then nowhere can we evoke it in ourselves and manifest it to such an extent as in such cases, if we endure them complacently, with warm gratitude to God, who sent them to us as a truly great good, thereby testifying to our complete devotion to the will of God, and fiery zeal to conform ourselves in everything to this will. This kind of mood precedes the message of cool accidents. God, seeing the emergence of this mood and wanting to bring it into strength and root, sends a cup of the strongest temptations, the willing, complacent and joyful enduring of which actually always brings such good spiritual fruit. Therefore, knowing this and wanting and seeking this, we must accept such a cup from the hand of God, closing the eyes of inquisitiveness and with full faith, it is clear in vain that both God’s green love for us and our faithful spiritual success are in vain, joyfully drinking it to the bottom, the more desirable it is, the more bitter it is felt. Chapter 41. How one can excel in the same virtue in different cases Above, in one chapter, we said that practicing one and the same virtue for some time is much more fruitful and useful for success than suddenly practicing many virtues, and that therefore all the accidents that we encounter should be turned to its benefit, even if they are dissimilar from each other. Now listen, I'll show you how convenient it can be done. If, for example, it happens to you on the same day or even the same hour to be reproached by someone innocently for some deed, which in itself is irreproachable, or to receive a refusal of a request with which you address someone, or something happens to you because of which they will wrongly suspect you of something bad, or some kind of bodily illness comes upon you, or someone from your superiors orders you to do something that you do not like, or something else comes across you whatever is unpleasant and unbearable, with which poor human life is filled, then, due to the variety of such and similar accidents, you are required to perform various virtuous deeds. But, observing the rule you have suggested, you will do better if you direct all of them to exercise in the virtue that you are primarily practicing at that time. So, if, while the cases shown to you come across, you will primarily exercise patience, then take care to endure them willingly and joyfully; if you are especially busy with success in humility, then strain to realize that you are worthy of all evil and deserve the troubles that come your way; if your feat is aimed at acquiring the virtue of obedience, then force yourself to submissively bow your neck under the sovereign hand of God and, out of good pleasure to Him, willingly submit to His rational and unreasonable and soulless creatures, through which He brings such hardships and sorrows upon you; if you are jealous of success in poverty, then build up in yourself contentment, joy and gratitude that you are deprived of all worldly and worldly consolation; If you are working on the rooting and exaltation of love, then try to arouse in yourself loving feelings towards your neighbor, since at this time he is the mediator of the good that you can extract from present situations, and towards God, since He, as always, is now the first loving reason, sending or allowing such sorrows for your spiritual success. From what has been said, you can already understand for yourself how you can turn to practicing the same virtue such cases that do not strike for a short time, but drag on for a long time, such as illness and the like. Chapter 42. How long should one practice each virtue and what are the signs of success in it? The amount of time one needs to practice virtue in order to establish oneself in it cannot be determined speculatively. Let everyone assume this for himself, judging by his condition, his circumstances and his successes in spiritual life, especially according to the reasoning of his elder or spiritual father who guides him. However, whoever has a lively zeal for success and does not stop at any difficulties or means will soon discover clearly no small success. A sign of success is if someone who has entered the path of virtue zealously follows it with a firm determination not to stray from it, no matter how difficult it may be and no matter what sacrifices it requires, despite the cooling and darkening of the soul that occurs at times, or the scarcity of spiritual consolations and grace-filled joys, which are allowed according to Divine providence for us, for our benefit. The second, no less sure sign of success is the degree of strength of the battle that the flesh raises against good decisions and deeds. The more this warfare weakens, the more success in virtue clearly moves forward. Therefore, when you do not feel abuse or attacks from the lower, sensual part of yourself, especially at a time when you have before your eyes stimulating cases, you can believe that your virtue has already received sufficient strength. But if you have begun to do your deeds on the path of virtue with greater readiness and spiritual joy than before, you can consider this a sign of success in virtue, even more sure than pacification of the flesh. And St. Isaac advises, having determined the goal towards which all the affairs of your life should be directed, to keep in mind the signs and omens, asking experienced people about them whether you are following the right path or have deviated from it and are following some path outside the real road. He believes the following signs and omens: “If you see that your mind does not tolerate violence, but acts freely and flows in good thoughts, then this is a sign that you are reaching into the foreground; in the same way, when, while standing in prayer, your mind does not float back and forth, and suddenly the verse is cut off on your tongue, and the shackles of silence are placed on your soul without the participation of your will - also when you notice that with every good thought and recollection that arises in your soul and with every spiritual contemplation, your eyes are filled with tears and tears flow freely down your cheeks, or when sometimes you see, that your thought, by itself, without your assistance, plunges into the depths of your heart and remains in this state for some hour, and peace reigns in your thoughts - all these are signs that you are succeeding well on the path of the spiritual life you have accepted” (Word 44). With all this, however, we should not have complete confidence that we have completely established ourselves in the sought-after virtue or have finally conquered any passion, even if sometimes for a long time we did not feel its attacks and movements; because here the evil intrigue of the man-hating devil and the cunning of the sin living in us may be hidden, due to which we often perceive ourselves as good and, out of our innermost pride, recognize as such what is truly of a completely opposite nature. And besides, if we think about the perfection to which God calls us, then, even though we have already walked the path of virtue for quite some time, we will rather think that it is unlikely that the beginning of a worthwhile life has been laid by us, rather than that we have already been established in it. Therefore, the holy fathers call the life of even the most perfect people imperfect, not devoid of shortcomings. “And the perfect are imperfectly perfect,” says Climacus. And Saint Paul believes that perfection lies in constantly bringing mothers-in-law and mother-in-law to the front, without looking back and not thinking that they have already achieved what they are looking for; therefore, he calls himself imperfect and has not yet achieved what he strives for: “I have not already achieved,” he says, “or those who have already been accomplished: I pursue, even if I comprehend... Brothers, I have not yet achieved for myself: one thing, forgetting what is behind, but reaching out to what is before, I pursue with zeal to the honor of the highest calling of God in Christ Jesus." - And wanting to show that this alone is our perfection, he adds: “If we are perfect, let us philosophize” (Phil. 3:12-15), as it were: this is perfection, so as not to think that we have achieved perfection; that is to be in a virtuous state, so as not to stand, and all mothers-in-law to constantly strive for virtue. Moreover, in the depths of our hearts there sometimes reside such subtle and such secret passions that we do not even know that they are passions. How can we allow ourselves such audacity as to think that we have already completely cleansed ourselves of passions? And if those keen-sighted and prophetic eyes of David could not see this in ourselves, how can we appropriate such a vision for ourselves? Therefore, as he always prayed to God: “Cleanse me from my secrets” (Ps. 18:13), so we have even more need to beg Him for the cleansing of our secret passions. For we only feel the actions and branches of passions, but we cannot know their powers and roots without enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. That’s why we recognize passions in ourselves only when they act; As soon as they subside, we think that we have already achieved dispassion. How can we make sure that passions have only subsided in our hearts, and not been killed? The fact that when we, having calmed down about them, happen to encounter objects that feed the passions hidden in us, especially when it happens suddenly, they immediately come to life and make themselves felt sensitively with their sometimes difficult movements, so that, being confused by them, we ourselves wonder where they were hiding and how they suddenly grew. Saint Isaac the Syrian explains this with the following beautiful comparison: just as during winter, although grass and flowers disappear from the face of the earth, their roots remain intact, hiding in its depths, and as soon as they sense the spring rain and warmth, they immediately grow again and cover the face of the earth, so it happens with passions... And one more thing: just as the cursed earth naturally grows thorns and thistles, so does human nature, when damaged through the fall and now conceived and irritated in sins, in some way naturally gives rise to passions from which sins, and he can never be trusted or relied on. So, you, as a beginner still in spiritual warfare, exercise yourself diligently in virtue, as if you have not yet made a beginning in it, remembering that it is better to take care to always extend yourself to the beginning in virtue, rather than to look out for and determine the signs of perfection in it. Our Lord and God, the only Leader of our hearts, enlightens some and allows them to see their success in virtue, but does not give such enlightenment and knowledge to others. For he sees that while for those this knowledge will serve to humility, these will not restrain themselves from being proud - and like the Father who loves his children, he removes from these latter the danger of falling into a sin that is especially hated by Him, and gives the former a reason to strengthen the virtue of humility that is especially dear to Him. However, even the one who is not given the knowledge of his success, unless he neglects and stops practicing virtue, can learn about this in due time, when God is pleased to reveal it to him for his good. Chapter 43 When you find yourself in some kind of sorrow that you endure with thanksgiving, pay attention to the good, so that the enemy or your pride does not deceive you into wanting to get rid of it. For from this you will suffer two losses: the first is that although, having perceived such a desire and agreed to it, you will not immediately lose the virtue of patience, you will nevertheless significantly shake it, from which it, little by little weakening, due to the failure to fulfill the desire to get rid of proper grief, will finally plunge you into a state of impatience; the second is that from now on your patience will begin to be forced: God is willing to love and reward the giver. Consequently, from now on, although you will still endure, for the mere desire to get rid of sorrow does not relieve you of it, but your patience will be unrewarded. God will reward you for enduring grief until that hour, until which you endured complacently, without seeking deliverance, but from the time you perceive such a desire, God will no longer reward you anything for your reluctant patience. On the contrary, if you, reflecting and suppressing the desire for deliverance from sorrow, completely surrender yourself to the good will of God, expressing your readiness to willingly endure sorrows a hundred times greater than the present, if the Lord wishes to send them to you, then, even if your present suffering lasted for an hour or even less, God will accept it as the longest and will commensurate your reward with this. Likewise, in all other cases, do not give free rein to your desires, but keep them in your power, directing everything exclusively towards one main goal - standing in the will of God and walking according to the will of God. For then all your desires will be right and pious, and you will remain at peace in the face of every unpleasant accident, resting in the will of God. Sincerely believing that nothing can happen to you apart from the will of God, and not wanting anything other than being in the active fulfillment of God’s will, you, as is self-evident, will always have only what you want, no matter what happens to you. What I said, however, that nothing will happen to you that is not the will of God, does not mean your own sins and the sins of other people, since God does not desire sins, but refers to sorrows and needs sent by God to admonish and teach us or as punishment for our sins. They are beneficial for us and are rightly called the saving cross, which He often places on His closest favorites and saints, and the bearing of which is especially pleasing to Him in all. And what I said: do not want to get rid of sorrows, understand it as it should, in the sense of submission to the will of God. We cannot help but desire to be free from sorrows, because God Himself put into our nature the desire for well-being, which is why He deigned to include in the prayer He Himself wrote for us: “Do not lead us into temptation” (Matthew 6:13), which we repeat every day several times. If now, after such a prayer, heard, of course, by God, He sends us sorrow, then it is clear that this is His special will, to which we, as His creatures, conscious of our duty to submit to Him in everything, must complacently submit, enduring what was sent as something that is necessary for the salvation of mine and yours. And the very prayer: “do not lead us into temptation,” do it, meaning: “not as I want, but as you” (Matthew 26:39), imitating the Lord Savior, i.e. do it not because you have an aversion to temptations and do not desire them under any circumstances, but for the sole reason that the Lord commanded to pray in this way, containing in your soul complete readiness to complacently accept everything that it would be pleasing to God to send upon us, and not indulging the selfish desire for continuous well-being, which cannot be on earth, since it is the lot of the future eternal life. Chapter 44. Warning against evil advice of the devil in good When the crafty devil sees that we are rightly, with lively zeal and in good order, following the path of virtues, from which he does not have time to distract us to his side with obvious temptations for evil, then he transforms into an angel of light, and now with imaginary good thoughts, now with the sayings of the Divine Scripture, now with the examples of saints, he incites, untimely and beyond his strength, to accept exorbitant feats towards spiritual perfection, so that when we dream of standing on top of it, it will cast us into the abyss of falling. Thus, he teaches others to cruelly exhaust their body with fasting, scourging, sleeping on the bare ground and other similar embitterments of the flesh so that he either falls into pride, dreaming that he is doing great things, or falls ill from extreme exhaustion and becomes unable to perform small works of piety, or, tired under the weight of exploits, becomes indifferent to all spiritual deeds and even to salvation itself, and thus, little by little, having cooled towards goodness, with the strongest desire he had ever had before, he attacked carnal pleasures and worldly pleasures. And how many souls have already perished from this machination of the enemy, who, succumbing to the zeal of unreasonable jealousy and in their self-mortifications, transgressing the measure of their own strength, disappeared in their ascetic inventions and became the laughing stock of evil demons! Which, of course, would not have happened to them if they had adhered to good reasoning and advice and had not forgotten that these self-destructive exploits, although commendable and fruitful where there is sufficient bodily strength and spiritual humility for them, should always, however, be controlled by prudence and used only as a means to spiritual success, and not elevated to the dignity of goals, and either belittled or are increased, then changed, then completely stopped for a while. Those who cannot live so strictly with themselves and such uplifting efforts as the saints can imitate their lives in another way, namely: by arousing and instilling good dispositions in the heart, becoming accustomed to warm prayers, unyielding overcoming passionate thoughts and desires and maintaining purity of heart, love of silence and solitude, humility and meekness before everyone, doing good to those from whom they had to suffer. something, guarding oneself from everything unkind, although it was insignificant. Such kindnesses of the heart are more pleasing to God than exorbitant feats of mortification of the flesh, when they are not required by our moral condition. Then I advise you to act judiciously in undertaking such physical feats, when there is a need for them. Do not take high measures, but start from low ones; for it is better to ascend little by little than to suddenly take hold of something high and then have to go down, to your shame. But I also advise you to avoid the other extreme, into which men who are considered spiritual sometimes fall. They, being driven by self-indulgence and self-pity, show too much concern for the preservation of bodily health and are such zealous caretakers of it that when faced with the slightest labor and deprivation, they tremble, fearing to lose their health; and they don’t think so much about anything, don’t talk about anything with such pleasure, as about preserving their lives. Meanwhile, however, by inventing delicate dishes for themselves that are more satisfying to their voluptuous taste than healthy ones, they relax and often upset their health, depriving themselves of what they consider a great good for themselves, by their inability to take the proper means to achieve it. Although they pretend that their motivation for such a course of action is the desire to work best for the Lord, in fact this is nothing more than an attempt to bring two irreconcilable enemies - spirit and flesh - together, not only without any benefit for both of them, but, on the contrary, with obvious harm to both one and the other, for this deprives the body of health, and the spirit of a saving mood. Therefore, it is safer and more beneficial for the body and soul to live a measured way of life, governed by prudence, in which mental needs and the special constitution of the body and the state of health are taken into account, for there is not one measure for everyone in this regard, although for everyone there is one law - to keep the body in the service of the spirit. At the same time, remember what was said before, that in acquiring not only physical, but also spiritual virtues, one must be gradual, ascending in them little by little. Chapter 45. If we judge our neighbors strictly, it is from a high opinion of ourselves and from the instigation of the enemy. How to overcome this tendency From pride and conceit, another kind of evil is generated in us, which causes serious harm to us, namely, strict judgment and condemnation of our neighbor, according to which we then despise, despise and humiliate him on occasion. What evil habit and vice, originating from pride, is nourished by it and grows, and vice versa, it feeds and grows, for our pride, after any action of condemnation, moves forward, due to the feeling of well-being and self-pleasure that accompanies this action. By giving ourselves a high price and thinking highly of ourselves, we naturally look down on others, condemn them and despise them, since it seems to us that we are far from those shortcomings that we think are not alien to others. And then our all-evil enemy, seeing such an unkind disposition in us, cheerfully stands nearby and, opening our eyes, teaches us to vigilantly watch what others do and say, to draw from this conclusion what thoughts and feelings they have, and based on these assumptions to form our own opinion about them, most often unkind, with this unkindness elevated to an inveterate disposition. These judges do not notice and do not see that the very beginning of condemnation, the suspicion of thinness in others, is imprinted in the thought by the action of the enemy, and it is then inflated by him into the confidence that they really are such, although in reality there is nothing of the kind. But, my brother, just as the enemy watchfully watches you, looking out for how to sow evil in you, watch even more watchfully over yourself, so as not to fall into the snares he is setting for you, and as soon as he presents to you some shortcoming in your neighbor, hurry to quickly reject this thought from yourself, not allowing it to take root in you and grow, and push it out of yourself, so that no trace of it remained, replacing it with the thought of the good qualities that you know in your neighbor and which are generally appropriate in people, adding to this, if you still feel the urge to pronounce condemnation, the truth that you have not been given the power to do this and that, by appropriating this power to yourself, at that moment you yourself become worthy of judgment and condemnation not before weak people, but before the omnipotent Judge of all God. Such a revolution of thought is the most powerful means not only for driving away thoughts of condemnation that occur by chance, but also for completely weaning oneself from this vice. The second, also a very strong means for this, is not to let go of the mind about your badness, your unclean and evil passions and deeds, and accordingly, constantly maintain the feeling of your lewdness. Of course, you will have quite a few of both – passions and passionate deeds. If you have not given up on yourself and given up, saying: come what may, then you cannot help but take care of healing these moral infirmities of yours that are destroying you. But if you do this sincerely, then you should not have enough time to deal with the affairs of others and draw up judicial verdicts about them, because then, if you allow yourself to do this, your ears will incessantly ring: “Physician, heal yourself; First remove the beam from your hair” (Luke 4:23; Matt. 7:5). Moreover, when you strictly judge some unkind act of your neighbor, know that some root of this same unkindness is also in your heart, which, due to its passion, teaches you to make guesses about others and condemn them. “An evil man brings forth evil from the evil treasure of his heart” (Matthew 12:35). On the contrary, a pure and dispassionate eye dispassionately looks at the deeds of others, and not with evil. “A pure eye cannot see evil” (Hab. 1:13). Therefore, when the thought comes to you of condemning another for any mistake, be indignant at yourself, as the doer of such deeds and guilty of the same, and say in your heart: “How can I, a damned one, being in the same sin and committing even more serious sins, dare to raise my head to see the mistakes of others and condemn them?” By acting in this way, you will turn the weapon with which an evil thought inspires you to hit another on yourself, and instead of wounding your brother, you will apply a plaster to your own wounds. And then, when your brother’s sin is not secret, but obvious, visible to everyone, you try to see the reason for this not in what the unkind passion of condemnation inspires, but in what a brotherly disposition towards him can indicate, and say to yourself: since this brother has many hidden virtues, then God, in order to preserve them from damage by vanity, allowed him to fall into the present sin or to remain under this unsightly sin for a short time a cover so that he would seem indecent to himself, before his own eyes, and, being despised by others for that reason, would reap the fruit of humility and become even more pleasing to God, so that in the present case he would receive more benefit than how much harm he suffered. Even if someone’s sin is not only obvious, but also very serious and comes from a hardened and unrepentant heart, do not condemn him, but raise the eyes of your mind to the incomprehensible and wondrous judgments of God, and you will see how many people who were previously lawless, then repented and achieved a high degree of holiness, and how, on the other hand, others, who stood at a high degree of perfection, fell into deep abyss. See that you too do not suffer such a calamity for being condemned. Therefore, always stand with fear and trembling, fearing more for yourself than for anyone else. And be sure that every good word about your neighbor and joy about him are the fruit and action of the Holy Spirit in you, just as, on the contrary, every bad word about him and his contemptuous condemnation come from your evil nature and the devil’s suggestion to you. Therefore, when you are tempted by some unkind deed of your brother, do not let your eyes sleep until you have driven out this temptation from your heart and have completely made peace with your brother. Although self-reliance and trust in God, and persistence in ascetic deeds are extremely necessary in our spiritual warfare, as has been shown so far, prayer is more necessary than all of them, this is the fourth weapon in this battle, as we said at the beginning (Chapter 1, at the end), because through it those first three weapons, like any other good, are acquired and receive their full strength. Prayer is a means for attracting and a hand for receiving all the graces that are so richly poured out on us from the inexhaustible source of God’s boundless love and goodness for us; in spiritual warfare, you put your sword into the right hand of God, so that He may fight your enemies for you and defeat them. But in order for prayer to manifest all its power in you in this matter, it is necessary that it remain in you incessantly, as a natural direction of your spirit, and be protected and inspired by the following dispositions. 1) You must always have a living desire to serve the one God in every action, and to serve in a way that is pleasing to Him. To revive and support such aspiration, be convinced and persistently keep in mind that the Lord and according to His wonderful properties - goodness, greatness, wisdom and other countless and immeasurable perfections, should be given worship, honor and service by every rational creature. But when you add to this the constant remembrance that He Himself indescribably served you beneficially through His incarnate economy, redeemed you and lifted the great oath from you, healed and healed your ulcers caused to you by the poison of sin, not with wine and oil, and not with any plasters, but with the priceless Blood that flowed from His most holy ribs and most pure flesh, tormented by scourges, thorns and nails - can you resist so as not to diligently devote every moment to serving Him alone in word, deed, and thought? Moreover, you should not forget how beneficial such service is for ourselves, since it makes us masters over ourselves, conquerors of the devil and sons of God. 2) You must have a living and warm faith that God, out of His great mercy and the multitude of His bounties, Himself desires and is ready to give you everything you need for your worthy service to Him, and every good thing you need. Such faith and such hope will be in you a vessel that will fill God’s boundless mercy with the treasures of His graces. And the larger and more capacious this vessel you have, the more abundant your prayers will return into your bosom every time. And how can one imagine that God, the changeless Almighty, who commanded us to pray to Him and promised to give us the blessings we asked for, refused to make us partakers of them when we ask Him for them with diligent and patient prayer, and did not give us His Spirit? Is not His word: “How much more will the Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13)? And didn’t He promise: “And whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matthew 21:22)? 3) You must approach prayer in such a mood that you desire only the Divine will, and not your own, both in the request itself and in receiving what you ask, namely, so that you are moved to prayer because God wants it, and you want to be heard, again as He wants it. In a word, let it be in your mind and heart to completely unite your will with the will of God and obey it in everything and not at all want to bend the will of God to your will. And why is this? Because your will is always dissolved with pride, very often it sins and does not know what it should desire. The will of the Lord is always good, wise, all-righteous, beneficial and can never sin. Therefore, just as it is an urgent law for everything that exists and happens, so it must be the rule for the will of all rational creatures and the queen of their desires, which they must obediently follow in everything. Thus, you should always desire, ask and seek that one thing that is pleasing to God. And if you ever doubt whether this or that is pleasing to God, seek it and ask in the thought that you want to do or have it, if God also desires it. Seek and ask for that which you know for sure is pleasing to God, such as virtue, in order to please God most of all and to serve Him better, and not for any other purpose, even a spiritual one. 4) You must approach prayer also adorned with deeds consistent with your request, and after prayer, work especially hard to become a worthy receptacle of the grace and virtue you ask for. The work of prayer, therefore, must be accompanied by the feat of self-compulsion and straining oneself to do what we ask for, because here, in the order of spiritual life, asking and seeking one’s own follow one another, each other attentively. If someone in prayer prays to God for any virtue, and meanwhile he himself indulges in negligence, not accepting any specific means to acquire this virtue and not doing any deeds for this, and not achieving feats, then truly such a person is tempting God rather than praying. Why did the divine Jacob say that “the prayer of a righteous man can make great progress” (James 5:16). Success here occurs when someone, asking a righteous person to pray for something for himself, prays for it himself, and when someone, praying for something to God, diligently does everything necessary to obtain what he asks for, as St. Maxim. 5) In your prayer you must combine those four actions about which St. writes. Basil the Great: first glorify God, then thank Him for the blessings shown to you, then confess to Him your sins and transgressions of His commandments and, finally, ask Him for what you need, especially in the matter of your salvation. Following this, you can pray something like this: “Lord, my God! I praise and glorify Your ineffable glory and Your immeasurable greatness - I thank You that, by Your sole goodness, having given me existence and making me worthy to be a partaker of the saving blessings of Your incarnate economy, You have repeatedly delivered me, unknown even to me, from the troubles that threatened me and from the hand of my invisible enemies - I confess to You that countless times I have trampled his conscience and fearlessly violated Your holy commandments, being ungrateful for so many of Your blessings. But, my most merciful God, may this ingratitude not overcome Your goodness, despise my sins and indecencies, look at the tears of my contrition and, according to the multitude of Your bounties, help me even now, give me what is necessary for my salvation and direct my entire life to please You, so that Your all-holy name may be glorified by me, the unworthy.” With this last word, you can count by name all your real spiritual, mental and physical needs, and if at this time you are practicing any special virtue, then remember it too and pray that God will help you to succeed in it perfectly: if you are disturbed by the movements of any passion, pray for help not to succumb to it and drive it away; If you suffer any injustice or insult, or any kind of damage or misfortune, do not forget to thank God for it, because this too, being according to the will of God, is always good, and visits you for your good. 6) So that your prayer may have power before God and attract His favor to you, give it wings and grace it with undoubted faith, not only in the immensity of God’s generosity and in the immutability of His promise to hear us calling to Him, even before our prayer ends (Isa. 58:9), but especially by virtue of the economy of our Lord Jesus Christ embodied for us, for our sake who died on the cross, was resurrected, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, where he stands and intercedes for us, since “if God did not spare His Son, but for us... gave Him up to eat, how can... not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Offer also, in your hearing, the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Ever-Virgin Mary, who prays for us day and night, and the intercession of all the saints - Archangels and Angels, apostles and prophets, shepherds and teachers, martyrs and martyrs, reverend fathers and mothers and those who have pleased God in every way, your Guardian Angel and the saint whose name you bear and to whom the church is dedicated, in which you are baptized and always pray. By prefacing these petitions to your prayer, you will precipitate your humility, which is nothing more favorable to God, who does not look upon anyone so mercifully as “the meek and humble.” God will not despise a contrite and humble heart” (Isa. 66:2; Ps. 50:19). 7) You must always perform your prayers with tireless diligence, as the Apostle commands, saying: “Be patient in prayer, watchful in it” (Col. 4:2). For humble patience, tirelessness and persistence in prayer defeats the invincible God and bows to His mercy. If the persistence of the widow of the Gospel bowed down to her request the judge of the evil and unrighteous, according to the Gospel parable of the Lord, who deliberately spoke it in order to teach us not to get bored, but to remain patiently in prayer, as we read in the Gospel: “the verb and the parable... as it is fitting to always pray and not get cold” (Luke 18:1) - if, I say, the unjust judge bowed to the widow’s request because of her persistence, then how will God, Who is all goodness, not bow to our prayers if we relentlessly beg Him? Therefore, when you beg God for something and He hesitates to hear you, continue to pray, holding in your heart a firm and living hope for His help. For earnest prayer never remains behind Him, and rich mercies are always ready to be poured out from Him, exceeding the very aspirations of those praying, if there are no moral obstacles on their part and if they are not in such a state that it is better for them that their request remains unfulfilled - in which case, instead of what is asked, He sends some other good that is beneficial for them, whether it is known to them or unknown. In this mind, it is fair to have the conviction that prayer never goes unheard, but only happens that what is sent as a result of it is not what they ask for, not knowing that it is not useful for them and that it is left invisible because seeing it is not harmless for those receiving. Always be patient in prayer and be sure that prayer never remains fruitless. If you do not receive what you ask for, believe that you are receiving or will receive another benefit instead; and if you do not and will not see this, do not try to find out why, but rather, instead, turn to your unworthiness and fill your soul with thoughts and feelings of humility. If you reproduce and confirm such feelings in yourself as a result of prayer, then even if you receive absolutely nothing for it, not only visibly, but also invisibly, accept these very feelings as the fruit of prayer, and for you, saving and pleasing to God above all else. Listen to what St. says. Chrysostom: “Prayer is a great blessing if it is done with the proper good mood and if we teach ourselves, both when we receive what we ask and when we do not receive it, to thank God. For when He gives and when He does not give, He does both for our good, so that when you receive what you ask for, you have obviously received it, and when you do not receive it, you have received it, because you have probably not received what is not useful to you - not to receive what is not useful is to be rewarded with what is useful. So, whether you receive or do not receive what you ask, thank God, believing that if it were not often more beneficial for us not to receive what we ask, then God would always give us what we ask.” So, always patiently pray to God and thank Him for everything, believing and confessing that He is good to you and wisely good, and is your loving Benefactor both in giving and in non-giving at your request, and by this unshakable faith, remain in humble submission to Divine Providence, joyfully and gratefully meeting everything that happens to you, both pleasant and unpleasant. Chapter 47. What is mental, or internal, prayer and what types does it come in? Mental, or internal, prayer is when the person praying, having gathered his mind inside the heart, from there, not vocally, but in a silent word, sends up his prayer to God, glorifying Him and giving thanks, contritely confessing his sins to Him and asking Him for the spiritual and physical benefits he needs. You must pray not only with words, but also with your mind, and not only with your mind, but also with your heart, so that your mind clearly sees and understands what is being said in words, and let your heart feel what your mind is thinking about it. All this taken together is real prayer, and if your prayer does not contain any of this, then it is either imperfect prayer or not prayer at all. You have probably heard these words: verbal prayer, mental prayer, heartfelt prayer; Moreover, I may have heard discussions about each of them separately. Why does such a decomposition of prayer into its parts occur? Because, due to our oversight, it happens that sometimes the tongue pronounces the holy words of prayer, but the mind wanders God knows where, or the mind understands the words of the prayer, but the heart does not respond to them with feeling. In the first case, prayer is only verbal and is not prayer at all; in the second, mental prayer is combined with verbal prayer, and this is imperfect, incomplete prayer. Complete and real prayer exists when a prayerful feeling is combined with a prayerful word and a prayerful thought. It happens, by the grace of God, that there is only one prayer from the heart - and this is spiritual prayer, moved in the heart by the Holy Spirit; the one who prays is aware of it, but does not create it, but it itself is created in him. Such prayer is the property of the perfect. Prayer that is publicly accessible and required of everyone is that both thought and feeling are always combined with the word of prayer. There is also a prayer, which is called standing before God, when the one praying, fully concentrating inside the heart, mentally contemplates God as inherent in himself and in himself with corresponding feelings: now the fear of God and reverent amazement of His greatness, now faith and hope, now love and devotion to His will, now contrition and readiness for all kinds of sacrifices. This state comes when someone deepens in ordinary prayer with words, mind and heart. Whoever prays for a long time and properly, such states will be repeated more and more often, and finally such a state can become permanent, and then it is called walking before God, and there is unceasing prayer. St. was in this state. David, testifying about himself: “I have seen the Lord before me, as he is at my right hand, so that I will not move” (Ps. 15:8). So, my brother, if you want your prayer to be fruitful, never limit your prayer to prayer alone, but pray together with both your mind and your heart: with your mind, understanding and realizing everything that is being prayed, with your heart, feeling everything. Most of all, pray with your heart. Prayer, shooting out from the heart like a lightning arrow, instantly passes through the heavens and appears before the throne of the all-merciful God. And God listens to her most of all and bows to her. Moses prayed this prayer before the Red Sea and immediately heard the voice of God: “Why are you crying to me?” (Ref. 14, 15) - and received power from God to deliver his people from the trouble that threatened them. Chapter 48. How to learn to pray in this way I believe that after reading what has been said, you have a question: how to learn such a prayer? And here is your answer: learn to always pray this way, i.e. not only in words, but also with your mind and heart - and you will learn. How did you learn to read? I began to work on this and learned. How did you learn to write? I started writing and learned. So you will learn to pray, as shown, if you begin to pray in this way. You know the words of prayer, of course, you were taught them from childhood. They are contained in our prayer books and church service books. They are prayerful outpourings poured out from the hearts of holy men and women when, moved by the Spirit of God, they expressed the desires of their hearts before God. They contain a spirit of prayer; You too will be filled with the same spirit if you read them as you should, just as the spirit of some writer is communicated to those who read him with full attention. Everyone experiences this; I think you have experienced it too. These prayer words are collected in our prayer books, and you do not have to work at collecting them. So, have a prayer book and at certain times for prayer, usually in the morning and evening, read the prayers there, delving into every word, thinking as it is depicted there, and trying to reproduce the same feelings in your heart that move in the prayer you read. That's all the wisdom! That's what everyone usually does. That’s what everyone usually does – it’s true, you might say. But why doesn’t everyone have the right prayer? Because they do this, that is, they take a prayer book, stand in front of the icons and read, but do not apply their mind and heart here: the mind wanders not knowing where, and the heart delights in its own things, and not in prayer. And you, while praying, enclose your mind in the words of prayer, and perceive with your heart what they say - and you will immediately feel the fruit of such prayer. So, you have prayer words, which means you understand and feel them, you know, and this is in your power. Therefore, prayer and success in it are in your hands. Work hard and you will succeed. I will, however, offer something as a guide to the most convenient success. 1) Try not during prayer time, but at other free times, to think and feel the prescribed prayers. Having done this, during prayer you will not encounter any difficulty in reproducing in yourself the entire content of the prayer being read; Even as soon as you begin a prayer, its thoughts and feelings will appear to your consciousness, and you will pronounce the prayer word as if it were your own and came from your heart, being generated in it, and not being put into it. 2) Try to think and feel the prayers and memorize them. Having done this, you will carry prayers within you. While they are in the prayer book, they are outside of you; and when you memorize them, they will become inside you, and you, no matter what your circumstances, will always have your prayer book with you. In addition, by memorizing prayers, you will imprint prayerful thoughts and feelings more deeply in yourself than by simply discussing them and feeling them. From such study, a prayerful structure will be formed in you, if you not only memorize the words, but also be in the thoughts and feelings that are contained in prayer. And this is the best path to success in the skill of worthy prayer. 3) When the time comes for prayer, do not suddenly, as soon as you break away from your usual affairs, begin to pray, but prepare in advance for this: “Stay silently for a while until your feelings calm down,” as the prayer book teaches you, and remember what you are about to do and what you have to do, who you are who has to pray, and who is the One before whom you will say your prayers, and what exactly you must say it and how. Such preparation is made necessary - in the morning, the whitening of the soul from falling into sleep and the attack of worries about the upcoming affairs of the day immediately upon awakening, and in the evening - the diverse impressions of the day, and especially cases of outstanding and amazing, pleasant and unpleasant. Try to get everything out of your consciousness, so that the matter of prayer then takes up all your attention and you can exclusively devote the available time to it alone. Amazing cases, if you don’t have time to deal with them, turn them into the subject of prayer or thanksgiving, or asking for help and deliverance, or surrendering them and yourself and everything you have to the will of God. 4) Before the very beginning of prayer, place yourself in the presence of God to the consciousness and feeling of Him with reverent fear and raise in your heart a living faith that God sees and hears you, that He does not turn away from those who pray, but looks favorably on them and on you at this hour of prayer, and be inspired by the hope that He is ready to fulfill, and will actually fulfill your request, if it is spiritually beneficial for you. 5) Having set yourself up in this way, say your prayers, deeply delving into them and taking every possible care that they come from your heart as your own, although they are memorized. Do not allow your attention to wander and your thoughts to fly to the side. As soon as you realize that this has happened, return your thoughts inside and begin your prayers again from the point from which your attention deviated to something else. Notice that attention does not dissipate when the heart is in prayerful feelings. That’s why you care most about these feelings. Do not allow yourself to rush into prayer, but carry it all out reverently, as a sacred task, and bring it to the end with patience. 6) If, in the midst of prayer in such a mood and order, some subject of prayer especially falls on your heart, captivates your attention as close to you by circumstances and evokes your own prayer word, do not let this opportunity pass by, but dwell on it and pray with your word until the prayerful feeling or need that has arisen is satisfied. 7) If you take the trouble to do prayer in this way, you will take away from it a prayerful mood, which you take care to keep as strong as possible. For this purpose, do not immediately rush into ordinary affairs and never think that, having completed your prayer rule, you have finished everything in relation to God and that you can now give free rein to your thoughts and feelings. No, you should try to behave the same way throughout the day as you followed the prayer rule. To support this, do not forget that you walk before God and are held by His right hand over the abyss of insignificance, and keeping this in your thoughts, do every thing you do, both big and small, as God wants it, asking Him for blessings, and turn everything to the glory of His name. By doing this, you will reach your evening prayer in a good prayerful mood. Having completed the evening rule in the same way, you will sleep well at night. And now you have a day of good prayerful mood. Spend this day after day, and in a few months, and maybe even weeks, you will become a strong prayer book, and prayer, like an unquenchable lamp, will begin to constantly glow in your heart. 8) I will also add one more rule, namely, the continuity of such prayerful work, from its beginning to success in it... If now you pray well and keep yourself in a prayerful mood, and tomorrow you give yourself free rein and spend the day dissolutely, then, acting in this way, you will never succeed in prayer. It will be the same as building and destroying... And you can get to the point where prayer completely dies out and the soul becomes useless for it. Having begun, one must patiently remain in prayer, without weakening and without indulging oneself in privileges and liberties. Chapter 49. About your prayer, the praying component itself Everything that has been said so far has been said about prayer or prayer with ready-made prayers, and although done with attention and feeling, they are still someone else’s. Should this be limited forever? The prayer itself will answer this. Begin to pray properly with memorized prayers - prayer will begin to be instilled in the soul from the very beginning, and as the strength with which it is instilled, it will begin to call the one praying to offer his own prayer, on his own behalf, according to his own needs, composed in the heart. And with every prayer he will offer such prayers to God. Thus, prayer has its own place and part in the work of prayer. I already reminded you in the previous chapter (paragraph 6) that when, during prayer, any words of a spoken prayer fall on your soul and occupy it, you should not leave it unattended, but stop there and pray on your own about what has occupied your soul. And do so. The same thing happens when reading the word of God and fatherly spiritual books, it happens when thinking about divine things - about God’s greatness and all-perfection, about the wondrous works of God’s creativity, omnipotence and providence, and about the most wonderful work of the incarnate Economy for our salvation; It also happens in especially impressionable and striking cases of current life, that is, that some object especially strikes the soul, captivates its attention and calls it to ascend in prayer to the Almighty God. And in all these cases, do not ignore the emerging urge, but fulfill its demand by temporarily stopping the activity in which it happened. These sudden impulses mean that prayer has begun to settle in the heart and fill it. For this does not appear from the very first time you devote yourself to the work of becoming accustomed to prayer, but after a more or less long time. This is evidence of success in prayer work; and the more often such urges appear within, the more fully the heart in which they arise is filled with a prayerful spirit. This should end with you always praying only your own prayer. But this does not happen, and one’s own prayer always comes ready-made into the prayer book. For they are homogeneous and the same degree of dignity, and if they are replaced, then by the prayer of standing before God contemplatively without words. Note that sometimes in such cases only a urge to a specific prayer is generated, and sometimes with the urge the prayer itself is formed in the heart without difficulty on the part of the person praying. In the first case, you must compose the appropriate prayer yourself, and in the second, you must only listen and not interfere with the prayer coming from your heart. At the same time, I will remind you: do not be tempted by the desire to compose your own prayers without the said inner urge and need. You can put together a very clever speech to God, but it will not be a prayer, but a combination of words and thoughts without the spirit of prayer. Don't do that. You cannot do without vanity and conceit, and these creations drown out real prayer and suppress it. As for prayer, which is formed by itself in the heart along with the need that has arisen in it to pray about an object that concerns you personally and is beneficial for you, then sometimes it is actually your creation from those prayer elements that are collected in the heart from the assimilation and memorization of ready-made prayers, and sometimes it is produced by the action of God’s grace. In such cases, it becomes the rudiment or embryo of spiritual prayer, which I mentioned to you in Chapter 47. When you become worthy of this, it will mean that you are approaching the limits of perfection available to you. Then thank God, and begin your mother-in-law’s path of life with even greater fear and trembling. The more valuable one's treasure, the more the envious eyes of enemies flare up. Chapter 50. About short prayers, or short sighs of prayer to God It has already been said more than once that real prayer is internal prayer, not only in words, but also performed with the mind and heart. Such prayer captures all attention and keeps it inside the heart; therefore, staying inside is an integral feature of real prayer and its main condition. With being inside in the matter of prayer, the thought of God present, seeing and listening to prayer, is inseparable, with the reflection of every other thought, which is called sobriety or guarding the heart. Therefore, all the concern of a person working on success in prayer should be primarily turned here, and indeed is turned, that is, so that he always remains close to the heart, soberly protecting it from every thought except God alone, and no matter what has to be done, do it without deviating attention from God, with the consciousness of His presence, as if before His face. This is the highest achievement in prayer work. The path to it and even to the consciousness of its need and need is paved by prayer, performed in the manner shown. It first teaches the mind to concentrate on the heart and listen exclusively to God. Having realized how beneficial this concentration is, it is natural for a prayer worker to wish that it would be an unchanging state of his spirit, for then there would be unceasing prayer in him; it is natural for the one who desires to seek satisfaction of this desire. And all those who felt such a need sought and are seeking this. All the instructions of the holy fathers about sobriety and guarding the heart are aimed at this and are generated by nothing other than success in this work. If you also feel such a need, then the question is inherent in you: how can you manage in this non-existent inward abiding before the face of God, with a sober guarding of the heart? Prayer paves the way to this and produces the beginnings of this, but does not give the work itself or does not bring it to the required strength and perfection. The prayer book is complex. It contains and presents to attention many objects that, although all are holy, can, however, resemble other objects, everyday and social, and through them worldly, unlike, according to the usual laws, combinations of thoughts and imaginations. This is how it happens. And the most diligent prayer does not pass without the thought not deviating or wandering. Since prayer through this is disturbed and becomes unclean, there is no prayer book who would not be annoyed by this and would not want to get rid of such weakness. Attention was drawn to this from the first days of asceticism. After the prayer, what was invented to heal her? It was invented to pray with short prayers, which would, keeping the thought before the face of God, would not give it a reason to deviate from indulgence and would make it inwardly abiding. About this St. Cassian testifies, certifying that in his time such doing was everywhere in Egypt (Conversation 10, chapter 10). From the instructions of other fathers we see that it was in use in Sinai, and in Palestine, and in Syria, and in all other places, throughout the Christian world. The appeal “Lord have mercy!” and other short prayers, with which all the rites of our worship and our prayers are filled, what else do they mean if not this? So here’s my advice to you: choose a short prayer or several such prayers and by repeating them frequently, get to the point that they repeat themselves on your tongue and keep your thoughts on one thing - thinking about God. Which prayers to choose can be left to everyone’s freedom. Read the Psalter. There, in every psalm you can find inspiring appeals to God. Choose from them those that are closer to your condition and more to your liking; memorize and repeat one thing, then another, then a third, intersperse your prayers with them, and let them be on your tongue at all times and in all matters from prayer to prayer. You can also compose your prayers, more closely expressing your need, following the example of those saints. Chrysostom 24 prayers that you have in your prayer book. However, do not type too many of them, so as not to burden your memory with them and cause your attention to scatter over them, which will be completely contrary to the purpose for which they are prescribed - to keep your attention focused. 24 prayers to St. Chrysostom is a measured measure, and less is possible. It is good to have not one, but several of them for variety and revitalization of spiritual taste; in using them, however, you should not quickly move from one to another, but having taken one that comes closer to your spiritual need, cry out to God with it until the taste for it dulls. You can replace all or part of your prayer with these prayers, repeating them several times - 10, 50 and 100 times, with small bows. But always keep one thing in mind - keep your attention to God constant. Let's call this activity short sighs of prayer to God, at every moment of the day and night during which you are not sleeping. Chapter 51. About the Jesus Prayer There were and are prayer books who loved one short prayer and repeated it incessantly. St. Cassian says that in Egypt in his time the short prayer common to everyone was the 2nd verse of the 69th Psalm: “God, come to my help; Lord, strive for my help” (Ps. 69:2). Oh St. It is written in John’s life that he kept repeating the following prayer: “My hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, my protection is the Holy Spirit.” He also attached it to each verse of the 30 psalms, which he memorized and made up his prayer rule. Another person had the following words in his constant prayer: “I, as a man who has sinned, You, as a generous God, have mercy on me.” Others, of course, loved prayers for themselves. Since ancient times, many people have chosen the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” We see an indication of it in St. Ephraim, St. Chrysostom, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Hesychia, St. Barsanuphius and St. John and St. Climacus. Then, becoming more and more generalized, it began to fulfill the lips of everyone and even entered the church charter, where it is proposed in place of all prayers at home and all church services. That’s why we mainly use short prayers. Try to get used to it too. This prayer is called the Jesus Prayer because it addresses the Lord Jesus and is verbal in composition, like any other short prayer. It is smart and should be called when it is elevated not only by words, but also by the mind and heart, with awareness of its content and feeling, and especially when, through long, attentive use, it so merges with the movements of the spirit that they alone are seen as inherent within, but there are, as it were, no words. Any short prayer can ascend to this level. The Jesus Prayer has the advantage because it unites the soul with the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is the only door to communion with God, which prayer seeks to achieve. For He Himself said: “No one will come to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). Therefore, the one who acquires it assimilates to himself all the power of the embodied Economy, which is our salvation. Hearing this, you will not be surprised why those who are zealous for salvation spared no effort, trying to get used to this prayer and to assimilate its power. Take them as an example for yourself too. The habit of the Jesus Prayer externally consists in achieving the fact that it constantly revolves on the tongue by itself, but internally - in concentrating the attention of the mind in the heart and constantly standing there before the Lord, with the accompanying warmth of the heart in different degrees, and the rejection of all other thoughts, and especially with a contrite and humble fall to the Lord the Savior. This skill begins by repeating this prayer as often as possible with attention in the heart. Frequent repetition, when established, gathers the mind together in the presence of the Lord. The establishment of such a system within is accompanied by a warming of the heart and the driving away of even simple thoughts, and not just passionate ones. When the fire of clinging to the Lord begins to incessantly glow in the heart, then along with this a peaceful dispensation of the heart will be established within with a contrite and humble mental fall to the Lord. Our own work has reached this point with the help of God’s grace. What else, higher than this, can be accomplished in the act of prayer, will be a gift of one grace. The holy fathers remember this only so that anyone, having reached the shown limit, does not think that he has nothing more to desire, and does not dream that he stands at the very top of perfection, prayerful or spiritual. So, the first task before you is to repeat the Jesus Prayer often, as often as possible, until you get used to repeating it incessantly. Do it like this: 1) Determine the part of the Jesus Prayer in your prayer rule. Say this prayer several times at the beginning of your prayer and several times after it. If you have zeal, and after each prayer included in such a prayer book, do the same, imitating St. John the Great, who, after each verse of the psalms he read in his rule, repeated his short prayer: “My hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, my protection is the Holy Spirit.” 2) Determine the number of times to repeat this prayer in which case, either for yourself or with the advice of your spiritual father. Just don’t prescribe too much at first, and then, as you enjoy this prayer, add a little. If when the desire comes to repeat the assigned number, do not deny yourself this, without making it a permanent rule, but only in this case. And no matter how many such repetitions your heart requires, do not refuse. 3) Do not rush to rush one prayer after another, but say them with measured duration, as they usually say in front of a large person when they ask him for something. However, do not worry about words alone, but more so that your mind is in your heart and stands before the Lord as if present, with full consciousness of His greatness and grace and truth. 4) If you have freedom, then during the time between one prayer and another, make it a point to stand as you usually stand for prayer, and offer this prayer to the Lord several times. And if there is no such freedom, then internally insert this prayer everywhere between your deeds and even your speeches. 5) When performing this prayer on the rule or in addition to it, placing yourself in a prayer position for it, each time you pronounce it, make a bow - ten times from the waist, and then to the ground - until you finish. You, of course, have heard or read that the holy fathers in their rules on prayer include many bows. One of them said: prayer is not enough if someone does not overload his body with bows. If you decide, according to your strength, to imitate this, then you will sooner see the fruit of your work on becoming accustomed to the Jesus Prayer. 6) For further instructions, instructions and warnings regarding the Jesus Prayer, read in the “Philokalia” of Simeon the New Theologian, Gregory the Sinaite, Nikephoros the monk, Ignatius and Callistus; and all other fathers, lessons on inner prayer can be applied to the Jesus Prayer. Note: in the lessons of the said fathers you will find instructions on how to sit, how to hold your head and act with your breath. These techniques, as Callistus and Ignatius said, are not essential, but are only external devices, not suitable for everyone. It is enough for you to be attentive in your heart before the face of the Lord and to offer this short prayer to Him reverently and humbly, with bows when you stand on the rule, and with one mental prostration when you do this between tasks. 7) Note also: you need to pay attention to the heart or inside the chest, as some fathers say, namely, a little above the left nipple, and repeat the Jesus Prayer there. When your heart begins to ache from tension, then do as monk Nicephorus advises, namely, rise from that place and stand with attention and a prayerful word where we usually conduct a conversation with ourselves, under the Adam’s apple at the top of the chest. Then you will go down again over the left nipple. Do not disdain this remark, no matter how it may seem too simple and little spiritual to you. 8) You will find many warnings from the holy fathers. All of them are motivated by experiences of wrong action. To avoid these errors, have an adviser - a spiritual father or an interlocutor - a like-minded brother - and trust them with everything that happens during your work. Always act in the greatest simplicity, in great humility and not appropriating success to yourself. Know that real success happens inside, imperceptibly, without showing, just as the body grows. Therefore, when it shouts inside you: ah, here it is! - know that this is an enemy’s cry, presenting to you something apparent instead of what is real. This is the beginning of self-delusion. Silence this voice right away, otherwise it will hum like a trumpet, feeding your conceit. 9) Do not determine the time required for success in this prayer. Just put in work and work. Months and years will pass before the faint beginnings of success appear. One of the Athonite fathers said about himself that two years of labor passed before his heart warmed; for another person it came after eight months. For everyone this happens according to his strength and zeal for this matter. Chapter 52. Contributing to success in the habit of prayer When doing and seeking success in prayer work, adapt everything to this end, so as not to destroy with one hand what the other creates. 1) Maintain your body strictly in food, in sleep, and in rest; don’t give it anything just because it wants it, as the Apostle commanded, saying: “Do not please the flesh through lust” (Rom. 13:14). Give no rest to the flesh. 2) Reduce your external relations to the most inevitable. This is for the time of teaching yourself to pray. Afterwards, the prayer, acting in you, will indicate that without prejudice to it it can be added. Take special care of your senses and especially your eyes and ears; tie and tongue. Without observing this, you will not take a step forward in the matter of prayer. Just as a candle cannot burn in the wind and rain, so prayer cannot be warmed by the influx of impressions from outside. 3) Use all your free time after prayer for reading and meditation. For reading, choose books that write about prayer and, in general, about inner spiritual life. Think exclusively about God and divine things, and especially about the incarnate Economy of our salvation, and in it, especially about the suffering and death of the Lord Savior. By doing this, you will find yourself immersed in a sea of ​​divine light. Add to this going to church as soon as you have the opportunity. One presence in the church will overshadow you with a prayer cloud. What will you get if you spend the entire service in a truly prayerful mood?! 4) Know that it is impossible to have time in prayer without having time in general in the Christian life. It is inevitably necessary that there should not be a single sin on the soul that has not been cleansed by repentance; and if during the work of prayer you do something that troubles your conscience, hasten to be cleansed by repentance, so that you can boldly look to the Lord. And always keep humble contrition in your heart. Then do not miss a single opportunity to do any good or to demonstrate any good disposition, especially humility, obedience and renunciation of your will. But it goes without saying that zeal for salvation should burn unquenchably and, filling the whole soul, in everything, from small to great, should be the main driving force, with the fear of God and unshakable hope. 5) Having thus set yourself up, bother yourself in prayerful work, praying now with ready-made prayers, now with your own, now with short appeals to the Lord, now with the Jesus Prayer, but without missing out on anything that can help in this work. And you will get what you are looking for. Let me remind you what Macarius of Egypt says: God will see your prayer work and that you sincerely desire success in prayer, and will give you prayer. For know that although prayer created and achieved through one’s own efforts is a prayer pleasing to God, the real prayer that settles in the heart and becomes persistent is a gift of God, a work of God’s grace. Therefore, while you pray about everything, do not forget to pray about prayer. 6) I will tell you what I heard from one lover of God. “I lived,” he said, “not quite properly; but God had mercy on me and sent me a spirit of repentance. It was during fasting. I strained myself in every possible way to put into myself a firm determination to correct myself, especially before confession I prayed for a long time before the image of the Mother of God, asking Her to beg me for such determination. When I started confession, I recounted everything frankly. My spiritual father didn’t say anything to me, but when he said a prayer of permission over my head, a sweet light sank into my heart. The sensation is similar to swallowing a tasty morsel. That flame that had sunk there remained in my heart, and I felt as if someone was holding me by the heart. From that time on, I kept praying and kept my attention where such a feeling was, trying to keep it from going away. And God helped me. I have not heard of the Jesus Prayer; and when I heard, I saw that what was in me was exactly what I was looking for in this prayer.” I bring you this legend so that you can understand from this what is sought through prayerful work and by what sign can one know that it has been received. 7) I will add to this the following words of St. Gregory of Sinaita (“Philokalia”, part I, p. 112 ff.): “Grace has been in us since the time of Holy Baptism, but due to our inattention, neglect and failure in life, it is suppressed, or, like us, buried in the ground. When someone decides to live properly, zealous for salvation, then all his work as a result has the fruit of restoration in the power of his gift of grace. This is accomplished in two ways: firstly, this gift is revealed by the arduous fulfillment of the commandments, and as one succeeds in fulfilling the commandments, to that extent this gift manifests its lordship and its brilliance; secondly, he comes into manifestation and is revealed by the unceasing prayerful invocation of the Lord Jesus. And the first means is powerful, but the second is more powerful, so that the first also receives its strength through it. Therefore, if we sincerely want to reveal the seed of grace hidden in us, then let us hasten to quickly get used to this last heart exercise and have this one act of prayer in our hearts, sightlessly, unimaginably, until it warms our heart and inflames it to ineffable love for the Lord.” This combines everything that I reminded you of above in paragraph 4. Chapter 53. The Work of Prayer in Invisible Warfare Speaking about prayer, I primarily drew your attention to how to raise prayer to its proper level. It might seem strange to you that when we are talking about invisible warfare and you want to know what kind of help prayer provides in this battle, you only hear about how to make prayer real prayer. Do not be surprised at this, because here only prayer becomes a victorious weapon in the invisible battle, as soon as it becomes real, that is, it penetrates into the heart and begins to act incessantly in it. From that moment on, it becomes an impenetrable, insurmountable and impenetrable fence of the soul, not allowing enemy arrows, passionate attacks of the flesh, or seduction from the charming world to reach it. By her very presence in the heart she suppresses invisible warfare. Therefore, it was suggested to you: hasten to instill in your heart the action of prayer and make sure that it is there in constant movement. For this is the same as saying: do this, and without fighting you will be a winner. This is indeed what happens. But until your prayer reaches such strength, your enemies will not give you peace, and you cannot do even a minute without fighting or fearing it. Is prayer helpful here? Absolutely, and more than any other weapon of spiritual warfare. It always attracts God's help, and the power of God repels enemies; just be zealous and devoted to the will of God. Its place is at the very beginning of confrontation with enemy attacks. This is how it all goes. When attention, like a vigilant guard, makes one aware of the enemy’s approaches and their arrows are felt - that is, either a passionate thought or a movement of passion appears within, the spirit zealous for salvation, realizing this is the enemy’s evil deed, mercilessly reflects it from the heart with tension, not allowing it to penetrate there, and at the same time, in almost the same internal act, ascends in prayer to the Lord, calling on Him for help. Help comes, the enemies disperse, and the fighting subsides. St. John Kolov accurately depicts it this way, saying about himself: “I am like a man who sits under a large tree and sees that many animals and snakes are approaching him. Since he cannot stand against them, he hastily climbs a tree and escapes. So I am: I sit in my cell and see evil thoughts rising up against me; and since I lack the strength against them, I resort to God through prayer and save myself from the enemy” (“Memorable Tales”, paragraph 11). St. Hesychius writes about this in his “Sermon on Sobriety and Prayer”: “You must look inside with a sharp and intense gaze of your mind in order to recognize those entering; Having learned, he immediately crushed the head of the serpent with a contradiction, crying out with groaning at the same time to Christ the Lord. And then you will receive the experience of invisible Divine intercession” (paragraph 22). Again: “And so, whenever evil thoughts happen to multiply in us, let us cast into their midst the calling of our Lord Jesus Christ; and we will immediately see that they will begin to dissipate like smoke in the air, as experience has taught us” (p. 98). And again: “We will conduct mental warfare in this order: the first thing is attention; then, when we notice that an enemy thought has approached, we will throw words of oath at him from our hearts with anger; The third thing then is to pray against it, turning your heart to the call of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that this demonic ghost will immediately dissipate, so that otherwise the mind does not follow this dream, like a child seduced by some skillful magician” (p. 105). And again: “Disputation usually blocks the further course of thoughts, and calling on the name of Jesus Christ drives them out of the heart. As soon as the soul imagines the idea of ​​some sensory object, such as a person who has offended us, or a woman’s beauty, or silver and gold, or when all this happens in our thoughts, it is immediately exposed that spirits have led our heart into such a dream - rancor, fornication, love of money, and others. If our mind is experienced, trained and skillful in guarding itself from the attacks of the enemy and seeing clearly, as in daylight, the seductive dreams and charms of the evil one, then immediately, with rebuff, contradiction and the prayer of Jesus Christ, we easily extinguish the kindled arrows of the devil, not allowing passionate dreams to carry our thoughts after ourselves, and these thoughts to agree with the ghost of the pretext, or to have a friendly conversation with him. and go into overthinking, or become overwhelmed by it - which is followed, with some necessity, by bad deeds, like night after day.” And you will find many similar places near St. Hesychia. In him you will find a complete outline of all the invisible warfare, and I would advise you to re-read his word on sobriety and prayer more often. Compiled by Elder Nicodemus for the manuscript he used