Апрель 1882 г.

Thursday of Holy Week. I thank the Lord, who accepted zealous repentance of my hostility towards the abbot for the humiliation with which he humiliated me in my absence before the people and before the poor, calling me Vanka. From the bottom of my heart, I forgave him for this by the grace of God, having humbled myself in my soul and recognizing myself as worthy of all humiliation and punishment from God for my sins. The Lord forgave me, driving away anger from my heart and giving me kindness and meekness, peace and spaciousness of heart with boldness. Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light [Eph.5:14]. Who are these sleeping and spiritually dead? It is we, sinners, and this word of the Apostle is addressed to us. He who is satiated and drunk is asleep and spiritually dead; he who lives in the impurity of voluptuousness is asleep and dead; he who envies the prosperity of another is dead; he who lives in enmity, hostility, hatred, anger at his neighbor is dead; he who collects wealth, the treasures of this world, and through this hardens his heart, is stingy, indulges in greed, oppresses and offends his neighbor. - he is dead; all such and such, if they remain unrepentant, celebrate the feast of the Resurrection of Christ in vain, in vain: they celebrate not Christ, but Belial, or the devil, their flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, they celebrate sin and passions; such people fasted, fasted, confessed and partook of the Holy Mysteries in vain: they were not renewed, did not improve, did not change for the better, they remained as they were. Fasting, fasting, repentance and communion were established for this purpose, so that from time to time we would be corrected, cleansed, sanctified, renewed, changed by a good change, ascend from strength to strength, from virtue to virtue, from sin to holiness and truth, so that, having been renewed and sanctified in this way, we would be worthy of a blessed death, fall asleep in the sleep of the righteous and be resurrected for eternal life. Nine o'clock. Ringing for the liturgy. After a walk on the wall. Now he sinned by becoming angry with the beggars and vilifying them as rogues, although he gave them three kopecks, and some five; He pulled one boy by the ear in anger for asking for an increase to the ten kopecks given to him. I sin gravely before God, before the Mother of God, before all the Heavenly Powers and all the saints with my malice and hard-heartedness, self-love, voluptuousness, gluttony, voluptuousness, love of money, envy, ingratitude, rebellion, guile, laziness and negligence about the only thing needed, that is, love for God and neighbor. Every time I sin when giving alms, I almost always give forcedly, reluctantly, with pride, embitterment, stinginess, without faith and love, with false thoughts, hostile feelings, as if I were extremely lending to them, the poor, and not they to me, receiving alms from me, giving not as Christ Himself in the person of the poor, with humility, willingly and joyfully, diligently, but as unworthy ragamuffins and parasites, sloths and drunkards (which means I condemn), with hardness of heart, arrogance and contempt. I am irresponsible and guilty before the truth, goodness and bounty of God. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy, and according to the multitude of Your mercies, cleanse my iniquity. ...For I know my iniquity, and I will take away my sin before me 135 [Ps. 50:3,5]. I repent, I condemn myself with all my mind and heart. Forgive and bless me, Lord! God! Grant me victory in Your name over the soul-destroying passions that separate me from God and His incorruptible Kingdom. I thank the Lord, who this very minute delivered me, as I looked at Him with faith and hope, from sinful, voluptuous, and blessed violence. We must sincerely wish, and pray to God, and ourselves try that our holidays - private, home, or public, church or civil - will be holidays of virtue, and not holidays of sin, not holidays of flesh and blood, holidays of unbridled revelry, as often happens. Many Christians, starting to celebrate in spirit, end up in the flesh, in sin: drunkenness, gambling, debauchery, and so on. This day was hard for me, the day of three christenings in unventilated rooms, with an extremely unclean atmosphere, and I was spiritually and physically dysfunctional due to the satiety of the birthday girls (Maria Evgrafovna and Maria Artamonovna and Ekaterina Stepanovna). I barely performed the christening after reading all the prayers. Friday of Holy Week. This day I have suffered greatly mentally for my hard-heartedness and insults to three beggar boys who often came up for alms; I repented for a long time, prayed, both walking along the street and at home, falling before God, and after repeated prayers and dejection of myself, I finally received mercy and forgiveness from the Lord at the beginning of ten o’clock in the morning. Then he lay down to rest. They do not trust the builders of the trusteeship to see the job through to the end; they complain about the non-existence of the charter of the House of Diligence and financial reporting. Put it on display. The winter passed and nothing was done for the cause; The rector and everyone will leave, and again nothing will happen, they say. Four o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who accepted my prayer and delivered me from the passion with which I left the house to go in a prayerful mood to the Merchant Wall. On the way back I met Otto Fedorovich Gaud, and a conversation began between us about the House of Diligence. Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who has now delivered me for my deep, reasonable, heartfelt repentance from hardness of heart towards the poor (to whom I gave alms with displeasure and grief). I was wounded and killed by my own sins, I was in cramped conditions, and when I strongly cried out to the Lord for salvation, He had mercy on me, pacified me, revived and expanded my heart - and how I suddenly felt joyful and light, light and cheerful! Glory to the most merciful Lord! I thank the Lord, the wise farmer of my soul, who through sorrow plucks from it the deadly thorns of sins and various passions, takes away from it sinful rudeness and callousness and does not allow it to die a sinful death, more lamentable than the physical one. I thank You, Lord, for the sorrows and hardships with which You admonish me and turn me to the path of Your righteousness. Everything in us is contrary to God: thoughts, feelings, intentions, memories, imaginations, various dreams, intentions, undertakings, plans of poor quality, words and actions, for everything is permeated with the impurity of sin, pride, vanity, pride, self-adoration; we give honor, service and wonder not to God, but to ourselves, our beauty, our wealth, our intelligence, our ingenuity, our strengths, our connections. We are extremely dreamy, proud, proud, envious, vain; we have become gods, we have become gods or want to become such by our own willfulness, by our self-love and pride, by our vanity, by our countless riches, which we have accumulated through our greed, hard-heartedness, stinginess, untruth, by our social position, by our pleasures and enjoyments, which we constantly indulge in, by our misused arts, and we lure inexperienced people into our networks, in our false way directed education, in his proud, arrogant little mind, in his strong physical build. After Matins. What scrupulous pride and devilish pride I have! Today, during Matins, the rector, through the watchman, and not himself personally, conveyed to me the governor’s proposal to hold a collection in the cathedral in favor of the Mariinsky Trusteeship for the care of the blind (dated April 2, No. 681) on the Week of the Blind, May 2, and I was offended and embarrassed, fell into cramped conditions, sorrow and hellfire, expressing my bewilderment to the rector about this; I heard an answer from him that he did it without any ulterior motive, by accident, and I, having repented of my pride and suspicion, calmed down, falling to the throne of the Lord in the Pokrovsky chapel. Oh, how passionate I am and have not yet been renewed, corrected, humbled, or meek in the depths of my soul. What was the fast for? Confession? Repentant prayers, chants, bows? Tenderness and tears? Why did you celebrate the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ so solemnly and joyfully? If my spiritual resurrection, correction, renewal, sanctification, reconciliation with God and with myself, with my conscience, with the eternal laws of truth and holiness have not yet followed, if a radical, complete change for the better has not followed in me, then why were all the small, but sometimes very diligent works of self-examination, repentance, good deeds, albeit unclean? I beat the air and didn’t get the job done, didn’t achieve the goal. Unless the Lord builds the house of the soul, the builders labor in vain [Ps. 127:1]. Didn’t I work without You, Lord, to build a spiritual home? - With You, with You, may I create and may I build it, Lord! Three and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who, through the prayer of my repentance, delivered me from the consequences of irritation and anger towards the rector, Father Paul, who extremely unreasonably and tendentiously, hostilely ordered that the people I sent to wash with salt should leave without doing their job and without fulfilling my Klyucharsky order, and other people, church watchmen, would not sweep the floor, on which there were whole pounds of dust. The Lord had mercy and pacified me and watered me with the dew of His grace. And the people did, on my orders, everything I ordered. He, the abbot, should not interfere in his own business. Do not be discouraged if sometimes you are struck by invisible enemies, for example, when reading the Holy Gospel or pronouncing prayers and exclamations of public liturgical services. This is allowed for your humility and contrition of heart. Here the old man is struck, and let him die, perish, be put aside, and a new man arise in his place. I thank the Lord for visiting me with His mercy and deliverance during my service of the all-night vigil on the day of Antipascha, when, as a result of a long (week) non-service, I became extremely weakened and seemed to die mentally, not having the strength to fight the invisible enemies who mercilessly attacked my weakness; I begged the Lord in repentance to come to my aid, and He immediately plucked me from the jaws of the omnivorous serpent. Resurrection of Fomino. I thank the Lord for the gift of warmth and tenderness during the reading of the Akathist to the Mother of God and the canon to the holy Guardian Angel, for deliverance from grief, crampedness and spiritual deadness before the liturgy and during its celebration, for the gift of tears of tenderness, for goodwill in the service, for the life-giving communion of the Holy Mysteries, for sufficient, although incomplete, boldness when reading the prayer behind the pulpit, for the kind word about the resurrection of the dead, belonging to Bishop Nikolai of Tambov and Shatsky 136. After the prayer service there was a prayer service in the church, and I could not read the Gospels and say exclamations, just like at the prayer service in the second officer’s wing at Mr. Captain Malichkin’s. During Vespers, I was extremely embarrassed and angry with the sexton for not preparing the menstrual Menaion; due to embarrassment and spiritual mortification, I could not speak the final litany and did not pronounce a single dismissal properly, but crushed both of them, I was broken morally and physically, a living dead. In this state I spoke with Burachki, Evgeniy and Pavel; after the conversation, I, killed, tormented by demons, turned in repentance to the mercy of the Lord in the Pokrovsky chapel, fell with the most lively hope to the holy throne, and - oh, a glorious miracle! The Lord revived me, a dead man, destroyed the bonds of hell in my soul, gave me His sweet Divine peace, heart space, lightness, boldness, light, strength, spiritual joy, for which I heartily thanked the Lord, who saves me incessantly. He performed the christening in the house of Philip Stepanov cheerfully, without stumbling, and a prayer service with the new father, Deacon Nikolai Petrovich Stefanovsky, also with feeling. Glory to God for all His mercies and great help. Amen. Fear, like a cursed adversary, is strong and in a hurry to corrupt God’s most beautiful creation - man with seduced thoughts, vile, nasty, evil, blasphemous feelings, ghosts of sin, but do not be discouraged and do not despair, man, but trust in the Lord, who redeemed you with His suffering and He shed His all-redemptive and life-giving blood and death for you. Do not be afraid, just believe [Mark 5:36] - and you will be saved. Through my external rage and anger against Father Pavel the rector (in absentia) and today against the sexton Mikhail Bystryakov, I destroyed the entire law of the Lord, which consists of love, I fell into the devil’s malice because of unimportant things, while I only caused myself the greatest harm with my malice, and did nothing to the culprits, even though the deed could have been done without anger and noise. I repented of this before God, and He forgave me, being abundantly merciful, obedient and gracious. Sincerity, true love for God and for people is taken away by the bodiless enemy from my heart and from the hearts of men, sharpening our hearts in earthly love, false, unclean, illusory, dreamy, ungodly, deadly, love of selfishness and profit, carnal love, love of vain clothing, temporary housing and its surroundings, love of distinctions and advantages in service, love of the womb. and his pleasures, the consequence of which is the stench and illness of the body, love for harmonic, earthly, vanishing sounds that do not lift souls to God, do not arouse in the souls any feelings of repentance, nor feelings of gratitude and love for God, do not attune the soul to due surprise and praise to God, for sounds that fruitlessly hit the nerves or pamper it, but do not nourish and teach it the duty of its heavenly calling - the saint praise to God, heavenly love, repentance, mercy, truth. By edifying ourselves with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, according to the Apostle [Eph.5:18–19], to the glory of God and to our good and blessedness, gaining victory over the passions, learning the truth of God, repentance, thanksgiving, praising God, the Mother of God, the holy Angels and the holy saints of God, and by practicing hymns and worldly songs, what do we learn, what do we gain, tell me in all honesty? What do we gain as Christians, as children of God, as heirs of the Kingdom of God? How are disciples of Christ God? Nothing, and if only nothing, but sometimes we lose the purity of our hearts and incur corruption, learning the feelings of earthly, unclean love. Monday. I thank the Lord, who delivered me today before Matins from great confusion, distress and sorrow caused by incorporeal enemies, and even during Matins who granted me His heavenly, life-giving help against them. The fight was extremely stubborn; I spoke other exclamations or offerings at the Great, Petitionary and Pure Litany with the greatest effort, extremely rarely, in order to be able to say everything. Glory to the Lord, who protects and has mercy on those who serve Him, who is thrice-holy and glorified from every creature, from every breath! Nine o'clock in the morning. After mass and after classes at the gymnasium. God! I thank You for the multitude and multiplicity of grace-filled powers that came from Your goodness and strength for my salvation before the liturgy, during the liturgy and after it (because of twenty-five kopecks the enemy caught it, and because of the grief that arose on the rector, which was overcome by grace, and because of an unclean thought, which was driven away by grace, and the feeling of prodigalness was destroyed); I rejoice in all Your powers and Your mercies that were in me, Lord, especially after communion of the Holy Mysteries, with which I was completely renewed, reconciled, spread into my heart, and completely revived. But the enemy tried hard to steal the treasure of truth and holiness from my heart and to wound my heart, to defile it either with bitterness, or impurity, or fear, or self-interest; Only by the grace of Christ did he overcome everything and survive. Glory to the Lord, who delivered me from great distress many times before mass, during mass and after it, or after a prayer service, at which I did not utter the words of Christ due to the annoyance of invisible enemies, and release, for which I repented and had mercy. Oh oh! How the devil wants to close my lips of heart and body and, unfortunately, he often does! But You, Christ God, deliver me from his dirty tricks and various intrigues. I read the pulpit perfectly, the dismissal said all bravo! I thank the Lord, who delivered me just before sleep from the choking thought of prodigal thoughts through my prayer and granted me a peaceful, healthy sleep. Thank you for the gift of health of soul and body. Confirm, God! Love your neighbor as yourself [Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31]. Alas for me! The evil demon does not allow me to pray sincerely in litanies and prayers for all people, for the Tsar and for everyone who is in power, he confuses me in the great, petitionary and intense litanies, in the prayer for the Tsar issued by the Synod, he confuses, persecutes, pursues, darkens, oppresses, and shames me. God! Grant me to sincerely and easily pray for everyone as for myself. Yes, through gluttony the enemy is doing terrible things to me: today during Matins he devoured and killed my soul through instant impatience and anger at the sexton Bystryakov for pointing with his finger the place of reading the canon (the sixth canon), although I myself knew what to read; the enemy perverted this case too, and in essence I looked at the good service of the reader as [an] meddling in something other than his own business and a desire to teach (oh, pride! oh, pride! oh, tyranny! oh, satiety! For from satiety this is impatience, this pride, this irritability) and became embittered at him, saying with anger: “Go away, I know it myself!” But immediately an evil spirit, or a whole horde of them, entered into me, and I could no longer get rid of them; when pronouncing the small and petitionary litanies, he crumpled them up, but did not say the serious one at all; he did not read the prayer to Christ, the True Light, in order to avoid the devil’s theft, but sang loudly, so as not to allow the enemy to tear out the beautiful words. At the end of Matins, I was in great, severe, painful agony with my enemies, I often fell in prayer of repentance to the Holy Altar in the Pokrovsky chapel, and finally God’s mercy overcame my anger, delivered me from it and its terrible torment and gave me peace, silence and freedom. Remember, Lord, Thy servant, the sinner and repentant Olympias, and have mercy on her according to Thy great mercy, for there is no sin that overcomes Thy love for mankind, as I have experienced on myself many times and as I know from the history of the Old and New Testaments. Thou didst not retreat, O Lord, having created all things, until Thou didst raise us to heaven 137. What does it mean: you raised him to heaven? This means that the Lord really opened up heaven for us, which was closed by sins, and He Himself ascended and sat on the throne of the Divine and, according to His humanity, made us sit down with Him, that is, human nature, so that very, very many saints ascended to heaven and stand before the throne of God; and even on earth he already elevates us to heaven and makes us heavenly when he vouchsafes the most pure, immortal, heavenly Mysteries of His Body and Blood: is not he who partakes of the Body and Blood of the Lord truly, with faith and love and the fear of God, elevated to heaven? Before mass and during it, especially at the beginning, and throughout it, the Lord granted many mercies of deliverance, peace and boldness to me, an unworthy one, through my prayer of repentance. He received life-giving communion, read the pulpit with boldness and tenderness, slowly, all the way to the end; Before the dismissal, the devil troubled me with thought and fear because of the kopecks left with me in favor of the poor from the funeral (Radunitsa), because of which he could not say the dismissal, but crumpled it up; I couldn’t read the Gospels well at the prayer service; through the prayer of repentance, the Lord delivered us from the oppression and forgave us; at Vespers, with difficulty, he spoke the great litany, pleading and intense; The enemies constantly exposed me to hell, but finally, after fighting and falling to the holy throne, they retreated - it became easy, and at the funeral service the officer was again irritated, embarrassed, pressed, not allowing him to pray. Evening. Today, before mass and during mass, the Lord repeatedly showed His immeasurable mercy and power in me, delivering me from the hellish sorrows and hardships that befell me for my irritability and anger at the beggars, at the watchmen (due to spilling oil on the marble floor), then at the sexton Mikhail Bystryakov (due to raising his voice when singing I Believe). In the latter case, the devil, with his terrible seduction and malice, terribly excited me, depressed me like a tree leaf, shook me and almost completely swallowed me - I was so upset, I became embittered at the sexton for his inconstancy in his voice! But even here the Lord did not abandon me, and although not completely, he delivered me from the very interior of the murderous serpent, and I received Holy Communion quite peacefully; However, I didn’t read the entire prayer behind the pulpit, I crumpled up the dismissal (Wednesday), at the prayer service I didn’t read the Gospel, and at the memorial service I concealed exclamations and dismissals. At Vespers I had difficulty saying the Great Litany, but the rest was good; At the funeral service in Sorokin’s house, I couldn’t say exclamations and dismissals because of the dreams of the devil (because of my stomach, because of the mere thought that I would be at the Machigins’ in the evening). For repentance and falling with faith and hope to the holy throne, the Lord mercifully delivered me from the fierce wolf. The reason for the increase in voice expressed by the sexton is very solid, and the increase was not a matter of whim on his part or annoying me, but even here he is ready to please me - he is so lenient and peaceful, and the devil slanderes him and even induces him to shun, like uncleanness, the warmth from his hands when he gives clothes for vestments. All temptations and worries come either from anger, pride and pride, or from addiction to temporary, perishable things of my imperishable soul, in general to appearance. But the spiritual and eternal must always be preferred to the material and disappearing. I thank the Lord for the life-giving miracles of His mercy and power in me, manifested this morning in church at the beginning of Matins and then repeatedly throughout it, so that only by the grace of God I got rid of the countless deadly snares of the enemy and peacefully, without stumbling, completed the entire Matins. Then, on the way to the funeral service at Sorokin’s house, when my ethereal enemies confused me with grief at [Gerasimovna], who apologized for bad tea, for secret repentance the Lord again delivered my heart from darkness and gave me the grace to carry out the entire funeral service without stumbling. After mass. Before the beginning of the mass and during its celebration, the Lord repeatedly delivered me, after the prayer of repentance, from sorrows and oppression and gave me tears of tenderness; He served without stumbling, he received life-giving communion, he did not read the entire pulpit (he missed the sanctification of those who love the splendor of Thy house: Thou glorify those... us who trust in Thee because of the fact that he imagined Lamanova in the church that served the remembrance), he did not fully say the dismissal. At the funeral service at his dismissal, he did not utter the initial words: The living and the dead, Christ, our true God, risen from the dead, was possessed by the prayers of His Most Pure Mother, the glorious and all-validated Apostles, our reverend and God-bearing fathers and all the saints, the souls of His servants who departed from us... - and was extremely wounded because of this... Repentance, forgiveness. At Vespers, he stole the Great Litany out of embarrassment... then he corrected himself by the grace of God. At Mishustin’s funeral service at seven and a half o’clock in the evening, he hid the litany out of embarrassment, on his release he corrected himself by the grace of God and calmly and rarely pronounced out the entire release and eternal memory... What peace and contentment after that! Oh, if only everything were always like this! Give, Lord! Achieve complete sincerity in all prayers and supplications, petitions and thanksgivings, praises, defeating the guile, coldness, and passion of your heart. All confusion and deadness, temptation in the depths of your heart during prayer come from your passions that control you, and from a lack of love for God and your neighbors. Love casts out fear, because in fear there is torment [1 John 4:18]. God! Grant me by Your grace to achieve perfect simplicity, truth and holiness, so that not a single sin, not a single shadow of sin remains in me. Today, too, the Lord Jesus Christ surprised me with His mercies, which I felt and delighted me greatly, both during the service of Matins, especially during the recitation of the Great Litany and during the canon after the sixth canon and before the prayer to Christ, the True Light, and especially after Matins at home, where I came in the greatest fiery satanic temptation regarding the unannounced prayer service from Sophia Vasilievna after Matins, when I was completely ready to leave and already left the altar. What reluctance attacked me, anger, resistance, disobedience, contempt, pride, laziness and, on top of all this, mortal tightness, the burning sensation of a thousand snake stings, confusion, darkness and gloom! I couldn't read or sing! He started badly, continued, or rather, shortened it, and ended in shame and cramped conditions! He then fell to the holy altar (Pokrovsky chapel) in repentance, but there was no depth and sincerity of repentance; This is how I left the church, or almost this way, I gave alms with annoyance and came home. Here I fell firmly to the Lord in repentance and spiritual hope, and the most merciful Lord had mercy and granted deliverance from all evils and the peace of God with boldness. Glory to His invincible mercy! In the future, we must always willingly fulfill the pious desires and requests of parishioners. If I had willingly fulfilled Sofia Vasilievna’s requests, I would not have fallen into spiritual trouble, but would have been calm and content, having fulfilled my duty, and for my stubbornness, willfulness, caprice, disobedience, unkindness, what trouble I fell into - I simply perished, the snake devoured me, I descended to hell. And all because of the desire for peace of my flesh: I wanted to rest as soon as possible! Here's your vacation! Oh, damned one! I humiliated both the Lord and the Lady, and the servants of God, and the servants of God Sophia and Alexandra (Kamenogradskaya), and their relative, and other people who prayed willingly at the prayer service! Have mercy, Lord! (For yesterday’s gluttony in the Duma I was punished, and the enemy cruelly wounded me for zeal for God during Matins: I irritated him with zeal for the service and zealous singing and prayers.) After mass. I thank the Lord, who filled me today with the miracles of His many-merciful deliverance: since after the unsuccessful beginning of the liturgy with reading, Christ is risen and Glory to God in the highest... Lord, my lips... (I was embarrassed, hurried, did not pronounce); deliverance followed after the great litany upon falling to the holy throne; the second - after the great entrance, before the very end of the litany, the Lord delivered from terrible anxiety due to a feeling of envy of the [hospital] priest, whom he saw through the window seeing off a rich deceased; for the third time after the prayer service, and especially for the fourth time after the funeral service, at which he stole his leave. How many truly deaths and how many revivals of the all-merciful Savior! Glory to Thee, Lord! I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace to celebrate Good Vespers with Compline and the hesitant steps of my heart upon the arrival of the ktitor and the head of the city Nikitin at the choir, who, through my prayer, affirmed in the altar upon touching the Holy Altar. Why is the sky called the firmament [Gen.1:6]? Because the luminaries and planets all firmly follow the laws of the Creator for thousands of years and because the Angels and all the inhabitants of heaven firmly fulfill the will of God. This is a great lesson for us. More than once I did not celebrate the liturgy with dignity, completely, sincerely, with fiery love for God and for humanity, about whom and for whom it is performed (about everyone and for everything). We must always deliberately and seriously prepare for its accomplishment by thinking about God, reading the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Holy Fathers, fasting, almsgiving, and frequent prayer. Saturday. You surprised me, O Master Lord, with Your great mercy and power in my greatest distress from invisible enemies and my passions (self-love, voluptuousness, irritability, stinginess and hard-heartedness). You showed Your mercy in me during Matins and especially at the end of it, when evil demons attacked me and ulcerated me, confused me, tormented me, killed me mentally for evading the struggle with them while pronouncing the petitionary and special litanies. It's in the church. And at home, after a fervent prayer of repentance for my hardness of heart towards the poor (I sent many away without alms, having already given to more than seventy people), for which I was in extreme distress, confusion, and anguish, I received forgiveness and peace and great mercy from the Lord. He was completely healed, who was completely covered in sinful ulcers. Glory to the Lord! After mass. I thank the Lord for the mercy and salvation of me, unworthy, before the beginning of the mass, at the beginning of the mass of the Great Litany, then after the Great Entrance, and finally after the requiem service before the consumption of the Holy Gifts (at the requiem service I did not pronounce the dismissal). I also forgot to write down God’s deliverance after the prayer service, at which I did not read the Gospel enough and thus received an ulcer in my soul, from which the Lord delivered me for repentance. The Lord showed me another great deliverance at the entrance to the gymnasium while climbing the stairs, when in repentance I called on the Lord to grant me forgiveness, peace, freedom and boldness, but my fault was the reluctant giving of alms to the townspeople, since they pursue me everywhere. The Lord quickly and powerfully delivered: I felt the sweet streams of heavenly life, peace and freedom. Resurrection. (Myrrh-Bearing Women.) I thank and glorify the Lord, who performed miracles of His mercy and salvation in me today before the liturgy and at the beginning of it, when the Lord, through my prayer of repentance, exchanged deathly oppression for the life-giving space of the soul, confusion for the world, and instead of sin, He established truth. I thank the Lord for the tears of tenderness, which are the gift of His grace to my soul, for the unfailing service before the prayer behind the pulpit, for the life-giving communion of the Holy Mysteries, for the word of edification given to me and communicated to the people on this day during the liturgy, and for the well-spoken dismissal of the liturgy. I especially thank you for the greatest miracle of restoration of me, who after the liturgy fell into the sin of stinginess, love of money and hardness of heart at the entrance to our courtyard and then into my apartment through the multitude of beggars. I regretted giving the boys ten kopecks each, but gave six and seven each (to three - twenty), and when they begged strongly, I easily, but with grief, tore one of them by the ear, and at the entrance to my home, when perky poor Natalya began to demand that I place her somewhere, I impatiently and angrily handed her twenty kopecks and told her to leave, that I could not accommodate her, that I had no shelter. This love of money, this hardness of heart and anger deprived me of the grace of righteousness and peace, which I received after communion of the Holy Mysteries, and was the cause of hellish sorrow and oppression; I repeatedly fell to the Lord in repentance with a great inner heartfelt cry, and finally the Lord turned His face to me again, forgave me and revived me, calmed me, spread me and consoled me. Glory to the miracle of realization! What grace did I have! And what I lost and what I received again - what grace, what righteousness, what peace! Glory to my greatly gifted Lord Jesus Christ! Nine and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who performed a miracle of salvation in me through the prayer of my repentance and gave me the most repentance, sincere heartfelt tenderness (for the harsh treatment of the poor and for the reluctant giving of meager mercy to them due to their frequent petition). I repented of the evil movement of my heart and will and of the wrong direction of thoughts, I repented with all my heart, with all my thoughts, with all my willpower, because I sinned with the same forces and with the same strength, and the Lord revived me, who had been killed, giving me streams of life and destroying mortal currents and waves, bestowing peace, freedom, boldness, righteousness. Glory to Thy good obedience, kindness, and beneficence, O Lord! I thank the Lord for delivering me from the sorrow and cramped conditions that befell me in Anna Andreevna Vorotnikova’s apartment during a prayer service for my addiction to Semyonov’s vestments (I was afraid that they would smoke and become overloaded with incense smoke). In repentance, I fell before the Lord after the prayer service and was delivered from the tightness by the mercy and goodness of the Lord. Write a word on Sunday about the blind and say it in the cathedral inviting a donation to the Institute for the Blind. April 13. How long will gold lie in the dung, that is, the soul created in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by the blood of the Son of God? How long will gluttony, satiety, serve the devil, who loves to live in intemperance and voluptuousness? Do you, man, hope for eternal life, that you live inattentively, carelessly, lazily, not caring about virtue, about preparing for the resurrection and the future endless life? Do you cleanse yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, creating holiness in the fear of God [2 Cor. 7:1]? Time is getting shorter every day and hour. After Matins. I thank the Lord, who showed me the greatest mercy during Matins (in the church in the Pokrovsky chapel) through the prayer of repentance for gluttony, greed, hard-heartedness towards the poor, in anger at them and in reproaching them (he said: I will give you the devil). I was in sorrow, crampedness, fire, but after sincere repentance, the Lord had mercy on me, delivering me from sorrow, cramping and burning fire and giving me peace, cool dew, a stream of life, silence, tranquility, lightness and space. I thank the Lord for the sincere singing and reading during Matins in a clear and loud voice. (The lower teeth in the left gum hurt a little. Heal, Lord!) Thursday. I thank the Lord, who, through a sincere prayer of repentance, revealed in me the miracle of His mercy in the garden near the house of the General Staff, where He [led] me from spiritual death to life, from cramped conditions to space, from a punitive rod to mercy, from confusion to peace. I suffered worthily for my malice and hard-heartedness towards the beggars, of whom one of the guys who pestered me (when alms had already been given to him) kicked in anger, and soon I myself was wounded in soul and suffered from hellish cramped conditions all the way to the gymnasium. The Lord God is all-good and all-good, generous and wise, but I am all-mean and careless, stingy and stingy! O me, accursed, poor, beggarly, blind and naked in soul! O me of little faith and faithlessness! O I, ungrateful, [ill-hearted] and hard-hearted, self-loving, proud, impatient, selfish, voluptuous, peace-loving, lazy, careless, disorderly, fickle, partial, irritable, crafty, suspicious, nasty, rebellious, wayward, frantic, cowardly, fearful, obsequious, unloving. (I sin due to the hardening of my heart from excessive self-satisfaction with food, drink and sleep.) How long will I be a slave of the womb and the devil and an enemy of God? How long is this cowardly, childish and worse than childish consent to someone’s words when they offer to eat and drink, even if it was completely unnecessary? And how much harm to the soul and body from satiety, how much burden! How much time is wasted, uselessly and to the detriment of me!.. All you have to do is digest your food. Oh, the baseness! Oh, animality! And this is the one serving the liturgy! And this is the servant of the highest Mysteries, heavenly, holy, immortal! And this is a servant of Christ God, a minister of renewal, immortality, incorruptibility? (I thank you, Angel of Christ, my holy Guardian, who always instills goodness and usefulness in me!) My wife offered me milk late in the evening, and I, as a follower, as a slave and slave, obeyed her insistent offer, completely unwillingly, not having the slightest need for food. How long will I neglect, insult and eradicate the image of God in my soul, insult the Lord, who created me in His image, and [will I not begin] to despise everything that is profane, perishable, alien and strive with my whole being for the heavenly, intrinsic, native, eternal? Until I love virtue with all my heart - humility, prayer, abstinence, mercy? How long will I, foolish, offend the all-holy, life-giving Spirit of God, given to me, a sinner? After mass. I thank the all-good and all-powerful power of the Lord Jesus Christ, who performed a miracle of His mercy on me during the liturgy at the beginning and especially after reading the Gospel after my secret, intense prayer of repentance. I repented of my hostility towards the rector, who had to celebrate another mass in the Assumption Church (I served an earlier one), and of my involuntary rancor towards him. And the Lord performed a miracle - he transformed death into life, confusion into peace, cramped space into space, anger into goodness. After high school. I thank and extol the Lord, who revived me, killed by sin for hard-heartedness and stinginess towards the poor, for anger and irritation with my wife and maid for non-compliance with the letter I wrote to General Nadezhda Nikolaevna (oh, partiality, people-pleasing and excessive respect for some and disrespect, dislike, hostility towards others!), although, apparently, as it turned out, this letter was taken for delivery to the address. After sleep, irritation flared up in me with particular force, I was all scorching, but the prayer of faith with repentance, secretly continuing all the way to the gymnasium, bowed to the Lord's mercy, and I felt this wonderful life-giving mercy, climbing the stairs of the gymnasium. What peace the Lord gave, what spaciousness of heart, what boldness, what well-being of soul throughout the lessons and afterwards! When I came home and crawled with my heart into the sin of the voluptuousness of the flesh through sight, and was stung by my soul, and after dinner I repented heartily, with my heart recognizing the One God as essential and eternal sweetness, beauty, goodness, and all earthly sweetness, beauty, like smoke, disappearing, fickle and charming and because of the charm and abuse of mortality - suddenly again I received from the Lord permission from the bonds of sin and again peace, space, spiritual sweetness, righteousness and simplicity of heart. Glory to the Lord! After Vespers. The Lord showed me a new and great mercy upon my arrival home from vespers after my new orgy of anger and shouting at the poor and refusal to fulfill their desires and requests. I gave them as little money as I wanted, but they asked for much more. I considered them unreliable and lazy. After this anger towards them, I was completely, with all my soul, wounded, confused, died, but through intense repentance I bowed to the Lord’s mercy and came to life again, was pacified, and renewed. Glory to the wonders of Your mercy, O Lord, within me. Thus have mercy on all who lead You, O merciful and righteous God. On the Week of the Paralytic, take yourself as an example and proof. The Lord Jesus Christ showed countless miracles of healing in me, a paralytic. Glory to Him! By the healing of the paralytic for thirty-eight years at the Sheep's Font, the Divinity of the Risen One is proven (against heretics), as well as by the healing of the man born blind, His glory is revealed as the Almighty Son of God, the Creator of the world and the human race, and the story of the Samaritan woman shows that He is the source of our life, temporal and eternal. Eleven and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who right now, after an intense prayer of repentance, delivered me from the corrupting soul and body of the prodigal, painful, deadly, dishonorable, absurd, insane. I thank the Lord, who inspired the good minister Count Ignatiev with the idea and intention to settle the poor vagabonds and give them work. "New time". April 16 issue. After the all-night vigil in the Assumption Church. I thank the Lord, who revived me, mortified by sin, with the grace of repentance and tearful tenderness, especially when I thought about where I stand (at the holy throne of the Lord of glory), in what rank, in what grace, with whom I stand (with the Angels of glory), what great work has been entrusted to me from God (prayerful intercession for people and the performance of the Sacraments of new grace), how many people present are listening and echoing our prayers, doxologies, thanksgivings, petitions or the words of Christ (the Gospel, or Take, eat... Drink from it all... [Matthew 26:26-27]. But after such mercy of God, the greatest temptation of secret anger at the merchant Degtev, who was tearfully reading the psalms, happened... I was all confused, shocked, until I asked the Lord for repentance with intense prayer pardon and peace (psalms before Polyeleos) Before reading the Gospel, the Lord performed in me the miracle of the resurrection of my soul, deliverance from hell... Such temptations befell me for the greed for meat, from which my heart is completely exhausted and hardened. At the Titkovs’ prayer service in the gymnasium at nine o’clock in the evening, I was also granted by the Lord, after the devil’s cowardice and fear and after repentance and calling upon Him for help, the greatest deliverance and boldness in the service of the prayer service for the blessing of water and pre-school. The short, frequent prayer, Lord, have mercy, is a prayer of repentance and an antidote to sin, which constantly strives to kill us forever. Just as you need to breathe, you need to say this prayer. That is why it is often used in church and at home. Order mania is killing my spiritual life, the life of my heart: as soon as you desire an order on a red ribbon, your soul becomes indignant, darkened, oppressed, and pitifully separated from God - a worthy reward for our vanity! How can you believe when you receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that is from the One God? [John 5:44]. Is not the Sweetest Jesus my glory, my reward, my joy, my treasure? Do I just want to appear and deceive myself and others with an empty appearance, while inside remaining uncorrected, unclean, ugly, stinking? Decorate the imperishable image of your soul with meekness, humility, kindness, abstinence, purity, truth, love, non-covetousness, mercy, forbearance, patience, generosity, purity and chastity, sincerity, humility and obedience, faith and hope, looking to heaven. Leave earthly things to the earth, and not to the heart, which does not rest and is not satisfied with anything earthly and is satisfied only with the heavenly, the Divine, the eternal. Who is more blessed than the holy hermits of ancient, middle and modern times, who were not in the least consumed by the pursuit of earthly distinctions and wealth? Whose entire property was a hair shirt, bread and water, and a wretched cell? Whose glory is more permanent: theirs or the peace-loving ones? Whose peace was firmer, more imperturbable? Is it not them, the hermits? So, away from vain worries, harmful to my soul and separating me from my God, the source of life, true glory, strength, my light, my joy. Amen. (With God I have everything; without Him, having everything, I have nothing.) After late mass in the Duma Church. How many extreme spiritual weaknesses I have, how many mercies and power of God were shown to me today before mass and during mass! When I went with chagrin and dissatisfaction to serve prayer services (to Sidorova, to the stock exchange, to Ankudinov and Reznikov), then for this grief and reluctance I extremely relaxed my heart, fell into crampedness, sorrow, with which it was impossible to serve God, but, walking along the road, I repented, called on the mercy of God and got rid of the cramped conditions and cheerfully served a prayer service at Anna Ivanovna Sidorova; in the end I thought about the Titkovs’ income (from the gymnasium) and became embarrassed; Ankudinov has the same thing at the prayer service, and the Gospel of Matthew: Ask, and it will be given... [Matthew 7:7] I did not finish due to the cramped conditions and relaxation of the enemy; then he gave his word to secretly contribute part of the income taken from the cab driver into the mug - and he defeated the enemy and served good; I served with Reznikov in order and with feeling. In the church before mass, the same story again, grief and cramped conditions because of the old ruble: I decided to finally pay it in - and it became easier. During mass, the weakness is mortal, especially during the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel; barely survived the Gospel: loss of spirit, extreme humiliation; I began to read a prayer about deliverance from sedition - I have no strength, so the accursed one washes me away: I didn’t read it enough, shortened the prayer, then I prayed intensely for deliverance from the insolence of the invisible enemies who are fighting me, for the gift of love for everyone in my heart, and the Lord did not leave me - he gave me tears of tenderness, and I served the rest of the mass with tears of tenderness, took communion in a life-giving, renewing way; I read the pulpit well, with feeling, quietly, not extremely loudly; I didn’t read the end, I shortened it out of doubt; He said the whole sermon well, he said the dismissal was complete. I thank the Lord. Tuesday. I thank the Lord, who did not leave me with internal pain, but who healed me with the onset of damp weather. Yesterday morning I started to have seizures or a fever, as if some kind of blood infection, there was pain in my back, although my appetite was good. The sky was clear; it seems that the atmosphere did not promise a change, although I said in the morning that, apparently, there would be bad weather, either rain or snow, and today my assumption begins to be justified: the sky is covered with solid clouds (cover). (Since yesterday morning I had a toothache and a pain in my left ear, I generally felt some kind of raging blood, a rush due to the approaching big change in the air.) I thank the Lord for the kind prayer service with Marya Terentyevna Mikhailova (easy, very easy, without the resistance of the devil), but it was hard, hard to serve with Yakov Apollonovich Hildebrandt. Ask Krestov, a former high school student, for my book. Burachok's "Words of John of Smolensk". Yesterday, April 19, Monday, I served mass at eight o’clock in the morning for Kuznetsova, and the Lord miraculously blessed me with the service and especially with the communion of the Holy Mysteries, renewing me and strengthening my spirit, weakened by sins. In the evening, due to satiety at dinner, the prayer service at Hildebrandt’s was served restlessly, with great stumbling blocks and omissions, but at Maria Terentyevna’s it was calm, free, without stumbling (the air in the room was clean). Look above... He sang and read Matins quite well, although not with yesterday’s strength and spiritual strength. The voice was unclean from the tea that he drank quite a lot at home. At eleven o'clock, a prayer service at Turkin's after a nutritious snack at home and after sleep - weakness of the heart, demonic fear during the service of the prayer service, omissions in the reading of the Gospel and litanies, prayers of the holy water, impoverishment of grace, cramped conditions, embarrassment, dissatisfaction with oneself. Prayer of repentance before and when visiting the sick Kozlov Mikhail Nazarov, ease. Beggars, small and large, exchanging money, giving alms - voluntary to the boys and reluctant to the big ones (one of them with a sore hand), grief, stinginess, inviting a policeman to drive away the big beggars (three). He deprived himself of the goodness and mercy of God through malice and stinginess and fell into the cramped conditions of hell; bitter repentance at home with tears of anger and stinginess, which they angered the goodness and generosity of God; pardon, healing, peace, boldness. My physical premonition was justified: the sharpness and chills in the blood, the rush of blood to the head, to the ear, to the teeth (on the left side) were before a strong storm and cold and before rainy weather (dust swirled terribly through the streets). It is now ten o'clock in the evening on April 20th. By the grace of God I feel completely healthy. I thank the generous, all-merciful Lord. Hard-heartedness. A rabbit climbed up a tree from being chased by a cat or dog, the dog below (or cat) tried extremely hard to get it and couldn’t, I lifted the dog (or cat) up the tree, and a mortal struggle ensued between them; the rabbit (or other animal) excellently used its paws and hit the enemy in the face, but the strength and greed of the dog or cat overpowered the small animal, and it was grabbed by the teeth of the predatory animal and soon bitten and crushed. I saw the death throes and last breaths of the poor animal. And I, the cruel one, was the cause of the death of the little animal! (Dream.) Oh, cruel heart! For a bloody spectacle, for fun, he gave the powerless to be tormented by the strong! Isn't this a parable? Didn’t I allow the devil to strangle and destroy the sheep of Christ’s flock through my negligence, my laziness and inattention? Keep, O Lord, Your verbal sheep within the fence of Your Church. Remember, Lord, all those who commanded me (and those for whom it is commanded) to pray: Nicholas, Theodore, Paul, Nicholas and many others, protect and save them, guide them on Your path, small and large, those who have not come to age and those of age, those who have matured and the elders. I confess, Lord, Your mercies, which You showed to me yesterday while driving to Pesochnaya Street to the house of Rusanov to the sick Dmitry Vasilyevich Vasiliev (from the Jews): I was wounded and paralyzed by the arrow of voluptuousness from an unclean, lustful view, and for sincere repentance I was pardoned. There is one true, life-giving sweetness and beauty - the Lord God, to always lust after Him alone, to look at His holy beauty insatiably, to enjoy Him worthily and righteously and life-giving, and in this lies eternal life, joy and pleasure of all the righteous and all the angelic ranks! Then the Lord delivered me from the tightness and relaxation that befell me during the admonition of a sick person due to the action of the devil (I could not pronounce prayers due to the deadly breath and resistance of the demon). The Lord again accepted my secret repentance on the way to Alexei Moiseevich Fedorov for a prayer service (wife’s birthday) and delivered me from cramped conditions, comforting me with a feeling of inner peace and freedom; Alexei Moiseevich Fedorov, while serving a prayer service, was confused and confused by the enemy while reading prayers, litanies and the Gospel with the thought: how much to give the sexton for the demand from Vasiliev, performed without the sexton (given three rubles). Selfishness confused, the struggle was hard; From now on, on the way to another birthday girl, Alexandra Ivanovna (in the bourgeois council), I walked and repented, and again received mercy, and served the prayer service with spiritual strength and freedom; then at Mr. Baranovsky’s he read prayers to the mother in labor calmly, firmly, unhindered. God bless! My salary is Christ God. He is my every good, infinitely superior to all earthly blessings. April 24, 1982. The peace-lover does in everything the will of the devil, and not the will of God: with his evil eyes, he looks at everyone and everything with evil eyes, he thinks with his thoughts, he feels with his feelings, he fulfills his evil will, he carries around his bad images in his imagination, he speaks his words, he does his deeds and, what is especially bad, he does not notice and does not realize that he is his slave, and sometimes he completely denies the existence of evil spirits. Oh, the cunning of crafty demons! Thursday. After Matins. I thank the Lord, who revived me, killed and tormented by my sins against the poor Chukhonian, whom I, in anger for his deceptions (perhaps involuntary), tore out by the hair, thereby showing my pride, anger, selfishness, carnality, greed, lust, anger. I heartily repented of all this, weeping bitterly and condemning myself, and invincible mercy defeated my malice, infinite goodness surpassed my iniquities, after a bitter death I tasted the sweetness of life, feeling in myself streams of grace and mercy, peace, tranquility, spaciousness, boldness, righteousness. Glory to the all-merciful Lord, but shame on my face, me, uncorrected, ungrateful, inattentive, lacking in faith, indecent. Evening. I suffered greatly mentally and physically due to gluttony in the morning, vanity (placing the chain of the cross correctly on my chest) and stinginess regarding the poor: I was struck by sorrow and cramped conditions, and for a long, long time I begged (in my repentance) the Lord for mercy, healing and revival, walking slowly along the road to the gymnasium; Before entering it, the Lord delivered me. But when I drank tea at Titkov’s and ate cheese, having no need, my heart hardened again, again I lost grace, again fell into sorrow and oppression, again repentance, languor, and already in the fifth lesson God had mercy on me. At the Morozovs he engaged with a cramped, timid heart, powerless, and dined with them in a cramped heart. During the all-night vigil I sang and read gracefully and refreshingly. Prayer services in the courtyard of the houses of Nazarov and Dementyev were served with God's help decently, calmly, but with struggle. Before mass, defeat of the heart from nasty fighting enemies, relaxation, coldness; after the prayer of repentance there is mercy, a feeling of freedom, peace. Before the Great Entrance and after it, even during the canon of the Eucharist and then until communion itself, there is a terrible inner decline, heart powerlessness, coldness, sorrow, crampedness due to worldly addictions, namely: desires for a salary for lessons in trusteeship, which means bribes, self-interest, silver. Oh, how this untimely desire and wish has humiliated, killed, bound, shamed me! Only by the special mercy of God, which I asked with tears from the Lord, did I get rid of shame, crampedness and spiritual death, mental darkness and dumbness during the performance of the Sacrament and then! So much for the silence of the passionate flesh, and standing with fear and trembling, and not thinking about anything earthly! I became completely earthly, with thoughts, feelings, aspirations, against my will! Only by the special grace of God did I get rid of this absurdity just before communion and received communion victoriously, life-giving; I read the pulpit well, and said the dismissal too. God bless! Resurrection. Is it still possible that even after today’s terrible temptation and the overcoming of the enemy during and after the early liturgy, after the mortal tightness of heart and all the abuse of me in Gostiny Dvor during the service of prayers from evil demons, I will not be convinced of the extreme evil of gluttony and satiety, especially on the eve of the service of early mass? Saturation is real suicide, the eternal murder of the soul created in the image of God. Gluttony makes a person's heart coarse, callous, cold, hard-hearted, uncompassionate, deceitful, unmerciful, lazy and inactive. During mass it was extremely difficult for me: my heart was lifeless, rough and cold as stone, powerless and subject to all sorts of cunning of evil spirits. Upon arriving home in sorrow and cramped conditions from the temptations of the enemy (at the Neustroevs’ shop), I earnestly prayed to the Lord in repentance for deliverance from sorrow and cramped conditions, and the Lord sovereignly and mercifully delivered me from cramped conditions and gave me peace and space. Glory to the Lord! Twice I cried bitterly (secretly) at the prayer services of the Neustroevs, Paul and Plato - it was so hard for me from demonic violence, embarrassment, cramped conditions, powerlessness to pronounce the words of the Gospel, prayers, exclamations, litanies. The Lord had mercy on my tears and helped me serve (otherwise fear, timidity, cowardice and weakness of heart overcame me). (Yesterday Markov had gluttony.) I thank the Lord, who showed me help during two christenings, a wedding and a prayer service (in the house of Alexandra Petrovna Murashova in the apartment of Prokopiy Evdokimovich Oleinikov). After the last prayer service, I sat and treated myself, and at that time I was desecrated and killed internally by one unclean thought, but in repentance I raised my gaze to the Lord, to the icons, and He immediately delivered me, giving me peace, righteousness, and freedom. By the grace of God I came [to the church] whole after severe wounds from evil demons: now the sting of fear and fear, now the sting of abomination, now the sting of evil suspicion and suspiciousness, they stabbed into my heart and stopped my voice, the speaking of litanies, exclamations. But glory to the Lord, invincible in mercy: every time I cried out to Him in repentance for protection and salvation, He delivered and saved me, healed the wounds of my heart, scorched by the remorse of the most evil, crafty, vigilant adversaries (and the sexton’s inclinations were extremely unpleasant to me, and the presence of the officer and some strange girls (Colonel Zarudnev): they seemed to me to be watching by me, and not by those praying - oh, wickedness!). After mass. The most merciful Lord delivered me from many serious, deadly temptations and internal falls according to my faith for the sake of my sincere repentant inner prayer at the beginning of the liturgy when my heart was deadened due to the constant slander and temptations from enemies at the beginning of the liturgy, for they do not allow me to calmly either perform the proskomedia or begin the liturgy of the catechumens; then after reading the prayer for deliverance from sedition and keeping the sovereign, then at the great entrance, then at the prayer behind the pulpit, from which he missed several expressions, at the dismissal, at which he missed some saints due to stupid embarrassment, and especially after the memorial service, at which he stole the words of the dismissal, namely the sweetest words of the Risen from the Dead... and others. After the memorial service there was a prayer service, and at the prayer service for reading the Gospel, I emerged victorious in the power of the fortress of Christ, which trampled down my fiercest enemies: I read the Gospel firmly and said leave. At home after dinner, the Lord delivered me for internal repentance from the inclination of the prodigal inner in thought and heart movement. Thank the Lord! Grant me, Lord, to sincerely pray for the entire fulfillment of the 138 church, that is, for all its members, living and dead, and to sincerely call upon all the saints as intercessors with reverence and love. Oh, how lofty, heavenly and heavenly the liturgy is, and how unworthily I always perform it! How unclean, low, earthly, not heavenly, sinful, not holy I am! What dirty tricks and impurities the adversary puts into the heart even during the liturgy, when everything must be filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit! What irritability! What an attack on the enemy's nerves! You are afraid of all your weakness, all your sin and passion, all your illness, all your fear and your shadow, when you should be filled with the greatest calm and boldness, dignity, and divine sublimity! After Vespers. My service of Vespers today was associated with the greatest temptations for me: once because of my suspiciousness that I do not attend the school of guardianship for free and for small labors I charge up to [...] rubles a month, omitting many lessons; secondly, because of my embarrassment from the presence of two unfamiliar girls, whom I did not dare even look at. He confused the Great Litany, didn’t say enough, and also the petitionary litany. He only spoke strictly decently in the choir. The serpent's wounds are fatal and fierce; Several times I prayed to the Lord to get rid of them, and the Lord saved me. At Compline, the dismissal was said by everyone, for he prayed strongly to the Lord after being wounded at the dismissal of Vespers (which I stole from fear and embarrassment and wounding) and asked for forgiveness, deliverance, peace and boldness. At prayer services, the serpent is again killed after reading the Gospel incompletely, and after the prayer service there is repentance and healing. The old woman served the prayer service and memorial service calmly for Ekaterina Stepanovna, especially for Evgenia Maksimovna. After these demands, on his way home, he became angry with one beggar, kicked him in rage, then pushed him with his hands and sent him out of the yard, although he later gave him twenty kopecks. Again the death of the heart, and again the prayer of repentance at home on my knees, strong, tearful, and again the Lord had mercy and stopped the streams of death, giving streams of life. Tuesday. God! I thank You for Your wonderful and great mercies, which You surprised me with many times during the service of Matins, delivering me from the bite of fierce demons and giving me healing, peace, strength and strength for heartfelt service; also, after the prayer service that took place at Matins, You healed me from the same demonic wound, when I fell with warm faith before Your throne. After mass. I thank the Lord for admonition and all-powerful help and deliverance from extreme misfortune during the liturgy after the great entrance, when I was mortally embarrassed - sometimes from the thought of rich promises, especially from the fall of a censer with hot coals and burning incense on the carpet in front of the throne, for I dropped it from my hands from the paralysis of my heart with addiction; my soul was confused, agitated, exhausted, pierced by the stings of demons, but I did not fall into despair and, clinging with my heart and lips to Him who sat on the throne, I asked for His mercy, which I soon received, and continued to serve quite calmly, and took communion in a life-giving, renewing way, and read the pulpit calmly, heartily. I had a grave temptation before, before and during the reading of the prayer for the destruction of sedition and the preservation of the sovereign: from addiction to the same orders, my heart became sick, weakened, and died. Oh, damned me! Oh, the deadly charm of earthly blessings! In God alone is my life, peace, my strength, my glory, my light, food, drink, my clothing! Let no one and nothing from here deceive me - the Lord alone is all my treasure, wealth, beauty, strength, glory! After Vespers. I thank the Lord, who showed me His help and mercy during Vespers, then in the apartment of Pavel Stepanovich Burachok, when I cried out to the Lord secretly for deliverance from cramped conditions and despondency, and in the apartment of Prokopiy Evdokimovich Oleinikov (the house of Gerasim Murashov), where I prayed in an unskilled language for the St. Petersburg guests: Paraskeva [E...] Stroganova and her daughter Theoktiste and their children Alexandra and Claudius. Whoever is a carnivore, a glutton, who loves jewelry and is vain about it, who is avaricious and covetous, who is man-pleasing and partial, who loves the distinctions of this world and all the pleasures of the world, he cannot be a lover of God and a lover of souls (loving mankind), for it is impossible for two masters to work [Matthew 6:24], - and how will he sincerely intercede for souls and care about their salvation? I thank the Lord for the prayer service performed without stumbling by His grace after Vespers with the reading of the Gospel to the west, facing the people. I thank the Lord for the manifold and constant manifestation of God’s mercy and power in me through my prayer for my small repentance, for the knowledge of my repentance and my passion. I thank the Lord for covering me with His Divine righteousness. Wednesday. I suffered severe temptations today during Matins and early mass at the very beginning, during the Six Psalms and the Great Litany (from suspiciousness regarding the candles above my head, at the Last Supper); while reading the kathisma, I venerated the holy throne in repentance and prayer, and the Lord delivered me from the darkness of the arrows of the evil one; then, while reading the canon, the enemy mortally wounded me with secret anger at the sexton, who awkwardly, discordantly began to sing - during the canon at the end, the Lord delivered; I did not speak the litany in a solemn and pleading manner for fear of the demon. At mass, first there is mortification, then through the prayer of repentance, revival; at the great entrance there is tightness and sorrow, through prayer there is miraculous salvation and the fulfillment of the Sacrament without stumbling; I read the entire pulpit, and the entire dismissal too. Four o'clock in the evening. Now the Lord, through the prayer of repentance, has delivered me from the death of sin, from the stings of death (from inner voluptuousness), and how many times has the Lord delivered me today, both during Matins, and the early liturgy, and in the gymnasium! Glory to the Lord! Before the evening, ethereal enemies raised in me the greatest, deadly spiritual storm, which disturbed my entire being through an insignificant reason: an indication to my wife and sister-in-law of a thick layer of butter, spread by their beloved servant Anna on a slice, with the words: “That’s why your butter is soon being consumed!” And they slandered the unloved servant Evdokia, as if she was stealing butter. When they heard these words from me and saw the chunk of butter, it was unpleasant for them, that is, I say this to their beloved foolish servant and defend another, and they attacked her, bringing her to tears. This insult outraged me extremely, shocked me all over; I went and came to Vespers, embarrassed, mortified, and before Vespers began, I fell for quite a long time before the Holy Altar with repentance and prayer for the quenching of my storm and the revival of me - and glory to God! The Lord did not leave me, he calmed my soul, but after such terrible excitement I was still afraid to speak the litany, lest my voice be completely interrupted and I would become numb. But he sang well. I gave myself and my household to Christ God, may He, the all-merciful One, guide our paths, may He pacify our lives, may He not allow the widow to offend those whom she wants. God! Measure with the same measure with which she measures others. Teach her Your truth. I thank the Lord for the victories of His goodness and power in me over invisible enemies, for deliverance from their remorse and for the stumbling-free service of Matins, also for deliverance upon coming home from the movement of voluptuousness after I fervently prayed, repenting of delusion; solemnly, in a joyful voice, I read and sang the canon and stichera in praise and stichera. After the great litany, the adversaries forbade me to speak the verses of God the Lord and appearing to us and others. When pronouncing the litany itself, they tried to stutter, and before the litany, when reading the morning prayers, they tried to confuse and entertain, to scatter the thoughts and heart... Countless intrigues!.. And the Lord crushes them all. Glory to the Lord! After mass. How many and how grave are the infirmities and addictions within me, enslaving and exhausting my soul and alienating me from love for God and neighbor! Either an addiction to food and belly (stale pale prosphyra), [...], then to a fair and beautiful robe and to various shiny and precious decorations (a good new cassock of blue damask and velvet, gold embroidered armbands and other dreams of mine), then dissonant singing (sometimes only imaginary, and not in reality) or more usually extended, although harmonious, then vain anger confuses me to the depths, removing me from God and from sincere, fruitful service to Him and His heavenly Sacraments; priestly service, which is the highest, most heavenly service, service to heavenly truth and sacredness, infinite goodness and mercy, incorruptibility and immortality of people; These addictions, which have grown up in me, humiliate, paralyze, often make me unworthy and fruitless and subject me to the righteous curse of God, for it is said: Cursed is the man who does the work of the Lord with negligence [Jer. 48:10]. Anyone from you who does not renounce all his property, says the Lord, cannot be My disciple [Luke 14:33], but we are feverishly concerned about increasing our wealth and fortune and are careless about souls. We strive to saturate the body and leave the soul and souls to melt away with spiritual hunger, we enslave them to earthly vanity, earthly passions, trampling on the image of God. Countless were my internal falls during, before and after the liturgy and cruelty, deadly, but without number the Lord accepted my repentance, and had mercy on me, delivered me, revived me, pacified me, protected me, expanded and lightened my heart, lifted me up, granting me to look at everyone cheerfully and with dignity. How many different idols have taken refuge and live in my soul, alienating it from God and from my neighbors! O gods of many and lord of many, may the Lord of heaven and earth destroy you! Amen. When reading the Lord's Prayer, you must read it with your whole soul, with the participation of your whole mind, your whole heart and your whole will, rationally or meaningfully, with a sincere feeling, with complete zeal and zeal to live holy in all your life, to seek always and everywhere the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, to fulfill in everything the will of God, pleasing, good, saving, to avoid unnecessary worries of covetousness and gluttony, to be content little ones, not to envy, not to bear any grudge against anyone, but to forgive everyone everything that concerns us personally, to avoid temptations and enticements and to fight firmly against all sin, always calling on the Lord God for help, for His is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen. April 30, 1982. Wake up! Friday. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the darkness of temptations and troubles that befell me during and after Matins (Alexandra Ivanovna Tretyakova: during the censing of the church, her face seemed to me astonished 139, unkind, and I secretly became embittered against her through the work of the devil, because of that there were many troubles). Before the confession of the St. Petersburg butcher Gregory and his wife Pelagia. After high school. I thank the Lord, who quickly delivered me from an indecent movement of heart and flesh during a lesson in the first grade after secretly praying to the Lord and condemning myself. After Vespers. I thank the Lord, who has repeatedly delivered me from mental ulcers caused by spiritual serpents, during and after Vespers before confession of the parishioners. Ten o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who showed me the mercy of deliverance through my prayer of repentance as I walked on Bear Street in front of the entrance to the apartment of my nephew and niece. My soul was in mortal distress from my passions, from my ill will, malice, gloating, stinginess and hardness of heart. When I sincerely repented, calling on the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart, the bonds of sins collapsed and I received freedom, peace and boldness, light and strength. And at that moment again the Lord delivered me, after secret prayer, from new cramped conditions. I thank the Lord, who strengthened me to calmly, with sincere feeling, read the prayer (for the second day) for deliverance from seditionists and the observance of our king by God for many years to come. Grant always, Lord, to pray to You with a sincere heart, spirit and truth for everyone, especially for the authorities. Vynu (Church Glav.) - always. Eminence Nicholas (Dobrokhotov; 1800–1864). Prayer of the Eucharistic Canon “It is worthy and righteous to sing Thee...”. Fulfillment (church glory) – completeness. Amazed (Church Glav.) – frenzied, distraught (amaze – lead into frenzy, take away reason).