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“I have come into the world as a light” (John 12:46), the Lord said about Himself. This Light stood before the Jews, clothed in flesh; He is before us, clothed in the Gospel. 1.495 The great and all-holy book is the Gospel! It depicts a new, god-like man; and what the properties of the new man should be - these are revealed by Christ’s commandments. In them, Christ revealed to us His properties, His way of thinking and acting. Peering into the Gospel, looking at ourselves in this mirror, we can little by little recognize our shortcomings, little by little throw out the concepts and properties of our old age, replace them with the thoughts and properties of the Gospel, Christ. This is the task, the lesson that a Christian must solve and fulfill during his earthly life. It is necessary to depict a portrait of Christ on the soul, to convey to it the resemblance to its prototype. Portraits devoid of resemblance will be rejected at that general exhibition at which each person will be tested to what extent he has preserved and renewed in himself the image and likeness of his Creator and God. Images in which all the features and colors are so distorted that all resemblance, all similarity is lost, will hear: We don’t know you! They won't be recognized! The Lord will refuse them! Let's begin spiritual painting! Let us pay attention to the image of God, thrown down, covered with dirt, scratches and dust, inscribed on us and entrusted to us by God! The painter is Christ; His brush is the Holy Spirit. Let us prepare the soul for this painting so that the soul, like a clean, new canvas, is able to take on everything - the finest features, the most delicate colors and shades. For such preparation, one needs to cleanse oneself with repentance and wash oneself with tears. And in order to arouse in oneself a feeling of repentance, saving sadness and crying, one must, while abstaining from all passions, often read the Gospel, compare one’s life with its most holy commandments, force oneself to fulfill these commandments, contrary to the aspirations and impulses of the sin-loving will. A certain holy father said: “By fulfilling Christ’s commandments a person learns his weakness.” Exactly: then it will be revealed to us how weak we are, how much we have been damaged by the fall, when we begin to force ourselves to fulfill the Gospel Commandments. From the sight of one’s weakness, one’s damage, crying is naturally born. Crying is a heartfelt feeling of repentance! Crying is a contrite and humble spirit, so dear to God. When the Lord sees a soul purifying itself through repentance, then He begins, little by little, in accordance with its purity, to renew on it with the Holy Spirit the features of His image, the shades and colors of His likeness. First of all, he imprints her with meekness and humility. Learn from Me,” He says, “for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Only then can one find sacred peace when the mind and heart are immersed in the humility of Christ and His meekness, having learned them from the Gospel. These two virtues put in order the features of an image upset by the confusion that persistently cohabits with every person who serves the passions. The sign of order is sacred peace. Then, according to the corrected features, holy colors are put in place, comforting the spiritual gaze: goodness, mercy, purity of mind, heart and body, living faith, not neglecting all vanities, teaching a person to follow Christ completely, patience, carried above all temporary sorrows, loving sorrows as participation in the sufferings of Christ - love for God and neighbor, striving to fulfill all the duties of a person to to its Creator and to creatures similar to themselves, which must be one in their Creator. 6. 430–431 Our eternal destiny depends on the lifestyle that we will lead during our short stay on earth. Do you want to be the church of God? Do you want your heart to be a vessel of the gifts of Grace? I entrust you with the Gospel, let it be the rule of your life. Believe in him with your deeds, your life - not only with your thoughts, heart and lips. When you read this Divine book, the book of life, you imagine that Christ Himself stands invisibly before you and speaks to you the verbs that are the Spirit and the Life! One should not draw in the imagination the appearance of Christ - no, one should only vividly and reverently feel His all-holy presence. 6.512 According to the Gospel Commandments, we will be judged at the court established by God for us, Orthodox Christians - at the court on which our eternal fate depends. This is private for every Christian immediately after his death, and will be common for all people at the second coming to earth of our Lord Jesus Christ. At both courts, God Himself is present and judges. In private judgment, He carries out judgment through the angels of light and fallen angels; at the general judgment He will carry out judgment through His Word made man (Matthew 25; John 5.22, 27). The code, or collection of laws, on the basis of which judgment will be made and sentence pronounced at both courts, is the Gospel. The Lord said: “Cast away Me and do not accept My words that judge him: the word that is spoken will judge him on the last day. For I did not speak from Myself, but the Father who sent Me gave Me the commandment that I should speak and that I should speak. And we know that His commandment is eternal life” (John 12:48–50). From these words of the Lord it is clear that we will be judged according to the Gospel, that neglect of fulfilling the Gospel Commandments is an active rejection of the Lord Himself. 5. 35–36 Blessed Elder Seraphim of Sarov said: “You must accustom yourself so that your mind seems to float in the law of the Lord, by which you must govern your life.” 5.37 He who based his life on the study of the Gospel and on the fulfillment of the Gospel Commandments, founded it on the hardest stone. No matter what position he was placed in by the circumstances of life, his heroism was always with him. He continually does, he continually strives, he continually succeeds, although his work, although his achievement and success are inconspicuous and incomprehensible to others. 5.38 To learn the truth from the Gospel and the Holy Fathers, and through reading to commune with the Holy Spirit who lives in the Gospel and the Holy Fathers, is great happiness. 1.119 When reading the Gospel, do not seek pleasure, do not seek delight, do not seek brilliant thoughts: seek to see the infallibly holy Truth. Do not be content with one fruitless reading of the Gospel; try to fulfill his commandments, read his deeds. This is the book of life, and one must read it with life. Do not think that without reason the most sacred of books, the Four Gospels, begins with Matthew and ends with the Gospel of John. Matthew teaches more how to do the will of God, and his instructions are especially appropriate for those beginning the path of God; John sets out an image of the union of God with man, renewed by the commandments, which is available to those who have succeeded on the path of God. When opening a book to read - the Holy Gospel, remember that it will decide your eternal fate. We will be judged by it and, depending on how we were here on earth in relation to it, we will receive either eternal bliss or eternal executions (John 12:48). God revealed his will to an insignificant speck of dust - man! The book in which this great and all-holy will is set forth is in your hands. You can accept or reject the will of your Creator and Savior, depending on how you please. Your eternal life and eternal death are in your hands: judge how much you need to be careful and prudent. Don't play with your eternal fate! Pray in contrition of spirit to the Lord that He will open your eyes to see the miracles hidden in His law (Ps. 119:18), which is the Gospel. Eyes are opened and one sees the miraculous healing of the soul from sin, accomplished by the Word of God. The healing of bodily ailments was only proof of the healing of the soul, proof for carnal people, for minds blinded by sensuality (Luke 5:24). Read the Gospel with extreme reverence and attention. Do not consider anything in it unimportant or unworthy of consideration. Every iota of it emits a ray of life. Neglect of life is death. Reading about the lepers, the paralytic, the blind, the lame, the demoniac, whom the Lord healed, think that your soul, bearing the many different sores of sin, being held captive by demons, is like these sick people. Learn from the Gospel to believe that the Lord, who healed them, will heal you too if you diligently beg Him for your healing. Acquire such a disposition of soul that you will be able to receive healing. Those who confess their sinfulness and decide to leave it are able to receive it (John 9:39,41). To the proud righteous man, i.e. a sinner who does not see his sinfulness has no need, a Savior is useless (Matthew 9:13). The sight of sins, the sight of the fall in which the entire human race finds itself, is a special gift of God. Ask for this gift for yourself, and the book of the Heavenly Doctor – the Gospel – will become clearer to you. Try to assimilate the Gospel to your mind and heart, so that your mind, so to speak, floats in it, lives in it; then your activity will conveniently become evangelical. This can be achieved by constant reverent reading and study of the Gospel. The Monk Pachomius the Great, one of the most famous ancient fathers, knew the Holy Gospel by heart and charged his disciples, by the revelation of God, with an indispensable duty to memorize it. Thus, the Gospel accompanied them everywhere, constantly guiding them. ...What happiness, what wealth – acquiring the Gospel by memory! It is impossible to foresee the upheavals and disasters that may happen to us during our earthly life. The Gospel, which belongs to memory, is read to the blind, accompanies the prisoner to prison, speaks to the farmer in the field irrigated by his sweat, instructs the judge during his presence, guides the merchant at the auction, amuses the sick during painful insomnia and severe loneliness. Do not dare to interpret the Gospel and other books of Holy Scripture yourself. Scripture was spoken by the holy prophets and apostles, spoken not arbitrarily, but at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). How could it not be crazy to interpret it arbitrarily? The Holy Spirit, who spoke the Word of God through the prophets and apostles, interpreted it through the holy fathers. Both the Word of God and its interpretation are the gift of the Holy Spirit. Only this one interpretation is accepted by the Holy Orthodox Church! Only this one interpretation is accepted by her true children! Whoever explains the Gospel and all Scripture arbitrarily, thereby rejects the interpretation of it by the holy fathers, the Holy Spirit. Whoever rejects the interpretation of Scripture by the Holy Spirit, without any doubt, rejects Holy Scripture itself. ...To whom will I look but to him who is meek and silent and trembles at My words? - says the Lord. Be this way regarding the Gospel and the Lord present in it. Leave your sinful life, leave earthly passions and pleasures, renounce your soul, then the Gospel will become accessible and understandable to you. “Hate your souls in this world,” said the Lord, “the soul for which, from the fall, the love of sin has become as if natural, as if life, will preserve it in eternal life” (John 12:25). For one who loves his soul, for one who does not dare to self-sacrifice, the Gospel is closed: he reads the letter; but the word of life, like the Spirit, remains for him under an impenetrable veil. When the Lord was on earth in holy flesh, many saw Him and, together, did not see Him. What is the use when a person looks with the eyes of his body, which he has in common with animals, but sees nothing with the eyes of his soul - with his mind and heart? And now many read the Gospel every day, and have never read it together, do not know it at all. “The Gospel,” said one venerable desert dweller, “can be read with a pure mind; is understood as the commandments are fulfilled by his very deed. But the exact and perfect revelation of the Gospel cannot be acquired through one’s own efforts: it is the gift of Christ.” The Holy Spirit, having indwelled His true and faithful servant, makes him both a perfect reader and a true doer of the Gospel. The Gospel is an image of the properties of the new man, who is the Lord from heaven (1 Cor. 15:48). This new man is God by nature. He makes His holy race of people, those who believe in Him and have been transformed by Him, into gods by grace. You, who are wallowing in the stinking and dirty swamp of sins, find pleasure in it! Raise your heads, look at the clear sky: there is your place! God gives you the dignity of gods; you, rejecting this dignity, choose for yourself another: the dignity of animals - and the most unclean ones. Come to your senses! Leave the stinking swamp; cleanse yourself by confessing your sins; wash yourself with tears of repentance; beautify yourself with tears of tenderness; rise up from the earth; ascend to heaven: the Gospel will take you there. Until the light comes - the Gospel in which Christ is hidden - believe in the light, so that you may be sons of light - Christ (John 12:36). 1. 106–109 The beginner must first study the commandments of the Lord in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. From studying the commandments in these Evangelists, by fulfilling the commandments by deeds, the other Scriptures that make up the New Testament will become understandable. When reading the Evangelists, one should also read the Blagovestnik, that is, the explanation of the Gospel by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria. Reading the Gospel is necessary: ​​it contributes to a correct understanding of the Gospel and, consequently, to its most accurate fulfillment. Moreover, the rules of the Church require that Scripture be understood as explained by the Holy Fathers, and not at all arbitrarily: guided in understanding the Gospel by the explanation of the Holy Father, the explanation accepted and used by the Church, we will preserve the tradition of the Holy Church. 5.50 (See Gospel, Reading the Holy Fathers). Heresy is a false teaching about Christianity. ...Christianity is God's teaching, it is God's Revelation. It, as knowledge given to people by God, must be accepted and maintained with the greatest reverence and submission befitting this greatest shrine. It can be accepted and maintained by humble faith alone, as completely beyond human reason. This is that spiritual, mysterious book (Rev. 22:18-19), the book of the knowledge of God, inscribed and published by God, to which it is impossible to add anything, from which it is impossible to exclude anything. From here it is clear what a serious sin is heresy. It is the indignation and rebellion of the creature against the Creator, the rebellion and indignation of the most insignificant, most limited being - man - against the all-perfect God. It is - scary to say - the judgment of man over God and man's condemnation of God. She is a sin of the mind, a sin of the spirit. It is blasphemy against God, enmity against God. She is the fruit of pride, the cause of the fall of the fallen angels. And the consequences of her fall are very similar to the consequences of the fall of rejected spirits; it darkens the mind, hardens the heart, spills its poison onto the very body, and introduces eternal death into the soul. She is incapable of humility. It makes man completely alien to God. She is a mortal sin. Like the fruit of pride, heresy holds its captive in iron chains, and it is rare that the captive is torn from its chains. Persistence in heresy is the characteristic of a heretic. The first heretics were Jewish Christians who, outwardly believing in Christ, wanted at the same time to adhere to the ritual and civil law of Moses in its literal sense. ...Pagan philosophy and human learning in general became another source of heresies. ...The Holy Scripture, studied to the letter by carnal and spiritual people, served for them to invent heresies, to their destruction of themselves and others. The Holy Apostle Peter said about the Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul that some lack of teaching and unconfirmation corrupt them (according to the Russian translation - they transform them), like other Scriptures, to their destruction (2 Pet. 3:16). Here the words “corrupt” and “transform” are used very correctly, because the carnal and spiritual man, not understanding the spiritual meaning in Scripture, gives it meaning in accordance with his dispensation. It cannot be otherwise: after all, it is necessary for a spiritual person to obtain some kind of concept by reading or studying the Divine Scripture, but he is not able to understand the Scriptures as he should; therefore, of necessity, he gives himself the concept that he pleases. The origin of Holy Scripture, the way of understanding and explaining it are depicted with complete clarity by the holy apostles Peter and Paul. The Holy Apostle Peter says: Every prophecy is not written according to its own telling (according to the Russian translation: no prophecy in Scripture can be resolved by itself). It was not by the will of man that prophecy came into being, but by the Holy Spirit, the holy men of God were enlightened (2 Pet. 1:20-21). This means: just as the Word of God, or Holy Scripture, is spoken through the mediation of the Holy Spirit, so only through the mediation of the Holy Spirit can it be explained, and therefore understood. The Holy Apostle Paul says: “No one knows the message of God, but the Spirit of God. We do not receive the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, and we know what is given to us from God: even we speak not in the words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Holy Spirit: spiritual with spiritual understanding” (according to the Russian translation: “spiritual expounding spiritually”) (1 Cor. 2, 11-13). ...The mental and physical state is a consequence of our fall: it is a state of indignation against God and enmity against God. Due to the inability of the spiritual person to correctly understand the spiritual, the Holy Church forbids her children to arbitrarily interpret the Holy Scriptures, but commands them to strictly adhere to the interpretation made to the Scriptures by the holy fathers. ...Heresy is a sin of the mind. The essence of this sin is blasphemy. Being actually a sin of the mind, heresy not only darkens the mind, but also imparts special bitterness to the heart, killing it with eternal death. By this sin a person most closely resembles fallen spirits, whose main sin is resistance to God and blasphemy against God. The distinctive quality of fallen spirits is pride; A distinctive feature of heretics is pride, the most obvious manifestation of which is contempt and condemnation of everyone who does not belong to their sect, disgust with them, fierce hatred of them. But an essential manifestation of pride in heretics and schismatics is that they, having rejected the knowledge of God and the service of God, revealed and taught by God Himself, are enslaved by unauthorized, blasphemous and ungodly teachings. The devil does not bother to tempt those infected with heresy and schism with other obvious passions and sins. And why should the devil tempt him and fight with him who, through mortal sin - heresy - was killed by eternal death, and alive is already the property of the devil? On the contrary, the devil supports the heretic and schismatic in abstinence and other outward deeds and types of virtue, in order to thereby support him in complacency and error, and the faithful - with the mask of holiness that the heretic wears on himself, to attract heresy or, at least, lead to justification and some encouragement for it, as well as to doubt in orthodoxy and to coldness towards it. He who has treasure is attacked by robbers, but he who has nothing is not bothered by robbers. He who has the treasure of orthodoxy is cruelly slandered by the enemy! The enemy vigorously attacks the true believer, trying to present him before human society in a state of defeat, for the same purpose with which he tries to present the heretic as virtuous and worthy of respect. With the same incomprehensible cunning, the evil spirit acts in favor of heresy and to the detriment of true Christianity. Unfortunately, he is very successful in this intrigue! With it he traps thousands of people into destruction. Many led the strictest ascetic life while living in heresy or schism; When they accepted Orthodoxy, they were subjected to various weaknesses. What conclusion should this lead to? To such an extent that in the first state the enemy did not fight against them, recognizing them as his own, but in the second he rebelled against those with a fierce war, as against those who clearly declared and confessed themselves to be his opponents. Holy Scripture calls the evil spirit not only an enemy, but also an avenger (Ps. 8:3). He not only is at enmity against man, but, being infected with fierce envy of man, cannot indifferently see that man performs virtues and pleases God, and takes revenge on man for his godly deeds, bringing upon him countless temptations both from the outside - from evil people, and inside, raising various passions in man. Schism and heresy have a strange influence on the human body itself! The hardness of the spirit is communicated to the body. This is not noticeable to everyone during a person’s lifetime, but after death the body of a heretic and schismatic instantly turns to stone and instantly begins to emit an unapproachable stench. And this is done especially to those of them who led the most strictly ascetic life and were famous teachers of their sect and earned the universal respect of the blind world; After their death they emit the most terrible stench; Streams of stinking pus open from their withered bodies; it is difficult to perform their burial and be present at it. Demons are present at their graves and appear with them in different forms, either to intimidate or to seduce. Repentance and knowledge of the Truth are inaccessible to a heretic. Repentance and true knowledge of God are more accessible to adulterers and criminals than to a heretic and schismatic, especially if he is a scientist and ascetic. Both were proven by obvious sinners and learned sectarians contemporary with Christ, mentioned in the Gospel: sinners accepted both the Lord and His Forerunner, while the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees rejected both Jesus and John. The feeling of repentance is not akin to someone who is completely satisfied with himself, but around him sees only temptation and shortcomings of all kinds. He who recognizes himself as rational, more than anyone else, is not akin to the hunger and thirst for the boundless Divine Truth, which completely satisfies his pet and with such saturation arouses even greater hunger and thirst for the grace-filled truth. It is not like one who recognizes this blasphemy as the holy Truth to reject his blasphemy; it is not natural for him to recognize the holy Truth, because the very organ of vision, the spiritual eye, his mind, is blinded by lies. The conversion of a heretic and schismatic to Orthodoxy - a special mercy of God - is arranged by the special Providence of God for the chosen ones, known to the One God. Human means of converting schismatics and heretics are powerless. Although at the First Council of Nicaea the lamps of the Church stood against Arius and his like-minded people: Athanasius the Great, Nicholas the Wonderworker, James of Nisibius, Spyridon of Trimythus, although they acted not only with the power of words, but also with the power of signs, they did not soften the fierce host of the heretical and heresiarch Arius, who remained stubborn and faithful to his own until the end of his life. error, as church history tells. Debate is the weakest weapon against heretics, a weapon more harmful than useful. It is done this way in accordance with the properties of mental illness - heresy. Proud heresy does not tolerate denunciation and does not tolerate defeat. She becomes hardened by reproof; from defeats he becomes furious. This has been proven by countless experiments. Heresy is overcome by gentle exhortation; even more convenient - silent greeting, humility, love, patience and long-suffering, diligent prayer, filled with condolences for one's neighbor and mercy towards him. Heresy cannot be defeated by man, because it is an invention, a demonic undertaking. Its winner can be One God, called to fight it and defeat it through man’s humility before God and this man’s love for his neighbor. He who wishes to successfully fight against heresy must be completely alien to vanity and enmity towards his neighbor, so as not to express them with some mockery, some caustic or cruel word, some brilliant word that can resonate in the proud soul of the heretic and disturb its passion in it. Anoint the scab and ulcer of your neighbor, as if with whole oil, with only words of love and humility, so that the merciful Lord will look upon your love and your humility, may they be announced to the heart of your neighbor, and may God’s great gift be given to you - the salvation of your neighbor. The pride, insolence, stubbornness, and enthusiasm of the heretic have only the appearance of energy; in essence they are weakness, in need of prudent condolences. This weakness only multiplies and becomes more ferocious when it is acted upon with reckless zeal, expressed in cruel reproof. Heresy is a covert rejection of Christianity. When people began to abandon idolatry, due to its obvious absurdity, and come to the knowledge and confession of the Redeemer; when all the efforts of the devil to support idolatry among people remained in vain; Then he invented heresies, and through heresy, while preserving for the people who held it the name and some appearance of Christians, he not only took Christianity away from them, but also replaced it with blasphemy. What is Arianism? This is a renunciation of Christ and Christianity, a renunciation of God. If the Son is a creature, as Arius asserted, then there is no true God in the three Persons. If the Son is not God, then where is the incarnation of God? Where is the communion of human nature with the nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4), the incarnation of God acquired for men? Where is the salvation? Where is Christianity? “You shall not believe in the Son or the Father” (1 John 2:23), says the Word of God. Arianism is both atheism and blasphemy. What is Nestorianism? Rejection of the incarnation of God the Word. If a simple man was born from the Virgin, then where is the conception from the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18)? Where is the fulfillment of the words of Scripture: “The Word was flesh” (John 1:14)? Where is the birth of the Son of God (Luke 1:31)? Where is Christianity? – Nestorius repeats the Aryan heresy, but under a different guise: the essence of these heresies is the same - the rejection of Christ, and through the rejection of Christ - rejection from God. Eutyches and the Monothelites do the same thing: merging two natures and two wills into one in the God-Man and asserting that in Christ humanity disappeared in the Divinity, like a drop of wine in a vast sea, they come to the same goal, although from the other side, to which Arius and Nestorius came, because, rejecting the presence of human nature in the incarnate Son of God, they certainly reject everything that the Lord endured as a man, therefore they reject and the redemption of mankind through the suffering and death of the Lord, reject all Christianity. Iconoclasts (icons) also strive for the same thing. By rejecting the possibility of depicting Christ in painting, they indirectly reject the coming of the Son of God in human flesh. If the Son of God is clothed in flesh, then there is every possibility of Him, indescribable by Divine nature, to be depicted as a man. If it is possible to depict Him, then His images should be especially revered. We honor the images of our parents, kings, leaders, benefactors, and place them in places of honor; all the more should the icon of our Savior be respected, and according to it - the icons of the Mother of God and all the saints. Papism (Catholicism) is intensifying to accomplish the same thing; this is the name of the heresy that declared the West, from which various Protestant teachings sprang, like from a tree of branches. Papism assigns the properties of Christ to the pope and thereby rejects Christ. Some Western writers have made this renunciation almost explicit, saying that it is much less of a sin to renounce Christ than to renounce the Pope. The Pope is the idol of the papists; he is their deity. Because of this terrible error, the grace of God departed from the papists; they are devoted to themselves and to Satan, the inventor and father of all heresies, including papism. In this state of darkness, they distorted some dogmas and sacraments, and deprived the Divine Liturgy of essential meaning, eliminating from it the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the offered bread and wine, in which they are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. This essential part of the liturgy was in all liturgies delivered by the apostles of Christ throughout the universe, and was also in the original Roman liturgy (See Life of Gregory of Acragantius). No heresy so openly and brazenly expresses its exorbitant pride, cruel contempt for people and hatred of them. Papism invented the most terrible tortures, the most terrible executions for humanity. Countless thousands of people died in stuffy dungeons, burned at the stake, and tortured in various ways. And this terrible, murderous, bloodthirsty fanaticism is called the one true Christianity and with frenzied jealousy seeks to captivate the entire universe into its heresy. By their fruit you will know them (Matthew 7:16), the Savior said about their teachers and their teaching. In its fruits, papism comes very close to Mohammedanism: both of these heresies recognize as an act of faith and the highest virtue all the atrocities and all the murders they commit in any society of people of a different religion. Protestants rebelled against the errors of the papists, or more correctly, they rebelled against the ugly power and divinity of the popes; but since they acted on the impulse of passions, drowning in depravity, and not with the direct goal of striving for the holy Truth, and not in the way Cornelius the Centurion sought it, they did not turn out to be worthy to see it. “Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light” (John 3:20). Of all the errors of the papists, the Protestants rejected only their wicked opinion about the pope; They followed other errors of the papists, strengthened many errors, and added many new ones to the previous errors and errors. So, for example, they rejected all the sacraments, the priesthood itself; they rejected the liturgy altogether; rejected all church traditions and left each of their followers to explain the Holy Scripture at will, while it, being spoken by the Holy Spirit, can only be explained by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). ...The teaching which, without touching either dogmas or sacraments, rejects living according to the commandments of Christ and allows Christians to live a pagan life, should also be classified as heresies. This teaching, which outwardly seems not hostile to Christianity, is in essence completely hostile to it; it is a renunciation of Christ. The Lord Himself said: “And I will command them (those who acknowledge the Lord with their lips, but with deeds contrary to His will), because I have never known you, depart from Me, you who practice iniquity” (Matthew 7:21,23). Faith can only be alive through works of faith; without them she is dead (James 2:26). However, even the most correct concept of Christian dogmas is lost in non-Christian life. Even at a time when idolatry was very strong, heretics lived a pagan life. Saint Athanasius the Great makes this remark about the Arians, who indulged in the amusements of idolaters and resembled them in morality. In modern times, pagan life appeared initially in the depths of papism (Catholicism). The pagan feeling and taste of the papists are shown with particular brightness in the application of the arts to objects of religion, in the painted and sculptured images of saints, in their church singing and music, in their religious poetry. All their schools bear the imprint of sinful passions, especially voluptuousness; there is no sense of chastity and decency, no sense of simplicity, no sense of purity and spirituality. Such is their church music and singing... Pagan life with its comedy and tragedy, with its dancing, with its rejection of shame and decency, with its fornication and adultery and other customs of idolaters, firstly, was resurrected in Rome under the shadow of its gods - the popes, from where it spread throughout Europe. Through heresies and finally through pagan life, all pagans who once accepted Christianity have left and are leaving Christianity, returning to their former complete ignorance of God and to serving demons, although no longer in the form of idolatry. What is the reason for this heresy? The reason is that this terrible sin, which includes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, completely alienates a person from God and, having alienated him from God, betrays him into the power of Satan. In this state, a person is incapable of any thought, feeling, or spiritual act, and therefore, incapable of a spiritual state; On the contrary, spiritual and carnal states develop strongly in him. It abundantly exudes earthly wisdom (wisdom), spiritual, demonic, filled with envy, zeal, and pride (James 3:11–15). There is no meekness, love, or edifying humility in this wisdom: it is verbose and lofty, abundant in human and demonic knowledge, full of self-deception and deceives those who listen to it. It cannot be different, because the thoughts of someone alien to the grace of God - a heretic - are under constant violence and the guidance of fallen spirits. This is incomprehensible and incredible for many: let them hear the definition of a spirit-bearing man who said: “No good thing can be believed or acted, except in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit” (St. Mark the Ascetic. A Sermon on the Spiritual Law, Chapter 2). Thought, word, deed, in order to be worthy of the Lord, must be anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit; the same thoughts, words and deeds that do not have this anointing belong to the old man and are abominable to God, no matter how outwardly they appear, before the court of the world, to be wise and good. The state of alienation from God, the state of self-delusion, clouding of the mind, the movement of the strongest passions has always been the state of heretics, especially heresiarchs. Usually they were devoted to various passions. Eutykhios was extremely greedy and, contrary to the monastic vow of non-covetousness, accumulated significant money. Apollinaris even in his old age had a concubine. Arius wrote “Thalia” - a work in verse that has not reached us, filled with shameless debauchery. This work began to be read at the First Council of Nicaea, but the fathers of the Council refused to listen to it, it was so shameful, and they burned the copy presented to them. Such are the works of the newest heretics (heretical writings). They are filled with hellish blasphemy, daring, false speculations, terrible shamelessness and depravity. The concept that is given about them here is still very weak compared to the concept that is obtained about them from reading their writings. What the heresiarchs said and wrote cannot come to the mind of an ordinary person. However, all the writings of heretics were compiled under the influence of spirits and contain moral poison that kills the soul with eternal death. Their dogmatic books certainly contain false dogmas and blasphemy against the dogmas taught to the Holy Church by the Holy Spirit. Their books about asceticism, although outwardly they seem to teach the doctrine of the highest Christian virtues and states, are in essence the fruits and expression of self-delusion and demonic delusion, incomprehensible to the crowd. Their moral writers teach the morality characteristic of the old Adam, since that is all they have a concept of, and not Christian morality, which is completely inaccessible to their minds and hearts. ...Novels, comedies and other works, obviously sinful, filled with voluptuousness, are also the fruits of heresy; Some of these works were written by clergy, such as “Telemacus” written by Fenelon. Reading all these books is extremely harmful, although to the untrained eye the poison is noticeable in some of them, while in others it is very hidden. The inconspicuousness of the poison does not diminish its potency; on the contrary, refined poisons act with particular destructiveness. Reading a dogmatic, especially ascetic heretical book often arouses lustful thoughts, and reading novels arouses thoughts of unbelief, various perplexities and doubts about faith. Sins, like unclean spirits, have an affinity with each other: one who voluntarily submits to one sin involuntarily and necessarily submits to the influence of another, due to the affinity of evil spirits and passions. Experience proves that people moved to heresy and atheism most from a depraved life and, on the contrary, heresy always entails a disorder of morality due to the similarity of sins with each other. The initial effect of all heretical books is to arouse thoughts - doubts about faith. “Be careful,” said Saint Isaac of Syria, “not to read heretical dogmas: this is an armament, as it increases the spirit of blasphemy against you.” Do blasphemous thoughts operate in anyone? Has anyone wavered in their trust in the Orthodox Church, which alone is the true Church of Christ? Has anyone become a universal Christian, belonging - according to his heartfelt conviction or, more correctly, due to his complete ignorance of Christianity - equally to all confessions and therefore not belonging to any? – Know that he was brought to this state by reading heretical books or by conversations with those infected by this reading. People devoted to voluptuousness especially eagerly read heretical books about Christian asceticism and perfection, and are alienated and disgusted by the moral books of the Orthodox Church. What is the reason for this? Similarity in mood. These people find pleasure in reading a book written out of dreaminess and self-reflection, seasoned with refined voluptuousness, vanity, arrogance, which seem to be grace to minds and hearts not purified by the true teaching of Christ. Orthodox books call for repentance and abandonment of a sinful life, for self-sacrifice, for self-condemnation and humility, which is exactly what the son of the world does not want. Idolatry and all kinds of open rejection of God can be likened to open poison; Anyone can easily avoid it. Heresy can be likened to food that looks beautiful in appearance, but is poisoned; such food is the same poison, which is already difficult to guard against, both because the poison is disguised and because the beautiful sight and aroma of food arouses in a person a natural desire to be satiated and enjoy food. Heresy is always accompanied by hypocrisy and pretense; she is verbose, eloquent, full of human learning, and therefore conveniently attracts people to herself and traps them in destruction; incomparably more people are caught into eternal death through heresy than through the direct rejection of Christ. 8. 3–23 Without obedience to the Church there is no humility; without humility there is no salvation. “Humble yourself, and save me,” said the Prophet (Ps. 114:5). Heresy and schism contain, moreover, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is a mortal sin, not forgiven by God to a person either in this age or in the future, if a person continues in this sin. The blood of martyrdom itself cannot cleanse this sin, according to the teaching of St. John Chrysostom, Fr. This sin is cleansed only when a person renounces his heresy, leaves the schism and joins the Holy Church. 4.374 Let us eliminate from ourselves all false teachings and activities based on them: the sheep of Christ do not follow an alien voice, but flee from it, as they do not know the alien voice (John 10:5). Let us definitely become familiar with the voice of Christ, so that we can immediately recognize it when we hear it and immediately follow His command. Having acquired in the spirit sympathy for this voice, we will acquire in the spirit alienation from the alien voice, which is emitted by carnal wisdom in a variety of sounds. As soon as we hear an alien voice, we will run, we will flee from it, according to the nature of Christ’s sheep, who flee from an alien voice by flight, by decisive inattention to it. Attention to him is already dangerous: after attention, seduction creeps in, and after seduction, death. The fall of our forefathers began with the attention of the foremother to an alien voice. 1.93 The only infallible path to salvation is non-deviating adherence to the teachings of the holy fathers, while decisively deviating from any outside teaching, from one’s own understandings, until the mind is healed of its illness and becomes spiritual from the carnal and spiritual. Having recognized this truth with your mind and heart, confess it with your lips, make a vow to God that you will be guided by the teaching of the Holy Fathers, deviating from any teaching that is not attested by the Holy Spirit and not accepted by the holy Eastern Church. Having confessed the truth of God with your lips, confess it with your deeds; Having made a vow, fulfill it. Do not be afraid of this vow! Every Orthodox son of the Church must give it, and his spiritual father must demand it from every son of the Orthodox Church when performing the Sacrament of Confession. Among the questions that the confessor is supposed to do, the first place is occupied by the following: 1) “Rtsy, my children: if you believe, as the Catholic, Apostolic Church, planted and raised in the East, and scattered from the East throughout the entire universe, and in the East hitherto immovable and certainly abiding, did you betray and teach? 2) Have you ever doubted any legend? 3) Rtsy, child, were you not a heretic and an apostate? 4) Didn’t you stay with him, visiting their churches, listening to their teachings or reading their books?” Reading heretical books and paying attention to their teachings is a grave sin against faith, a sin of a mind that is sick with pride and therefore overthrows the yoke of obedience to the Church, taking insane, sinful liberties. And now this sin is no longer considered a sin! Nowadays they allow themselves to read indiscriminately all kinds of heretical writers. The Church thundered anathema against them! But blinded sinners do not heed the thunder of the Church, or they heed it only in order to laugh at the voice of the Church warning against destruction, so that its judgment and determination can unthinkably be called superstition and barbarism. Many heretical books have been translated into Russian, and one of them, besides all the patristic writings of the Universal Church, is given first place after the books of the Holy Scriptures. Exorbitant and incredible impudence! It is expressed in print. 6. 437–438 The Apostle also includes heresies among the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:20). They belong to the deeds of the flesh according to their source - carnal wisdom, which is death, which is enmity against God, which does not submit to the law of God, for worse it can (Rom. 8:6-7). They belong to the deeds of the flesh in their consequences. Having alienated the human spirit from God, uniting it with the spirit of Satan due to his main sin - blasphemy, they subject him to the enslavement of passions, as abandoned by God, as betrayed by his own fallen nature. Their foolish heart will be darkened, - says the apostle about the wise men who have deviated from the true knowledge of God, - declaring to be wise, foolish, turning the truth of God into a lie: for this reason God betrayed them in the passion of dishonor (Rom. 1, 21-22, 25-26). Various prodigal passions are called the passions of dishonor. The behavior of the heresiarchs was depraved: Apollinaris had an adulterous relationship, Eutyches was especially enslaved by the passion of love of money, Arius was depraved beyond belief. When his hymn, “Thalia,” began to be read at the first Council of Nicea, the fathers of the Council stopped their ears and refused to hear blasphemy, which could never come to the mind of a pious person. "Thalia" was burned. Fortunately for Christianity, all copies of it have been destroyed; We are left with historical information that this work breathed with violent debauchery. Many works of the newest heresiarchs are similar to “Thalia”: in them terrible blasphemy is combined and mixed with expressions of terrible, inhuman debauchery and blasphemy. Blessed are those who have never heard or read these eruptions of hell. When reading them, the connection of the spirit of the heresiarchs with the spirit of Satan becomes obvious. Heresies, being a carnal matter, the fruit of carnal wisdom, are invented by fallen spirits. “Flee godless heresies,” says Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer, “they are the essence of the devil’s invention of the evil serpent.” This should not be surprising: fallen spirits descended from the heights of spiritual dignity; they fell into carnal wisdom more than men. 4. 79–80 Fallen spirits, containing within themselves the beginning of all sins, try to involve people in all sins with the goal and thirst for their destruction. They draw us into various pleasures of the flesh, into greed, into the love of glory, painting before us the objects of these passions with the most seductive painting. In particular, they try to draw into pride, from which hostility towards God and blasphemy vegetate, like the seeds of a plant. The sin of blasphemy, which constitutes the essence of all heresy, is the most serious sin, as a sin that actually belongs to the rejected spirits and constitutes their most distinctive property. Fallen spirits try to cover up all sins with a plausible guise, called “justifications” in the ascetic writings of the fathers. They do this for the purpose of making people more easily deceived and more easily agreeing to accept sin. They do exactly the same with blasphemy: they try to cover it up with a magnificent name, magnificent eloquence, and sublime philosophy. A terrible weapon in the hands of spirits is heresy! They destroyed entire nations through heresy, stealing Christianity from them, unbeknownst to them, replacing Christianity with blasphemous teaching, adorning the deadly teaching with the name of purified, true, restored Christianity. Heresy is a sin committed primarily in the mind. This sin, being accepted by the mind, is communicated to the spirit, spills onto the body, defiles your very body, which has the ability to receive sanctification from communication with Divine grace and the ability to become defiled and become infected by communication with fallen spirits. This sin is hardly noticeable and incomprehensible to those who do not know Christianity with certainty, and therefore easily catches in its net the simplicity, ignorance, indifferent and superficial confession of Christianity. The monks Ioannikis the Great, Gerasim of Jordan and some other saints of God were caught for a time in heresy. If holy men, who spent their lives in exclusive concern for salvation, could not suddenly understand the blasphemy covered in disguise, what can we say about those who spend their lives in worldly concerns and have an insufficient, very insufficient concept of faith about faith? How can they recognize the deadly heresy when it appears to them dressed in the guise of wisdom, righteousness and holiness? This is the reason why entire human societies and entire nations easily succumbed to the yoke of heresy. For this reason, it is very difficult to convert from heresy to Orthodoxy, much more difficult than from unbelief and idolatry. Heresies that come closer to atheism are more easily recognized and abandoned than heresies that are less removed from the Orthodox faith and therefore more hidden. 4. 81–83 Heresy, being a grave sin, a mortal sin, is cured quickly and decisively, as a sin of the mind, by sincerely, from the bottom of the heart, anathematizing it. Saint John Climacus said: “The Holy Catholic Church receives heretics when they sincerely anathematize their heresy, and immediately honors them with the Holy Mysteries, and those who have fallen into fornication, even if they have confessed and forsaken their sin, commands, according to the apostolic rules, to be excommunicated from the Holy Mysteries for many years. The impression made by carnal sin remains in a person both after confession of sin and after leaving it; the impression made by heresy is immediately destroyed by its rejection. Sincere and decisive anathematization of heresy is a cure that finally and completely liberates the soul from heresy. Without this healing, the poison of blasphemy remains in the human spirit and will not cease to shake it with perplexities and doubts produced by unexterminated sympathy for heresy; thoughts remain that are placed on the mind of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), making salvation inconvenient for the one possessed by them, possessed by disobedience and resistance to Christ, who is in communion with Satan. Medicine has always been anathema and has always been recognized as necessary by the Holy Church against the terrible disease of heresy. 4. 83–84 A sight worthy of bitter sobbing: Christians who do not know what Christianity consists of! And this sight greets the eye almost incessantly; Rarely are they consoled by the opposite, as if by a comforting spectacle! Rarely can they, in a large crowd of people who call themselves Christians, stop at being a Christian both in name and in deed. The question you suggested is now asked in a row. “Why can’t pagans, Mohammedans and so-called heretics be saved,” you write? There are good people among them. To destroy these kindest people would be contrary to the mercy of God!.. Yes, this is disgusting even to common human reason! And heretics are the same Christians. To consider yourself saved, and members of other faiths lost, is crazy and extremely proud!” Christians! You talk about salvation, but you don’t know what salvation is, why people need it, and finally, not knowing Christ is the only means of our salvation! This is the true teaching on this subject, the teaching of the Holy Universal Church: salvation lies in the return of communion with God. This communication was lost by the entire human race through the fall of our forefathers. The entire human race is a category of lost beings. Destruction is the lot of all people, both virtuous and evildoers. We are conceived in lawlessness, born in sin. “I will go down to my son, lamenting, into hell,” says St. Patriarch Jacob about himself and his holy son Joseph, chaste and beautiful! Not only sinners, but also the righteous of the Old Testament descended into hell at the end of their earthly journey. Such is the power of human good deeds. Such is the price of the virtues of our fallen nature! To restore man's fellowship with God, otherwise, for salvation, atonement was necessary. The redemption of the human race was accomplished not by an Angel, not by an Archangel, not by any other higher, but by limited and created beings—it was accomplished by the infinite God Himself. Executions - the lot of the human race - are replaced by His execution; the lack of human merit is replaced by His infinite dignity. All human good deeds - the weak ones that descended to hell - are replaced by one powerful good deed: faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Jews asked the Lord: What shall we do, that we may do the works of God? The Lord answered them: This is the work of God, that you may believe in Him, He is His ambassador (John 6:28–29). We need one good deed for salvation - faith; but faith is a matter. By faith, by faith alone, we can enter into communion with God through the sacraments he has given. It is in vain and mistaken that you think and say that good people among the pagans and Mohammedans will be saved, that is, they will enter into communion with God! It’s in vain that you look at the opposite idea as if it were a novelty, as if it were an intruding delusion! No! This is the constant teaching of the true Church, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Church has always recognized that there is one means of salvation: the Redeemer! She recognized that the greatest virtues of fallen nature descend to hell. If the righteous of the true Church, the lamps from which the Holy Spirit shone, the prophets and wonderworkers, who believed in the coming Redeemer, but whose death preceded the coming of the Redeemer, descended into hell, then how do you want the pagans and Mohammedans, because they seem good to you, who did not know and did not believe in the Redeemer, to receive salvation, delivered by one, one, I repeat to you, means - faith in the Redeemer? Christians! Get to know Christ! Understand that you do not know Him, that you denied Him, recognizing salvation as possible without Him for some good deeds! He who recognizes the possibility of salvation without faith in Christ denies Christ and, perhaps unknowingly, falls into the grave sin of blasphemy. “We think morbidly,” says St. Apostle Paul, “through faith a man may be justified without the works of the law” (Rom. 3:28). The truth of God through the Christian faith is in everyone and on all believers: there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God: we are justified by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:22-24). You object: “St. The Apostle James absolutely demands good works; he teaches that faith without works is dead.” Consider what St. demands. Apostle James. You will see that he demands, like all the divinely inspired writers of the Holy Scriptures, works of faith, and not good works of our fallen nature! It requires living faith, confirmed by the deeds of the new man, and not the good deeds of a fallen nature, contrary to faith. He cites the act of Patriarch Abraham, the deed from which the faith of the righteous man emerged: this deed consisted in sacrificing his only begotten son to God. To sacrifice one’s son is not at all a good deed by human nature: it is a good deed as the fulfillment of God’s command, as a deed of faith. Take a closer look at the New Testament and in general at all of Holy Scripture: you will find that it requires the fulfillment of God’s commandments, that this fulfillment is called works, that from this fulfillment of God’s commandments faith in God becomes living, as active; without them she is dead, as if deprived of all movement. And on the contrary, you will find that good deeds of fallen nature, from feelings, from blood, from impulses and tender sensations of the heart - are forbidden, rejected! And it’s these good deeds that you like about pagans and Mohammedans! For them, even if it was with the rejection of Christ, you want to give them salvation. Your judgment about common sense is strange! Why, by what right, do you find and recognize it in yourself? If you are a Christian, then you should have a Christian concept about this subject, and not some other one, unauthorized or captured who knows where! The Gospel teaches us that through our fall we acquired a false reason, that the reason of our fallen nature, no matter what natural dignity it may have, no matter how sophisticated it is by the learning of the world, retains the dignity given to it by the fall and remains a false reason. It is necessary to reject it, to surrender to the guidance of faith: with this guidance, in due time, after significant deeds in piety, God grants His faithful servant the mind of Truth or the mind of Spirituality. This reason can and should be recognized as sound reason: it is the informed faith, so excellently described by St. by the Apostle Paul in the 11th chapter of his letter to the Hebrews. The basis of spiritual reasoning is God. It rests on this solid stone, and therefore does not waver or fall. What you call sound reason, we, Christians, recognize as a reason so sick, so darkened and lost that its healing cannot be accomplished otherwise than by cutting off all the knowledge that composes it with the sword of faith and rejecting it. If we recognize him as sound, on some basis that is unknown, shaky, uncertain, constantly changing, then he, as sound, will certainly reject Christ. This has been proven by experiments. What does your common sense tell you? That admitting the death of good people who do not believe in Christ is contrary to your common sense! Not only that! Such destruction of the virtuous is contrary to the mercy of such an All-Good Being as God. Of course, did you have a revelation from above about this subject, about what is and is not contrary to the mercy of God? - No! But common sense shows this. - A! Your sound mind!.. However, with your sound mind, where did you get the idea that it is possible for you to comprehend with your own limited human mind - what is and what is not contrary to the mercy of God? Allow me to say our thought - the Gospel, otherwise the Teaching of Christ, otherwise the Holy Scripture, otherwise the Holy Ecumenical Church, has revealed to us everything that a person can know about the mercy of God, which exceeds all speculation, all human comprehension, inaccessible to them. The vacillation of the human mind is vain when it seeks to define the infinite God!.. When it seeks to explain the inexplicable, to subordinate it to its own considerations... Who? God! Such an undertaking is a satanic undertaking!.. One who calls himself a Christian and does not know the teachings of Christ! If you have not learned from this blessed, heavenly teaching the incomprehensibility of God, go to school and listen to what children are learning! Teachers of mathematics and the theory of the infinite explain to them that it, as an indefinite quantity, does not obey the laws to which definite quantities - numbers - are subject, that its results can be completely opposite to the results of numbers. And you want to define the laws of the action of God’s mercy, you say: this is in accordance with him, this is disgusting to him! It agrees or disagrees with your common sense, with your concepts and feelings! Does it follow from the fact that God is obliged to understand and feel as you understand and feel? And this is what you demand from God! This is a most reckless and quite proud undertaking! Do not blame the judgment of the Church on a lack of common sense and humility: this is your fault! She, the Holy Church, only unswervingly follows the teaching of God about the actions of God, revealed by God Himself! Her true children follow her obediently, enlightened by faith, trampling on the arrogant mind that rebels against God! We believe that we can only know about God what God has been pleased to reveal to us! If there had been another path to the knowledge of God, a path that we could pave for our minds through our own efforts, revelation would not have been given to us. It is given because we need it. The own self-reflections and wanderings of the human mind are vain and deceitful. You say: “Heretics are the same as Christians.” Where did you get this from? Does anyone who calls himself a Christian and knows nothing about Christ, out of his extreme ignorance, decide to recognize himself as the same Christian as the heretics, and not distinguish the holy Christian faith from the child of the oath - the blasphemous heresy! This is not how true Christians talk about this! Numerous hosts of saints accepted the crown of martyrdom, preferring the most severe and prolonged torment, prison, exile, rather than agree to participate with heretics in their blasphemous teaching. The Universal Church has always recognized heresy as a mortal sin, has always recognized that a person infected with the terrible disease of heresy is dead in soul, alien to grace and salvation, in communion with the devil and his destruction. Heresy is a sin of the mind. Heresy is more a devilish sin than a human one; she is the daughter of the devil, his invention - wickedness close to idolatry. The Fathers usually call idolatry wickedness, and heresy wickedness. In idolatry, the devil receives divine honor from blinded people, and in heresy he makes blind people participants in his main sin - blasphemy. Whoever reads the “Acts of the Councils” with attention will easily be convinced that the character of the heretics is completely satanic. He will see their terrible hypocrisy, exorbitant pride, he will see behavior composed of continuous lies, he will see that they are devoted to various low passions, he will see that, when they have the opportunity, they decide to commit all the most terrible crimes and atrocities. What is especially remarkable is their irreconcilable hatred of the children of the true Church and thirst for their blood! Heresy is associated with hardening of the heart, with terrible darkness and damage to the mind; it persists in the soul infected by it - it is difficult for a person to recover from this illness! Every heresy contains blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: it either blasphemes the dogma of the Holy Spirit, or the action of the Holy Spirit, but it certainly blasphemes the Holy Spirit. The essence of all heresy is blasphemy; Saint Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who sealed with his blood the confession of the true faith, pronounced the determination of the local Council of Constantinople on the heresiarch Eutyches in the following words: “Eutyches, hitherto a priest, an archimandrite, is fully convicted both by his past actions and by his present explanations of the errors of Valentinus and Apollinaris, in his stubborn adherence to their blasphemy, especially since he did not even heed our advice and instructions to accept sound doctrine. Therefore, weeping and sighing over his final destruction, we declare on behalf of our Lord Jesus Christ that he has fallen into blasphemy, that he is deprived of all priestly rank, our communication and the management of his monastery, letting everyone who will henceforth talk with him or visit him know that they themselves will be subject to excommunication.” This definition is an example of the general opinion of the Universal Church about heretics; this definition is recognized by the entire Church and confirmed by the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. The heresy of Eutyches consisted in the fact that he did not confess in Christ, after the incarnation, two natures, as the Church confesses, he admitted one divine nature. You will say: only!.. Funny in its lack of true knowledge and bitterly pitiful in its nature and consequences is the answer of a certain person clothed with the power of this world, St. Alexander, Patriarch of Alexandria, about the Arian heresy. This person advises the Patriarch to maintain peace, not to start quarrels, so contrary to the spirit of Christianity, because of certain words; he writes that he does not find anything reprehensible in the teachings of Arius - some difference in the turns of words - and that’s all! “These turns of phrase,” notes the historian Fleury, “in which “there is nothing reprehensible,” deny the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ” - only! This means they are overthrowing the entire Christian faith - that’s all! It is remarkable: all the ancient heresies, under various changing guises, strived for one goal: they rejected the Divinity of the Word and distorted the dogma of the incarnation. The newest ones are most eager to reject the actions of the Holy Spirit: with terrible blasphemies they rejected the Divine Liturgy, all the sacraments, everything, everything where the Universal Church has always recognized the action of the Holy Spirit. They called it human institutions - more boldly: superstition, delusion! Of course, in heresy you see neither robbery nor theft! Maybe that’s the only reason you don’t consider it a sin? Here the Son of God is rejected, here the Holy Spirit is rejected and blasphemed - that’s all! He who accepts and contains blasphemous teachings, who utters blasphemy does not rob, does not steal, and even does good deeds of a fallen nature - he is a wonderful person! How can God deny him salvation!.. The whole reason for your latest bewilderment, like everyone else’s, is your deep ignorance of Christianity! Do not think that such ignorance is an unimportant flaw! No! Its consequences can be disastrous, especially now, when countless little books with Christian titles and Satanic teachings are circulating in society. If you do not know the true Christian teaching, you can just accept a false, blasphemous thought as true, internalize it, and with it internalize eternal destruction. The blasphemer will not be saved! And those bewilderments that you depicted in your letter are already terrible accusers of your salvation. Their essence is denial of Christ! Don't play with your salvation, don't play! Otherwise you will cry forever. Start reading the New Testament and St. the fathers of the Orthodox Church (not Teresa, not the Francis and other Western crazy people whom their heretical Church presents as saints); Study from the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church how to correctly understand Scripture, what kind of life, what thoughts and feelings befit a Christian. From Scripture and living faith, study Christ and Christianity. Before the terrible hour comes, in which you will have to appear for judgment before God, acquire the justifications given by God to all people - through Christianity. 6. 388–396 Francis d'Asiz, Ignatius of Loyola and other ascetics of Latinism (after the fall of the Western Church from the Eastern), who were recognized as saints in its depths, reached the strongest demonic delusion while in seclusion. “When Francis was caught up into heaven,” says the writer of his life, “God the Father, seeing him, was for a moment at a loss as to who to give priority to, whether His Son by nature or His son by grace—Francis.” What could be more terrible, uglier than this blasphemy, sadder than this beauty?! 5.69 It is forbidden to pray for heretics, as if for members belonging to the Church; why it shouldn’t be necessary to take out particles about them as images of participation in the Church; It is possible to pray for their conversion. He who has his own dead man cries for him, prays for him. Criminals imprisoned cannot accept petitions for other criminals. The Lord is Love and desires the salvation of everyone so much that we cannot even comprehend. Let’s give this Love our salvation – and everyone’s, and on our part let’s try to do what depends on us – to cleanse ourselves. 6.159 Again I bring you, faithful son of the Eastern Church, a word of sincere, good advice. This word does not belong to me, it belongs to the holy fathers. That's where all my advice comes from. Keep your mind and heart from the teaching of lies. Do not talk about Christianity with people infected with false thoughts; do not read books about Christianity written by false teachers. The Holy Spirit is co-present with Truth; He is the Spirit of Truth. Lies are co-present and assisted by the spirit of the devil, who is lies and the father of lies. He who reads the books of false teachers will certainly become familiar with the evil, dark spirit of lies. Let this not seem strange or incredible to you; This is what the luminaries of the Church – the Holy Fathers – say. “Let no one read,” said the Hieromartyr Peter of Damascus, “who does not serve to please God. If he reads something in ignorance, then let him strive to quickly erase it from his memory by reading the Divine Scriptures, and of them precisely those that most serve for the salvation of his soul, according to the state of his soul, according to the state that he has achieved... But let him not read books that are contrary to this. What need is there to receive an unclean spirit instead of the Holy Spirit? Whoever practices what word receives the properties of that word, although the inexperienced do not see this, as those with spiritual experience see.” If your mind and heart are not written with anything, let the Truth and the Spirit write on them the commandments of God and His spiritual teaching. If you allowed the tablets of your soul to be scribbled and covered with various concepts and impressions, without prudently and carefully understanding who the writer is and what he writes, then clean out what was written by alien writers, clean it out with repentance and rejection of everything that is contrary to God. Let the finger of God be the writer on your tablets. Prepare for this writer purity of mind and heart through a pious, chaste life: then, during your prayers and when reading sacred books, the law of the Spirit will be inconspicuously and mysteriously inscribed on the tablets of the soul. You are allowed to read only those books about religion that were written by the holy fathers of the universal Eastern Church. This is what the Eastern Church demands from its children. When performing the Sacrament of Confession, it is necessary to ask the penitent whether he is reading heretical books? If you reason differently and find the command of the Church less solid than the reasoning of yours and others who agree with you, then you are no longer a son of the Church, but a judge of it. Are you going to call me one-sided, not quite enlightened, a rigorist? - Leave me my one-sidedness and all other shortcomings; I wish it would be better, given these shortcomings, to be obedient to the Eastern Church, than, despite all the imaginary perfections, to be smarter than it and therefore allow myself to disobey it and separate from it. The true children of the Eastern Church will be pleased with my voice. They know that whoever wants to receive heavenly wisdom must leave his own, earthly wisdom, no matter how great it may be, renounce it, recognize it for what it is, violence (1 Cor. 3:19). Earthly wisdom is enmity against God; it does not and cannot submit to the Law of God (Rom. 8:7). From the beginning this is its property; She will remain like this until her end, when the earth and the deeds on it, and with them earthly wisdom, are burned up (2 Pet. 3:10). The Holy Church allows the books of false teachers to be read only by those of its members whose thoughts and heartfelt feelings are healed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who can always distinguish from true good the evil that pretends to be good and is covered with the guise of good. The great saints of God, who knew the weakness common to all people, feared the poison of heresy and lies and therefore, with all possible care, avoided conversations with people infected with false teaching and reading heretical books. Having before their eyes the fall of the most learned Origen, Arius, skilled in argument, the eloquent Nestorius and others rich in the wisdom of the world, who died from arrogance and conceit, they sought salvation and found it in flight from false teaching, in the most precise obedience to the Church. Spirit-bearing, holy shepherds and church teachers read the writings of blasphemous heretics, forced to such reading by the necessary need of the entire Christian society. They denounced errors with a strong word, a spiritual word, and announced to all the children of the Church the hidden danger in heretical writings, covered with magnificent names of holiness and piety. But you and I need to be guarded from reading books written by false teachers. Anyone who does not belong to the Eastern Church, the only Saint, who wrote about Christ, about the Christian faith and morality, has the name of a false teacher. Tell me: how is it possible to allow yourself to read any book, when every book you read leads you wherever it wants, convinces you to agree to everything it needs your consent to, reject everything it needs you to reject? Experience proves how disastrous the consequences of indiscriminate reading are. How many concepts about Christianity can be found among the children of the Eastern Church that are the most confusing, incorrect, contrary to the teachings of the Church, condemning this holy teaching” - concepts acquired by reading heretical books! Do not be offended, my friend, by my warnings, inspired by the desire for your true good. Father, mother, kind teacher, but will they be afraid for an innocent, inexperienced baby when he wants to enter a room without restrictions, where there is a lot of poison between the food supplies? The death of the soul is more unfortunate than the death of the body: the dead will be resurrected, and often the death of the body is the cause of life for the soul; on the contrary, a soul killed by evil is a victim of eternal death. The soul can be killed by one thought containing some kind of blasphemy, subtle, not at all noticeable to those who do not know. “The time will come,” the holy apostle foretold, “when they will not listen to sound teaching; but according to their own lusts they will choose teachers for themselves, with their ears scratched; they will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). Do not be seduced by the loud title of the book, which promises to teach Christian perfection to those who still need the food of babies; Do not be seduced by the magnificent publication, or the painting, the power, the beauty of the style, or the fact that the writer is like a saint, as if he has proven his holiness by numerous miracles. False teaching does not stop at any fiction, at any deception, in order to give the appearance of truth to its fables, and the more convenient it is to poison the soul with them. False teaching in itself is already a deception. They are deceived by him, before the reader - the writer (2 Tim. 3:13). The sign of a book that is truly, essentially beneficial to the soul is that it is a holy writer, a member of the Eastern Church, approved and recognized by the Holy Church. 1. 113–116 Do not read any heterodox writers: in them the Holy Spirit is replaced by unbridled, fiery blood; they can lure people into the abyss - and they lure many people there. They do not have the Holy Spirit; They have their own spirit - the gloomy, flattering spirit of the dark and proud heresy. 6.286 (See Earthly life, Commandments, Baptism, Peace of God, Christianity, Monastic vows, Selflessness, Body). In fallen human nature, good is mixed with evil. The evil that has come into man is so mixed and merged with the natural good of man that natural good can never act separately, without evil also acting together. A person by tasting sin, i.e. by experienced knowledge of evil, poisoned. The poison has penetrated into all members of the body, into all the powers and properties of the soul: both the body, the heart, and the mind are affected by a sinful illness. By harmfully flattering themselves and deceiving themselves, fallen people call and recognize their minds as sound. There was sound mind before the fall; After the fall, among all people, without exception, it became false, and in order to be saved it must be rejected. The light is in my eyes, and that one is not with me (Ps. 31:11), says Scripture about the mind of fallen nature. By harmfully flattering themselves and deceiving themselves, fallen people call and recognize their hearts as good; it was good before the fall; after the fall, his good was mixed with evil, and in order to be saved it must be rejected as defiled. God, the knower of the heart, called all men evil (Luke 11:13). Because of the sinful infection, everything in man has become disordered; everything works wrong; everything operates under the influence of lies and self-delusion. This is how his will works; This is how all his feelings operate; This is how all his thoughts operate. It is in vain and in vain that fallen and blind humanity calls them kind, graceful, sublime! Deep is our fall; very few people recognize themselves as fallen creatures in need of a Savior; the majority looks at their state of fall as a state of complete triumph - they use every effort to strengthen and develop their state of fall. 2.364 The power of God is perfected in the weakness (2 Cor. 12:9) of the fallen nature, when this nature is erased into dust by the Cross of Christ. On the contrary, fallen nature can develop only with an abundance of benefits provided by fallen human society: with learning, with wealth, with honors. These are the foundations and, at the same time, signs of the development of fallen nature. In such a development, fallen nature accepts, like an apocalyptic wife, worship from blinded, unhappy humanity and enters into a prodigal union with it when it renounces Christ and the Holy Spirit - perhaps without the words of renunciation - in a substantial renunciation, activity, life. After the renewal of our nature by the God-man, man’s return to his fallen nature is adultery in relation to God. 2.399 If you renounce and constantly renounce your own understanding, your own will, your own truth, or, what is the same, the mind, will and truth of fallen nature, in order to implant in yourself the mind of God, the will of God and the truth of God, taught to us in the Holy Gospel by God Himself, then the fallen nature will open within you a fierce war against the Gospel, against God. Fallen spirits will come to the aid of fallen nature. Do not fall into despondency because of this; by your firmness in the struggle, prove the thoroughness and positiveness of your will. Defeated, rise up; deceived and disarmed, arm yourself again; defeated, rush to battle again. It is extremely useful for you to see in yourself both your own fall and the fall of all humanity! You essentially need to recognize and study this fall in your own heart and mind experiences; you essentially need to see the weakness of your mind, the weakness of your will! The vision of one's fall is a spiritual vision. Seeing your weakness is a spiritual vision. 5.48 (See Sin's sight, Baptism). You might be interested in: