About sin and its consequences

Contents The Categorical Word The Word about the essence of sin, its types, degrees and various sinful states The Word about how sin occurred in the world and in the human race, and how it occurs in each of us The Word about how sin tempts a person, and why there are so many unrepentant sinners, and so few truly repentant The Word that the destructive effects of sin are so great that we cannot even see them in all their depth and breadth, but must, according the suggestion of the word of God, reason and experience, to assume that they are terribly disastrous. The word that sin spreads darkness throughout a person’s entire being, spoils his mind, disfigures and poisons knowledge and predisposes the sinner to madness. The word that sin, promising a person freedom and independence, deprives him of true freedom and overthrows him into a state of painful slavery. The word that the joys of sin. are temporary and insignificant, that sin, on the contrary, takes away from a person all true and pure pleasures and serves as a source of countless sorrows and disasters The Word that sin is the main and primary cause of all human illnesses and his mortality The Word that sin inevitably exposes a person to the painful dominion of the devil The Word about the cruel death awaiting the sinner The Word that sin will finally be followed for man by eternal torment in hell along with rejected spirits “When I taste a little honey, ... and now I die” (1 Samuel 14:43) What, listeners, is our enemy, the very first and the last, the most evil and the most insidious? Sin. This is the very first enemy, for who deprived us of the image of God, expelled sweets from paradise, and settled disasters and sorrows on this earth? Sin. This is the very last enemy: for who will separate sinners forever from the face of God, cover them with shame and curse before the whole world, and cast them irrevocably into hell to the devil and his angel to eternal torment? Sin. This is the most terrible enemy, for he destroys our soul and body, darkens the mind, enslaves the heart, exposes us to illness, betrays us to death and decay. This is the most insidious enemy: for what does sin not use to defeat and destroy us? He uses our strength and our omnipotence, and our passions and very virtues, he uses even the goodness of God, even the priceless merits of our Redeemer, instilling in the sinner, by relying on them, fearlessness and unrepentance. In all this it is a sin, as St. rightly noted. Fathers of the Church, more terrible than the devil himself: for even sin made the devil from the luminous angel into a rejected spirit. Judging by such cruelty and cunning of our enemy - sin, it would be expected that we would be extremely careful against him, and would try to take all measures in advance against his attacks and deceit; that the battle with sin in all its forms will become a constant and most important feat of our entire life; that in order to defeat sin, or at least to avoid sin, we will use all our abilities and strengths, all means and aids, both natural and grace-filled; that in the event of defeat and wounds inflicted on us, we will immediately rise from our falls, compensate for losses, heal wounds, avoid those places and cases that were dangerous and disastrous for us; that everything that closely or remotely leads to sin will become alien and disgusting to us; everything that protects or delivers from sin is dear and precious. But look at the world and the human race, look at others and yourself, and you will see the completely opposite. Only a small, very small part of people wages that holy battle against sin and vice, which should be waged by everyone. Others, if they begin to fight the common enemy from time to time, then, firstly, from time to time, without proper constancy and firmness; Moreover, they go out to battle without gathering all their strength, without thinking through a plan of action, without understanding the goal and means, without a firm determination to win or die, therefore they stop it at the first small success or failure, forgetting that the battle with sin must last until the end of life. Most people never thought about the need to fight sin; Instead of hating this enemy and moving away from him, they themselves seek attacks and captivity, they themselves go to the enemy’s camp, betray themselves to his will and demand shameful bonds and orders, the former are readily carried out and the latter are carried out. What is the reason that such a terrible enemy as sin finds in us so little opposition and so much obedience and favor? Is it that we lack the strength and means to fight him? No, this cannot be said: for although we, through the cunning of this same enemy, have lost the primitive powers for good, with which we were endowed when we were created, we still have so much ability that we can at least have a constant aversion to sin and its poisonous temptations. On the other hand, each of us, by our holy faith, is given new strengths and means, no less than those that we once possessed. That these new forces and means are sufficient for a complete victory over sin is witnessed by the whole numerous face of the saints of God, who, being in everything like us, covered with the same mortal flesh, being among the same temptations, fighting with the same misfortunes, enduring the same things, and a hundred times more, did not hesitate to go out to battle with sin, defeated it in all its forms, and finally remained perfect victors: and now, free from of all sin, filled with all perfections, are blissful in heaven, being ready to help us in all our sinful circumstances. So, it is not our powerlessness that is to blame for the fact that our terrible enemy sin dominates us so unpunished. What then? Among the reasons for this sad phenomenon, one of the most important is ignorance, the fact that most people do not know their enemy and his terrible properties, they do not know to the point that they consider him to be their friend. Apparently, it is strange for those who sin constantly not to know sin, but in fact it is so. Alas, we know, we know sin too much to sin; but we do not know, as we should, sin in order to avoid it and hate it! That is, we know the side of sin that he himself shows us in order to deceive us, and we do not see the side with which he will destroy us and therefore tries in every possible way to hide from us. In this case, most people are like a baby who, having seen several times the various movements of a snake and the beautiful play of its colors in the sun, but having no idea about its poison, would begin to assert that he knows well what a snake is. With such half-knowledge, the baby is perhaps ready to assure that the snake is a beautiful animal and that it is worth having in your arms, near your heart. Most sinners are completely like a baby: otherwise how can one explain the insane praise of sin and vices that is often heard from the lips of poor sinners? How can we understand that many not only sin constantly, but also boast about their sins? To assert that they have reached the point of moral bitterness and are directly seeking their eternal destruction in sin? But this is sometimes not visible in these unfortunate people; and they themselves would be the first to be horrified if someone began to produce their sinfulness from this terrible beginning. No, in their sin they are not looking for their own destruction, but for bliss; and they think to find it in it because, like a baby, they see only the magical variegation of the snake’s skin, and do not see the sting and venom of the snake. If they had clearly seen the latter, understood what poison is hidden in the sweetness of sin, and were completely convinced that the last sin is seen straight to the bottom of hell, then the first, perhaps, would hasten to part with sin forever, would curse all its pleasures, and decide not to slave to their passions, but to fight them to the death. In this state of affairs, obviously, there is nothing more necessary than to spread among people the true concept of sin and its terrible consequences. Anyone who can should do this, should in every way, at every opportunity, inform others what he knows about sinful poison, what its effect is and what reliable means are against it. This is everyone’s most sacred duty! For, judge for yourself, isn’t this exactly what we all do when some terrible ulcer comes upon us: don’t we then ask each other, don’t we each tell what he knows about the ulcer, who and when it especially attacks, what attracts it and what disgusts it, how you can protect yourself and get rid of it? But what plague can compare with the sinful plague and the terrible devastation it causes in the human race? Therefore, there is no duty in relation to our brethren more sacred than to warn them against sin, and for this to admonish them of the terrible property of it - to kill our soul and body. This is the most useful subject for interviews between mentors and students, parents with children, homeowners with household members, enlightened people with common people. But if the sacred duty entirely rests on anyone to expose vice in all its guises and show all the terrible consequences, then it is on the shepherds of the Church. In all fairness, it must be said that this, especially, should consist of caring for the souls entrusted to them. For all the truths of salvation, no matter how beneficial they are, will not produce the desired effect on the sinner until he is convinced and feels that the state of sin in which he finds himself is the most terrible and destructive state. Feeling this truth, we, brethren, in accordance with the duty of our calling, decided in the coming days of holy fasting to choose sin and its terrible poison as a constant subject for our conversations with you. If our word were not able to arouse anyone’s attention, then now is the time to arouse it. For during the fast, each of us needs to begin repentance and confession: this forces the most inattentive to think about sin. And so let us think together and out loud: let us unite with common forces against our common enemy. For this, with the help of God’s grace, let us consider, firstly, what sin is in its essence, and what its types are, secondly, we will examine how sin tempts us, and we will try to tear off all the seductive guises from it, thirdly, we will walk in thought along the paths of lawlessness, and show where they lead. A conversation about these subjects can serve for all of us instead of preparing for the sacrament of repentance and confession. Amen. A word about the essence of sin, its types, degrees and various sinful states Those who intend to engage in battle with any strong enemy try first of all to first know the properties of their opponent, the composition of his horde, the forces and means that he may have at his disposal: similarly, for us, who must fight against sin, it is necessary, in order to be successful in our business, to first know what sin consists of, where its beginning is, what its properties are, in what forms it is expressed, where it gets its strength from, what is favorable to it and what is contrary to it. Who will tell us this? He will say, firstly, the word of God, in which sin is depicted in many places with all its terrible consequences; will say, secondly, the history of the human race, filled with examples of all kinds of human sins and crimes; finally, the most daily experience, both alien and one’s own, will tell. Alas, to depict the properties of sin, there is no need to resort to any speculations and aids of human wisdom; it is enough to look carefully at people and look into your own heart, which, as the sacred writer of everyday life rightly noted, from youth is inclined to think evil all the time! To the question: what is sin? The apostle answers us, saying that “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). And indeed, the essence of all sin is the violation of some law, so if there were no law, then there would be no sin. since the law itself is nothing more than an expression of the will of God, then sin is just as rightly called a crime of this all-holy will. With every sin, man, every time, instead of the law, puts his blind arbitrariness, instead of the law of God's most holy will, his evil will, and therefore, with every sin, man becomes an opponent and enemy of his Creator. Already by this one feature, anyone can judge how criminal, dangerous and harmful sin is: for is it a small thing for a creature to become against its Creator? Since the requirements of the law all consist of two things - first, that we do everything that is good and just, and secondly, that we do not do anything bad and unjust: then sin, as a violation of the law, also consists of two main types - firstly, from failure to do what the law commands to do - sins, so-called omissions, secondly, from doing what the law prohibits doing - sins, so-called violations. So, for example: he who takes away his neighbor’s property, in any way whatsoever, sins; The one who does not use his own property for the good of his neighbor also sins when he can do so: for the law commands not only not to offend his neighbor in any way, but also to help him in everything. In a similar way, not only the one who lies and misleads others sins, but also the one who, knowing the truth, does not reveal it and does not lead them out of error. This should be especially noted: for many consider it a sin for themselves only that they have done something bad and ungodly, and what they have not done that is good and beneficial for all, they do not consider it a crime at all. No, and it is a sin when a person, having the power to do something good, does not do it out of his own negligence or cowardice. All such will be judged by the slave who buried his talent in the ground. And he did no harm to anyone, later presenting his talent to his master whole: but since he did not use it as he should, he was deprived of everything, as a punishment for laziness. Since the free activity of a person expresses itself in three main ways - thought and desire, word and conversation, and finally, the actions themselves; then sin has three main types. There are mental sins - these are all unclean thoughts and desires, sinful imaginations and memories. To harbor such thoughts and desires in your mind and heart means to sin: for, in addition to the fact that bad words and deeds often arise from such thoughts and desires, they themselves already spoil the Soul and make it unclean and ungodly. How dangerous and harmful this inner impurity and sinfulness of thoughts and feelings is is strikingly shown by the example of unclean spirits, for they have neither our word nor our physicality, their corruption and corruption is all contained in their spirit, and yet how terrible it is! The second type of sin consists of bad and rotten words. This includes all types of lies and verbal deception, all kinds of vain deeds and reckless oaths, all gossip and slander at the expense of one’s neighbor, all false testimony and slander, all seductive jokes and shaming. This should also include the sins of the written word, when what is sinful to utter with the mouth is written on paper, and thus spreads and causes temptation and harm a hundred times more than what is spoken orally. This type of sin will also include those cases when we could have said something good and useful, but did not say it when we had to defend the sacred truth, or reveal dishonest lies and slander, and did not do so out of calculations of pride or self-interest. The third type of sin consists of the most vicious actions. Here, if you start counting by name, you will be missing numbers and words. Let us only note that other sins are directly against God and faith in Him, such as: unbelief, blasphemy and despair; other sins are directed directly against one’s neighbor, for example: theft, murder; others are against the sinner himself, for example: voluptuousness, intemperance and drunkenness. Not all sins, no doubt, exist in every person; usually one passion takes precedence over the others and, becoming dominant, often even drives out other passions that are incompatible with it, for example: stinginess drives out intemperance, but in essence, every sinner carries within himself the seed of all vices, just as a righteous person carries within himself the beginning and seed of all virtues. Moreover, you cannot be with any one sin or vice arbitrarily. A proud person, for example, is also envious, vengeful, and cruel; a stingy person is oppressive, deceitful and base; a carnivore is a perjurer, hypocritical and wasteful. Not all sinners are also at the same degree of corruption: sin, like virtue, has its own gradualism. The first degree, when a person begins to indulge from time to time in various vices, or just one, without a particular disposition towards sin, not forgetting repentance from time to time, although without its special fruits. The second degree is when bad actions turn into a skill, a vice or a passion, and become a constant beginning of action and a rule for life, without, however, completely drowning out the desire to improve and stop sinning. The third degree is when corruption reaches the point that the sinner, completely blinded by sin, considers it a necessity, completely forgets the law and the fear of God, sins unrepentantly, with the intention of always remaining as he is. Sinful states are also different. There is a state of sinful ignorance in which a person, following the attraction of corrupt nature and bad examples, commits many sins, not having a proper understanding of how what he is doing is contrary to the law and nature. Many of the poor pagans are in this state, due to the lack of true religion. There is a state of spiritual carelessness, in which those who are not thinking at all about what and how a person should do, what the law of God requires and what prohibits, they live as it happens, act as it happens, sin and commit lawlessness as it happens. Example and circumstances, habit and passions are for them instead of all rules and laws. There is a state of spiritual hypocrisy when a person clearly sees what duty and conscience require, and tries to maintain the whole guise of honesty, but secretly indulges in everything to which his passions lead. The Lord once denounced the Pharisees for such hypocrisy. There is a state of spiritual bitterness when a sinner comes out of the fear and secrecy inherent in sin, openly commits outrages, stubbornly rejects all admonitions and boasts of his crimes. There is a state of despair when a sinner, having awakened from sin, feels extreme disgust for it, but imagining that his sin is unforgivable, he is ready for the most desperate actions both against others and against himself: an example of this state is the unfortunate traitor of Christ. You see how many diseases and ulcers the human soul has! You see how many bonds and fetters our poor freedom and will have! You see how many snares and snares our enemy the devil has! That's why St. Scripture so often advises us to constantly be sober in spirit and watchful, which is why people experienced in spiritual life do not advise us to rely on any of our virtues and firmness, for, as examples show, one can suddenly fall from the highest degree of spiritual perfection and be broken into dust. But let no one be discouraged by this! Great is the power of sin, but a hundred times greater is the power of God's grace. The horde of vices is diverse, but the face of holy virtues is even more diverse. We are not alone - our Redeemer is with us, the Holy and Almighty Spirit is with us, the Guardian Angels are with us, all the Saints of God are with us, the Church and its sacraments are with us. There is no sin that overcomes the mercy of God, there is no crime that the all-holy Blood shed for us all on Calvary could not wash away from our souls. Every sinner, no matter who he is and no matter how great his sins, if only he sincerely and firmly desires, can, with the help of God’s grace, become pure and righteous again and be worthy of the kingdom of heaven: an example of this is the thief who repented on the cross. Amen. A word about how sin occurred in the world and in the human race, and how it occurs in each of us Where does sin come from in the world? - the question closest to every sinner, but to answer it you need to mentally go beyond everything visible, for sin did not occur in our world; Thanks, a thousandfold thanks to the Lord, that we, humans, were not the first culprits of sin that disturbed the boundless kingdom of God and brought death and destruction into the universe! For although we were infected with the terrible ulcer of sin, but since it came to us from elsewhere, it infected us, moreover, without our full consciousness: therefore, we still have the opportunity to be healed from the ulcer of sin. Where, you ask, did the sin occur? In the realm of spirits - in the heart of Lucifer. He gave birth to the first sin in himself, he poured this ulcer first into spirits like himself, and then into the heart of our careless ancestor. How sin was conceived and born in the spirit of the luminous Angel, we do not know: it is a mystery! Guided by the true concept of the perfections of the Creator and the nature of rational beings, we can only and must affirm that the first sin did not come from nature, but from freedom, and consisted of the abuse of reason and will, and, following some instructions from the word of God, we understand that the first abuse of reason and will in the first culprit of sin was conceit and pride, the desire for boundless independence and the desire to become like God. Same with St. Scripture, and this time positively, reveals to us that these criminal feelings in Lucifer did not stop at internal discontent and secret enmity against the Almighty, but reached the point of obvious indignation and insane opposition to his almighty will. Such insolence and rebellion could not be tolerated at the throne of the Almighty - and the proud Lucifer was cast into the underworld, into the lowest region of the universe, where he really formed from himself and his minions his own kingdom of darkness and horror, hatred and despair, death and destruction. In order to multiply the number of his dark servants and accomplices of indignation, in order to wound the essentially unapproachable Creator in the person of the visible representative of His perfections on earth, the enemy of God decided to infect the man created after his fall with the sinful infection. It is known how this infection followed. For man, as the visible image of the invisible God, as His future viceroy on earth and the ruler of all lower beings, a test was necessary, or such an experience of obedience and love for his Creator and Benefactor, in which the tested person could show with all freedom that he decided once and for all to subordinate his will to the most holy will and law of his Creator, in order to act in everything according to His wise goals and intentions. For this experiment, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was chosen, with a prohibition to eat from its fruit - under fear of death. Obedience to this commandment contained everything for man - life in fulfilling it, death in violation: for through fulfillment he forever remained one with the Creator, and therefore capable of what he was destined for by His goodness: through violation he separated from his Creator, became an enemy of Him, and therefore completely incapable of his place and destiny. At this mysterious tree the tempter appeared in the flattering form of a serpent, and with the insidious promise that by eating its fruits man would not die, as the Lord threatened, but would become like God, he was drawn into the crime of the Creative will. From this ill-fated moment, sin invaded our world with all its horrors. Having broken the blissful union with God by crime, our unfortunate forefather was thereby deprived of direct, internal communication with the Source of all strengths and perfections: his mind became darkened, his power disappeared, his whole being died. At the same time, he lost the ability to achieve his high place and destiny among beings. And having become fallen away from God and deprived of primitive perfections, the first man could no longer help but pass on this unhappy state, that is, his fallen nature, to all his descendants. “And Adam begot a son according to his own kind” (Gen. 5:3), it is said in the history, and no longer in the image of God, as he himself was created in the beginning. Here, in this primitive fall of all humanity, lies the first source of inclination towards evil, common to all people. This source is our own, fallen, darkened, sin-corrupted nature, which each of us receives from our ancestors. Those who do not recognize this source of evil are clearly going against universal experience. For where does such an early and decisive predominance of sensuality over mind and conscience come from in us? Where does temptation come from so powerfully over us and such a weak effect of good examples on us? Where do the unclean and evil movements in even infants come from? Let’s not even talk about the frailty of our entire being, which apparently is not of original – Divine origin, but a consequence of some terrible revolution in our nature. However, he would form a wrong idea about this sinful corruption, innate to us all, who would think that as a result of it, a person must now necessarily sin. No, thank God! this terrible necessity does not exist for any of the sons of Adam. As a result of our primitive fall, sin now has, so to speak, a ready-made place in each of us, and it is much more difficult for us to fulfill the will of God than it was in the beginning, and yet there is not a single sin that cannot be avoided, as long as there is a firm determination to do so. For, as a result of the merciful thought of Divine love for us, we, against the weakness and corruption of our nature, now have the power of grace, constantly helping us in our struggle against the inclination towards evil. Therefore, now, as in the first days of human existence, and in each of us, as in our first ancestors, a series of falls begins not from necessity, but from arbitrariness and consists in the abuse of reason and will. How does this new thing, our own fall, occur in us? Ap gives us the answer to this. Jacob. “Everyone,” he says, “... is tempted, because of his own lust he is attracted and seduced. The same lust, having matured, gives birth to sin” (James 1:14, 15). In fact, until our soul is corrected by the grace of God and freed from the inclination to evil, until in it, like weeds on the poor soil of the earth, various sinful herbs constantly arise thoughts and desires are unclean. In themselves, they do not yet constitute active sin, but serve only as a sign of a sinful disposition in us, and so to speak, as material for lawlessness: their appearance in the mind and heart does not violate our freedom, but only attracts us, as the Apostle puts it, and seduces us into sin. And as long as the lust of sin is not fertilized by free will, then criminal thoughts and desires remain fruitless and weaken in the soul. freeze and disappear. Otherwise, if, along with the desire, there followed an unfortunate consent to sin, if, instead of rejecting temptation and temptation and suppressing it with reason and conscience, we accept it into the embrace of our thoughts, unite our will with it, indulge in what inspires lust and passion, and decide to actually fulfill the evil intention: at that time - not before, sin is “born,” as the Apostle says. A sin is born, even if for some reason we were unable to actually commit it: for sinful lust, perceived by freedom, assimilated by the will, destined for implementation by reason, is already a complete and independent action of our spirit and a criminal action. Thus, the impulse to evil in the form of lust also happens from the inside - from a heart corrupted by sin, but very often it also happens from the outside - from people and things around us. Some temptation appears, through vision or hearing, enters our soul and begins to drag along the will and deceive the heart. If a person, armed with the fear of God and a sense of duty, remains on the side of conscience, then temptation, having penetrated the soul, loses its power and finally disappears. Otherwise, that is, when this external temptation is assimilated by the heart, carries the will along with it, and turns into a rule of action: we fall and sin, if not externally, then internally. A striking example of this descent into evil is provided by our ancestress in Paradise. Behold, she stands before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and looks at it, still innocent: and the serpent draws her to the forbidden fruit and the tree - the serpent, with a flattering promise that there is no death in the tree, as the Lord said, but on the contrary, extraordinary knowledge and Divine independence - the tree, with its fruits and beauty. “And the woman saw that it was a good tree for food, and as it was pleasing to the eyes of thee, and it was red, as you knew.” A sinful desire was already born in Eve’s soul, but could be rejected and suppressed by reason and a strong will. The ancestress of the human race could say to herself: the words of the serpent are tempting, but the words of God and the Creator are a hundred times truer and more holy: the sight of the tree and its fruit is beautiful, but the law of God is even more desirable. I could have said that and walked away. Thus, both internal and external temptation would have remained fruitless and would have turned into nothing, rejected, defeated, it would have even strengthened the will to overcome new and greater temptations: but the unfortunate heart of our foremother could not resist this goodness, was carried away by lust, and the crime was committed. “And the wife took the poison, and gave it to her husband, and devoured the poison.” Likewise, each of us is tempted and falls. David, for example, by chance sees Uriah's wife and, inflamed with criminal passion, commits two terrible crimes one after another. Jezebel sees Naboth's vineyard, decides to have it at all costs, and also achieves his goal by crime. Finally, a mediocre and immediate reason for evil, in all its forms, can serve for us, just as the first culprit of sin himself, the primordial enemy of humanity, the devil, served for our ancestors. For although this murderer is bound by the bonds of the omnipotence of God, and can do nothing against those who are under the shadow of the grace of Christ, but those who, with their unbelief and wickedness, shirk from under this holy cover, open the door to his heart, on these unfortunate people the spirit of malice gets the opportunity to act directly and directly, breathing into them from its fullness of evil blasphemous thoughts, malicious lusts and ungodly intentions. A terrible example of this hellish inspiration is provided by the ill-fated traitor of Christ, about whom it is directly said that the devil put it in his heart that he would betray his Teacher. The same word of God clearly says that the devil to this day walks like a lion, trying to devour someone. However, here too we would have a very wrong idea if we thought that he devours whoever he wants: no, he devours only those who themselves want it, who do not care about the means of avoiding this lion and his terrible absorption. The proof of this is the same unfortunate traitor. The thought of betrayal was placed in his soul and accepted by it: but the Divine Teacher, despite all this, does not leave any means to stop him on the path of betrayal. Why didn't you leave it? Therefore, without a doubt, Judas could remove the accepted, internalized thought of betrayal from himself, reject it, and become what he was in the beginning, that is, a faithful disciple and Apostle. The same precious opportunity - to return to one's duty and conscience - remains for every sinner, and if he does not find an excuse and an answer for himself at the trial, it is because he could, as the Apostle Paul says, arise from the devil's snare, and - he did not want it. This, my brothers, is the origin of sin in the world, in the human race and in each of us! Sin, as it originated in the beginning, and now always occurs not from nature, but from the abuse of will and freedom. Without freedom there is no, and there cannot be, any new sin. Therefore, we must preserve and strengthen freedom of spirit in every possible way, for it, like a magnet, can both increase in strength and decrease, depending on how it is exercised. In pure Angels and perfect righteous people, free will, from unceasing holy exercise in good, reached the point that it became completely inflexible to evil, immovably established in goodness and law: and in the spirits of the rejected, from unrepentance, pride and incessant descent into the depths of sin, free will came to such a state that it lost the power to turn to good and became one sign of true freedom. Likewise, in sinners who are careless about their correction, blindly devoted to passions, freedom from repeating the same sins is finally diminished - to the point that they, left to themselves, without the omnipotent grace of God, could never emerge from the abyss of sin. Remembering these immutable truths, let us, my brothers, cherish as much as possible the internal arbitrariness of our freedom, without insanely squandering the power of our immortal spirit, according to the demands of passions and whims. When we feel within ourselves the damage to our spiritual freedom from our sins, we will hasten to replenish the weakness of our will with tears of true repentance and the grace-filled sacraments of St. Churches, like sailors, immediately rush to re-magnetize their compass when they notice that it is losing its power to point north. Amen. A word about how sin tempts a person, and why there are so many unrepentant sinners, and so few truly repentant And reason, and experience, and the word of God assure us, brethren, that sin is a great evil, and to indulge in it means to be an enemy to oneself. Meanwhile, what do we see in the world? What do we see around us and in ourselves? Sin. Only a small part of God’s elect, having established themselves on the rock of the Lord’s commandments, protected by the fear of God and the grace of Christ, keeps themselves clean from sin, constantly fights it in all its forms, and defeats it in themselves and in others. A much larger part, if they do not completely abandon the path of righteousness and truth, then constantly deviate from it on the right hand and neck. An even greater part of people do not even think about the royal path of truth and duty; they calmly allow themselves to be dragged by passions through all the wilds of vice. Finally, there are those who have become so alienated from all virtue, so close to all sin, that, like rejected spirits, they are ready to remain in sin forever, ready, if it were possible, to reign it over the whole world. There is, therefore, something especially attractive in sin when it can take hold of people in this way, despite all the warnings against it from reason, experience and the law of God. What would it be? This, as the Apostle notes, is “the temporary sweetness of sin” (Heb. 11:25), and, we can add, the temporary bitterness of virtue. Man was created for bliss, and by nature he irresistibly and constantly strives for it. Since in our present state, vice is often sweet, and virtue, on the contrary, is bitter, then a person who thirsts for bliss, therefore, himself strives for vice, which is sweet, and turns away from virtue, which is bitter. But where does this, albeit temporary, sweetness of vice, and this, albeit temporary, bitterness of virtue come from? Is the former sweet and the latter bitter by their very essence? No, this cannot be. Sin in its essence is the bitterness of hell, virtue in its very essence is the sweetness of heaven: but this is in their essence, in order to feel this bitterness of sin, this sweetness of virtue, a pure and healthy taste is necessary, we do not have this taste, therefore virtue sometimes seems to us bitter, and vice sweet, just as it happens in relation to dishes, during some illnesses. Such a transformation of spiritual taste does not happen suddenly. In our youth, when this taste is usually purer (we, as fallen beings, do not bring a completely pure taste for virtue and vice into this world), everything good is much more pleasant for us, and therefore easier to accomplish, and everything vicious is much more bitter, and therefore more disgusting. But as time goes on, when our sensuality takes precedence over reason, when examples and customs drown out conscience, when sin from repetition turns into a habit, our spiritual taste, deteriorating more and more, finally completely transforms, so that virtue becomes bitter for us, and vice sweet and pleasant. All this partly clarifies the dark dominion of sin over us, but in order to see all the tricks with which it ensnares a person, all the bonds and fetters with which it holds us in captivity, let us consider the matter in more detail. We are born into this world, as experience shows, not with primitive perfections and innocence, but with a damaged composition of soul and body, with forces and abilities that do not have proper harmony among themselves, with a visible inclination towards the sensual, and an aversion from the law and our duties. To heal us from this leprosy, to straighten all the members of our nature, to return us to primitive life, health and integrity, long-term healing is required, which is what faith and virtue, grace and the Gospel do. A person, having surrendered to them, like a sick person surrendering into the hands of a skilled doctor, of necessity loses most of his freedom, must live and act not as he wants, but as he is told, must endure various hardships, take many bitter drops, until he is freed from the inclination to sin and sensuality. All this is difficult, sometimes very painful for our carnal man, for our very imagination, will and freedom. And then sin appears to a person and says: why these coercions, all these deprivations? Why should you torture yourself? You are what you should be, at least not at all as bad as faith and religion portray you. Live as you want, use everything you can, catch joys and pleasures, of which there are not many already. The poor man listens to the charming voice, throws off all the bandages and obligations that faith and virtue placed on him, and goes over to the side of vice, which offers complete freedom, all types of earthly pleasures and joys. Secondly, faith and virtue subject a person, although for his own good, to various coercions and restrictions, often requiring important sacrifices and efforts from him, but promises a reward for this not so much in the present as in the future, often distant, but full fruit and retribution for all labors and hardships and is not promised in this world, but is ordered to await it after death. A person, illuminated by the light of grace and resolutely established in goodness, is completely satisfied with this promise: for he sees clearly that the matter cannot be otherwise, that until his fallen nature is completely renewed and sanctified by grace, until then it cannot accommodate complete bliss, that real life itself, our very earth in its present state are incapable of this bliss. But a person, led by earthly wisdom, who has not renounced sensuality, cannot rise to this holy view of things; he, despite all his shortcomings, despite all his illness, would like to become blessed here, and as soon as possible. Sin takes advantage of all this, and firstly, it casts doubt on future rewards for virtue, on the future life itself, which is not difficult for it to do, for both are invisible, and secondly, it maliciously exaggerates the sacrifices required by law and conscience, while at the same time exposing the full picture of its pleasures. Why, he says to man, should one omit what is true—the present—and pursue the future, which is unknown and hardly possible? I don’t beckon with what I don’t have: all my blessings and joys are there. They are all at your service, just surrender to me. The poor sinner will look into the distance of the future, promised for virtue, and with his short-sighted eyes he sees nothing, or he will look very little at the area of ​​sin, it boils before him with joys and pleasure, and behold, he is on the side of sin, in captivity of passions! Experience could stop a poor man at this, show him how many sinners, instead of all the sweets of sin, or for small drops of it, suffer terrible disasters in this world: but sin knows how to skillfully cover up this gloomy and terrifying side in itself, imagining that these disasters did not arise from sin itself and the crime of the law, but from a lack of prudence, or from a special combination of circumstances. All this happens with sin, passion tells a person, but all this may not happen: you take the appropriate measures against it, and only sweets and pleasures will fall to your lot. To top off these seductions, sin has an amazing ability to diversify its poisonous sweetness, depending on demand. We can say that the sweetness of sin is transformed according to the taste of each sinner. For coarse and sensual people, sin has many pleasures, the most carnal and coarse; for people living in the realm of spiritual lusts, sin has many immaterial pleasures, for example, the pleasure of the stingy from one glance at heaps of gold. For people who act primarily by their mind and will, sin has a ready supply of criminal mental pleasures delivered by pride, contempt, violent plans, daring actions, etc. Even for people familiar with the life of the spirit, with the deeds of virtue, with Christian perfections, sin has its own sweet poison: it is secret self-affirmation by one’s perfections and deeds, with oblivion of one’s own insignificance. With this bait, sin catches the soul in its net, so to speak, under the very sky. The very sweetness of sin, whatever it consists of, has Terrible properties. When eaten, it weakens a person throughout his entire being, takes away from him part of his inner feeling and rational self-awareness, and thus imperceptibly plunges first into spiritual sleep, and then into spiritual torpor and deadness. The sinner, maddened by passions, seeing does not see, hearing does not hear. No matter how much the sun of grace rises over him, no matter how much he is watered by the streams of the word of God and Christian instructions, no matter how much the thunder of God’s wrath thunders over him: all this seems to not exist for him, because sin has blinded his mind, suppressed his conscience, deadened his spirit. Shall we be surprised after all this that there are so few people who completely avoid the snares of sin, and so few who, having the misfortune of getting stuck in these snares, then courageously break them apart and set out for freedom of spirit? Ah, if it weren’t for the almighty power of God’s grace, if it weren’t for our guardian Angels, in the maternal care and sacraments of the Church, then all of us, without a doubt, would forever remain captive to passions, not even having the thought of fighting them and enduring various coercions in order to regain freedom of spirit and purity of heart! Let us not forget this, beloved! Knowing the cunning of our enemy - sin, and how it traps us, let us oppose it with constant vigilance, strict analysis and unyielding aversion. If he appears before us with his sweetness, we will reject it with horror, just as we would reject poison, the sweetest and most delicious. Will sin seduce us with joys in the present? Let us remember that these joys are temporary and quickly disappearing, and the sorrows that follow them are everlasting and eternal. Will we be presented with the difficulty of a virtuous life, the greatness of the sacrifices required by faith and repentance, let us say that this difficulty is also temporary and at the same time necessary and saving, that these sacrifices will be rewarded in due time a hundredfold and are required of us for our own good - let’s say so, and we will remain faithful to the law, God and conscience. Amen. The word that the destructive effects of sin are so great that we cannot even see them in all their depth and breadth, but must, according to the inspiration of the word of God, reason and experience, assume that they are terribly disastrous One of the destructive properties of sin, as we noted before, is that it reveals to us only that side of itself that is seductive for our sensuality, and always hides the harmful and destructive side and presents it as completely non-existent. Therefore, wanting to create in ourselves a saving horror and aversion to sin, we must use every effort to bring out all the poison hidden in the sweetness of sin and show its harmful effects. With the help of God’s grace, this is what we hope to do in our next interviews. Now we consider it necessary to consider first whether we, in our present state, can see all the destruction that results from sin, and if we cannot, then why exactly. This is necessary so that no one realizes that we have said everything that can be said about this destruction, and that there is nothing more left to see or say. No, we renounce this perfection in advance. All the destruction that comes from sin cannot be seen by the eye of the human mind. Why? For the very reason that we cannot now see the state of the human race, neither the past - primitive, nor the future - final. In order to know what disasters sin broke out over a person, it is necessary to have an idea of ​​what his primitive perfection consisted of, with damage from sin, in soul and body; none of us saw the first person in a state of innocence and immortality. After this, how can we determine what sin did to us there, what exactly it deprived us of and what it subjected us to? On the other hand, the consequences of sin should be revealed not only in this life, but even more after death, in eternity, which is also inaccessible not only to our feelings, but even to our very concepts. Therefore, again, on our own, we cannot say what sin will do to us, how far its destruction and cruelty will extend over us. After this, for our observation of the destructive effects of sin, one close circle of our earthly existence remains above us. Here, many of the harmful effects of sin are immediately visible to everyone, but most of them are again invisible to the eyes of the most far-sighted. For sin, although it is the strongest poison of all poisons, usually does not exert its effect suddenly; it spoils nature and our life gradually and imperceptibly: which is why it is difficult to clearly indicate what exactly bad things have resulted in our lives directly from sin, and what from other reasons. To identify all the harmful effects of sin on a certain person, it is necessary to know his entire life exactly, to take, so to speak, the entire sum of his vices and the entire sum of his sufferings, and compare one with the other: but this is impossible. It is all the more impossible to do this in relation to the entire human race. Therefore, in the well-known church hymn, the knowledge of all our sinful ailments is assimilated to God alone: ​​“The only one who knows the weakness of the human being!” Exactly, only God knows and sees what sin has done, is doing and can do to us! Thus, despite all our experience and all our knowledge, we would remain with very superficial information: about how terrible sin is, and what destruction it produces in our nature, if one great witness had not come to our aid in this matter, who was at the beginning of our existence and saw what sin had done over our first parents, who, on the other hand, knows everything that will follow us after the grave, in eternity, how the destruction of sin will break out there over those who did not manage to free themselves from his fierce leprosy. This omniscient witness is Divine Revelation, before whom, as before the eyes of God Himself, our entire destiny in time and in eternity is completely revealed. What does this false witness tell us about the consequences of our sins? Ah, he reveals so much to us that if we were attentive to his words, then our whole life would turn into mourning for what we have lost through sin, and in avoiding what threatens us for sin. For what has sin deprived us of, according to the testimony of the word of God? He deprived us of the image of God, which adorned us in a state of innocence, and which, together with God-likeness, contained the basis and guarantee of all perfections, deprived us of blessed communion with God and the angelic world, deprived us of immortality and life in paradise, deprived us of dominion over creatures and the whole earth. These are our deprivations! Who, say with Solomon, can count them and weigh them? (Eccl.1:15) No less evil threatens us from sin, according to the testimony of the same word of God, in the future, for there is a threat of complete separation from God and heaven, complete deprivation of all heavenly blessings, there is a threat of endless loss of all true life and joy, there is a threat of a terrible, involuntary, eternal stay with rejected spirits in hell, among endless torments. What could be more terrible than this fate? Shall we dare to suspect the heavenly witness of the infidelity and inaccuracy of his testimony about the destructive effects of sin? But what need does he have to mislead us? On the other hand, the testimony of the word of God in this case is strikingly confirmed by the testimony of all primitive humanity. For what do all the most ancient legends tell us about our primitive state? All of them, despite the diversity of peoples and countries of the world, say one thing - that the first people enjoyed the greatest perfections and the most blissful state, and that all these perfections and bliss perished from the transgression of the commandment of God, that all the disasters that cover the face of the earth covered it precisely from the time sin reigned among people. It could not have been otherwise, according to the most ordinary and at the same time unchangeable order of things. Each creation has a law of its existence, outlined for it by the wise and omnipotent Creator. Deviation from this law of life and perfection inevitably spoils and destroys everything that deviates, as can be seen in all kingdoms of nature. A precious stone, when the law of its existence is accurately reflected in it, is strong, bright, transparent and valuable, otherwise it is ugly, dull, brittle and of little value. A tree that corresponds to the example of its species is slender, strong, durable, and fruitful, but one that deviates from it is crooked, ugly, sterile and unfit for use. The same is true in the animal kingdom; the incorrect and, one might say, lawless mixing of breeds in animals, separated from cohabitation by nature itself, if it gives existence, it is to creatures that are ugly, weak, and which, moreover, cannot continue their kind. Thus, any deviation from the laws of existence in the nature that surrounds us avenges itself! This deviation must be all the more destructive for man, for the depth of the fall and destruction he has caused always corresponds to the height and enormity of the building, and man is the ruler and crown of everything visible. In unreasonable creatures, sin cannot exert the full force of its poison, for their very existence is temporary and transitory, it only spoils and destroys them. And in man, as an immortal being, food for him is eternal, inexhaustible. Having settled here, sin can live forever, forever torment and torment, destroy and destroy endlessly. No matter how closed this future tyranny of sin over the human being after death is from us, there has always been a deep presentiment of this in the human race, and a constant, universal desire to prevent this tyranny. For review the traditions of all nations, the most enlightened and the most crude: in each of them you will find a belief in the future terrible state of sinners after death. And what do all the sacrifices for sins offered to the deity in different forms by all peoples mean, if not attempts to make peace with heaven, get rid of sin and prevent its terrible effects on people beyond the grave, in the future world? We will not go into consideration of the reality of these sacrifices (what could reconcile us with heaven and free us from sin and curse, except for the one Divine sacrifice made on the cross?): it is enough for us to see that the entire human race, always and everywhere, recognized in sin the most terrible evil for man, the destructive consequences of which extend throughout eternity. Having stocked ourselves with these thoughts, let us now turn, in our next interviews, to a consideration of the destructive effects of sin in relation to all the powers and abilities of man, to his present state - on earth, and his future - after death. Amen. The word that sin spreads darkness throughout a person’s entire being, spoils his mind, disfigures and poisons his knowledge and predisposes the sinner to madness “They will go away like blind men, having sinned before the Lord” (Zeph.1:17) The very first of the seductions with which the hellish serpent enticed our ill-fated ancestress in paradise to transgress the commandment of God, consisted, as is known, in promising her, from eating the forbidden fruit, some special knowledge, similar to Divine knowledge: “if you take away the day from him,” said the serpent, “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like a god, seeing good and evil.” (Gen.3:5). Although the bitter experience of our ancestors should have taught us all not to rely on this evil promise, and to consider sin as a source not of light and knowledge, but of darkness and error, the tempter and enemy of men has so much shamelessness that to this day he does not cease to use the same deception, enticing us to sin, among other things, as a sign of wisdom and knowledge. In fact, look at a sinner among the so-called educated people, what do you notice in him? First of all, mental arrogance and contempt: many of these are ready to say frankly that they allow themselves what others do not allow, because they know more than others. And how do depraved people usually look at those who are always faithful to the law and their duty? As limited people, incapable of anything higher and greater. You can notice something similar to this in a sinner from the lowest class of people, and he considers himself above the crowd of his brothers, ready at every opportunity to set the tone for them, to be their leader, as an experienced and knowledgeable one. What is most pitiful is the boasting and impudence of vice, which is the reason that the kindest people get used to looking at depraved people as creatures, although fallen, but possessing a special power of mind, and as a result of this, they show towards them, along with regret, a certain kind of compliance and even respect. Isn’t it all the more necessary to tear away this mask of great wisdom from vice and show that if there is such darkness in the human race, then it is all from sin and vice, that sin, wherever it appears, everywhere leads darkness and blindness, that it blinds and spoils the greatest abilities, transforms and destroys the most extensive knowledge, that its inherent property is to predispose a person to mental insanity? Will we, however, challenge all knowledge of the sinner for this? No, we will assimilate it to him, even in a certain special way, bearing in mind the experience and example of our ill-fated ancestors. After their fall, their eyes were indeed opened, as the tempter promised, but what did they see? “Yako nazi besha” (Gen. 3:7). Here is the new knowledge produced by sin, and at the same time the punishment for sin, for not knowing one’s nakedness was one of the advantages of the state of innocence. The bodily eyes were opened, but at the same time the spiritual eyes apparently closed, for from whom did our ancestors want to hide? From God and the Omnipresent Creator. Thus, the most obvious and immutable truth of the omnipresence of God was instantly eclipsed in the soul! This unfortunate opening of the eyes continues to this day among the sinner: after each new crime, he sees himself in a new state and knows what he did not know before; and if we add up different types of sins, all the experiences of evil and falls, then, perhaps, we will create a type of knowledge that not only a virtuous person, but the Angel himself does not have, just as a person who has not been sick cannot know experimentally what illness produces in a person. But, my brothers, judge for yourself, what kind of knowledge is this? How pathetic and disgusting it is! And it is a hundred times better not to know what a sinner knows to his misfortune. And yet, from this pitiful knowledge, he often extracts ways to appear wiser than others. Add to this the impudence of vice, which, removing the most sacred bonds from a person, first of all makes his thoughts and mind unbridled - and you will understand how a sinner can seem to know others. The first characteristic of a virtuous person is to keep himself within the limits of faith and modesty. Why is he, not relying on the strength of his mind and insight, always ready to acknowledge his ignorance, to stop - at a loss as to how to act, much less allow himself to boldly judge what is above his concepts: so the first property of a sinner is to judge and order about everything, to be dissatisfied with everything, to prescribe laws to everything, to show himself omniscient and capable of everything. With such spirit and shamelessness, with some ability and knowledge, is it surprising to sometimes be considered a smart guy? To complete the charm of sin, in this regard, people who are truly gifted, partly due to the inclination of our damaged nature towards evil, partly due to the vicissitudes of education and even the sciences themselves, rarely fail to pay, at least temporarily, tribute to vice, which, destroying all the best in them - the mind itself, however, derives from their talents the benefit for itself that, relying on their personality, it passes off its gloomy banner as the banner of wisdom. This, I say, pitiful greed of people gifted for sin gives vice the opportunity to wear the guise of knowledge and seduce with it the eyes of people who do not know how to distinguish the gifts of the Creator from their abuse. On whose side they often see people who are considered smart, about that side and think that it is a region of light and knowledge, not paying attention to the fact that these gifted people are strangers in it and miserable traitors to their homeland. You see that we have not hidden anything that in sin, as in the serpent, could be shining, and at the same time you see for yourself how insignificant the ghost of wisdom with which vice deceives. So, enough concessions: let us now look into the face of this crafty enemy, bring the light of experience closer to him and see what will happen to him! There is no doubt, my brothers, about the sad truth that the human race is covered with some kind of unnatural darkness of ignorance, and that all efforts to disperse this darkness have so far remained without significant success. What is most unfortunate is that this darkness does not allow a person to see what he especially needs to see clearly, even - who is the Creator and Master of his destiny? Even where is he from and why is he here on earth? Even - what should he do, what should he prepare himself for, and what awaits him after death? These are objects of extreme importance for a person: and they are covered with great darkness. The most educated peoples have been most pathetically blind in this regard. We are now amazed at the enlightenment of the ancient Greeks and Romans: but ask, who did they worship? To the idols. What did they know about the origin and fate of man? Nothing clear or decisive. The best of people tried to free themselves and others from this darkness, lit a lot of lights for this, sometimes created a kind of flickering around themselves - even fires, but the flickering disappeared, the fires died out - but darkness and ignorance remained. Is it possible that this terrible darkness was natural to man, that the all-wise Creator, having created such a creature as man, did not make him clearly aware of Himself, did not speak directly about his destiny, and did not indicate where he should go and which way? What earthly father would do this to his son - having sent him on a long journey, he would not say what to do on the way and what kind of place he was sent to? But the human race is precisely in such darkness. If we wanted to be unfair in relation to the love of the Heavenly Father, and decided to assume that she did to us, as earthly fathers sometimes do to their children, immediately after birth, hiding from them forever, and leaving them to the mercy of chance, then we would be convicted by a look at all other creations, of which each is equipped with everything necessary for it, we would be exposed by the very remnant of light and truth innate to our soul, which shows that we once were equipped in excess with the required supply of vision, they did not know how to keep it intact, the voice of all primitive humanity would finally have denounced the fact that man at the beginning of his existence was and walked in the light, but lost it. Who deprived us of this natural, primitive light and plunged us into darkness, from which, despite all our efforts, we still cannot get rid of? Nobody and nothing but sin. In a state of innocence, as we see from the descriptions of life, our forefather had the ability to foresee the innermost properties of things, which is why he gave names to all animals just by looking at them - names that were approved for use, for their goodness, by God Himself: after the fall, the same forefather suddenly became blind to the point that he imagined the possibility of hiding from the omnipresent God in the canopy of the trees of paradise. The remnants of the primeval light, as long as the Patriarchs lived, saved humanity from plunging into complete darkness, but when this precious store of traditions, this sacred inheritance of paradise was exhausted, and humanity was left with its mind blinded by sin, at that time the darkness of ignorance was revealed in all its strength, and man began to say to the tree: “You are my father,” to the stone: “You begat me.” To our great misfortune, sin not only deprived us of the primitive light of the Divine and distanced the objects of knowledge, but also made us incapable of seeing them, spoiled our mental vision to the point that now, even if we showed these objects to a person, he would not see them as he should. Indeed, what are our mental abilities? They represent not only extreme weakness, but also some kind of internal disorder, similar to as if all the glasses in a telescope had been moved from their proper place. And here is an explanation of why the science of knowledge, with all its efforts to form the human mind, achieves very little success, and sometimes produces nothing at all. This is because our mind is damaged by sin in its very composition. Therefore, it is a pitiful delusion when we think that our mind, as well as the other faculties of the soul, lacks only a decent education and, so to speak, polish. No, the current human mind lacks more than just the right image, it lacks internal integrity and health, and, therefore, lacks something that no science can give. Therefore, the word of God, taking into its own hands the enlightenment of man, goes to this goal not only by imparting knowledge to him, although it could suddenly reveal a lot of it to him, but first of all by healing, and for this purpose he delivers it into the hands not of earthly educators and mentors, but of the heavenly, omnipotent Physician of minds and hearts - the Holy Spirit, may he open the “eyes of the heart”, may he remove from them the hereditary thorn, and He will anoint them with the mysterious “colluria” and heal and recreate them. And those on whom this sacred and mystical operation has been performed, whose eyes of mind and heart have been opened by the grace of God, those, without any science, know and see what no earthly education can provide. Judging by this, that sin has already deprived us of primitive light and knowledge and made it so that we come into this world blind in spirit, it would seem that there was nothing left for him to do in particular over the minds of poor sinners. But the ability to blind can never leave him. On the other hand, a person still has a remnant of natural light, and a Christian, in addition, has quite a bit of revealed light: therefore, even now, with each appearance in a person, sin leads with it new darkness for him, in addition to the general natural one. Let us see how this darkness takes possession of the sinner. The first and inevitable effect of vice in a person is that it turns the face and the whole being of a person from heaven to hell, at the same time, the first and inevitable consequence of vice is that the spiritual Sun - God ceases to illuminate the soul of the sinner. Therefore, an inner darkness immediately begins to spread over his soul, which cannot be dispersed by any earthly light, and which at times makes itself felt with force by the poorest sinner and others. The most educated of sinners, in moments of self-awareness, feels, and sometimes even says with a sigh, that his soul is dark!.. Why is it dark when it is apparently filled with all kinds of knowledge? Because there is no light of God in her, and there is no light of God because she has turned away from the face of God. This state of internal darkness from sin apparently also happens to others. Something gloomy constantly hangs over learned, but vicious people, they are thoughtful, their gaze is fluent and clouded, there is no spiritual clarity in them, their movements are restless, their undertakings are indecisive, their very joys are gloomy and empty, they are like a person walking in the dark, groping. On the contrary, over a virtuous person, even if he is not familiar with any education, there is always a certain light hovering, peacefully resting in his soul, shining in his pure and bright gaze, often shining on his face, illuminating all his paths and giving him the convenience of being firm, correct and calm in his actions. This is the light of the face of God, to which the pure soul is constantly turned. When the sensual sun is hidden, at least other luminaries become visible in the sky; when the Sun of the spiritual God is hidden in the soul, on the contrary. Here what, according to the testimony of the word of God, is to happen at the end of the world is fulfilled in full force: not only does the sun darken, but the moon does not give light, and the stars fall from the sky. This moon is our conscience: not illuminated in the sinner by the light of God’s face, it itself does not provide sufficient light to illuminate the paths of his life. These stars are lofty and holy truths, which for our guidance were planted by the hand of the Creator on the firmament of the human spirit. These are the concepts of God and His holy law, our eternal destiny and reward beyond the grave. These guiding stars are covered with darkness in the sinner’s soul and become inconspicuous. And here is the explanation of that unfortunate but ordinary phenomenon that people, apparently the most educated, but vicious, are not only cold to these truths, but even decide to go against them. This is often attributed to malicious intent, while for the most part it is a natural consequence of a sinful life: the prophet spread a veil over these stars, hid them from the mental gaze of the sinner, and he, not seeing them in his soul, is therefore ready to assert stubbornly that they do not exist at all in the human soul. Therefore, when you meet, brethren, a pitiful clever man who dares to mock sacred truths, then do not enter into an argument with him, you cannot thereby disperse the darkness of hell in his soul: but if possible, take him by the hand and say with regret: “Oh, dear brother, how did you come to such terrible blindness? May the light of Christ shine upon you!” Say this and pray for him with zeal to the One who alone can lead him out of darkness into His wonderful light. Having been deprived of the grace-filled influx of God's power, having escaped from the control of conscience, reason in the soul of a sinner becomes a miserable slave of the dominant passion, which, for greater enslavement, gouges his eyes so that he does not see the truth, proves and affirms not what follows according to the eternal laws of truth and duty, but what worldly pride, self-interest and carnality command. Therefore, there is no such lie and absurdity that the mind, enslaved to passions, would not be ready to affirm with all its effort and jealousy, and there is no such truth that it would not hesitate to denigrate and refute, since it is not to its advantage. From the frequent exercise of his mental faculties in this pitiful transformation of truth, the sinner apparently becomes dull and finally loses the feeling and taste of truth to the point that he cannot distinguish it from lies, and accepts as true only what he needs according to its appearance. And this attitude towards the lower, so to speak, material and everyday truths, and in relation to the higher, sacred ones, the inveterate sinner has not only disgust, but also obvious hatred, so that he is extremely pleased to question them, to ridicule those who hold them sacred, to speak and write against everything holy. In this case, the same thing happens to depraved people as to people suffering from eye disease: they cannot bear light, especially sunlight; they will gladly prefer to it the light of rotten wood, which is better in their eyes than the sun. What is done with the knowledge of the sinner if he has it? Vice, in addition to the fact that it always significantly reduces their circle, always takes away from them depth, strength, harmony and life. In all objects of our knowledge there is a sacred side, by which it is addressed to the Author of all things. This holy and sublime side does not exist for a vicious and free-thinking person. That is why all images of objects made by immoral writers always resonate with inner emptiness and deadness, for a godless world is a soulless corpse with flowers scattered all over it. What use does a vicious person make of his knowledge and abilities? The most pathetic and terrible thing. To reconsider, refute, and distort everything is his inevitable property. That is why there is nothing more dangerous for society than people who are educated by the sciences, but devoted to passions, and that is why the increase in false immoral enlightenment always entails the disorder of families and the destruction of entire states. What, finally, is the outcome of mental darkness produced by vices and passions? A visible disorder of all cognitive abilities, a weakening of internal self-awareness and spiritual personality, and finally, obvious insanity of the mind. Let the thought of judging and condemning those unfortunate brothers of ours who are in this last state be removed from us! But how can one not proclaim what is so loudly preached by the very ministers of our bodily health, that is, that insanity of the mind almost always has a sinful state of soul as its primary and main source? That it is generally directed in its forms according to the types of human passions, that its very essence consists in nothing other than the eclipse of concepts about God and the loss of moral feeling? Based on the testimony of medical science itself, we have every right to assert that a person is depraved; if his life continued on earth for a long time, which, however, almost never happens, then he would inevitably finally go crazy. We see a terrible example of this in the spirits of the outcasts. What are they, with all their great abilities, if not creatures obsessed in their minds with pride and hatred of their Creator? And here is an explanation of how they cannot understand, for example, the impossibility of a creature fighting with its Creator, how they can dare to go against the Almighty. This is sheer madness, but for them it seems like wisdom, because they are beside themselves, in a state of frenzy, and have destroyed their mind and pure consciousness of themselves. Let our word now turn to you, who are engaged in science and attend our Divine services and interviews with such zeal. The education of the mind and the increase in all kinds of knowledge is now the main subject of our activity. Rest assured that truth and virtue are one, one in God, as the source of all truth and virtue, one in nature, as the product of the wisdom and holy will of God, one must be one in man, as the image of God and the dear world. It is possible to forcibly separate for a time the ray of truth from the ray of virtue in a person’s soul: but then this ray, like a forked ray of the sun, loses its power, ceases to warm and life-giving. Purity of conscience and morals will illuminate with an unflickering light not only all the paths of our life, but also the entire area of ​​​​our knowledge, for you will constantly be in the light of the face of God. Along with this, an inexhaustible source of luminous thoughts and lofty feelings will open in your soul. Sin, on the contrary, will darken, poison and destroy all your abilities and mental acquisitions, and will undermine at the very root the beautiful flower of knowledge. So, diligently close your ears to all the charms of freethinking, constantly close your eyes to all the delights of vice, remembering the saying of the ancient sage that “wisdom does not enter into an evil soul, but dwells below in a body guilty of sin” (Wisdom 1:4). Amen. The word that sin, promising a person freedom and independence, deprives him of true freedom and overthrows him into a state of painful slavery “Every servant who commits sin is sin” (John 8:34) If you look at the surface of sin and at the first steps of the sinner, then in sin it is not slavery that appears, but freedom and independence. For what is sin? It is not to listen to the commands of God himself, to go against the laws of your Creator, to be for yourself the beginning and end of actions, an idol and purgatory. A sinner freely allows himself to do things that a virtuous person does not even dare to think about, enjoys things that are unknown and seem to not exist for the latter, and apparently becomes above all. This, of course, was what the tempter of Eden understood when he said to our foremother: “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). This, no doubt, is what he, the unfortunate one, was carried away by when he decided to develop a banner of indignation against the Almighty. This is what every sinner strives for, openly or secretly, but inevitably. Give free rein to his unbridled desires, provide him with the means to fulfill his crazy plans, remove all obstacles from his path, and you will see that he will not be satisfied with anything, he will go further and further in his pride and greed for pleasure, he will dream of being like the Most High, he will say directly with Pharaoh: who is God, may I listen to him? And haven’t recent times seen a terrible example of how an entire people, famous for their education, but having lost the purity of morals, dared, in the person of their representatives overcome with pride and vice, to reject all beliefs, prohibit all types of worship, proclaim human reason as a deity and give it the worship befitting the only God! So, apparently, the sinner is proud and far from any humiliation and slavery! And yet nothing is as close to him as slavery, nothing is as inevitable as humiliation! Who humiliates and enslaves him? The same sin that seduces with freedom and independence. Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. How does this happen? The most inevitable. The true freedom of man consists in freely uniting with the highest, Divine freedom, from which it flows, to assimilate for himself its holy mode of action, and thus to be clothed with its omnipotence. Sin dissolves this blissful union, puts human freedom in contrast to Divine freedom and its omnipotence: therefore, it deprives human freedom of the only source of strength and power that is essential, eternal. In this case, the same thing must happen to human freedom as happens to a branch cut off from a tree: both must wither, become exhausted and die. If a sinner does not feel this for a time, it is because, after the dissolution of the blissful union with God, a part of moral arbitrariness remains for a while, just as in a branch cut off from a tree some vitality remains for a while, and it can retain its greenery, leaves and flowers for several hours. But the sin that has reigned in the soul soon demands this small remnant of spiritual arbitrariness as a sacrifice, and the poor captive has nothing left but slavery. For why did the sinner reject his freedom from the will of God and the law? Because it seemed to him that something was better than the will of God and the law. Whatever this supposedly best thing is - honor, acquisitions, sensual pleasures, all this, no matter how insignificant, becomes an omnipotent idol for a person. What previously he had to do for God, according to the demands of the law and conscience, now he must do for his idol, in whatever form it may be, according to the demands of his passion for him. At first, even here, the ghost of freedom remains, so that the sinner feels able to throw and break his idol, but then, from time to time, the gravest slavery sets in, so that the sinner involuntarily does everything that his sinful idol demands. In this case, the prisoner of sin is like a man descending from a high and steep mountain: at first the horizon is vast, there are many views before the eyes, paths under the feet, but the further and wider, the narrower the horizon, the fewer views and traces, and finally one path remains, leading, or even more so, leading into the abyss. In fact, my brethren, how long does sin honor its captives with even that pitiful honor of keeping them in direct dependence on itself, with the right to wander along all the obstinate crossroads of iniquity? No longer than it becomes apparent (and this happens very quickly) the specific ability of each captive in certain sinful work. After this, sin immediately distributes its captives among its cruel guardians: it gives one into slavery of the flesh and sensual pleasures, another forces one to work for covetousness and avarice, and orders the third to be in the service of ambition and the pride of life. A sinner devoted to one passion sometimes does not have enough freedom to switch to serving another: he does not dare and cannot even change his bonds, for example, a carnivore is often deaf to the suggestions of ambition, a miser cannot tolerate sensual pleasures, etc. What does the ruling passion do to the poor sinner and his freedom? What is done among distant barbarians with their captives: so that they cannot escape, their eyes are gouged out and the veins in their legs are cut off. Likewise, passion scars the sinner’s eyes: everyone sees the insignificance of his idol, the danger of his position, the inevitable consequences of depravity, one sinner is blind, it often seems to him that he lives and behaves in the best possible way. Passion barbarously spoils the sinner’s legs: everything sometimes forces him to leave the path of lawlessness, he himself feels the opportune moment to escape from his shackles, and yet he cannot budge, or, after taking a few steps, he falls, and, having been captured again by his master, is subjected to the most difficult bonds. In fact, until then the sinner works, like a senseless animal, to please sinful passion, while it is silent and as if does not exist, gives him the freedom to shake and jingle his chains, to present himself as a person with an independent heart. But as soon as the intention to break his bonds and go into freedom of spirit is revealed in the poor sinner, then all the ferocity of passion is revealed, the smallest good thoughts are forbidden and persecuted with bitterness. If a sinner, despite the severity of the sinful habit, does not give up the desire to free himself from it, then an internal battle begins, the most terrible, which, given the inequality of spiritual forces remaining in the sinner, with the power of passion growing into a giant, would always inevitably end in the victory of sin over its captive, if the grace of God did not come to the aid of the latter. But the assistance of omnipotent grace often remains unsuccessful, because the person himself does not give it all the space in his heart. I will never forget, brothers, one sad incident that affected me for the rest of my life, in which what we are discussing now was revealed in full force. I happened to visit a man who had the misfortune of being infected with the passion of intemperance, but who had not lost his sense of aversion to sin, gifted with excellent abilities and knowledge, even love for all that is good. This was in moments of his struggle with passion. My God, what did I see! I saw a poor soul entangled from head to toe in the bonds of passion, I saw a fallen angel wanting to rise from the fall and unable to cast off the burden of sin, I saw in reality the struggle between heaven and hell. What did the unfortunate man not do? Streams of tears flowed from his eyes and washed his very clothes, then he knelt before the holy icon and raised his eyes to heaven, then he beat himself in the chest and tore out the hair on his head, then he turned for help to all the holy saints, and gave himself up to their protection, like a drowning man, then he cursed his birthday and called for death, then he suspected the presence of an evil spirit in himself and dared to blaspheme against Providence. And how did this terrible struggle end? Mostly a victory of passion over spirit and conscience. May the almighty grace of God help you, beloved brother, in your painful deed, and may he lead you to the latitude and freedom of spirit you desire! If I dared to tell your fate before my listeners, it was because you yourself did not hide your distressed state and, by your own example, convinced us to observe the bonds of sin. When, in the course of a few years, my brethren, sin can so overwhelm the best of people, strangle the moral strength of the will in those who are gifted with many means to nourish, support and heal it - then what could sin do to the freedom of a person if the latter were given the opportunity to live and work for sin here for many centuries? A terrible example of this is represented by rejected spirits. Why does the goodness of God, extended to all sinners, seem to not exist for them? Because they do not want to participate in the pardon. Why don't they want to? Because they can't. Why can't they? Because sin strangled spiritual freedom in them; they became so hardened in evil that going back became morally impossible for them. If the fallen angels were not saved from such a fate, from such cruel slavery to sin, then will we, brothers, be saved if we surrender unrepentantly to sin? So, let us diligently guard the freedom of our spirit and will, so that, once we have lost it, we do not search in vain for all eternity. Let us not be bored by the compulsion necessary for virtue: this compulsion is for a time, until the members of our being dislocated from a fall are straightened out: then walking in all the paths of the law will become natural and easy for us, then it will be a hundred times more pleasant to obey the most holy will of the Creator than to rush around in a whirlwind of passions and sinful pleasures, and finally, with the help of the grace of God, we will achieve, following the example of the celestials, the fact that deviating from the law of God will become completely impossible for us - be with us all! Amen. The word that the joys of sin are temporary and insignificant, that sin, on the contrary, takes away from a person all true and pure pleasures and serves as a source of countless sorrows and disasters “The wicked shall not rejoice, saith the Lord” (Isa. 48:22) And why does a poor sinner run headlong into the abyss of sin, if not for joy and comfort? Listen to the peace lovers - they still say the same thing that they said in the time of Solomon: “Come, let us enjoy real blessings; let not one of us be deprived of... pleasure: let us leave everywhere a sign of joy, for this is our part and this lot” (Wis. 2:6, 9). If it were not for joy and gladness, then the world and sin would have long ago lost all their fans. What does the word of the Prophet mean, taking away joy from the wicked? The fact that the wicked only chases after joy, but in fact does not achieve it, is that the imaginary joys of sin are empty, temporary and insignificant, and that sin, captivating with the ghost of sensual joy, at the same time robs a person of true joy and makes his heart incapable of bliss, and finally, that along with the depravity of the soul and heart, an inexhaustible source of grief and misfortune opens up for a person. Indeed, my brothers, how could a sinner have those divine and ineffable joys that come from the Holy Spirit, and of which one drop cannot be replaced by a whole sea of ​​worldly pleasures? These holy joys and pleasures, which constitute the crown of earthly things and the guarantee of heavenly bliss of pure and holy souls, are completely lost for the sinner: for sin has broken the blessed union that should be between God and the soul, created for bliss in God. Between them, in a sinful state, there is no other relationship than the inevitable - an ungrateful creature to the Almighty Creator, a criminal to the Judge and Master. The thought of this relationship, no matter how the sinner usually tries to suppress it, awakens strongly from time to time and always fills him with secret fear and sadness. Having deprived a person of divine joys, sin does not give him pleasure in pure human joys. The first of these is the joy of a good conscience, and it is this that the sinner is first deprived of. Instead of inner peace, spiritual pleasure and holy encouragement from conscience, in the depths of his soul lurks boredom, discontent and heaviness. It is true that the conscience in a sinner with the increase of iniquities, with his age in evil and wickedness, itself weakens, but everything can never be completely silent, even when it is silent, that dull, but nevertheless palpable feeling, like some kind of dull wound, weighs down and worries. Hence the almost always tinge of embarrassment and dissatisfaction on the face of a peace-lover, hence the deep sighs in the midst of the most noisy amusements, hence the complaints and murmurs about one’s life, when, apparently, nothing is lacking in its bliss, hence the secret envy of the condition of poor but virtuous people, hence, finally, the instantaneous transitions of some peace-lovers to repentance, so that they, abandoning everything, run away from the world forever into the desert. And the sinner cannot have other higher and pure human joys as long as he remains in the power of lawlessness. Thus, all the sublime joys of the spirit are unknown to him: the joy of a prayerful conversation with God is unknown to him, the sweetness of the hope of eternal life, or suffering for the truth is unknown, the spiritual joy from being in church, from reading the word of God, from receiving the Christian sacraments is unknown, the holy warmth of the heart from communication with brothers in Christ and the work of mercy is unknown, even the bright and comforting view of nature as the work of one’s hands is unknown. of God, for the revelation of the glory and wisdom of God. All this is lost for the sinner, and not only lost, but turns into a source of boredom, into spiritual heaviness, so that this very thing, for example, reading the word of God, or being present in church, can be assigned to him as punishment. Sin transforms a person’s heart to such an extent that everything that responds to faith and virtue is disgusting and disgusting to him. Shall we turn for this to other joys of the soul, which even the best of the pagans enjoyed and treasured, and we will not find them in the sinner. Thus, the sinner does not have the pleasures stemming from self-knowledge and moral self-improvement: his element is to live in self-forgetfulness and not care about himself. The sinner has no joy from perfect, selfless friendship, for what kind of friendship does he have who breathes self-love? The sinner does not have the joy of a pure family life; he, for the most part, either runs away from the family fortune as a bond, or becomes the worst father of the family, the most disobedient son, the coldest and most unapproachable relative. All these joys are so inaccessible to sin that he cannot even promise them to his favorites, and does not promise them: what does he do? He tries to present them as either impossible or not worth the effort, and instead of this, he makes the only important ones appear to be those that he is able to deliver to them. What can he deliver? That which comes from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the self and the pride of life is something that Solomon once wanted to experience with all his might, but despite the fact that the king had many means to continue and diversify sensual pleasures, he was forced to admit that everything he experienced was “vanity of vanities,” and did not produce pleasure, but exhaustion “and ruin of the spirit” (Eccl. 1:2). Let us, however, follow the sinner in thought, albeit along the main paths of his joys, and see what they consist of. Here he is drawn along the haystacks on a magnificent chariot and rejoices: for what? That his servants are dressed in gold, that the dumb people carrying him are of the best breed and the highest price, that crowds of people involuntarily make way for him, that he can proudly look at everything he encounters, mostly without any reason, from one region to another, appear there, be here, then see, leave it, start a lot, finish nothing, leave traces of his greatness and his emptiness everywhere. Is this joy and fun? Here is another sinner: he sits in the treasured church and counts the pieces of silver, looks at the heaps of soulless metal and rejoices: for what? That he has a debt to “accrue for the summer”, that he can, if he wants, buy an estate, build a house, own this or that. But will he want to? No, his pleasure is to count and store, and not to use, he is not the master, but the slave of his treasures, in order to increase them, he turns to all means, denies himself even the necessary, in the midst of wealth he suffers poverty, suffers and suffers, until death snatches from his hands everything that he had, and on which he insanely spent his whole life. Is this joy and bliss? Here is another sinner: he goes the opposite way and turns everything to his own pleasure, his house is decorated and open for all lovers of peace, the meal is filled with food, there is singing and faces all around him: but his condition is already exhausted, and his health was already exhausted from intemperance, he himself feels that there are few drops left in the cup of earthly pleasures for him, and he tries to drown out this feeling with new types of intemperance. Is this joy? But we took sinners with all the convenience to sin, but how many of them are there? The majority are in the miserable need to constantly hunger for sinful pleasures, and do not have the opportunity to satisfy impure desires. What is this miserable crowd doing? He throws himself into all kinds of pleasures, indulges in all kinds of vice, just so as not to perish, so to speak, from spiritual hunger. In general, the same thing happens to people who have given themselves over to a vicious life as happens to a person after being bitten by a tarantula. They say about such people that they immediately feel an irresistible urge to bodily movement, begin to jump and whirl, so that, looking at them, one might think that they are supposedly in a state of extraordinary joy, meanwhile they suffer terribly, and often die in the midst of this pitiful dance. This is also the position of the sinner: bitten by sin, imbued with its serpentine venom, he receives an irresistible inclination towards distraction and sensual pleasures, constantly moves in the direction of the dominant passion, jumps from pleasure to pleasure, imagines the face of a person intoxicated with happiness, and meanwhile inside he suffers and suffers. Soon he begins to suffer on the outside: for one of the first accessories of sin and passions is unbridled pleasure, and with this the strength of the spirit and body is quickly depleted. On the other hand, from the most sinful pleasures a lot of grief and annoyance inevitably arise, the wide path of sin, which seemed covered only with flowers, becomes increasingly crowded and inconvenient from time to time, the flowers disappear, giving way to thorns, and the sinner finally sees himself in the abyss dug for him by his own sins. In fact, how many of the peace-loving people, and for how long, even enjoy health, this necessary condition for earthly happiness, which they are chasing? Most die prematurely, and if not suddenly, then after prolonged and severe suffering. If some reach old age, it is not because they indulged in vice, but because they did not indulge in it entirely, that they did not forget the rules of abstinence, that is, they did not abandon virtue altogether. The remnant of goodness saves them from the destructive power of sin. For this same sin, in this case, for the most part, it finds another means of exacting a cruel tribute for a few drops of muddy joy. Intemperance and extravagance, so inseparable from vice, in a short time deplete the sinner of the means to satisfy his criminal desires. From a luxurious rich man, he often becomes a beggar, over whom the Gospel story of the prodigal son is repeated with all accuracy, who previously had millions to satisfy his whims, is forced to cleave to any inhabitant of the country, and consider it a mercy when he is allowed to have a piece of daily bread. And how many of these unfortunate people there are! And if illness is added to poverty, as often happens: then the lover of peace begins to endure alive what the word of God threatens unrepentant sinners beyond the grave. In such cases, if the special grace of God does not come to the rescue, it is rare not to reach despair and suicide. After this, judge for yourself, brothers, does the word of God say rightly that the wicked should not rejoice? Truly, there is no sinner who, at the end of his sinful career, would not say with Jonathan: “I have tasted a little honey... and now I die” (1 Samuel 14:43). The righteous also suffer: the very word of God, which decisively takes away true joy from the wicked, says that “many sorrows will come to the righteous.” But what kind of sorrows are these? They are all similar to the beneficial bitter medicines that a patient takes, as prescribed by a skilled doctor, to heal himself from a deadly disease: their bitterness is constantly accompanied by a sweet feeling of recovery, from day to day they feel better and stronger in their soul and conscience, and this makes up for all their sorrows. One can most certainly attribute to virtuous people what St. noticed about himself. Paul: “For he who mourns, yet rejoices always” (2 Cor. 6:10), but about sinful people the opposite must be said with all his might: always, apparently, he who rejoices, but he who grieves always. Amen. The word that sin is the main and primary cause of all human illnesses and mortality "The patterns of sin are death" (Rom. 6:23) How much sin would be reduced in the world if these words of the Apostle of Christ found complete faith in each of us! For what do we fear most? Death. With all a person’s attachment to something, tell him that this very thing to which he is so attached lies his death, and he will immediately leave his beloved thing, try to remove it from himself and destroy it. Therefore, if we were sure that there is death in sin, then the fear of death would turn into fear of sin, and we, with all our inclination to sin, would run away from sin just as we are now running away from death. But, unfortunately for us, we do not see the connection between sin and death; we think that one can sin and not die, just as one must die at some time, even though one has not sinned. This way of thinking destroyed us even in paradise: for our ancestor had not previously decided to stretch out her hand to the forbidden fruit, when the evil serpent assured her that from tasting it death would not follow: “You will not die by death!” (Gen.3:4). This same way of thinking is ruining us now. Where is he from? Apparently from experience. We do not see from experience that death follows sin, nor do we see that without sin death does not follow eventually. Sinners continue to live, sometimes for a long time; the virtuous, on the contrary, continue to die, sometimes prematurely. After this, our crafty and sin-inclined nature immediately comes to the idea that there is no necessary connection between sin and death, and if there is one, it is only weak and distant. Thus, the clearest testimonies of the Prophets and Apostles that sickness and death are the fruit of sin remain over us without any effect. It is therefore necessary to tear off this mask from sin, and show its direct affinity with illness and death, so that in this way the fear of death turns into the saving fear of sin, which is its only original parent. What will we do for this? Let us delve, firstly, into the very thing by which the poor sinner is most deceived in this case, that is, into the imaginary possibility of sinning and remaining alive. Therefore, says sin, I am in vain accused of death; I do not kill anyone, as experience shows. So, we will answer, you, fiend of the devil, apparently do not kill anyone, because you have actually killed everyone a long time ago, so now there is no one else to kill. In fact, my brothers, how are we born into the world? We are all born, as Scripture teaches, already killed by sin. None of us has that holy and blessed life that man enjoyed in the beginning and which is befitting of all of us, as if created according to the image of the all-good and all-blessed God. This life is lost in paradise along with its innocence. Our real life is only one miserable remnant of it; it is not so much life as constant dying. If we were given the opportunity to live just for one day the primitive, blissful life that our Ancestors lived before the fall, then we would see fully whether it is possible to sin and not die, for with sin we would immediately lose that life and suffer death. After this, it is not a great mercy of sin that, having once and forever taken away true life from us in paradise, it does not now suddenly take away from us all the rest of it. However, where does this mercy come from? Is it due to the natural condescension of sin towards its victim? Not at all, but because the destructive power of sin is now curbed by the invisible bonds of Divine mercy. If sin were allowed, following its nature, to reveal all its deadly power over a person, then the sinner would now suddenly be struck by death for each of his sins, like thunder. But in this case there would be no place for repentance, the sinner would perish irrevocably, just as fallen spirits perished, suddenly killed by sin for all eternity. Therefore, the mercy of God, having found in the depths of its wisdom a means to redeem the human race from sins, and so on. death, invented at the same time a way, without taking away sin’s deadly power, to suspend its action, to spread out, so to speak, the dues of death belonging to sin, so that we, not paying it suddenly, and taught by the weight of this dues, would turn with our whole being to virtue and eternal life, which naturally flows from it, using the rest of our lives, we would have time to show the sincerity of our conversion and be healed, by the grace of God, from the ulcers sinful. Due to the power of this most merciful thought about us, our Forefathers, even after their fall, lived outside of paradise with the remainder of their paradise life for several hundred more years, although they lost their true primitive life immediately after eating the fruit of the forbidden, as shown by their feeling of previously unknown nakedness, fear of the presence of God and the attempt to hide in the shadow of the trees of paradise. Likewise, we, their descendants, despite the increase, with the passage of time, of sins in the human race and the resulting increase in the dominion of death, continue to live the remainder of the same primitive life for several more decades. This is not sinful indulgence, but a consequence of God’s mercy. Therefore, instead of being seduced by this imaginary condescension and the powerlessness of sin to kill us, we must cherish every minute of delay and try to heal ourselves from the poison of sin before it becomes incurable. For, look how sin, even now by itself, wherever possible, immediately mercilessly finishes off a person for the rest of his temporary life. So, for example, don’t people even now die in an instant from intense anger? Even some innocent feelings, as long as they go beyond the limits and trace. take on the form and property of sin, becoming deadly, for example, excessive joy and laughter! Here again death and sin are together - and what sin? You can say only his shadow, but even that kills. There are not many such striking cases, but shall we regret that there are not many of them? For what would happen to us if there were many of them? This is an action, as we have noticed, of God’s mercy, leaving room for repentance for the sinner. However, even if others do not mortify us every time, like anger, to death, they always take away a part of our life, so that if at the end of it a true and accurate account were to be made, it would turn out that it was all dismantled piece by piece by sins and passions: this perished from lust, another from envy, another from arrogance, this from avarice, etc. In this regard, again, with all the darkness and disorder produced by sins in our being, indelible traces of a wise and merciful order for us, tending entirely towards our admonition, are visible. For take a closer look at human life, and you will see that after some sins, illnesses characteristic of them are launched directly, with all their might, so that the fear of illness and suffering moderates, if not exterminates, the inclination to all sins, and from some sins, illnesses and bodily destruction are removed at a considerable distance, so as not to completely bind our freedom and not thereby take away the entire value of our virtue. And with what sins did diseases come into play? With those precisely to whom our sensual nature is especially inclined - with the sins of voluptuousness and lust. Who will not shudder, looking at the terrible perversion of the splendor of the body produced by these sins! Who would not, in this case, revere the secret and at the same time obvious order of heavenly justice! However, all other sins, no matter how removed from sensuality, never lose their natural property of ruining health and shortening a person’s life. What is more immaterial than envy? This passion consists of inner spiritual sorrow for the good of one’s neighbor. But since this sorrow is a sin, look what it makes of an envious person? Lead idol. This pallor of the whole face, this shortness of all his features, this grave-like hue of the eyes and lips, what else shows but that this passion transforms the entire order of bodily forces, that the blood is directed unnaturally from the circumference to the center, that it has accumulated near the heart and crushes it like a grave stone. Let's take another vice - despondency. What is apparently purer and more innocent? A sad person does not offend anyone, but since this is a vice, a state unnatural to human nature, then at the same time as despondency takes possession of the soul, the entire physical makeup of a person is subject to suffering. The sad person apparently dries up, melts, loses the desire and ability to do everything and tends to the grave. Thus, sin at all its levels inevitably leads to weakness of strength, illness and death! To strengthen these experimental and generally understandable observations and truths, we could cite from the annals of medical science many cases confirming the same thing, and even more, we could show how the accumulation of diseases in general is directed not only after, but also in kind, hordes of vices (why the very science of physical healing, not only in general, but also in particular features, converges with the science of spiritual healing), we could show how not only each department of sins, but also each sin has its own illness that belongs to it, just as passions and vices introduce illnesses for entire centuries into entire families, just as in entire nations, folk vices and moral diseases form folk ailments corresponding to them, how in some cases the dominant passion even imparts its own appearance to certain parts of the body, for example, from strong love of money, the very heart of a money lover takes on a form similar to metal. But such considerations would force us to go beyond the limits of a simple pastoral interview. Let us leave this useful work to lovers of science, which will never achieve its goal so closely and will not provide such a service to humanity as by turning its knowledge and discoveries to admonish a person about the poisonousness of sin for him and the beneficial influence of virtue on his entire being. Let's turn to the solution to another doubt. We saw why sinners do not die immediately, as they should: - because we all already died in paradise for the primitive true human life, because the mercy of God, by special order, protected in us a certain remnant of this life, in order to give us all a place and time for repentance. Let us now see why the righteous also die, whereas they should, apparently, be completely free from death, since it is the fruit of sin. For this, the death of the righteous, can also confuse and inspire the idea that death is not from sin, but is the natural destiny of the human body. Let us not act unfairly if we say that even among the righteous, death is a consequence of sin. For where can one find a righteous person who is completely sinless? Such was only one righteous man in the human race, the One who completely put death to death by his death, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. All other righteous people, no matter how perfect, are involved in sin, and therefore in death, as a consequence of sin. This is how the most righteous people make us think and speak: for they all recognized themselves as sinful people. And, however, even if a perfect righteous man were to be found on earth, among people, would his reward now be not to be subject to death? On the contrary, freedom from bodily death would be a reward then, if the righteous lived on earth the perfect life that the first man lived in paradise, the loss of such a life would definitely constitute deprivation and punishment. But now even the righteous, as a result of the primitive fall of the human race into the abyss of sin and corruption, do not have the life of Eden; in relation to bodily existence, like all other people, they live only on the sole remnant of this life. To remain in this position forever would not be a reward, but a punishment. Therefore, one should marvel at the righteous not that they finally die like all people, but moreover that they do not die sooner than others. For through death they are freed forever from the bondage of bodily mortality, which is indecent for them, as if they had already been resurrected in the spirit, as if they had begun to live a new heavenly life. That, speaking in this way, we affirm the most essential truth, evidence of this is the feelings, words and actions of righteous people. Look, for example, what does the Apostle Paul most desire? He desires to be “resolved,” that is, to be freed from the bonds of the flesh, “... to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). Why does he want this? Because, as he said, it was much better for him than staying on earth. Why is it not resolved and continues to remain alive? Only because it is more necessary and useful for his disciples, for the Church of Christ. This means that if he continued to live, then it was not a benefit for him, but a deprivation, not a reward, but a feat and a sacrifice for the salvation of his neighbors. No matter how you look at death in this way, it turns out to be a consequence of sin in all respects. Let us stop, beloved, from being deceived by sin. We are all extremely afraid of death, we will begin to fear sin better, for what is terrible in death is all from sin. Without sin, death is desirable, for it destroys all the consequences of our spiritual impurities and returns us to primitive life. When the ancient murderer begins to deceive us (for he even now continues to do the same thing that he did in paradise) and say: “You will not die by death,” we will say to him this: what is the benefit that now, after our new fall, we will not lose the remnant of this poor physical life, when, through your malice and wickedness, we have lost forever the blessed life of Eden? If now we do not die before the time, then this is not your mercy (you would kill us now, just as you destroyed our first parents), but a consequence of the Divine mercy, the precious fruit of our redemption from sin and death by the cross of our Savior. It is enough for you, murderer, that you have deprived us all, through sin and disobedience, of the life of God: and we will use the rest of this life for what it was given to us by the mercy of our Lord, for cleansing and healing ourselves through repentance and faith from all sins, for the ultimate removal of ourselves not only from deeds, but also from wrong thoughts, to contrition, by the grace of God, of your very head Zmiina. Amen. The word that sin inevitably exposes a person to the painful dominion of the devil “It is the devil who commits sin; for the devil sinned from the beginning” (1 John 3:8) To be from the devil, to be in close connection with him, the enemy of God and man, to be subject to his hellish influence, this is such an unfortunate state that one cannot even think about without trepidation. But the sinner, as the word of God teaches, inevitably finds himself in this unfortunate state: “It is the devil who commits sin!” Why is this so? Because, the Apostle answers, “as the devil sins from the beginning,” that is, because the original source of all sin in the world, as we saw in our previous conversations, is in the devil: he was the first to apostatize from the law and will of God and introduced sin into the universe, he poured the poison of sin from himself into the soul of our unwary forefathers, and in their faces he infected the human race with lawlessness, and he is the same now. uses all means to ensure that this poison of sin, destroyed by the grace of redemption, remains in full force in the soul of every person and produces its destructive effect on everything. Just as every good is from God and is the property of God, so that when you turn to good, at the same time you turn to God, its Source and Master, so every evil and sin is from the devil, and constitutes his unfortunate property, so that, turning to sin, at the same time we turn with our whole being to the very source of sin - the devil, and we fall under his dark influence. “It is the devil who commits sin, for it is the devil who sins first.” Secondly, sin betrays a person into the power of the devil by adjusting his being to the devil. Just as a virtuous person, through a good life, takes on all the features of the image of God, becomes God-like, as a result of this attracts the grace of God to himself and becomes the abode of the Holy Spirit: so an unrepentant sinner, through an unclean life and evil morals, takes on the image of the devil, becomes like him in hatred of truth and virtue, attracts evil spirits to himself with unclean lusts and turns into a dwelling for them. How great is the dependence of the poor sinner on the devil? Judge for yourself by the expressions that the word of God uses to mean this dependence. And, firstly, it calls the sinner the son of the devil in a sense similar to how the righteous is called the son of God. “You,” the Savior Himself says to the unrepentant Jews, “are of your father the devil, and you want to do the lusts of your father” (John 8:44). Could the connection between a son and his father be deeper and more significant? The same is the connection between a sinner and the devil. The son receives his very being from the father: and the sinner, like a sinner, owes his sinful existence to the devil. From the father, for the most part, they pass on to the son. all natural qualities: and all the qualities of the evil spirit are gradually communicated to the sinner. Children receive education from their fathers: and the spirit of darkness does not sleep in perfecting sinners for any evil. But many of the fathers of the earth do not know how to keep their children in long-term dependence: but the father of darkness knows with all his strength how to educate his children so that they are like him in everything and never act out of his ungodly will. Next, St. The Apostle Paul calls the sinner “having been quickly caught by the devil to his will,” and commands believers to pray for such, “so that God may give him repentance in the mind of truth, and he will arise from the devil’s snares” (2 Tim. 2:25–26). Again the comparison is very strong: for what is it like for a bird caught in a net? It is entirely in the hands of the hunter: so the sinner is in the power of the devil. But a bird, caught in a net, usually sees its misfortune, immediately begins to fight and tries to break through the net: and the poor sinner rarely notices his unfortunate captivity, rejoices in the net of temptation in which he is caught, even when he breaks through, he tries to strengthen it and again imposes it on himself. Even the Savior Himself, on one occasion, noticed to the Jews that a sinner, due to his unrepentance, is so influenced by an evil spirit that this latter dwells in him, as in his own home, and not only dwells himself, but also brings with him other fierce spirits for habitation (Matthew 12:43-45). Now imagine what the owner cannot do with his house? He will remake anything he wants, he will break it, he will burn it: this is what the devil does with a sinful soul, with its thoughts, feelings and actions, as long as the power of God, which binds him, allows it to do so. These three testimonies are enough to see and understand in what terrible dependence on the devil the sinful soul is. Why, - the question arises - does the sinner, being in such terrible captivity, not feel his misfortune: for if he had felt, he would not have hesitated to free himself from it, having every opportunity to do so? – But, my brothers, how would a poor sinner feel this captivity when he cannot? And how could he, when his own soul is set up by sin like the devil? To feel the presence of the spirit of darkness in yourself, you must yourself be light, and the sinner is darkness himself. On a clean, white dress, even a small stain is immediately noticeable, but a black dress does not allow the largest stains to be noticed on itself. In a bright and pure soul, one thought thrown in by the devil immediately produces confusion, heaviness and heartache, but in the soul of a sinner it is dark and defiled, and his very presence is inconspicuous. The spirit of malice itself helps such inconspicuousness with all its might: for what benefit does it have to be noticeable? Make it feel right? This would mean forcing you to run away from yourself. And so he, tyrannically ruling over the sinner, at the same time tries to keep him in that seduction, supposedly he acts on his own, and is completely free in everything. For greater success in this, the spirit of malice often instills in the sinner disbelief in the very existence of evil spirits, forces him to deny the evidence of this from the very word of God, and laugh at those who claim the opposite. This is one of the most favorite intrigues of the spirit of malice, which he uses with extreme success, especially in our times, prone to doubt and unbelief. Not only that: the enemy of God and man, in order to strengthen his dominion over a poor sinner, according to the testimony of the Apostle, sometimes decides on the most courageous means, namely, he forgets, as it were, his evil nature, takes on the appearance of an “angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14), inspiring the most good, apparently, thoughts, forcing him to perform some good deeds, introducing into the understanding the differences between truths and mysteries, and all this is in order to lull a person to sleep with false hope in his imaginary goodness, to save in him for himself some dominant passion, which alone is capable of destroying a sinner. No matter how hard the spirit of evil tries to hide its presence in a sinner, it cannot always and completely achieve this, for the veil of human nature, with all the coarseness and earthiness of the flesh, in its most blackened form, is still too transparent for the darkness of hell. The power of evil, usually hidden in the depths of the soul, sometimes quickly comes out in a sinner, the image of the devil appears so sharply from under the plausible mask that peace-loving people usually try to wear, that everyone, looking at such a person, does not know what to think about him, the closest relatives are ready to run away from him and say with horror: he has an evil spirit! This is not a man, but a devil. The unfortunate sinner himself, despite his habit of everything evil and devilish, at times feels that he is, as it were, in an abyss and in some kind of chains, that inside him there is someone even a hundred times more evil and black than him, that he is under the influence of an invisible and ungodly force. Hence the heavy and terrifying sighs and expressions of sinners: I am a lost man! I am being drawn to sin by evil spirits! An evil spirit is following me! I wish I had never been born! How is the power of the devil over a sinner usually demonstrated? By the fact that he hastily extinguishes and strangles everything good in him, starting from the first concepts of the mind about God and the law, to the last remorse, by the fact that he gradually pours from himself into the sinner everything evil and ungodly, starting from unclean thoughts and desires to the most terrible crimes. Moving from one sin to another, from depravity to depravity, from insensibility and bitterness to greater insensibility and petrification, the sinner finally matures in evil to the point that he feels a direct and constant aversion to all good, an uncontrollable desire for all evil, clearly despises everything holy, madly mocks his own soul and conscience, and is ready for open warfare with Himself Creator. The devil himself cannot lead a person further! It is not difficult to foresee what the end of this terrible union of the sinner with the spirit of darkness should be: most of the time death is premature, often suicide. For no matter how pleasant it is for the spirit of evil to continue to dominate the sinner in this life, no matter how profitable it is for him to perfect his captive more and more in evil, and through him to spread the temptation and poison of sin to others: but all the joys about this are outraged by the fear that the sinner, while he is alive, through repentance, with the help of the almighty grace of God, can break all the bonds of passions, heal all ulcers with the blood of the Redeemer soul, turn to the law and thus escape forever from the jaws of hell. Therefore, the enemy of salvation is looking for every way to shorten the path to hell for the sinner and put an end to his life as soon as possible, for which the sinner, by his very intemperance, provides him with many opportunities. The height of the devil's triumph occurs when the tempter induces the sinner himself to raise his hands against himself, and thus directly betray himself to hell. To achieve this, the spirit of darkness, as experience shows, even decides to take measures that are apparently unusual for it, prompts the sinner’s long-dormant conscience, makes it cry out and torment his soul, helps it to imagine all the inexcusability of God’s judgment, all the inexcusability of the sins committed, all the impossibility of true conversion and pardon, so that through all this, plunging the sinner into final despair, him to the unauthorized termination of his earthly existence. This is exactly what the devil did with the ill-fated traitor of Christ! We know, my brothers, that by speaking before you in this way, we expose ourselves in advance to criticism from elemental wisdom. But what do we need this wisdom? The world, perishing in sin, was saved not by human wisdom, but by the violence of the preaching of the cross, which, however, is only “foolishness for those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). If, however, this wisdom, albeit for a while, ceased to be spontaneous, and ascended on its own, albeit out of curiosity, to the height of vision characteristic of the human spirit, then perhaps it itself would see living figures, where now only dead flesh is found. And speaking frankly, who, if not this false wisdom, should know with all accuracy the origin from hell of all evil, under the weight of which the human race groans? For St. Scripture itself, without a doubt, by its origin and properties, calls it “demonic” (James 3:15). What prevents the co-questioners of this century, who believe only in their own feelings, from appearing for observation at the foot of the incorruptible bodies of the Holy Saints of God? There they would see with their own eyes how the forces of hell, having come face to face with the forces of heaven, cannot bear the presence of the latter and reveal themselves in the most obvious and pitiful way, how they confess their evil nature, their uncleanness and guilt, like tortured criminals, how they humbly promise to do what is demanded of them in the name of the Crucified One, and how, driven by the power of the cross, they run away and disappear irrevocably. If this experience seemed for some reason inconvenient to carry out, let them turn from the servants of the altar at least to the servants of our bodily health - and those of them who did not make a soulless craft out of their venerable science, who did not ignore the instructive phenomena in human nature, among its painful states, will say without hesitation that among human diseases there is a terrible type of bodily-spiritual ailment, which is nothing cannot be explained satisfactorily except the presence of an evil spirit in a person. And we, my brethren, from everything that we have said, in the simplicity of faith, we will draw a saving lesson - to preserve ourselves by the grace of God from sin, among other things, because it inevitably betrays a person into the dominion of the devil, who, according to the word of Scripture, “like a lion goes roaring, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). For if it is bad to be in the mouth of a lion, then it is a hundred times worse to be in the mouth of the devil - from which may the Lord protect us all with His omnipotent grace! Amen. A word about the cruel death awaiting the sinner "The death of sinners is cruel" (Ps. 33:22) Since it is inevitable for every person to leave this world and move to another, higher one, then it should be extremely desirable for everyone that the transition to another world, called death, should take place as peacefully and painlessly as possible. A quiet and shameless death is such a good, to achieve which one can give up many pleasures in life, simply because it will be the last good in life - in those moments when peace and joy are most needed. But the one who works against sin and serves the passions must know in advance that if he does not correct himself, then this good is lost for him, that at the end of his life, with the separation of the soul from the body, what awaits him is not peace and pleasure, but sorrow and torment. “The death of sinners is cruel,” says the word of God. What does this depend on? It is not surprising if from the special predisposition of God’s truth, which, having given the sinner complete freedom to walk throughout life along the obstinate paths of wickedness and temptation, takes the end of it under its direct control, and, by its omnipotence, always arranges it in such a way that an unclean and lawless life is followed by a cruel and painful death. For is it really possible that the action of God’s Providence cannot include direct control of those events in our life that do not depend on our will, which are the beginning and the end of life? On the other hand, who would not agree with the ancient sage that “it is convenient before God on the day of death to reward a person according to his deeds?” (Sir.11:26). However, my brethren, a life spent in sin and wickedness, by its very essence, is such that it, like strikes of lightning and thunder behind a cloud, cannot but be followed by a fierce and painful death. Why? Because, firstly, the intemperance and unbridled character and habits of people agitated by passions, in the very ordinary order of things, very often expose them to dangers and disastrous adventures, as a result of which they either die prematurely in an insolent and terrible manner, or, deprived of strength and health, are chained for a long time to the bed of illness and go to the grave after prolonged and severe suffering. In this regard, vice and debauchery are more ferocious than war itself, so that no enemy weapon can compare with their poisonous sting. In the absence of such deadly adventures, vice prepares for the sinner at the end of his life a bitter cup of suffering by disrupting his body in advance and making it the seat of painful diseases. Ask doctors about this, if you like, and they will present you with many striking examples of this. In general, the dying illnesses of virtuous and vicious people have a very different character: in the former, they are like strong but favorable winds, in which the dying soul, having straightened the sails, quickly, but without noise and shock, is carried away from the pier, and in the latter, that is, sinners, the dying illnesses are like autumn storms, which destroy everything, forcibly tear the ship from its anchor and carry it to the agitated abyss, to obvious destruction. And where, really, if not from experience, is the custom taken to call the death of righteous people dormition or repose, and to say about great sinners that they do not die, but cast out their souls? Those who were ever honored to be present at the death of righteous people could not help but notice that they really did not die, but seemed to fall asleep, or depart in peace somewhere from us. With sinners, on the contrary, at their death, something similar happens to what happens to an unfortunate baby when, due to some shock, it unnaturally erupts from its mother’s womb. And is it surprising if the separation of the soul from the body occurs in such different ways in both cases? In a truly virtuous person, even during his life, one might say, the separation of the soul from the body is already taking place, so that the longer he lives on earth, the more he renounces his body, ascends in spirit to the heavenly, approaches the world of the Angels, and passes into heaven. In this case, for the Angel of Death there is no need for any intense action, sometimes just one light, so to speak, breath is enough in order to interrupt the thin thread connecting the immortal with the mortal. It is not so in the sinner: here the immortal soul is so entangled in the bonds of sensuality, the heavenly is so mixed up with the earthly and carnal, that death itself cannot suddenly break all the bonds, separate without delay the incorruptible from that which should become the prey of the grave and corruption. Hence the suffering and torment in the dying person. But these sufferings of the body would not be so terrible if there was at least a drop of peace in the soul itself. We see in the martyrs of Christ how the most terrible torments lost their cruelty and power because those tormented were imbued with the spirit of faith, lifted up by grace above the earth and their body. In a dying sinner, on the contrary, instead of faith and hope, fear and despair usually dominate. For wicked people for the most part die without preparing for death, without even thinking at all about their end: therefore they are like a man who, walking on ice, suddenly fell into the abyss. Where does such a person not turn, to what does he not stretch out his hands, to whom does he not cry out for help? It’s the same with a sinner: he finally feels that he has fallen into the abyss, uses all means to drive away the disease, delay his end, and when he sees that everything remains without success, he is struck with horror, indulges in cowardice and despair. And how not to be horrified and tremble! Will a dying sinner look back at his life - he will encounter an endless series of crimes, one of which is more disgusting than the other. If he turns his gaze to the surroundings and the present, he sees that everything is now and forever leaving him, that before him there is only a coffin and a grave. If thought goes forward, it will be even darker and more terrible. It is necessary to go to an unknown country, where there lives only truth and righteousness, of which there is none. It is necessary to appear before the Judge, Who is endowed with omniscience and omnipotence. Previously, these thoughts, if they came, did not have an effect, were immediately driven away by distraction, suppressed by amusements, and even turned into objects of mockery for the insane. Now it’s not the same - on the threshold of life one cannot help but see all the emptiness and insignificance of earthly goods and carnal pleasures; on the threshold of eternity one cannot help but anticipate the judgment and reward that threaten faith and conscience. And the sinner’s eyes, like those of his forefathers in paradise, open before death: but what do they see? The angel of death is above their head, they see eternity with its immutable reward, they see the impossibility of either stopping judgment on oneself or avoiding it. Such a combination of physical and mental suffering rarely does not plunge a dying sinner into complete despair. The saving grace of God, which does not leave a person until the very last limits of his earthly existence, is ready in this case to visit the sinner, and for the most part appears at his bedside with a sign of redemption and with the cup of the covenant. But, alas, this comforting phenomenon rarely calms, but mostly confuses and frightens the sinner in the midst of his dying sufferings. Why? Because a soul petrified in evil is not capable of receiving a drop of spiritual oil. In fact, how many people are there who, having spent their entire lives in sins, could in the last minutes suddenly turn completely and open their whole soul and heart to the grace of repentance, like the thief who repented on the cross? Ah, many even on their deathbed remain like the other thief, who continued his sinful bitterness even on the cross. Therefore, the holy and comforting sacraments of the Church, even if they are performed on dying peace-loving people, for the most part do not bring them either joy or peace of mind. In order to have, as much as possible, a complete understanding of the cruel death that awaits the sinner, let us not forget, my brothers, those terrible visions with which the deathbed is sometimes surrounded. If someone wanted to attribute them to imagination alone, then even in this case these visions would not lose their horror and torment for the dying person, but would clearly remain a consequence of an unclean life and conscience, as well as a punishment for them. But who is able to deny the reality of these hellish monsters? Is it surprising if before death, when the curtain hiding the invisible world is lifted by the hand of death, the sinner sees what is invisible to all others surrounding his bed? And what will appear at this moment to the sinner from the spiritual world, except for the spirits of malice, which he imitated with his malice and wickedness, with which he long ago entered into an invisible, but nevertheless close community with his uncleanness, and which now apparently appear to accept their earthly minion into their eternal community - into utter darkness? If the soul of Lazarus, according to the testimony of the word of God, was carried into the bosom of Abraham by Angels, then the sinful soul, upon its departure from this world, should have the accompaniment it deserves. We do not want to frighten you, brothers, like children, with these reminders, but to focus your attention on a subject worthy of reflection. The hour of separation of the soul from the body is terrible! The last minutes of life are terrible! Therefore, the Holy Church itself, in every prayer, forces us to beg the Lord of life and death for a peaceful and shameless death. But this prayer will be in vain if our life is filled with untruths and iniquities. For just as the righteous, according to the word of God, “if he meets death, he will rest,” so “the death of sinners,” according to the testimony of the same word, has always been and will be “fierce” and painful. Amen. The word that sin will finally be followed by eternal torment for a person in hell along with the rejected spirits “Depart from me, cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41) This is the last reward for sin, the last crown of the devil! Having suffered from sin in various forms throughout his entire earthly life, suffering from it after death until the end of the world, the poor sinner must finally hear a new terrible sentence at the world court and go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Must step away! For good must ever prevail over evil with all its strength, the struggle between heaven and hell must not continue forever, but at the final triumph of the kingdom of light and love over the kingdom of darkness and evil, what can await the sinner except complete separation from God, to which law he has always opposed, except for complete rapprochement with the rejected spirits, whose suggestions he has always followed, except for the complete fall into the abyss of deprivation and suffering, which inevitably entails debauchery and lawlessness? To prevent us in this regard, all self-deception, the word of God with all clarity, in many places, anticipates us about this terrible fate awaiting sinners after the world judgment, so that among all the dogmas of our faith there is nothing clearer than the dogma about the future eternal torment of sinners in hell. What kind of torment is this and what does it consist of? To bring this subject closer to our understanding, St. Scripture uses various similarities to depict torment in hell, borrowing them from what is terrible and painful in our current world. And, firstly, it represents the state of those tormented in hell under the guise of darkness, the most impenetrable, or “utter darkness,” letting them know that in hell there is no light at all, so necessary for life, so joyful for everything living. Secondly, Scripture depicts the state of the sinner in hell under the guise of incessant torment by worms: and “their worm does not die” (Mark 9:43–48), thereby showing that the torment of hell will always be renewed with renewed vigor and consists of incessant painful torment of the sinner. But most of all, hellish torment is depicted in the word of God under the guise of being in fire, or “the lake of fire” (Apoc. 20:14), so that hell and eternal fire in the language of Scripture are almost equivalent words. Of course, this will not be the present fire, for the present fire itself, one might say, will burn out on the last day of the world, when, according to the testimony of St. Scriptures, our very elements will be destroyed when they are burned (2 Peter 3:10). But we would clearly be sinning against the true understanding of the words of Scripture if we decided to conclude from this that this hellish fire, being subtler and more spiritual than our fire, would therefore itself be weaker and more tolerable: on the contrary, by its very subtlety and spirituality it should be a hundred times more fierce and painful, so that St. The Fathers are not exaggerating the matter at all when they say that our present fire is as weak in comparison with the future hellish fire as the fire in the picture is weak in comparison with real fire. And this flame, prepared at first for the devil and his angels alone, will finally become your eternal inheritance, sinful soul! Will you doubt the reality of this threat! Please doubt it: we cannot now show you pitch darkness and Gehenna. But the doctor who tells the patient that if he does not abstain from this or that, he will die soon, also cannot show him his death: however, death comes when the doctor’s warnings and advice are not listened to. Who can know our future better - earthly doctors, or heavenly ones? But the heavenly Physician, clearly, as we have seen, says and foreshadows that, in the event of our unrepentance, fiery hell awaits us. Is it prudent not to believe the words and warnings of the One who, to justify His words, can, if necessary, create a new Gehenna? But alas, a fellow perishing in sin, Gehenna and Hell do not need to be created again: they have long been produced by sin and are contained in it, like a tree in a seed. Take a closer look at the face of your enemy and your friend, and you will see that he is all of a fiery quality, that all the manifestations of sin are already accompanied here by the flames of hell, that he makes even that which should please a person and delight him burn. Indeed, what, by nature itself, is more gratifying than the light of conscience? But sin comes, dries up a person’s soul with the heat of passions, turns him into dry brushwood - and this light turns into fire, conscience begins to burn and torment the soul! Burn to what? So much so that, in fact, as a result of this, sometimes fatal inflammation occurs. If we pay attention to the essence of the passions - these confidantes of sin, which in its name own and control the souls of sinners, then it turns out that they are all properties of fire. We involuntarily recognize this when we say, for example, the fire of passions, the flame of ambition! This fire is now connected by many ties, and therefore is not usually so noticeable: look, however, how it emerges from within a person, gets agitated, turns the face purple, sets all the blood bubbling in moments, for example, of strong anger! At this time, this fire is so furious and strong that others cannot bear it, and suddenly die as if struck by lightning. The flame of other passions is less fierce, but always penetrates and, over time, corrupts the entire makeup of a person. And how apparently this is, for example, in a person who is lustful, envious, or stingy! The internal composition of our body, which is especially threatened by future torment in hell, also represents not only the ability to ignite, but also an inexhaustible supply of fire. This is visible on the body of every person and in a healthy state: for from every part of the body, by means of certain artificial techniques, and sometimes without any art, many sparks can be extracted. But during illness, this secret affinity of our body with fire is revealed even more. For what disease is not detected by fever? Some clearly consist of some kind of painful burning of the whole body, or diseased parts of it. Hence the very names of these diseases, for example, fireweed or Antonov’s fire. In addition to these universal phenomena, from some, albeit rare, cases it is clear that in the human body there is the ability to be ignited by some kind of special fire, which in our world has no parallel in strength and destructiveness, and which invisibly resembles the fire of hell. This is a case of so-called spontaneous combustion, when a living and not even sick person, but upset in bodily strength, suddenly visibly ignites and is consumed by flame to the point that in a very short time - sometimes in a few minutes - nothing remains of the person except a few handfuls of ash. What is this if not the makings of hellish fire! The present mortal body, ignited in this way, smolders and disappears: but the future body - immortal, ignited cannot disappear, will burn forever. And here is Gehenna, homemade, homemade and at the same time unquenchable! Although nothing, apparently, can be added to the horror and torment of such a state, sin will not be satisfied with the torment itself. Having turned sinners into self-burning creatures, he will actually create for them a fiery world, or, as St. Scripture, the lake of fire, so that as the inhabitants are, so was the room, so to speak. For is it necessary, my brother, for the omnipotence of God, itself and positively, to create this fiery abyss of hell? This abyss can finally arise by itself from sin. How? Hearken and recognize the terrible nature of sin. There is no doubt that with his iniquities a person spoils and poisons not only his body, but also all the things that he abuses, the very elements that surround him. This corruption is mostly inconspicuous, but sometimes it becomes so noticeable that it contaminates the very air that he breathed, causing widespread illness and infection. Now imagine all the corruption of the elements caused by the sins of all people, combine it with the corruption and poison with which rejected spirits infect visible nature, imagine for this that on the last day of peace and renewal of all things, the corrupted and poisoned by sins part of the forces of nature is separated from the new, pure and bright world of God: what an accumulation of poison and corruption will be made of this! What an ocean of fire and flame! And here is the element in which the spirits and souls of the rejected will dwell! For around whom should she concentrate, if not around those who, through their sins, produced her? It is not without a special intention that we, brethren, enter into such explanations before you: it is desirable for us to present for faith some kind of support in experience itself, and to take away from unbelief and free-thinking the pretext to assert that the word of God offers us regarding our future state only mysteries and incomprehensibility for reason. No, if what is proposed seems to exceed reason, it is because reason is now in a childish state in all of us. If he had grown and matured in his understanding of human beings and the world around us, he himself would have seen inwardly the truth of what faith and the Gospel reveal to us. For this, I say, we entered into some, not so ordinary, explanations, and in order to eliminate the gloomy and false idea that the Creator Himself will directly torment the creation with His omnipotence. No, eternal love does not and cannot torment anyone. Sin torments and torments here on earth, and there in hell. God did not create death or hell, sin did. Let all our disgust and all our hatred be directed towards this enemy! May he not find the slightest place for himself, not only in our morals and deeds, but in our very thoughts and words! At the first appearance of sin in ourselves, in whatever form it may be, let us hasten to expel and suppress it completely! The means for this, as we will see in our next interviews, are so much stored up for each of us, by the grace of God, that whoever perishes from sin (and he will certainly perish if he does not correct himself) must blame only himself for his death. Amen. You might be interested in: