Слово 14

(1) What does God require of a Christian? – (2) What harm has a person suffered and is suffering from the devil, but does not know it? – (3) All people are sick in soul and do not understand it. - (4) They need to know their ailments in order to seek a doctor. – (5) The crafty devil sets his temptations as bait before people. – (6) For what reason do not all Christians excel in virtue? 1. God demands from every Christian, first and at the head of everything, that he always confess his previous sins, so that, remembering them at all times, he always has a self-abasement and humble wisdom and does not despise others. Secondly, he demands that he repent before Him and pray to Him about everything in which he sins every day, willingly or unwillingly, in knowledge or ignorance, for it is impossible for a person to spend even one day without falling into some kind of sin, large or small, because sin can be in word, deed, and thought. As these deeds, words and thoughts quickly alternate or act together throughout the day, you will not see how you will sin in one or the other. But he who sins falls; there is no justification for the fallen, but he is saved by the sole infinite mercy of God. Thirdly: since sins occur due to the weakness of thought and the soul therefore needs to be strengthened from above, a Christian must always beg God to grant him spiritual strength, which is the hidden grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthening the soul that is present and enlightening it, so that it may see evil as evil, and good as good, and aided by this enlightenment and this strength, may it walk safely among the snares of this evil world, without being caught by them. A person suffers from some hidden illness, great and inconvenient, which is so great and so excessive that the like has never been and never will be. Why was it necessary for God Himself to come to correct and heal her? Despite all this, however, people do not know about it and live in complete carelessness, not at all saddened by this illness due to their insensitivity. For whoever knows this disease feels it; whoever feels it hurts his soul; whoever is sick seeks recovery and tries in every possible way to recover from that illness. 2. But what kind of disease is this? Listen: the devil, according to his custom, always approaches the soul in a strange and inconveniently recognizable way, so that, being always close to it and without moving away from it, he disturbs and drills through all its aspirations, movements and thoughts, that is, both the mental, the desirable, and the irritable powers of the soul, and directs them to what he pleases. In this way, he lures us all into his net and takes us into slavery and into his will - and we don’t even know it; and, worst of all, the devil, constantly using this tactic and making us passionate and obscene, convinces us to think and say that this illness of ours (confusion and drilling inside), by which we are led into passions and kept in them, is a property of our nature, and not the work of demonic machinations *. He persuades others to think that the evil deeds they do through his action are the essence of service and virtue, and to boast about them. But this is already complete deadness of the soul, for whoever boasts about evil does not feel in the least (its harmful effects), and this is characteristic only of the dead. And this is why the danger of being condemned along with the devil and other demons hangs over the human race, but he does not know it. 3. A person who was previously healthy and fell ill knows and understands what is illness and what is health. But if someone happens to be sick from birth, it is difficult for him to understand what health is. So the soul, which is always unwell and suffers from the illness of the passions of anger and lust and other many and varied ones that are born from these two as the most important, anger, I say, and lust, does not know, poor thing, and does not understand that this is the essence of the disease, and does not see how its mental tyrant the devil, covered by this ignorance of hers, approaches her through the said passions day and night interrupts her with evil thoughts. Without seeing this, without understanding and without feeling, she does not feel the need for healing and does not seek it. Is it possible to hope that she will ever recover in this situation? Who does not want to get healthy and is not looking for health, how can he be healed? Or how will someone who does not know that he is sick and does not understand what his health consists of seek for healing, but drives away the one who explains it to him and interprets it? By doing this, he shows that he has no need for healing. 4. This is our illness, and for this illness there is no other cure except the one that I mentioned. Neither an Angel, nor an intercessor, nor a sage, nor a scribe, nor any questioner of this century could and cannot heal this illness of ours. For this, it was necessary for God to become human, so that human nature would unite with the Divine and in Him would find the most effective healing, powerful to destroy in us all disorder, corruption and death, and so that the invincible and irresistible power of the Divine would heal weak man and strengthen him with Divine grace, so that our mental molester the devil would no longer dare to approach him and tempt him through passions. For since the time of Adam’s crime, all the natural forces of human nature have been corrupted, that is, the mind, memory, imagination, will, feeling, which are all combined in three parts of the soul - mental, irritable and desirable. They were corrupted, but not destroyed. Why can a person think, but cannot think correctly? can desire, but desires meaninglessly; He may get irritated (it would be better to be more energetic), but he gets irritated unreasonably. For this reason, everything that he thinks and invents, that he plans and undertakes, that he sympathizes with and that he turns away from, is all crooked, askew, erroneous. 5. The temptation with which the devil tempts us comes in two types. Just as a bird, flying freely on its wings to find food for itself, is deceived by a bird-catcher, who spreads his nets along the ground to catch it, by the fact that, having spread his nets along the ground, he places bait on top of them, which, seeing, the bird flies down to peck, and then gets entangled in the net and is captured; then the bird-catcher comes, takes it, holds it in his hands and does with it what he wants; so the devil, knowing that the human mind is in constant motion (soars), creeps up on a person invisibly, places some sweetness in front of his thoughts, like a bait, and under the sweetness spreads, like a net, sin, which at the same time is the hand of the devil, invisible and secretive, because without sin the devil cannot seize a person’s soul. When he manages to lure the soul with the bait of sweetness, he immediately entangles it in nets and grabs it. The first thing he does here is to blindfold her, that is, to darken her mind, so that she does not see the light and the path and does not run away; and he does this with all diligence until she, through the habit of sweetness and a long stay in sin, completely surrenders to his will and becomes his assistant and beloved slave in everything. After this, she herself will no longer want to run away from this master of hers, to whom she is accustomed and who so comforts her and saturates her with all sorts of sweets, until he completely corrupts her with these unclean and stinking dishes. When he sees that she is completely corrupted, then he directs her to all kinds of indecency, sins and atrocities. But the bird catcher cannot attract birds from the air to his bait, and the devil, if he finds a soul naked by the grace of God, can incite the soul’s aspirations and desires for sweetness and bend it to his will. That’s why I said that the temptations of the devil are of two kinds: the first is the lure of sweetness, which he puts before the thoughts, and the other is the irritation of lusts, with which he forces the soul to lust for sweets and inclines it to his will. A soul that submits in this way and so much to the devil can do nothing more for itself than, having realized to what depths of evil it has fallen and how its will is bound by foreign bonds, cry out as from the belly of hell and call on God, who has descended into the underworld of the earth, to come to her and free her. She can do this alone, but she cannot free herself from the bonds and escape, just as someone who is shackled in iron shackles and kept in a dungeon under strong locks cannot escape. Maybe, I say, she should call on the name of Jesus Christ, may He send her help, and when she is strengthened in this way through the calling of Jesus Christ (for He is the only liberator of our souls) and feels that she has received help from God, then she can escape from under the yoke of the devil and from the bonds of sin. But, running away from the devil, she should resort to some kind of steward of grace, that is, to a spiritual father, so that the evil devil does not find her again unguarded and kidnap her. By this spiritual father she will be taught and exercised in what she needs to think, until she finally becomes capable of wearing the whole armor of God, that is, Divine grace, and with it resisting all the snares of the devil, all these principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, the spirits of evil. For the soul, united to the flesh, cannot alone, naked, resist such strong and so many enemies, unless it is clothed in the whole armor of God; just like a warrior, even the most courageous, cannot resist without weapons the enemies attacking with spears, swords and shields, and if he comes out against them, he will immediately be struck to death. 6. Just as the human body, composed of different parts, is united by the soul and does not allow it to fall apart, when the soul leaves the body, it decomposes and decays, because then all its connections are resolved, and what was united and harmonized before death is separated and decomposed; something similar happens to the soul when Divine grace is removed from it (which is the soul of our soul, and before Adam’s crime was united with it, as the soul is united with the body, and contained it in the unity and harmony of thoughts, which, after the crime, were scattered in countless directions) - Divine, I say, the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is again given by holy Baptism to those who receive, upon belief and announcement, this divine sacrament, - which all the external wisdom of the Hellenes does not know and cannot understand. For just as every person is confident that the soul is the force that brings into harmony and combines different parts of the body into a single harmonious whole, so every baptized Christian should always keep in mind that nothing else, but only the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, which he received through holy baptism and new birth, it alone unites, combines and holds back unscattered the countless and diverse movements and thoughts of the soul (if it is in him). This gathering together of the thoughts of the soul is and is called the life of the soul, which God gives it. But just as others forget and remain in careless thoughtlessness that their body consists of many and varied parts, why it is subject to many ailments, and that it is contained in union and harmony by the soul, so that when they are healthy and do not feel any illness, they are magnified by it (as if it were not a gift from God, but something of their own), so some of those who were honored to receive Divine grace, when, not paying attention to themselves and not containing in their minds and thoughts this great sacrament of Divine grace, which they received (and holding in union and harmony the various thoughts and aspirations of the soul), they tend to think proudly about themselves. For this arrogance they fall into the judgment of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), are stripped of Divine grace and fall into a state worse than what they were in before Baptism. And only those of them who, having realized what a great evil they have suffered, shed many bitter tears in order to again receive Divine grace, after much work and sweat, are again worthy of this great Divine mercy. However, we should also know that God, the all-good and loving man, did not leave human nature naked of all virtues after the fall, which is why even among the most unfaithful peoples some natural good qualities appear, and some show meekness, others compassion, some love, and these others some kind of spiritual kindness. The all-good God did this so that human nature would not be deprived of all benefits, but so that in what it has it would find help in acquiring what it lacks. However, it is in no way possible for an unbaptized person to ever achieve the perfection of virtues. So, since some Christians forget about the sacrament of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism, they have, however, as we said, some natural virtues to help and benefit their ailing nature, but, not remembering the grace they received, they do not try, with the help of this Divine grace of the All-Holy Spirit, to acquire other virtues that they do not have, but are content with only natures receive virtues, are proud of them and despise those who do not have them, not paying attention to those that they have and which they themselves do not have, then the gracious and humane God does not give such proud people the grace to acquire other virtues, so that they do not fall into the judgment of the devil. For if they do not acquire virtues, they will be condemned as unvirtuous, and if they acquire them through the grace of the All-Holy Spirit and become proud, as if they were self-virtuous, and begin to boast about them, as if they did not receive them from above from God, but had them (if we assume, then they acquired them) from their own labors and efforts, then they will be condemned together with the devil. Why should every virtuous Christian, as if he is contrite and humble, believe that the grace of the All-Holy Spirit lives in him and performs all the virtues, and not he himself. Such a one truly is and is rightly called a spiritual man, since the Holy Spirit is omnipotent in him, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen. Saint Macarius the Great said the same thing. Philokalia in Russian translation. T.1. M. 1895. P.146. You might be interested in: