Поучение 48 55 . В пяток первой недели. О том, чтобы нам украшать вечную свою обитель божественною добродетелию.

Brothers and Fathers! If any of the laity wants to build a large and magnificent house, then he has no rest at all, neither day nor night, he works, worries and suffers needs until the construction of the house is completed. They have such care and zeal for this work that their minds and thoughts, day and night, are occupied with nothing else but how to make the roof more beautiful and elegant, and how to decorate and decorate the entire bottom and everything else in such a way that everyone who looks at it would wish to have this house. And if someone wanted to keep them from this matter, then it would be as difficult for them as suffering a great insult. What do I want to say to your love, most honest brothers? Since each of us builds and creates for his own soul, not a sensual and perishable house, which is made of stones and trees, but a heavenly, incorruptible and eternal abode, which is created from the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit: then, tell me, will we really be more careless and lazier than those who build temporary houses? Wouldn't we have suffered a grave loss? Moreover, a perishable and temporary house accepts carnal people, and after many of the owners of the house have changed, it itself decays, becomes ruined and falls; and our spiritual house, which is built from virtues, receives the Holy Spirit, just as the Apostle says: “Are you the church of the living God, and the Spirit of God lives in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). And when the time comes for us to leave this world, He will follow us to heaven, and we will be there forever. The beginning of the creation of virtue is the fear of God, just as Divine Scripture says: “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Ps. 110:10). And then the four great virtues, that is, wisdom, courage, chastity and truth, and the rest with them, copulated with one another and created by the union of love, grow into the holy church of the Lord. Let us, brethren, build up this monastery and decorate it with virtues, so that we may be worthy to have the Holy Spirit within us, and to delight the holy Angels and to bring benefit to people through the practice of virtues. And since abstinence is one of the great virtues in which we now strive, we will give glory to God, who has made us worthy to complete one race of Holy Week. Our faces have changed and become pale, but they shine with the grace of abstinence. From the bile that has risen as a result of fasting, bitterness is felt in our lips, but our souls have been delighted by the hope and grace of salvation. For these two, that is, soul and flesh, by nature fight against each other, and when one becomes stronger, the other becomes weaker. So, brothers, let us rejoice that we are on the better side, i.e. that is, the soul was made stronger. Maybe someone will say: eat every day, but one day will it violate the perfection of abstinence? No, you shouldn’t be afraid of this; because if it were so, then Christ would not have commanded us in the prayer “Our Father” to ask for the necessary food for every day, or the crows would not have brought food to the Prophet Elijah every day, as well as to the divine Paul of Thebes; and Anthony the Great would not have considered it better to eat a little every day than to fast for three, four or seven days. And it seems to me that the reason for this is the following: since our body becomes exhausted and weak from daily labor, God, who created us, designed it so that it would be strengthened with daily food, and we could fulfill the commandments of God, and a person would not be like a paralytic, which happens to those who fast for two or three days; They cannot genuflect frequently, nor practice properly in readings and psalmody, nor perform other services regularly, not to mention what happens supernaturally. So, the daily consumption of food, according to the rule and order we have indicated, is not the work of imperfect, but also very perfect: however, everything with us was established by the Divine Fathers well and God-loving. Oh, that the Lord would grant us even more health and strength of soul and body, to serve the living and true God, and to await us the last day of reward, on which, oh, that you, together with all the saints from the ages, may shine like the sun, having received as an inheritance the kingdom of heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belongs glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. See Patrol. volume. 99th, p. 582. You might be interested in: