Август 1878 года

August 1st. All yesterday's grief and anger at the abbot were inflicted on me by invisible enemies in a flattering way: I was convinced with my own eyes that the abbot is a kind, gentle old man, calm, self-controlled, and that I am a man, weak in spirit and body, weak, cowardly, trembling, blissful, fearful, hesitant, especially in front of important persons and during their church reception, as yesterday at the expected reception of the sovereign, who was not in the cathedral. You don’t feel sorry for money for empty luxury, but you feel sorry for the poor (let’s say there are a lot of them); For luxury, you don’t feel sorry for rubles and tens of rubles, but for the poor you feel sorry for nickels and ten kopecks! We smugly and cheerfully spend a lot of money on trifles, but give to the poor to the sorrowful, not compassionate towards the poor at heart, but compassionate towards money, with a gloomy, dissatisfied look, as if irretrievably losing our perishable goods! Oh madness! Oh, love and earthiness! Oh, love of money! Oh, cruelty! Because of our greed for money and, in general, because of our addiction to corruptible and greedy flesh, to corruptible, earthly goods, we neglect the members of Christ, we destroy the entire law of Christ, which consists in love for our neighbor. Oh, ungrateful and malicious! Christ exhausted all of Himself for the sake of our salvation and eternal life, but we regret exhausting our (or is it ours?) possessions for His members, for Him Himself in their person! I completely condemn myself, condemn myself, accuse myself, denounce myself! I am deservedly punished today for this sin with sorrow and oppression, shame! But You are merciful, O Lord, my Lord, and, who sincerely repents, You accept and have mercy on me! Wake me up! Amen. By firmly confessing the name of God, the Mother of God and His saints in praises, thanksgivings, petitions, absolutions, atone for all your sins and do not be afraid of the dog barking at you. I thank the Lord, who has given me the grace to completely freely celebrate Vespers with Compline. I thank the Lord, who has repeatedly had mercy on me for my inner repentance of my secret sins and who has delivered me from the lovely aphid. Grant me, Lord, to keep all Your commandments holy, for the one who created them will live in them, just as I experience this. When praying at home or during public worship, for the success of prayer and its pleasingness to God, it is required: firstly, that the person praying believes in the presence of God, in the closeness of God to him, as the word of God assures him of: where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them [Matthew 18:20], and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age [Matthew 28:20]; secondly, so that he remembers His infinite goodness and hopes for it: if you, being evil, says the Savior, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him [Matthew 7:11], omnipotence: with God every word fails [Luke 1:37], and thirdly, so that the one who prays has an aversion to sin and love for good, but about the saints of God I thought that in God they are all and always close to us and wish us every good and can grant us what we ask for by the grace of God. Divine service is a verbal sacrifice of a person, a verbal being, to God his Creator, glorified in the Three Persons of the Divine, a sacrifice most pleasing to God more than all other sacrifices (especially material ones), especially if they are offered from a pure heart. August 2. I thank the Lord for the stumbling-free service of Matins, Liturgy and Vespers, for delivering me from sorrow and oppression at the beginning of the Liturgy, for the life-giving communion of the most pure Mysteries, for delivering me from evil and unclean thoughts during the Liturgy of the Catechumens. Thanks for the good-natured reception of me by the director of the gymnasium and for the good news about teaching the law in the girls’ gymnasium. Bless and help me, Lord! Blessed be your name! Divine service is the mutual service of God to men and men to God, or a heartfelt, grateful, reverent response of man to the love, truth, power and providence of God towards people, revealed in the creation of the visible world for man as the king of creatures, and a sweet conversation with God, praising Him and asking for his needs, and, since God works in us through certain rites and sacred actions His life-giving powers in us, Divine service is also the celebration of the Divine Mysteries of faith, combined with sacred rites. In the girls' gymnasium, before classes, read It is Worthy to Eat. When you are by the grace of God in a girls' school and attract the love of the pupils, then remember that they will love you for the grace of God on you, and not for your face or for your manners or appearance in general, and therefore do not at all show off yourself and behave simply and piously, so that they too place the dignity of a person not in appearance, but inside, in the soul, in the hidden heart of a person [1.3:4], so that they remember, that all glory to the king’s daughter—the soul—is within [Ps. 45:14], as was prophesied about the Blessed Virgin Mary. How beautiful and pleasant a truly pious person is to everyone, it is impossible to express; He is pleasing to God Himself, who looks at the heart and not at the face, but a vain man, outwardly, is cloying and unpleasant to everyone, because he is petty and not useful to souls. Yesterday's sweets and fish food created an extremely voluptuous disposition in the body and soul, arousing impure desires and thoughts. I sinned gravely before God, before myself and people, by feasting on the fast maintained by the Church in honor of the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. Stay away from sweets, so that otherwise God will not send you sorrows to heal your soul. When the street boys saw that the apple tree in my garden was covered with fruits, they threw a whole hail of stones at it to knock down the hearths and use them; when there was no fruit on it, then no one paid attention to it. This happens with souls filled with the fruits of virtues, and with evil demons: they shoot clouds of tempting arrows at her in order to deprive her of the fruits of virtues, and they carelessly do not pay attention to those living, as if for a time. But a virtuous soul is dearer to God Himself, and He surrounds it with an angelic army, like Elisha, His prophet [4.6:11–17]. Evil demons make their conquests in us every day and hour in thoughts, feelings, worldly passions through all our senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, through sinful habits: laziness, negligence - weaken the energy for good and increase the desire for evil and sin. Be sober, it is said, stay awake, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour [1.5:8]. Pray at all times in the spirit [Eph.6:18]. 3. August. I thank the Lord, who showed me His great mercy and help during the service of my matins. I served with great boldness, a stumbling-free, joyful soul. I thank the Lord, who saved me from the trouble of a quarrel with my wife when it came to her sister’s extravagance and the sufficiency of her support. I was overcome by grief and distress. I repented with tears, fell before the Lord, and peace was given to me. I thank and exalt the Lord Jesus Christ for the wonderful, sovereign and sweet salvation before the liturgy itself upon leaving the litany over the baby Sampson Il. Denisov by Ekaterina (I was embarrassed and did not utter all the words of dismissal), during the commission of which I succumbed to false shame and fear of the devil and after which a painful, bitter oppression befell me. I prayed and repented for a long time, walking in the cathedral garden, and finally, having arrived at the cathedral, with strong faith and hope I fell to the throne of grace, pressing my heart and lips to it, and found mercy and grace to help in time of need. He performed the Liturgy with a peaceful and light heart, and in a very life-giving way partook of the most pure, life-giving Mysteries of Christ; He spoke all his exclamations without stumbling (prayers and dismissals at the liturgy and requiem) and with boldness in Christ. God bless! Yes, I dare everywhere! There are a lot of suicides! Finally, the newspapers themselves are crying out. Why? - I ask. Because the people are falling away from the faith and the Church, guided by the rotten ideas of the West (especially Darwin and other materialists) that have penetrated the people, they do not read the Gospel or do not believe in it, and the Holy Synod is asleep, the archpastors and shepherds too. The sheep of the herd are dying: the mental wolf does not sleep. Do not look too much at public, city, military or secular authorities, do not humble yourself before them, for you yourself are an archpriest by the grace of God and have a high rank and high power from God; Conduct yourself everywhere with dignity before the authorities and high-ranking persons, with firmness and self-control. Do not bow down before the female sex, do not flatter her, do not look at her, for all the glory of man is like the flower of grass: the grass is gone, and the flower falls away, but the word of our God abides forever [Is. 40: 6–8]. Why am I still living like a pagan, and not a Christian, every day indulging in delicacies, gluttony, and sweet drinks? My life almost consists of eating, drinking, and walking in the fresh air. Of course, I serve in church and in homes, performing prayer services, the Sacraments, and often with high spiritual pleasure, but this does not always happen, not every day, and moreover, there are many motives and material benefits that ensure material life. But where is life complete for God and for neighbor? Where is the selflessness? Where is the willing giving of alms? Where is perfect chastity? Where is the patience, condescension towards human shortcomings, mistakes, [hobbies]? Where is the enduring love? Where is perfect devotion to the law of God? Where is the fight against sin to the point of bleeding? Where is the fiery desire for a holy, heavenly life on earth? Where is the sigh for the heavenly fatherland? Where is the desire to behold God, the Most Honest Cherubic Mother of God, the faces of the holy Angels, our elder holy brothers, the faces of all the holy saints who were once servile 149 to us, but are now impassive and saints? After all, we are members of the great wonderful Body of Christ - the Church, and members are naturally attracted to each other, help each other. August 4th. I thank the Lord of hosts, who deigned to deliver me from the crampedness and coldness of my heart during Matins and the beginning of the liturgy and to grant me, through my prayer, fervor and space of heart, boldness and immutability in service. Most of all, I thank you for reviving me with the communion of the Holy Mysteries, when the enemy brought despair to me for yesterday’s satiation in the evening with Moscow rolls, which made me feel cramped. Vasily spoke with dignity at the liturgy, memorial service, and earlier at Matins; A prayer service was also served. He served Vespers well. I thank the Lord for the thanksgiving prayer with Sergei Mikhailovich Dobrokhotov, the regimental doctor. Misfortunes during the viewing of the sovereign and Grand Duke Constantine: why? Because, without asking for God’s mercy and help for their affairs, neglecting the construction and visiting of local churches, they go straight to the deadly weapons, which cause the death of his subjects. The science of turning to God! What did Doctor Serey Mikhailovich Dobrokhotov tell about bacchus orgies in the main apartment of the commander-in-chief near Plevna!.. What did he tell about how the dead-drunk Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich crashed into the Turkish ranks and was almost captured only thanks to the brave Cossacks! What about the fact that even our sovereign himself was almost surrounded by enemies and was almost taken prisoner! This is how God punishes all of Russia for the sins of the royal house! Deliver, O God, the royal house from their iniquities! Where will they appear at Your Last Judgment? And here they live like gods, in the greatest freedom, in the greatest respect: how they are met and seen off! How much money is thrown at this! August 5th. As a result of drinking beer last night, the voice was good today, but the heart was unclean and extremely prone to fornication; it was necessary to constantly tame and destroy the prodigal movements in him through the prayer of repentance. God, have mercy on me! After mass. I thank and glorify the Lord, who has surprised me, a sinner, even now with His mercy, His righteousness and His judgment, His power and great deliverance. After yesterday's beer drinking at the doctor's, I felt very weak in my soul to fight carnal thoughts and movements and passions. And so, before the great entrance, a spirit of malice attacked the father of the deacon for his imaginary evil, and for a considerable time I fought with it: it cooled and paralyzed, confused my heart, squeezed it; Only through fervent prayer did I get rid of it, especially through communion of the Holy Mysteries; but even after communion, he approached me brazenly, crowded and embarrassed him; Finally, the Lord bowed to my sincere repentance and prayer and drove him away from my heart, and I calmed down. Glory to the Lord! I received Holy Communion life-giving, victoriously. God bless! Our prayers, church, home and public, suffer in us and from us from a very important shortcoming - superficiality, or lack of depth and sincerity, and haste, or greyhoundness 150; Because of these two shortcomings, people often lose all the fruit of prayer, and our prayers - come on, as they say, they can be empty, insignificant, ephemeral! The work of prayer is the greatest work! It is a conversation with God, our verbal sacrifice to God! Who is God for us and how do we imagine Him? And before this most perfect, all-righteous, all-knowing, all-good, wise and all-powerful Being, we offer a careless, thoughtless, heartless prayer, before Him, from Whom we received life, breath and everything [Acts 17:25]! Let us be ashamed! The holiness of God's saints is the great sacrament of their sanctified souls, performed or perfected in them by the Holy Spirit, the Source of holiness in which they eternally abide. Reverence, Christian, before the saints of God and try to imitate them in your life! Thou art holy, our God, and art thou resting among the saints 151. For this is the will of God, your sanctification [1.4:3]. August 6. Today mass was not celebrated anywhere on the occasion of painting the floors in the Assumption Church in Duma; He served prayers in artillery workshops with great faith and with great boldness by the grace of the Lord. When I came to the late mass in the cathedral where the rector was serving, I was in the greatest agony throughout the mass - in the struggle with my dissatisfaction with him and even with a strong hostility towards him for his lack of management, alienation from the brethren, for laziness in service, for negligence in the work of service and preaching (for he was completely absorbed in the love of money and ambition), for negligence about the good direction of the flock and even for mockery of the simple pilgrims who often go to church services, for harboring schismatics and for persecuting me regarding my advice to him to indicate their number in documents closer to the truth. However, I do not justify my dislike for him. I sinned in that I have hostility towards him, and I condemn myself, and consider it my duty to pray for him, may the Lord enlighten the eyes of his heart, may he warm his heart with love for the brethren and the poor, may the passion of love of money strike him to death (he has accumulated a capital of sixty thousand rubles), may he direct his thoughts and heart to the work of service. After accusing myself of hostility and being kind to him, I calmed down, but before I was very sick and oppressed. Do not look at the bad sides in your brother, so as not to hate him and not be in demonic delusion regarding him, but look at the good qualities or sides of him, if you want him to see more good in you, or to pay attention to your good qualities and leave the bad ones unnoticed, or to be lenient towards you, seeing in you a manifestation of bad properties or habits, passions, inclinations. In everything that you want people to do to you, do so to them, the Savior teaches [Matthew 7:12]. After indignation at the abbot confused and paralyzed me and the expression of my displeasure to him did not enlighten him, but only caused him to slander me - and again confused me, I was miraculously calmed by a prayer service from my neighbor with a garden, mechanical engineer [Simeon] Andrianovich. Glory to the Lord! Just an hour of prayer - and the weight is off your shoulders. I see the following good qualities in the archpriest: meekness, gentleness, quietness, regularity of character, self-control, abstinence, leisureliness in eating and drinking and in all actions, except for the service of God, which the sextons are forced to extremely shorten and hastily perform, although he himself speaks quietly, unhurriedly. May the Lord increase these gifts in him and may he add to them justice, mercy towards the poor and alms, sociability with the brethren (he is in contact with one German captain, Baron Gauvin), zeal for service, for preaching, for saving people, and not for making money, according to the word of the Psalmist: Incline my heart to Thy testimonies 152, and not to covetousness [ Ps.119:36]. Blame not others, but yourself for your sins, your heart is unclean and evil, your spiritual eye is dark, your glass is dim, your sense organ - your heart hurts with every passion. What wise Divine laws protect our life, this most precious gift of God! What bliss they bring to those who perform them! And despite all this, we do not obey them, we are self-willed, we transgress them every day and hour, we persist and get angry when they accuse us of this, or we also arm ourselves against the accusers and still hope for the mercy of the Judge! But the Judge will be merciful only to the repentant and the merciful. Mercy...there will be mercy [Matthew 5:7]. God will not despise a contrite and humble heart [Ps. 50:19]. But judgment is without mercy to him who has shown no mercy [Jas. 2:13]. The enemy uses everything to overthrow Christian love and plant enmity, hostility, pride, fornication, covetousness, luxury, intemperance, hard-heartedness, self-will, etc., for all this destroys love. We feel the machinations of the enemy over us every day. We must resist it with firm faith and succeed every day in faith, love, patience, abstinence, purity, in prayer, in work, in serving others. August 8. Every creature: the sun, moon, stars, earth, water, air, fire, plants, birds, fish, four-legged animals, insects - serve God in those ways or properties that are given to them from God (a grape tree bears fruit, an apple tree does the same, etc.), how much more should a person serve God in those ways that are given to him as a rational, free, feeling being; his service must be reasonable, heartfelt, voluntary, unconstrained, although forced by himself or others. In the service of God is the life and bliss of creatures. And the barren fig tree is cut down and thrown into the fire [Matthew 3:10]. Without serving God, a person’s strengths and abilities receive a perverse, false, disastrous direction for him (debauchery, drunkenness, heresy, rioting), and when serving God, they receive a correct, harmonious, peaceful, joyful, fruitful, saving, enlightening direction. August 14. I thank You, Lord, my joy, my help, my restoration, my healing, for yesterday’s Your mercies to me, a sinner, when I served prayer services in houses and baptized a baby at Murashov Alex. Alex., and after the christening, when I fell to Your mercy about the stumbling block and embarrassment that happened to me. I thank You, Lord, for Your great mercy this morning, when I ran to You in repentance about my hardness of heart towards the beggar and my anger at him and about all my sins: self-love, lust, pride, malice, hostility, envy, laziness, negligence. You have forgiven me everything and given me Your peace when I was not peaceful. Today at eight o'clock in the morning I was severely upset by my wife, who reached the point of insolence and abuse with me because of her disobedience (because of the kitchen doors): I put a through door so that the paints would dry, but she pushed away and tightly locked the real door. May she not enter into my inheritance for her great insolence and constant disobedience, may she not show off in these adorned palaces, unless she humbles herself completely and is obedient in everything, according to Scripture [Eph. 5:22], for she has surpassed every measure of insolence and disobedience: she called me drunk, a woman’s acquaintance. How destructively, shamefully, blindly, wildly the old sinful man, who has not been killed in us, undermines and acts in us! In just a few minutes, the husband and wife were in agreement, loving, peaceful, but because of one thing they suddenly quarreled fiercely among themselves: the husband opened the half door into the kitchen, which had been painted two days ago, and placed a random, through, rough door against the opening, which allowed free passage of air at the top for better drying of the floors and doors. The wife saw this and annoyedly interrupted her husband's business, locking the door and blocking the flow of fresh air; The husband saw this and was indignant, wanting to do it as before, but the wife resists; the husband insists with zeal, the wife is more opposed; the husband pushes the rebellious woman away, she does not yield - and an angry fight ensues in the corridor and then in the door frame: the husband pushes and squeezes, pins her down in anger, she raises her fists and threatens to break her face; so that the matter does not reach greater bitterness, the husband leaves his stubborn and daring wife and, in a prayer of repentance, pours out his grief and sadness before God about the disobedience and insolence of his wife, who did not want to submit in an insignificant case, when it cost her nothing to submit; Of course, out of prudence, I should have yielded to her, but I wanted obedience from her, as her head, to whom she owes obedience. However, I am also to blame for the fact that I did the said thing without consent, although I didn’t think that she wouldn’t like it. This is how the old sinful man living in us fools us, shames us, darkens us, and destroys us. He lives in me and in her equally. Self-love, pride, vanity, vanity, malice, self-will, rebellion, disobedience, envy, zeal, voluptuousness, luxury, lust, gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, laziness, negligence, love of money, covetousness also live in me. And we should not at all feel sorry for the old man, but should crucify him within ourselves: when they scold me, offend me, I should not be upset, but endure it with humility and kindness; when they stand their ground in something everyday, material, unimportant, I must give in without zeal or annoyance in order to avoid sin; For those who are devoted to the flesh and the world and those living without a path, pray fervently to God, that He may enlighten their eyes of the heart, blinded by vanity, and may He teach them to care about spiritual, eternal blessings, about the acquisition of good deeds, about almsgiving, obedience, prayer, and silent deeds. We, for our part, must despise the sins committed by people against us, leave debts to debtors, pray for them sincerely, as those causing the greatest harm to our souls, and we ourselves must in every possible way beware of malice and strengthen ourselves in kindness, maintaining calm and steadfastness of spirit. Oh, how unskilled I am at this! How vain, partial to earthly, ephemeral goods, and because of my addiction to them, I lose love, fall into enmity, hostility, anger, quarrel and anger my God, who brought peace to earth, reconciling God with people! Truly, where there is attachment to the world with its blessings, there is no peace of mind. I condemn myself, accuse myself as an unrighteous man, as a villain, and I ask You, my Lord Jesus Christ, for forgiveness and ask, tearfully ask for the forgiveness of all my sins. I thank You, King of the world, Lord Jesus Christ, for at this hour you have given me and my wife peace - this greatest blessing of our life; So my wife and I, at my suggestion, bowed our knees and thanked You and Your Most Pure Mother in the words of Your Church. Glory to You! Evening 14. An evil despondency attacked me, a demon of malice attacked me against the rector, Father Pavel Trachevsky, who modestly came to the cathedral, did not offend me in any way, although, in my opinion, he has previously and now offended me and is now offending me by taking away my Klyuchar rights, not entrusting me with the keys to anything and entrusting them to the guards; but this offense is, so to speak, innocent and not malicious. So, why are you attacking me, demon of malice, and forcing me to hate and resist the abbot under various pretexts? I see your hellish, underground machinations and I deny you and your deeds, and all your service, and all your pride, so contrary to my Lord, who commanded us to love each other. I want to love my father and superior in the Lord in meekness and quietness, then grant him, Lord, the goodness of insistence and zeal for Your faith and Your truth and Your people, for their salvation, and not only for pieces of silver and insignia. For, not differing in anything decisively (I adhere to the truth that has been said), he passionately loves insignia in the form of orders. However, who is without sin? May the Lord have mercy on him and grant him to care about the only thing needed - about the salvation of his soul and the souls of his brethren and all parishioners, about the proper glorification of the Lord and all the saints, for he is very negligent about this in all his service, especially everyday, and reduces it to the point of disgrace. May the Lord grant us all obedience to each other, as he, the abbot, truth and equality to his subordinates, and not oppression, contentment with existing things, sincere and unhypocritical love for each other, goodwill, quietness and moderation of disposition, abstinence, purity and holiness and all zeal for the Lord and for our neighbors - so that we may be saved into eternal life! Amen. August 14. After the Assumption Vigil. Glorifying the Lady Theotokos and Her great Dormition, we glorify in Her our glory, which through Her the Lord, wondrous in His deeds and mercy, has vouchsafed to us; We glorify our hope of immortality, for through It the Lord has given us all His ineffable blessings. In a speech before the start of the exercise. Contemporary events again encourage a greater focus of youth on Christian faith and morality. On Wednesday there is an early mass in the Duma from Olga Afanasyevna. I will serve. In a speech at the gymnasium. Every plant that My Father in Heaven has not planted will be uprooted [Matthew 15:13]. Mister! did you not sow good seed in your field? where does the tares come from? [Matthew 13:27]. Or: let the children come to Me and do not hinder them, for such is the Kingdom of God [Mark 10:14] (when they prevent them from going to church, when they burden them with lessons from external sciences). Meat food, according to my repeated experience, is especially capable of arousing carnal passions, and it makes the heart coarser and thicker. Rooms or things [necessarily] take into themselves the smell of those paints with which they are painted, or those odorous substances that they contain or with which they come into contact. Likewise, our hearts receive the properties of those things that the stomach accepts: from sweets the heart becomes voluptuous, from meats - coarse, animalistic and lustful, from heavy and indigestible food - dull and lazy. Therefore, have a prudent choice in food; Very justly and wisely, the Holy Church deprives us of modest food on Wednesdays and Fridays and during all multi-day and one-day fasts. (August 15 is the day of the Dormition of the Mother of God.) August 16. A thousand, ten thousand thanks to the Lord my God Jesus Christ, who revived me with His liturgy and communion of the Holy Mysteries yesterday and gave me health and tenderness during the service with tears; the darkness of thanksgiving to the Lord for the fact that yesterday I easily, easily took up the work of glorification and today, healthy and easily, I arose from sleep, rushing to the works of God! Amen. Thank you for celebrating the Sacrament of Baptism yesterday at nine o’clock in the evening, for your vigor and boldness. The power of God is made perfect in weakness [2.12:9]; Where sin lived with me, grace abounded. The devil is left with some freedom to tempt people (who sell themselves to him according to their sins) into every sin, and people are left with freedom both for good and, to some extent, for evil, for freedom is an essential property of rational creatures, constantly testifying to the greatest goodness, wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator, who created rational beings - the final manifestation of His infinite goodness and His perfections. But the higher the gift, the greater the responsibility for it and the punishment for its neglect, and the devil is preparing for himself a terrible eternal punishment in the fire and tartar of hell, like unrepentant sinners. Blessed are the people who love goodness and hate sin. Evening of August 16th. After yesterday's festive feast at the Neustroevs', today during early mass, extreme weakness, coldness, deadness appeared in my heart: I could not sincerely, sensibly, with spiritual strength and love pray for everyone for whom the Church prays, and for the departed, for whom the mass was held. The soul dies from luxurious dinners. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap: he who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life [Gal.6:7–8]. In the gymnasium, when testing incoming children according to the Law of God, I felt bad: melancholy, crush, despondency in my heart lasted for two hours. Upon leaving the gymnasium, walking along the road, I prayed and through prayer I got rid of cramped conditions and sorrow. The Lord saved me many times today from my inner sins, especially in Dr. Lovachev’s apartment before the christening and during and after the christening, when the sight of a beautiful young woman (I thought, a maiden) created in my lustful heart an inclination towards inner adultery and the sting of sin stung my soul, singing it with unclean poison. The prayer of repentance and faith soon saved me, and I thanked and magnified the Lord, the guardian of incorruption. I looked to Him in truth, and He granted me to speak the truth in my heart, the truth of purity and chastity, the truth of unfeigned love for every person without partiality, as the image of God and the church of God. He baptized solemnly, without stumbling, enthusiastically, anointed. Glory to the Lord! O all-evil, all-vile, all-absurd, all-destroying sin! You corrupt me with charming sweetness or bitterness and violence, and sometimes your charming, sweet corruption is so pleasant to a person until it is tested, and when it is tested, how bitter it is! What harmful consequences! Mortal men! Hate carnal sweets, with which the incorporeal enemy steals your integrity, honesty, purity, tranquility, and health. Every day to lend Christ God Himself in the person of the poor, what happiness, what bliss! And I often get upset with them and reluctantly, with annoyance, give alms and stingily - what madness, what insolence! Lord, have mercy and enlighten me from now on until the end of my life. 18. The disembodied enemy sometimes produces in me extreme discouragement, despondency, fear and apprehension where there is nothing to be afraid of. But the Lord saves me from this decline of spirit, cowardice and fear, miraculously revives me, encourages me and lifts my spirit, making me gracious before the noble, learned and noble of this world. Glory to the Lord, who saves me from cowardice and from the storm of demons. God! If I am a sinner, You are my cleansing, my mercy, my salvation, my deliverance. The bodiless enemy and the primordial murderer intimidates me with my sins, with which he has disgraced me, a vessel of my flesh, with which he has defiled my heart, thoughts and feelings, perverting my love, depriving me of the integrity of my soul and body. But You, Lord, are my Savior and my Deliverer. You cleanse the unclean, you transform and renew the corrupt, you restore the broken, you restore the fallen, you elevate the humiliated. I thank You, I extol You, the abyss of such great, countless gifts! Glory to Thee, surpass iniquity! Glory to You, who has destroyed and is destroying the works of the devil! Glory to You, who saves the greatest, completely corrupt sinners! Glory to You, who saves me, a corrupt sinner! In me, in me above all, the most sinful of all men, be glorified, O Lord, so that the devil, who sought so diligently, so fiercely and is still seeking to destroy me, may suffer greater shame in me! Inappropriate fear, originating from the devil, is the same sin as internal fornication or envy, self-interest; you have to [brace yourself], you have to have faith in the invisible Lord, who is your covering on your right hand [Ps. 120:5]. Against the mayor, as well as against the rector of the cathedral and the dean, the enemy often aroused me internally, rebellion and internal sedition fanned within me. I repent to the Lord - have mercy, Master, who knows all the hidden things! Protect my heart with love! Respect yourself and carry yourself with dignity, and others will respect you. God! Give me the grace to be a worthy organ of Thy praise, cleanse, Lord, enlighten and strengthen, Lord, the organs of praise and thanksgiving - my heart and lips, strengthen my wavering feet. 19. I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace to perform a prayer service in the gymnasium and before the beginning of the teaching and to say my speech. Father Deacon Sofronov served poorly with the binge drinking of yesterday, there was no voice, he often broke off - a disgrace, and that’s all. 20. I thank the Lord, who gave grace for the celebration of the early liturgy, although with extreme weakness of the heart, resulting from yesterday’s meat-eating in the evening and at dinner: excess in food is extremely paralyzing, kills the spirit, the heart, it becomes carnal, soulless or cowardly, insensitive, that is, incapable of sublime feelings. I thank the Lord, who has now revived me with His grace for my repentance, that I abandoned my trust in Him and put my hope in money, wishing to take on many lessons - in a women's gymnasium or in a preparatory class in a men's gymnasium, and regretting when they went to Comrade Klepachevsky. 22. Tuesday. Yesterday I saw in myself the multiple salvation of God, when I repented of my sins, I thank the Lord. I sinned before the Lord in the evening in that I was extremely gluttonous with my friend Captain Andrei Nikolaevich Tolbukhin, and ate a piece of veal, and ate a lot of English jam, and drank wine and beer (a glass and a shot glass), and liqueur, and sweet tea. And gluttony is idolatry and enmity against God. I repent, have mercy, Master! Forgive me, forgive me, Lord, that I fell away from love and fell into anger at my wife for her disobedience and disagreement with my orders; I had to prudently give in to her (compliance, condescension) and wait for her readiness to accept my order (I brought the varnisher to varnish the furniture, and she did not allow it, saying that it was not the time). Because of such an insignificant thing, I ruined Your entire law, fell away from love (and, according to the Apostle, Christian love never falls away - and I, damned one!) and fell into hostility, anger, quarrel with my wife, bickering and cursing. Oh me, fever! Why do I get excited and drag my wife into ardor! This means that I do not have Christian love in my heart, for it is not irritated, it is merciful, it endures everything, it covers everything, it does not think evil, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but it rejoices in the truth and falls away from nothing [1.13: 4–8]. I offer my guilt to the Lord with all my heart: I have ruined Your law, Lord, and I myself am guilty of eternal fire, because I have sinned in knowledge, and not through ignorance, and have repeatedly fallen into the same sins. But have mercy on me again and again, Lord! I repent to You, Lord, and I bring the illness of my heart before Your eyes: heal the passions of the repentant sinner, sanctify, broaden, have mercy on me. Grant grace and strength not to have a heart attached to anything perishable, for because of the heart’s attachment to the earth, there are many quarrels and quarrels, hatred, envy, and disobedience. But my heart is still firmly tied to the earth. As a result of gluttony, I become irritable and impatient. These are the fruits of sins! Take away the reason for them! I thank the Lord, who had mercy on me for repentance and reconciled me, who healed my soul from evil and who humbled my wife. Truly this is the betrayal of the right hand of the Most High 153 [Ps.76:11]! A great thing is the prayer of repentance; it does not remain in vain. August 22. I thank the Lord, who wonderfully had mercy on me this day at twelve o’clock in the afternoon, when I, in great spiritual distress due to involuntary anger at my disobedient wife, fell with great faith in repentance to the throne of God, asking for deliverance, peace and freedom from the overpowering passion. I left the throne miraculously delivered, comforted, and peaceful. I thank the Lord, who told me His mercy at the very beginning of the prayer service and throughout the prayer service with Anna Gerasimovna in the peace and space of my heart. But I sinned when I said rudely and with my heart to the archpriest: why on earth would I serve Vespers for you? He serves [...] Matins. This is disobedience. My broken, nasty organ, the organ with which [I sing] the glory of God, the Mother of God and all the saints, I mean my heart is nasty, blasphemous, evil, selfish, voluptuous, proud, evil, unkind, malicious and gloating, vain, prodigal, glory-hungry, lazy, careless, blasphemous! Having been with Paraskeva Lukinichna Kalmykova, I did not sympathize with the sick Elisaveta Petrovna Kalmykova, I was cold as a stone, thinking to myself: she was proud and very fond of her daughter’s marriage, she stopped going to church - that’s why she was punished. But God knows if this is so. Meanwhile, Christian love must weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice [Rom.12:15]. If we do not take revenge on our offenders, neither in thought, nor in desire, nor in word, nor in deed, but we remain silent and pray for them, then they too will soon be reconciled with us; if they are inveterate enemies, then God will take revenge on them soon. It has always been so, is and will be. Love is driven out of hearts by love: love for God and neighbor is driven out by carnal love, for example, addiction to the womb, to clothes, to the brilliant furnishings of one’s home, to money, to fun... 23. Our sextons, with their rapid reading and singing, reduce the entire divine service to zero: you will not understand anything, you will not be able to take anything out of the church of God. This is how the evil one twists us! I thank and exalt the Lord, who miraculously revived me today with His Divine Mysteries and raised my soul from the dead (for indeed, before communion of the Holy Mysteries, I was dead due to my sins, especially gluttony, satiety and excessive drinking of wine). Oh, what a triumph of faith and mercy of God there was in me, surpassing all and every sin of mine! Glory to Thee, Lord God, invincible in mercy. The enemy was pressing with despair. When I was in the sixth grade today, the devil poured his abomination on me against my will in my heart, in his movement, incomparably voluptuous, he shamed, oppressed, killed me for several minutes, but by repentance and looking to the Lord I defeated him, the leader of all kinds of abominations. Glory to the Lord and His grace! Late in the evening, I became angry with the janitor for his treachery and malfunction, and in his absence, in his absence, I vomited out his angry words, breathing with vengeance. For this, the Lord punished me worthily with cramped conditions. I resorted to heartfelt repentance and - a wondrous miracle! He who is abundantly merciful again had mercy on me, raising me from the dead. I came to life, tasted peace, calm, lightness, cheerfulness, space! Thus, the Creator of heaven and earth, infinite, beginningless, omnipotent, good, omniscient, bows daily and repeatedly to the heartfelt cry of His worm creeping on the earth, that is, me, a sinner, constantly offending His goodness, destroying His law, constantly falling away from His love and our neighbor! Today he baptized a Mohammedan in the cathedral (they called him Constantine), having preceded the Sacrament with two catechumens. Confirm him, O God, in the right and saving faith. We need to visit him. 24. I am in trouble because of the fish and fish soup I ate at night: there is an extreme lustful burning in my loins. I don’t eat fish or meat. After early mass. I thank the Lord, who has repeatedly revived me, killed by my sins (during Matins, served by the archpriest, and early mass, performed by me); Yesterday's gluttony killed my soul, but the Lord raised [it]. The canon was read animatedly. He served Mass with grace. The voice is excellent, on the one hand from the grace of God, and on the other from the fresh fish soup without fish that I ate in the evening. Take communion for life, joy, triumph! God bless! From the abbot I received a sacred parcel from the relics of the righteous Artemy - oil, cotton wool, shavings, samples. Write a letter of gratitude, ask for an apology in my sharp letter to him. I offended him with suspicion of ill will. Father Abbot is a great spiritual man, kindly, humble, and I am voluptuous, proud, gullible, malicious, envious, voluptuous, incontinent, money-loving, lazy, careless, prodigal, cowardly, timid, partial, obsequious, deceitful, man-pleasing, irritable and angry, impatient, unfaithful, murmuring, desperate. If you feel angry in your soul against your brother for whatever reason, immediately pray for him with all your heart, may the Lord have mercy and forgive him, and may this prayer always bring spiritual benefit to you and the one for whom you are praying; Do not multiply the evil of another with your own evil. But most often, the leader of evil slanderes our neighbors and teaches us to see evil in others when there is none, and thereby causes only evil, torment only to those who suspect their neighbor of evil. A very wise rule: do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good [Rom. 12:15]. And so let us love our enemies, let us bless those who curse us, let us do good to those who hate us, and let us pray for those who wrong us [Matthew 5:44]. Our pride is very ticklish and irritable: we tend to take revenge for any offense with a look, word, movement, deed. Man is a sinner! Have pity on a sinner like you: he is sick, he suffers from sinful inflammation, sinful mania, moral, mental insanity, free madness. Don't be like him. 25. I thank and extol the Lord, who delivered me, after a long prayer of repentance (on the way to the gymnasium and in the kindergarten of the observatory), from the hellish cramped conditions that befell me over yesterday’s disagreement with my brother Father Peter Klepachevsky. I thank the Lord, who defeated the spirit of malice and reconciled me with my brother; I gave him the hand of communication, and there is peace between us. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace [Luke 2:14]. I thank the Lord for reviving me, deadened by sins - I miraculously came to life when I received Holy Communion during early mass (from Nikitin). The strong, mortal barriers of hell within me were dissolved, and Divine ever-essential life penetrated into my heart. Oh, how sweet and desirable is Divine life! How light, spacious, cheerful, and renewed I felt! 26. I thank the Lord, who took away the oppression from my soul at the very beginning of mass and gave me peace and tenderness during the cathedral liturgy and life-giving communion, which destroyed the death of the heart. I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace to perform a good baptism with Leonid Katugin. I thank you for the greatest good change in me during the all-night vigil by the grace of Christ, for the tearful tenderness, for the most tender, bold, sublime prayer for everyone. I was greatly pleased by the thought of closeness to the Lord during the service of the priests of Christ: they, as His close friends and interlocutors or His workers, stand with the Angels at His throne and perform the heavenly Mysteries and distribute them to others. Do we always value ourselves as we should? If you want to enter into eternal life, says Christ, keep the commandments [Matthew 19:17]. How can you not want to enter the eternal belly? Christ Himself, the hypostatic Life, came into the world for this purpose, to give us eternal life. With love, willingly, and ingenuously, receive visitors and arriving guests into your home as Angels or as members of Christ and your fellow members; do not be faint-hearted, do not be upset, do not shake like Cain - they will stay and go. Remember that love is the sum of perfection [ Col. 3:14 ]. Without love there is no Christianity. Out of love, endure some embarrassment. 27. After late mass. Yesterday I drank a lot of champagne, and today it resonated heavily in me both in my body and in my soul: it hit my nerves in a deadening way, and in my soul there was a strong passion for bread, for clothes, for earthly things in general - and when? Before the liturgy itself and during it. This is absurd! The Lord raised us to heaven by His incarnation, deified us, made us heavenly from earthly, and the devil is trying to reify, earthen us and make us from heavenly completely earthly, madly passionate for earthly goods, to the point of forgetting about our heavenly calling, to cooling off towards God and neighbor, to the point of the most stupid selfishness. Oh, what an insult and humiliation to the entire mystery of redemption our addiction to the corruptible, disappearing blessings of the earth does! What an insult to the Redeemer Lord Jesus Christ and the Sanctifier Holy Spirit! And yet this insult is so common, constant! Today my heart was paralyzed, killed first by indignation at the archpriest for bad vestments, then at the prosphora bowl for small prosphora, but I sincerely condemned myself for madness, vanity, vanity - and the Lord had mercy on me: I was healed spiritually, I was at peace, my soul was expanded, I was revived. Then, at the great entrance, sin killed me because of cowardice. Then I repented again (forgive me, O Lord of mercy) and came to life again by the grace of Christ. He served well, received communion for life, strength, and joy. He read the pulpit well and delivered the sermon with animation. All said and done. God bless! After Vespers, when I was passing along New Street, the enemy caught me in the inner adultery of my heart through one glance at a young, beautiful harlot leaning out of the window, and I was confused in sin for about five minutes, saying a prayer of repentance; The Lord heard and saved me, a voluptuous, greedy, prodigal, accursed person. Glory to His mercy, but shame on my face that I am so willing to indulge in every sin. We need abstinence - bread and water in moderation. 28. Five and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord for His immeasurable mercy towards me, shown in repeated deliverance from the devil’s remorse and insults from the thoughts of my soul during the Liturgy, for the gift of tenderness and life-giving communion of the most pure Mysteries. I thank the Lord for deliverance from demonic attack during Vespers and after it, before the prayer service to the Iveron Mother of God, the Holy Forerunner and Saint Panteleimon. I fell in repentance to the throne of grace and received healing with peace, freedom, and boldness. (I don’t care about the robe, and I don’t care about the silver pendants on icons: because of them I was hurt.) In the seventh grade from the History of the Church about St. Philip the Metropolitan to the next grade. The worship of the Orthodox Church nourishes and strengthens faith, hope and love in a Christian and prepares him to be a citizen of heaven. Every priest has the priesthood of Christ - so the laity must be taught to look at it. The priesthood is the greatest, most heavenly, most salutary, gift of God to people: through it sinners are cleansed, sanctified, reconciled with God, renewed, enlightened, confirmed in faith and love, perfected, adored and elevated to heaven. Glory to God, who has given us such a gift! Let us honor the priesthood and use its grace abundantly. We were created by God as saints in the beginning, but we lost the holiness of God through sin and became defiled and became unworthy of God and paradise. The Lord most abundantly returned to us the gift of the holy in His person and through Himself, through rebirth, anointing and communion of His Body and Blood and made us worthy through Him and through Him of paradise, returning to us first of all our property. You place the sign of the cross on your forehead, on your heart and on both shoulders (muscles), among other things, so that you always pray to God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength, so that you do not forget to love God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength (a muscle is a sign of strength). But we often pray absent-mindedly, not heartily, sluggishly. This is what’s bad, that’s why we have such a paucity of fruits of virtue! 29. After mass. I thank the Lord, who deigned me to perform the Divine Liturgy without stumbling before the prayer behind the pulpit, at the end of which I missed a few words out of embarrassment at the thought of the new gold-cut Missal, bought and bound with brotherly money by me, and at the thought that I am the only one using it, and not everyone. May it be a common property. You weigh, Lord, my unfailing walk for all kinds of needs and always and often, often outside the parish, through my acquaintance and through personal affection and personal support of acquaintance. Didn’t I have the right to share the retribution for correcting these requirements (and there are many of them) between the sexton and me? But I didn’t do this, and so I used part of it to purchase a good Missal. Truly, this Service Book will not be mine, but brotherly. Justify then, O Lord, me, the threshing ox, and let not the enemy block the walls of my heart [1.5:18], and let him not confuse me, as it were, withholding his brotherly property, for not to them, but to the worker belong Thy gifts. Remember also my many trips to fulfill my needs, while the brethren travel more, and their infidelity in recording the brethren’s income, which they often used for their own needs. I thank the Lord, who renewed and revived me through the communion of His most pure and life-giving Mysteries. I thank the Lord for the cheerful, courageous service of prayer on the floating docks with the officers and crew. During the Gospel, I was extremely (and before and after, before the Great Entry), extremely overcome by sleep, to the point of death, to the point of exhaustion. After the great entrance and the enemy’s anger, defeated by the prayer of repentance, all weakness passed. He served cheerfully, loudly, with animation. Glory to the Lord! At the cathedral memorial service for Alexander the Great and the soldiers, at the exclamation he became confused from the embarrassment of the enemy. Then God had mercy. The holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky was an unshakable confessor of Christ in the Tatar Horde. 30. I thank the Lord for the speedy hearing of my inner prayer of repentance in the apartment of the birthday boy Alexander Fedorovich Fedorov before the prayer service (I was embarrassed and oppressed, overshadowed by grief at Father Klepachevsky for taking over lessons in the girls’ gymnasium and in the men’s (preparatory class)). I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace of tenderness during the liturgy and tears of repentance, a feeling of gratitude to the Lord. 31. I thank the Lord, who by His ineffable mercy revived me yesterday with His Divine Mysteries at the late (regular) liturgy, which I performed by His grace without stumbling in my words. I repent, accursed one, to the Lord of yesterday’s satiation after the christening at the tanner Zacharia Ivanovich: I, foolish, greedy, went for fruits and food (fish pie, smoked whitefish, caviar, buttered bun, [...] rich) and let’s eat - and ate until I was satiated, until I was burdened! O righteous God! How I grieve You and provoke You to anger! I partake daily of the most heavenly, life-giving, terrible Mysteries, and I have a tendency to become satiated with earthly scraps, and by the very act I am satiated and make my belly a god. And also, in impatience and cowardice, I sometimes say to myself: why doesn’t the Lord hear me when I cry out to Him to heal my hearing, damaged by a cannon shot! I am not worthy of God's mercy. And in a dream I imagined drinking and eating: my whole life passes in vanity and sin. Woe, woe is me! Woe to us! If shepherds behave this way, what about the sheep? And even more so they wander, scattered in different directions. God! Gather us all into Your fence and grant us to walk in all the ways of Your commandments. Abstinence, abstinence from now on! Grant, Lord! God help! Read the Bible, the writings of the holy fathers, Octoechos. Obsequious (church-glory) - a person similar to us, with the same passions and infirmities. Borzoi (Old Russian) – fast, cheerful. The exclamation of the priest at matins. Testimony (Church Glav.) – revelation, testimony, commandment.