Diary. Volume VIII. 1865

I • II • III • IV • V • VI • VII • VIII • IX • X • XI • XII • XIII • XIV • XV • XVI • XVII • XVIII • XIX • XX • XXI • XXII • XXIII • XXIV • XXV • XXVI This edition is the first publication of all currently known diaries of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt (1829 - 1908). The diaries cover the period from 1856 to 1898. At the moment, there are no diary notebooks for 1885 - 1890 and 1894 - 1896 and for the period from 1898 to mid-1908. The absence of notebooks over the years does not in any way detract from the significance of the publication, since the missing notebooks would have added some details concerning the life of the righteous man, without adding anything substantive. In connection with the publication of the diaries, it should be said that for the first time they provide the opportunity to compile a true biography of the righteous man, both from the point of view of facts and the essence of his spiritual feat. The currently available biographies of Father John of Kronstadt are somewhat simplified: they are neither an icon nor a photograph, but rather look like a popular print. As an entertaining read, such biographies have a right to exist - but as an aid on the path to salvation, as a spiritual guide, they can do more harm than good, since they can mislead the reader about the life of the righteous, painting a picture of the world around him, in which there was little resemblance to the real, often very harsh reality. Many pages of the diary are written by Father John with the utmost frankness, so that the reader may wonder if he is an ordinary person, Father John - although he is a priest, and perhaps sinners like us. However, a careful reading and study of the diaries of the righteous man shows that no, he is not at all like that and that there is almost an abyss between him and us. What modern Christians are already accustomed to, what constitutes, one might say, the almost everyday side of the life of a modern person, that world of thoughts, which is almost the usual environment of the inner life of a modern Christian and is not even realized by him and is not assessed in any way - this was recognized by the righteous as a bitter fall, requiring on his part the most cruel, merciless reproof. His self-reproach is so great, consistent and persistent that it shows that truly the Spirit of God was at work in him - and even though the Lord allowed him to stumble, He also quickly raised him up. By the strength of his struggle with mental temptations in the midst of the sea of ​​life and in the midst of the world in which he lived, the holy righteous John sets an example of one of the greatest saints of the 19th - early 20th centuries, on whom the great mercy of God rested, which, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, does not depend on the one who struggles, but on God who has mercy (Rom. 9:16). Knowing that Father John loved divine services and himself read the canon at Matins, some priests also try to read the canons at Matins, but often do not get what they expect, because, making extraordinary but isolated efforts, they lose sight of the concern for the hourly and minute-by-minute correction of their soul, the unceasing presentation of their conscience to God, which requires tension of a different quality. In this case, it is no longer a person who strives to do something good from his point of view, but the soul of a person is enlightened, like glass by the rays of the sun, by the word of God, which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword: it penetrates to the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from Him, but everything is naked and open before His eyes: to Him we will give an account (Heb. 4:12-13). Man is judged by it every minute and tries to remove from the soul every stain that is revealed on its clothes by the Divine verb. That is why the diaries of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt begin with an in-depth reading and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. It is impossible to be saved and have the right to live without knowing the Law of Life, without fully studying the will of God, embodied in the Holy Gospel. This is the first commandment of the righteous to all those who are being saved - to read, delving into the content, and again read the Holy Scriptures, delving into the inspired verbs, and judge themselves with them, and as they are fulfilled, again ask the Lord to open the mind to understand what is being read. It is like an unshakable stone on which only everyone can erect the structure of their salvation. From the diaries of Father John, we learn how he struggled with the passions inherent to one degree or another in every person, what his true relationships were with his colleagues in the church, with his wife Elizabeth and with relatives - and these relationships were very far from what is usually portrayed by his biographers. But from the diaries we also learn which path the righteous man followed and what Christian way out he found from the complex collisions of human existence. “What is my diary? – wrote Father John. - Not my praise. He is the story of my sins!” Nowadays there is a lot of talk about a person’s right to personal privacy, that one cannot touch on what a person wrote in his personal diary. Saying this, people forget that at the Last Judgment there will be no personal secrets, innermost feelings and thoughts. To such honorers of personal secrets we will respond with the words of the holy righteous Father John himself, which he wrote, referring to his diary: “Do not destroy this book even after my death: perhaps someone will be found similar to me in thoughts and feelings and will show his deep sympathy for what is written in this book, if not for everything, which I do not dare to hope for (because there may be errors here, with strict criticism), then at least for some parts of it. I consider everything that is good and just in this book not to be mine, but to belong to God, since we are not able ... to think anything from ourselves, as if from ourselves, but our ability is from God [2 Cor. 3, 5]. My only mistakes and shortcomings." The publication of the diaries fulfills the will of Father John, all the more immutable since the testator in this case is one of the great saints of the Russian Orthodox Church of recent times. Hegumen Damascene (Orlovsky) The text of the Holy Scriptures, quoted by the author in Church Slavonic, is given in the publication in Russian translation. The parallel Church Slavonic text of some quotes, necessary for understanding the author’s interpretation, was introduced by the editors and is printed in square brackets: You were rich in every good deed [Church Slavic: you abound in every good deed]. A deviation from the general principle of citation are some poems that are cited in the Slavic language, which seems more appropriate stylistically or semantically. The publication uses the following conventions: (Luke 1.1) - an indication of a quotation of Holy Scripture made by the author; [ OK. 1.1 ] - an indication of the quotation of Holy Scripture made by the editors; [...] – unread word; [glory] – supposedly read word; [animals] is a word missing from the text, but necessary in the context, introduced by the editors. I forgive my brother Konstantin and Nikolai. Where does the dream come from to pay for evil with bitterness? Conquer evil with good. Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult; on the contrary, bless, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing [1 Pet. 3, 9]. But slander, lies [...]. I, all of us, are nothing; everything is God. All sorts of things were brought from those who do not exist 2. We want our orders to be carried out exactly, but we do not want to fulfill God’s commands. Conversations by Eug. Popova 3 in 5th grade. For scrofulous, tea is harmful, milk is good. However, light tea is also good: it warms, nourishes, and clears mucus. Tea strengthens with cream. The beginning of all evil is food, says St. Basil (on the 8th of January, p. 517) 4. Because of food, we turn away from God and hate our neighbor. To a certain extent - and nothing more. God! Teach me to fast. Why am I caressing my flesh? Why do I give her everything pleasant when she does me so much grief? Why do I become her friend when she is my constant enemy? The flesh is the eternal enemy of God. Therefore, it is always necessary to crucify her. We are all one - we are all in the image and likeness of God, we all have one body and members, one mind, one word, that is, with the same laws; there is one God the Father for all, one Christ, one Church; one earth, one sun, air, water - we are one family of God, for which the Heavenly Father has supplied everything in abundance (we are all brothers and sisters), [commanded and invested] love in all. We are one in God; the earth is subjected to us all under our feet: rule it, said God [Gen. 1, 28 ]; the devil is a divider, our envier, who dissects the single body of humanity with malice, pride, envy, stinginess, love of money, lust... Let us pay attention to ourselves and adhere to the commandments of the Master, and always respect and love each other. Write words from the text: Lift up the gates of your princes 5 ... and the King of glory will come in [Ps. 23, 7]. The Only Begotten Son of the Heavenly Father has redeemed us all from the alien and evil spirit and its detractors; This evil spirit, through the gifts of God, distracts us from mutual love through stinginess, while the human measure is small and insignificant, and the gifts of God are infinitely great and inexhaustible. What kind of shepherds are we that we scatter our sheep, and they [...] in different places for no reason and leave their spiritual fathers? Until now, the Lord had provided everything to me with the care of a most tender Father, without my care or worry: I only worked and fulfilled my duties, and He gave me everything I needed to live in the body. Will I still now, after 35 years of experience in life, insult His providence by worrying about what I should eat and drink or what to wear? No: I live with a most loving and caring Father. Yes, I look at everything earthly, at the body itself, as if it were decay and rubbish. All flesh is hay [Isa. 40, 6]. I need the most trifle of food and drink, and I, dumb 6, eat and drink a lot, that’s why I’m dumb. How long will I not hate the treacherous, God-hating flesh from infancy? God! How long will I resist Your holy laws? Speak to the royal family sincerely, simply, calmly, slowly, with respect, like the royal family. In order to entertain our thoughts and hearts, to confuse, to confuse us during the service of God, the devil puts various nonsense into our thoughts and hearts: now human fear, now doubt, now with a passionate feeling, for example, malice, contempt 7 , envy of one’s neighbor, he will confuse the unwary. But all this is the deceit and dreams of the enemy. Pay all your attention to one thing - to the service of God, to God... My soul is buried by passions. Is it your deity or the Lord God who is sweet? Why do you cling to them with your heart? Why are you greedy about them? Why are you bonding with them, subservient to them? The enemy took you prisoner because of your addiction to them. Be a person with the most moderate demands regarding food, drink, clothing, housing and its decoration and various household utensils, as well as regarding people. Let your heart know the only sweetness - Christ, for carnal sweets separate us from Christ, our Life, and cause spiritual death to the soul - darkness, sorrow, crampedness and suffering. Remember the simplicity of your soul and the simplicity of the Director of its life, who was pleased to connect it with the body and supports both in life and prosperity. Remember these three: God, the image of God and the dust; love God and the image of God - man; despise all the sweets and beauties of bodies, things, gold, silver, and clothing. Trust in the Spirit and not in the flesh, in God and not in matter. Like air, everything will be given to you by God, just don’t let God out of your heart. God is all in all and all for all. All creatures are like nothing. I am nothing; everything is God. The opposite opinion is a dream of the devil. We do not have a pastoral, fatherly, cordial, compassionate attitude towards our parishioners as spiritual children. But we must certainly acquire it, like the apostles: we must acquire apostolic love for the flock. Give it, Lord! The Apostle says: be filled with the Spirit [Eph. 5:18], and we are filled with smoke, food and drink and various sweets. The evil one has control over us through everything. We must put off the old man, but we strengthen the old man with various desires. To despise the flesh is evil, sin living in the flesh. Do not be hostile against those who sin, because we are all one sinful body, we all bear the wounds of sins, we all suffer violence from the prince of this age and his hasty power, all slaves are martyrs of sin, pitiful slaves; We all need compassion, advice, prayer for us and do not deserve the malice of our neighbors, for 1) they themselves are not without sins and 2) malice is a new evil, a new insult, a new spiritual wound for us, a new mine that destroys all peace. Fulfill the Lord's commandment to love your neighbor constantly, in all days and hours of your life, without thinking, without inventing any dreamy excuses for hatred or insincerity, coldness, contempt or disregard for him, for example, like the following: he is visiting me at home or often goes to visit to eat and drink, or: I give him or her so much, for so long and so often, but he or she continues to ask me and bother me with your persistent requests; or so-and-so treats me with hostility, has offended or abused me, or slandered me - but, despising all these pretexts as dreamy, loving your neighbor simply, constantly, unchangeably, according to the commandment of the Lord: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 19]. Do not be afraid of lack of anything, but rely completely on God: for love God will send everything; if He is good to the graceless and evil [Lk. 6:35], then isn’t it all the more to those who are gracious and love God and their neighbor? Consider every sin as a dream and smoke, and virtue as an eternal, unshakable stronghold, truth and life. Cover the shortcomings and mistakes of your neighbor with love, endure insults and pray for those who offend you, so that you can make them your friends. Look at all material things as rubbish. I consider everything as rubbish [Phil. 3, 8]. Everything that exists is the thought of the Father, the creation of the Son, completion 9, sanctification and quickening by the Holy Spirit. Treat everything with purity and respect, as the thought and work of God’s hands, especially rational beings. Treat with contempt everything that inspires unclean thoughts and disgust towards the works of God’s hands. All is very good [Gen. 1, 31]. Every Christian is an image of God and a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit, a citizen of heaven, a cohabitant Angels and saints. May you never hesitate to love and honor your neighbor for a single minute. God! help: without You I can do nothing, but with Your strength I can do everything [John. 15, 5]. What fights against our neighbor when he often comes to us to eat and drink, or stays for a long time, or often asks for alms? – Blind, greedy, relying on food and drink and money, our flesh, the devil’s friend, is always seduced by him to the destruction of soul and body. But man will not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4]. God is spirit [Jn. 4, 24]: whoever loves God tries to live spiritually and despises the flesh, does not live according to the flesh in the flesh, but in the spirit. Do not give a flattering, hypocritical kiss to your neighbor, like Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, and do not be like this flattering disciple. When do we give a flattering kiss to our neighbor? When we kiss his lips with our lips, but in our hearts we have dislike, contempt, disgust or envy towards him, or we regret something for him, or when we speak to him softly, but in our hearts we are cruel to him, or when with our lips we invite someone to visit, but with our hearts we drive him away and do not want him to be in our house; With our lips we express our readiness to help, but with our hearts we do not want to help; We caress with our lips, but curse with our hearts. What pride and arrogance and material hope! – we ourselves think to arrange our well-being, independently of God, without relying on God. The more someone lives with you against your desire and eats your bread and salt, the more be kind to him in spite of the demonic anger aroused in your heart for him because with us he lives for nothing, in vain, without doing anything and eats and drinks for nothing. Throw away your reliance on food and drink, on these weak, material elements, and count your body itself as nothing - into dirt, and pus, and dust. Oh, are we not yet enlightened by the bodies of the dead lying in their coffins! O wicked flesh! You don’t feel sorry for anything, no expensive sweets, no expensive clothes, no money, but your neighbor feels sorry for sweets, clothes, and a few kopecks. Where is the commandment: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 19 ]? The work of the flesh is to harbor enmity towards one’s neighbor because of empty and insignificant things, to be alienated, to turn away, to despise him! Oh crazy! Evil! Proud! You are all flesh, my soul! Where is your God, by whom everything exists, lives and moves [Acts. 17, 28], By whom do all the worlds exist and revolve in amazing and harmonious order? Under no circumstances, for any reason, should you be hostile to your neighbor, no matter who he is; otherwise - cramped conditions, fire, darkness and death to the soul. Experience. The sin is grave. Love your neighbor unfailingly, constantly, bluntly, simply, as yourself. Leave the law of flesh and blood (samovar and tea with sugar) during Lent. Be content with black bread and water. To despise the flesh, that is, everything that the flesh loves: sweets, money, expensive clothes, expensive homes, abundantly decorated - despise, because all this harms the soul, turning it away from God and neighbor. Frivolous Kronstadt societies; God gave them over to a depraved mind—to do lewd things [Rom. 1, 28]. Sweets are a sharp, painful sting, fetters for the soul, death of the soul. Despise them. God! help. Hate, despise, subject your flesh to suffering. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. Sweets and addiction to them, pity for them paralyzes, binds, darkens, kills the soul and does not allow us to engage in the affairs of our calling, especially the matter of saving the soul - the most important matter of life, the eradication of passions, contemplation, prayer. But the Lord, through my prayer, had mercy on me - the sting of sweets was removed from my heart. Oh, what peace there is in You, what lightness and sweetness there is in You, what space there is in You, Lord! Thank you! Oh my simplicity 8! O my simple belly! Glory to You! February 18, 1865 How is the devil strong against us? The simplicity of his being, vivacity, vigilance, evil power, flattery, darkness. Let us contrast simplicity with simplicity, vigor and sobriety with vigor and sobriety, with his strength with the power of our Savior, with the deceptions of the enemy - with the truth of the Lord, with his darkness with the light of God, the light of Scripture. Are you really only earth, man? Why do you have all your thoughts about earthly things, your desires for earthly things? How long will you not understand your purpose? If you see that someone is angry with you and looks askance, angrily, do not be indignant at this and do not be angry with him, but kindly show him, for his anger is a disease of his soul, a demonic dream; it passes, disappears from affection, like snow melts from the sun or wax from fire. If someone sings along with the sexton in church, do not be angry with him, but be glad that he sings praises to God. The Lord is worthy to be a holy voice 11. It’s good if not one, but two sing: there is at least order, agreement. Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them [Matt. 18, 20]. You see, meeting in the name of God is pleasing to the Lord. And what kind of anger does the devil arouse in the heart of the singer? After all, he will rush at someone! Remember constantly that the spirit of addiction to earthly sweets, pleasures, games, and entertainment is the spirit of the devil; despise sweets - this is the fat of 12 plants and animals; despise feasts, meetings, entertainment: they do not lead to good, they remove you from God. It is because of food and drink that I am jealous, which so much humiliate, encumber, burden, darken, burn, defile, bind my spirit, separate me from God and my neighbor! Be gone, rubbish! You, like my flesh, have a place under your feet! I am dust. All flesh is hay [Isa. 40, 6]. Looking at all the sweets and jewels and beauties, say to yourself: this is all for a person, but the whole world is not worth it. All this is like dust under his feet for him. He, as the king of nature, is above all. He put all things under his feet [Heb. 2, 8]. Exalted, exalted royal house, and we are small people. You, praying with your wife, freely pronounce all your prayers; Pray just as freely with people, no matter what they are: you are a shepherd, and they are sheep, you are a ruler - they are subordinates. With humility and heartfelt reverence, remember the name of the Lord God, the Most Pure Mother of the Lord Jesus Christ and the saints of God; with humility and heartfelt respect, remember the names of royal persons and all the living and dead, whose names you remember in prayer, for: 1) this is how it should be and 2) with the measure you measure, it is measured to you [Mk. 4, 24]. How does this happen to us? Some of the laity will not kiss hands - that’s nothing; the other one doesn’t kiss - it’s a disaster, we’re offended. Do not seek honor, but to admonish the ignorant, for they do not know what they are doing [Lk. 23, 34], do not know that the honor given to the priest is given to Christ. But I myself am not worth any honor, as the greatest sinner above all. Sin is unprofitable in all respects: 1) it is madness; 2) bondage, slavery; 3) darkness; 4) dishonor to a person; 5) a strong obstacle to a) the salvation of the soul and b) the correction of everyday affairs; 6) spiritual death. And what are our sins? 1) Addiction to worldly pleasures and wealth and 2) pride and malice, which most often arise from addiction to earthly things and worldly vanity, to vain earthly glory; people think a lot about themselves, mostly because they are rich and abound in everything - poverty humbles them. To despise earthly wealth, earthly honors, earthly delights as enemies and destroyers of our love for God and neighbor. Crazy worldly greatness and worldly wealth. Instead of serving their neighbors with their power, strength, and honors and using their power, strength, nobility, and wealth as an instrument of love and goodness for their neighbors, the strong and rich use them as a means to satisfy their pride, pride, ambition, luxury, voluptuousness, pride, and cruelty towards their neighbors. Did you not, out of the malice of your heart, arouse jealousy and envy in anyone by hypocritical praise or gifts to someone, or compete with someone for the sake of unjust gain and self-interest? My heart is held in heavy, tormenting chains by earthly blessings: grant me, Lord, once and for all to renounce them, to despise them, not to pity them, to exchange everything for land and water, as well as my flesh, so that I may continually cleave to You alone, so that with You alone I will always be united, so that the things above will ever be wise 13, may my heart not be tormented by lawless attachment to to dust, may I not spend my life in passion, may I not be deprived of You, my endless life, my eternal light, my peace, my space, my sweetness. O cowardly me! Lord help me! This matter is great, but my strength is small - no, what am I saying? I do not have the strength to fight the charm of worldly pleasures, for my nature is greedy, my flesh is insatiable. God! What should I perceive? Is it fasting? – Teach me to fast, give me strength to overcome the lusts of my greedy belly. Is it prayer? - Grant unceasing, heartfelt prayer, so that I may always look to You, may I always see You alone with the intelligent eyes of my heart, and may I turn my eyes away from the vanity of this world, may I live in the simplicity of my heart. Oh, why is my heart’s eye always turned to sweets, and to earthly creatures in general, and not to You, my God, not to the heavenly Kingdom for which You destined me, for which You redeemed me, which You interceded for me? Why am I unfaithful to you? My poor fellow humans! How long will we remain voluntarily blind? - Let us lift up our eyes to heaven, let us lift up 16 to the Lord, that He may bless us and let us live to Him. Peter Alexandrovich [Sofronov] – respectful deacon. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven and on earth. Let the Christian faith absorb all your attention. Let us cleave to the Eternal, to the Existing 17, to the Abiding 18, as it is good to cleave to God [Ps. 72, 28] and because everything earthly is vanity and soap bubbles: rockets, fireworks, or quick lights, everything is fleeting, instantaneous. Everything is like a dream, like a fleeting dream, like a migratory bird, like a ship sailing, like a steam engine running on rails, like a steamship running on water... Carry constantly in your heart the two commandments of God: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul... and with all your strength... and your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12, 30 – 31 ], and actually fulfill them, daily, hourly. Remember what the Lord is for you, what is for everyone and everything that exists; who is your neighbor, how great he is as the image of God, how equal he is to you. Be simple 19 and simply follow God’s commandments. Do not be a glutton, do not cleave to the flesh or anything earthly, for you are the image of God, you must cleave to God; live with God for endless ages, but the flesh and the world pass away with lust, yes, they are earth, dust, a beginning alien to you. There is no food and drink in the Kingdom of God [Rom. 14, 17]. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God - why? Because they are perishable, as it is said further: corruption does not inherit incorruption [Cor. 15, 50]. Oh, what a change awaits humanity. We will all change, we will throw off our corruptible body. Do not desire or feel sorry for sweets, silver, clothes, flesh, or a richly decorated home, for this pity and desire is the devil’s dream. Our heart is the source of our life, and the source of our heart is God, or the life of the heart is God. The desire and pity for sweets, silver, clothes, housing, flesh is death for the soul and at the same time powerlessness, illness for the body. Thus, carnal passions or addictions are deadly both for the soul and for the body: they break the body too - this is the constant experience of everyone. Remember the simplicity of the soul, which animates the body, and the simplicity of the Lord God, who animates the soul and everything, as well as the body itself, because when the soul dies by sins, the body lives by the mercy and life of the Lord, who does not want the sinner to die, but to turn and live for him [Ezek. 33, 11]. Glory to Thee, our Life, Lord! Remember: there are not two principles of your life, not God and mammon, but one – God. The Lord created me; The Lord is everything to me; I am all in God, I am all in God. This is the extent to which you must not spare and crucify your flesh: even if you were beaten, flogged, strangled, spat on, cut, burned, scorched, planed, baked, boiled in tar or in water or drowned - you must endure everything complacently and consider yourself worthy of having violated the commandment of your infinitely great benefactor, your Creator. Example: the apostles and first their Forerunner, the Maccabees, then the martyrs, the saints, the unmercenaries, and at the head of them all is the Lord, the King of Glory. What about us? We lose a little sweets and our hearts hurt. We are greedy for lust, for money, for elegant clothes, for entertainment, in general we cherish the flesh in every possible way. This is not a Christian matter, it is pagan. This was done by the Sodomites and Gomorrites and Noah's contemporaries. Where is the contrition and tenderness and unfeigned reverence in prayer? There is none. We rush to mutter learned words out of habit, often without understanding or not realizing what we are saying. We neglect the words of prayers, just as a rich gardener neglects his garden vegetables because of their abundance and out of habit of them, and they (words) often do not matter to us, even if they are great to heaven. If you love those who love you, what gratitude do you have for that?.. Love your enemies [Lk. 6, 32, 35], love those who look askance at you, with pride and disdain, who are not disposed towards you with all their souls, and caress even more those who love you, like the sick, the mad, like slaves, so that they, ashamed of your love, themselves change and love you. Evil is never cured by evil. Take heed that no one repays evil for evil [1 Thess. 5:15] by thought and malice of the heart, or by look, or by word, or by deed. Satan does not drive out Satan, but Satan promotes Satan, or the devil promotes the devil. The force is hasty. Stick to holy simplicity. Love, love and love. Don’t go anywhere unless absolutely necessary, and if you have to go, go with just your family, so as not to be tied down, so that you have free time. Don’t think that you will be welcome here and there. Do not disturb the peaceful inhabitants of the monasteries. This is the Lord, and this is His venerable image - man, and this is all rubbish and earth. When temptations of the heart overwhelm you, then do not tear your body or your clothes, but rend your heart and bring whole-hearted repentance to the Lord. For this is also a temptation of the devil, so that you torment your flesh and clothing. There is spoiled air in the room - clean air outside; In the room, they often open a window in the window and let fresh air into the room and change and purify the room air. The same thing happens with the soul. In the church of our soul there is unclean, spoiled air - the dispositions and thoughts of the heart; one must open the door with the heartfelt prayer of faith and let the all-filling Holy Spirit into the heart and purify the mental air. Or they go to breathe fresh air, because indoor air can be unclean, heavy, suffocating, and they walk in the open air for health. Spiritually, one must go to church to breathe in the fresh, life-giving air of the church after the dusty, heavy air of secular magazines and newspapers and novels or hectic home conversations and activities. Irritability at the fault of a neighbor brings double harm: 1) it deprives the person who is irritated of peace and indignates him, 2) it confuses and often irritates and embitters the one with whom we are irritated, and more harmful to the cause for which we are angry, for the matter falls more out of hand when we are restless and overshadowed by passion. You must always have respect for a person. I will write a note of gratitude 20 to my all-good Lady, the most quick Intercessor, the most quick Novice, as in the confusion, and fear, and crampedness, and powerlessness of heart, brought upon me by the spirits of malice at the evening of the Baptism of the Lord, during my service in the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God without a deacon, She, the most merciful, delivered me from complete confusion and confusion and in extreme trouble and in the circumstances of the opposing forces, she apparently quickly and powerfully helped me, so that I performed the entire service well alone and read the prayer for the blessing of water with a good feeling. (January 9, 1865) I prayed to my Lady earnestly at Her image in the altar of St. John the Baptist - and She, the most merciful, heard my prayer, although I was unworthy for my sins of this mercy, as a slave of worldly pleasures and laziness. Glory to the unspeakable mercy of our Lady Theotokos! My God! How much of a sinner I am, how unclean and how weak I am, but also how inexpressibly great are Your mercies and the generosity of Your love for mankind on me, a sinner! God! Surprise me, a sinner, with Your mercy! If you save a righteous man, it is nothing great; and even if you have mercy on a pure person, nothing is marvelous: you are worthy of the essence of Your mercy. But upon me, a sinner, astonish Thy mercy, 21 Thy goodness, Thy power, Thy holiness, Thy cleansing grace, Thy wisdom, that I may glorify Thee. What happens to the parts of the whole, small and great, will also happen to the whole: the parts decay and pass away; if they disappear, the whole will decay and pass away. Parts of the world decay, pass away, disappear - the world will decay, pass and disappear. Heaven and earth will pass away [Matt. 24, 35]. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal [2 Cor. 4, 18]. The main benefits of God to man: created, redeemed, constantly enjoying good providence and guided towards eternal life. The human body is a wonderful work of God’s hands - pure, wise, purposeful in all parts, majestic, like a majestic church, an artistic church of the king of the earth, the image and likeness of God, the earthly God. Az reh: you are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High [Ps. 81, 6]. In the face of temptation, anxiety and the tightness of the satanic heart, as soon as I put into my heart by faith a mental stone - Christ, how at that very second my heart was pacified and expanded. The wondrous, all-saving name of the Sweetest Jesus Christ. January 10. Morning. 5 o'clock. Sunday. Where do you live, wheat one, you barley one, you rye ear? - By God. Whose life force is in you? - God's. Who do you live by, bird, you fish, you four-legged? You insect. Are you a reptile? - By God. Who are you, earth? Are you the moon? You, the sun, you, the stars? - By God. But man dreams that he exists on food, drink, wine, money, clothes, carriages, horses, etc. And he forgets God, his Creator, and is not jealous to please Him by keeping His commandments, in which there is life and peace, but in his own way he wants to live and arrange his happiness: he does not believe his Lord that He is preparing for him eternal bliss in the abodes of heaven. To Him, Who is truth, truth, goodness and omnipotence. So, everything exists by God - Angels, and humans, and animals, and plants, and all the heavenly bodies (that is why He is called the Existing One), and not from themselves and not by themselves: being and life are God’s in all creatures at every moment of their existence. We, reasonable people, His living images and likenesses, let us please Him, and fulfill His [animal] words, or commandments, so that we may not perish if we do not pay attention to them and fail to fulfill them, for He is the righteous Judge; We will thank Him for everything - for small and great things, we will glorify Him, we will ask Him for everything, we will humble ourselves before Him at all times, for in ourselves we are insignificance, weakness, sin and we are all worthy of all punishment. When calling the Most Holy Theotokos Virgin, remember that She is the most perfect Virgin both in soul and body, that is, most pure in both spirit and body, and that your soul is not virgin, nor your body, that you have had impurities from your earliest youth, both soul and body - and humble yourself, throw yourself into the dust, asking Her for purification, confirmation in the holy dispositions of the heart and salvation. Say: Most Pure Mother of the Renewer of our corrupted nature, cleanse me, for You are able to do all things, as the all-powerful Mother of Almighty God. I thank You, Lord, that You heard my prayer before Your Holy Gifts during the Liturgy for the bestial and drunken warrior Nikita and miraculously transformed him from a beast into a lamb kissing the hand of his wife, whom he had previously beaten like the most worthless animal. God! Complete Your mercies! Lady! I thank you, for you graciously heard my prayer for Nikita and translated it wonderfully. Complete Your mercies, O Lady! January 11, 1865 I thank You, Lord, for Thou hast despised my sins and pacified me throughout the entire liturgy, and without condemnation hast made me worthy to boldly partake of Thy Holy Mysteries and consume them. God! You have given Himself to me, with You, grant me all Your good things - and to us, as You have given them all, as according to Your word: Ask, and it will be given to you: seek, and you will find: press, and it will be opened to you [Matt. 7, 7]. Give me Thy wisdom, O Lord, Thy strength, Thy boldness, Thy love! January 11th, 1865. You should not be offended or embittered by the disorder, the infirmities of nature, by the manifestations of human passions: malice, wickedness, pride and contempt, stinginess and covetousness, drunkenness, gluttony, and add your own lawlessness - embitterment to the disorder or iniquities of your neighbor, but you must remain gentle and patient with all the sins and weaknesses of your neighbors, without increasing general ulcer. We must know that the devil seeks to use all our relations with our neighbors, all clashes, all his words, movements, and actions as a reason for anger towards our neighbor. Sweets prick and gore my heart, but I despise them as thorns, which they count as nothing and burn with fire. Be careless about everything earthly. Everything is a dream. There is one treasure of our heart and one sweetness of our heart - the Lord Jesus Christ. And let carnal pleasures, which so greatly remove us from the Lord, from His love, from love for our neighbor, be trampled underfoot like rubbish. Neglect them, Christian. Crucify your flesh, don't caress it. The world was created with all the sweets and beauties for man in his pure state, in a state of his faithfulness to God, the Creator and his Prototype, and not in a damaged, sinful and corrupted state. Now everything, all creation, through our depravity and through the wiles of the devil, alienates the Lord from us, even our flesh and all its senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and therefore we must be at enmity with everything, we must not trust anything from corruptible things - everything is deception, delusion, vanity and ruin of the spirit. The whole world is rubbish, all its things are rubbish, everything is earth, not excluding our body: the earth is ecu, and you will return to the earth [Gen. 3. 19 ]. In a person, in his passionate state, in a state of indignation, darkness, bondage, anger, distinguish three things: 1) a real person, created in the image and likeness of God, but suppressed, exhausted, dead; 2) an old, sinful, passionate person and 3) the devil, acting in the heart and in the members of his body, inflaming them and distorting his facial features. Man in this case is a victim of demonic violence, a victim of his hellish storm, hellish malice, carried away by the enemy into his own will due to man’s inattention to himself and his carelessness about virtue, through addiction to carnal pleasures and laziness and effeminacy of the flesh, and he is worth all compassion and needs the healing of meekness and prayer on our part. Shouldn't the wife be allowed to manage herself regarding food and drink? Shouldn't she be allowed to eat sweets as she wants? If this is bad for her, the Lord will enlighten her. But don’t stop her so that she doesn’t notice that you are sparing sweets for her. Leave it to itself: it has reason itself. But you yourself do not have an addiction to sweets and do not feel pain in your heart when others use them a lot; count them down to the dirt that they are. All earth, dust and dirt. It is necessary to depress the body, insult, upset, make it difficult, and not pamper it with delicacies. Have no attachment to the flesh at all. You know what temptations come from gluttony and voluptuousness—hasn’t the enemy desecrated your thoughts enough yet? You should have long ago hated all sweets and loved sorrows and labors and fatigues, and in general the sorrows of the flesh. You need more horseradish and mustard! Oh, how sweet things tear me away from God and from my neighbor, especially sugar and jam! Thousands of experiences of insults from sweets to your soul and body should long ago have convinced you to give up, to despise them, but you still love them, you have an addiction to them. The Lord alone be my sweetness! I thank You, Lord, who miraculously, victoriously, and generously carried me through two classes and gave me courage and daring, dignity and strength, and power and the word to open my mouth in the third and fourth classes. January 13, 1865 Everything is from the earth, and everything is into the earth, and the earth itself will burn - the bodies will be spiritual. How long will I be overcome by earthly philosophies about food and drink and sweets? How long will these earthly calculations last? Where is the heavenly wisdom? Repressed by the completely earthly. If this happens to me, a priest, a frequent communicant of the Holy Mysteries and a performer of God’s services and other mysteries, then what can we say about worldly people? What do they think more about? Of course about earthly things. O our sweetest Savior! Where is our loyalty to You, love for You, desire for You in the mountain villages? You ascended like an eagle into the heavens to prepare a place for us, but we clung to the earth with our hearts and forgot about You, about Your endless life, which You granted to us through Your suffering, death on the cross and resurrection! Prophecy, that is, preaching, and the preacher - do not despise [1 Thess. 5, 20 ]; don’t say: what is he talking about here? I know all this myself. Even though you know, listen, because it won’t be superfluous for you to repeat what you already know. Whose life is in plants, in grains, in vegetables, in tree fruits, in extracts of some plants? - God's. Whose sweets are in plants and animal bodies? - God's, and not plants and animals themselves, for what do plants and animals have? - Nothing. So, thank God for everything: trust in God alone in your life. Use everything in accordance with the will of God. Boundless is Your mercy, Lord Jesus Christ God, marvelous is Your power, glorious is Your simplicity! I was stung by the words of contempt, humiliation and untruth of my sister, retold to me by a certain person; I felt cramped, sad, I became faint-hearted, I was despondent - but I prayed to the Lord my God, I imagined in myself my Lord Jesus Christ, I became convinced that this ulcer, this insult was inflicted on me by the dreamer Satan, I imagined, I became convinced that this wounding, crampedness, sorrow, inclination of the soul to cowardice and humiliation was his dream - and I felt at ease. Oh, how great is the name of the Lord! Oh, what wondrous powers it produces! There is no need to be offended by the unfair, hurtful words of others! Despise malice, slander, humiliation, pray for the despisers and humiliators! Father, let them go: they do not know what they are doing [Lk. 23, 34 ] ! Having sinned, do not be discouraged, but be courageous, saying: I will correct myself - to whom does sin not happen? When you are offended, rejoice that it is not you who offend, but others who offend you, thus carrying out God’s righteous judgment on you for your sins. Love offenders as benefactors and pray for them, so that they do not die for your sake. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you [Lk. 6, 27 – 28]. This is where you show your obedience to the Savior where you don’t want to show it; break yourself, sacrifice your corrupted will to the Lord. Holy, pure, wise, powerful law of marriage! Oh, how holy is marriage, how great is the marriage that unites two rational beings, two images of God to give birth to a being similar to itself! Oh, what goodness, wisdom, and omnipotence of God are revealed in him! What wisdom, shrine, importance of childbearing members, childbearing seed, maternal wombs! Most pure, all-wise, all-powerful, all-good Creator and Lord, glory to You! But cleanse us, unclean in heart! Wear the cross in this way in your heart and in action, and not just on your neck, and do not be a hypocrite before Christ the Lord and before people. What kind of Christians are we when we do not crucify our flesh with passions and lusts - pride, contempt, malice, resentment, rancor, envy, condemnation, love of money, stinginess, gluttony, satiety, uncleanness? There are people (among whom I am the first) who cause a lot of harm to others through their sluggish disposition, which they could change into an energetic, lively and cheerful one. These people are thoughtful, gloomy, stern, rude, taciturn, uncommunicative, irritable, angry, stingy, envious, greedy, gluttonous - that’s why they are unsociable. When you see a person possessed by some passion, for example, in a fit of anger, envy, stinginess, pride, contempt, greed and gluttony, drunkenness, fornication and all uncleanness, etc., then take pity on him and pray for him: this is a ship with a broken rudder, without a helmsman and without sails, rushing in a wide and stormy sea, tossed by a storm and waves in different directions, tilted now on one side or the other and close to danger. Yes, have pity and pray, and do not be irritated with him - do not be shipwrecked and voluntarily. Do not pay attention to the words spoken to your neighbor in a fit, for example, irritation, contempt, stinginess - these are the words of a madman. Apart from the Lord, do not cleave your heart to anything: what I have in heaven; and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26 ]! Oh, how we must value ourselves so as not to sell ourselves to sin, for we are bought with a price, for we are members of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, sons and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. Do not regret God’s gifts to God’s people: by giving others the gifts of God’s goodness and generosity, you treasure new gifts of God for yourself, especially spiritual ones. In His righteousness, the Lord measures to a willing giver: with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you [Mk. 4, 24]. All sins, all sinful abominations, all passions are the stench of the hellish abyss, which the Lord or our Lady Theotokos can easily dispel through our prayer. Truly, this stench of sin is nothing for the Lord and the Lady, if only they have unshakable faith, which is truly for the Lord - and all the power of hell is like nothing. We need to have faith, and the determination not to sin, to despise sins. To do gymnastics [for children] for the flesh means to strengthen the enemy, it means to undead the multi-passionate flesh, to breed in it passions and thoughts that are nasty and unclean. To feed them always nourishingly, tasty, as if for slaughter - again means strengthening the domestic enemy - the flesh, to the detriment of the soul: please teach the Law of God here. How the word of God is humiliated in their hearts! And then there’s dancing – carnal fun! Oh, the bustle of the gymnasium! Tomfoolery, positively tomfoolery. What kind of love is this for my neighbor if I spare earthly sweets for him, when I do not spare for myself? After all, everything is for a person. What kind of arrogant am I? Am I resisting God's intention? Do I want to take His gifts from His people, whom He loved so much that He gave them His only begotten Son for food and drink? Oh, we damned people! Oh, damned flesh! Oh, heart, partial to earthly things and alien to love for God and neighbor! This is the kind of adulterous love that lives in our hearts, the love of peace, the sweets of life. What is it in me if I am a scientist, a teacher, a priest, a boss, a rich merchant, a king, but I don’t have love for God and my neighbor? I am nothing [1 Cor. 13, 2]. How much evil we have from love for the flesh and for the world. How much unlove and coldness towards God and neighbor! Whoever takes my sweets, I feel embarrassed and sick at heart, and I feel disgust and coldness towards my neighbor, and I can’t look straight into the eyes with love, because I love my flesh, carnal sweets, and not my neighbor; whoever spreads the stench, I am offended and irritated by him, because I love voluptuous flesh. Someone told the bitter truth to my face and denounced me - I am offended by him, because I love my flesh, which loves sin and remaining in sin. If someone breaks something, I get irritated again, because I love covetous flesh; If someone comes for my money, I get irritated again, because I love money-loving flesh, not man. Oh, how often do I violate Your commandments, O Lord, because of the vanity of earth. What answer will I give you? Love your neighbor... as yourself - let these words become deeds [Matt. 19, 19], and love the Lord with all your heart in response to His boundless love, shown to you every minute in action, for your whole life, every minute of your life is mercy, is an expression of God’s love for you, His long-suffering, His mercy. I thank You, Lord my God, for You instantly saved me, like lightning, from the nasty violence of the enemy and You suddenly pacified and spread me. January 15, 1865 Glory to Thee, my lightning, Lord! A simple thought, Lord, glory to You! My instant cleansing, Lord, glory to You! How good You are, O Lord my God, and how close You are to us - so close that we can always talk with You and be comforted by You, breathe in You, be enlightened by You, have peace in You, find space in our hearts in You. God! Teach me the simplicity of love for You and for my neighbor, may I always be with You, may I always have peace in You. God! Do not for one moment allow me to commit fornication with the disgusting and malicious enemy the devil, neither with malice, nor with pride, nor with envy, nor with stinginess, nor with covetousness, nor with gluttony, nor with lustful thoughts, nor with blasphemy, nor with despondency, nor with lies - anything sinful. May I always be all Yours! Negligence, disregard for everything true, holy, righteous, and proper, the enemy constantly strives to take root in my heart and to darken all truth or completely steal it from the heart, so that we must constantly be vigilant over our heart, reflect on the Christian faith, on the essence or content and purpose of it, so that it does not completely evaporate from the heart, and abstinence must certainly be added. My Most Holy Lady Theotokos... take away from me... oblivion, foolishness, negligence, and all the nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts from my accursed heart and from my darkened mind 22, for I have all this in abundance. Forgetfulness of the Christian faith and duties, the purpose of faith and good deeds, death, resurrection, judgment, eternal torment, eternal life, negligence in prayer, worship, teaching, preaching and every good deed and unreason, some kind of stupidity in all this overcomes me - and all from the enemy and from my gluttony and laziness. Do not think that about others and do not suspect in others that which you do not want from others for yourself. If you want not to be thought of as a thief, do not think of others without sufficient reason as thieves, or misers, or evil and shrewd, low in soul. Take care of the honor of your neighbor internally - he is the image of God; do not listen to the demonic slander: he wants to cool you off towards your neighbor in various ways. I am a beggar: I have nothing of my own in my soul (there is nothing to say about the body) - whatever I ask the Lord for good things for every day, that is what I have, but if I don’t ask, I am hungry and naked, and cold and blind, and deaf and suffocating. Oh, how poor we are without You, Lord! Our flesh is tempted before the usual hours of eating and drinking at the sight of the food and drink provided; if you overcome yourself at this time - not to eat or drink, then you will not want to eat and drink all day; otherwise, out of habit, we eat and drink when we don’t want to and when we don’t need it; then our flesh is tempted by covetousness, when, while doing a certain private matter, we expect payment for our labors, and in general, at the sight of money, or when they ask us for it, or when we lose it, or when we suspect someone might not take it from us, we must consider it as rubbish; further: we are tempted by beautiful or ugly, or beggars, or bosses, or rich and generally noble persons for some reason, being wounded by the carnal beauty of some, feeling contempt and disgust for others combined with some kind of bitterness, embarrassed and losing heart before others, servile and ingratiating them, flattering and groveling before others, ingratiating themselves with their favor and attention. We are also tempted to hate someone for some shortcomings, or for an insult, or by envying someone. And all this is charm, a demonic dream and worldly vanity. We are all brothers, all images of God, and we must love everyone as we love ourselves, without harboring unclean feelings for anyone, without despising anyone, without being embarrassed before anyone or losing heart, without lavishing flattery on anyone and without sacrificing our human dignity before anyone. We are all one - one tree of humanity, all the fruits of one tree. Grow and multiply, and fill the earth, and rule over it [Gen. 1, 28]. Blessed is the fruit of Your womb [Lk. 1, 42]. Only on this tree does each fruit have its own life, its own independence. Further: we are the Church of Christ, members of Christ and members among ourselves. The head is Christ, then the Head of the mental edifice 23 is the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Theotokos. Then the holy Angels, followed by the forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, saints or hierarchs, martyrs, confessors, saints or abstinents and others; behind them we, the earthly militant Church - patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, protopresbyters, presbyters, archpriests, abbots, hieromonks, priests, hierodeacons, deacons, subdeacons, laity, sovereign, synclit 24, military leaders, mayors, Christ-loving soldiers and all Orthodox Christians. We must not look at ourselves separately from others, but in union with others, precisely as members of the Church, and try to be a worthy, honest member of the Church of Christ, remembering who is the Head of the Church, who is the Head of the mental structure, who are the other foundations - in what golden chain we are, what we are being led to, and despise everything earthly, all earthly addictions. So we are one. How is one with plurality? – Through faith, hope and love. There is one body and one spirit, just as you are called to one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all [Eph. 4, 4 – 6]. Great words! Comforting words! Christians! Understand yourself, who you are, how you are loved, exalted by God, to what glory, to what bliss, which has no end, you are raised from the Lord Himself and His Church, which is eternally inherent in the almighty Pilot and Leader - the Holy Spirit. Pay attention to yourself, the Lord and the Church and obey her. He who disobeys the Church is a pagan and a tax collector [Matt. 18, 17]. Oh, how holy, heavenly, and spiritual the morals of Christians should be! But how unclean, sinful, earthly, carnal we are! Why? Because of our inattention and negligence - we eat, drink, have fun, play, get married, encroach on marriage, get into formations, formally, outwardly perform the rites of faith or attend divine services, receive the Sacraments, engage exclusively in either civil or military affairs, which is temporary - and with time, with the earth, with the devastation of the elements, everything will disappear. Here's our business! We also idle, idle talk, verbosely verbally, in writing and in print, visually, plastically, convexly, vividly - in living faces and actions we represent human vanity (theaters). Here's our business! We put on disguises, hiding behind them, we say what we want, what we would not say, perhaps without masks, we amuse ourselves with the idleness, curiosity and frivolity of others, not caring at all about the consequences of all this, not caring in the least about our soul, about its fate in eternity, about putting off the old man with his deeds, turning away from prayer, the church of God, the word of God, reading secular chatter, or secular wisdom, which is foolishness with God - these are our deeds. How strange we are, unreasonable (with reason), [wild] with enlightenment and education: we are afraid of losing money, but we consider losing love for the Lord and for our neighbor at no cost; if the money is not taken, but only for some reason it seems to us that a famous person took the money, we already let go of the Lord from our hearts, we become cold towards Him, and towards our neighbor we feel dislike and disgust and even enmity, and for this we lose the life of our hearts, our peace of mind, for our life is God, from whom we turn our hearts and love for Him and for our neighbor, which we lose from our attachment to earthly things. called benefits. But how long will we be foolish and not place all our hope in God? Until we are united with Him every moment of our existence, until we love our neighbor as ourselves, and consider everything earthly (and our body) as rubbish? How long will we be seduced and amused by particulars, these earthly trinkets: money, food, drink, clothes, and will we not be completely simple in all our lives? Until we are wise as a serpent and safe 25 as a dove [Matt. 10, 16]. My God! My simplicity, my being, my belly, my Provider! May I always be in You! Let my heart always say: my life is the Lord. Blessed is he who in everything, all needs - spiritual and material, or bodily, trusts in the one Being, in Whom all creation exists, rational and dumb, spiritual and material! Who will manage to live like this all the days of his life? Who will please his Lord? Who will reject the manifold idols of his heart in which he trusts? Who recognizes the one God as his very deed, his very life, the source of his life, who cares paternally for his life? We have many gods. Oh, how possessed my flesh is, how it rages when it sees uncleanliness and untidiness, especially in a place where it catches the eye or where it can stain my flesh or my clothes! How angry she is with those who did it, for example, spilled wooden oil on the shrine, spilled a lamp! After all, all you have to do is wipe it off - and the matter is over, and all the untidiness has disappeared - but no, she’s so absurd, blind, reckless, she gets angry and torments herself. Oh, wretched one! Oh, wayward! Oh, covetous - it’s a pity, see, she has a quarter of a spool of spilled oil! Oh, impatient, pampered! he is afraid, you see, to touch the wooden oil - it will prick, it will burn: hear - the oil will prick, it will burn! Oil will cause trouble! Or am I lying to you, my charming one, my deceiver, my worthless flesh? You say: I will only get dirty from the oil, but it won’t prick me, it won’t burn me. I don’t believe you: you are precisely afraid that it will prick you, burn you, for you really prick and burn me only by seeing the spilled oil, not just by touching it. So, don’t get angry when they spill, litter, break, or get dirty. All this is nonsense! Love for mankind, chosen Voivode and Lord, I thank Thee, for today You have comfortably and victoriously led me through two classes in Your name, and You have bestowed the gift of words and wisdom in the fourth class. I thank You, for You have granted me wisdom and strength to defeat the nasty enemy and the [rebellion] of my nasty flesh. January 16, 1865 Do not for a moment lose sight of the fact that during prayer the Lord listens to you, the Lady too, the holy Guardian Angel, the saint to whom you pray, and do not for a minute be lethargic, cold, relaxed, double-minded, spiritually dead, but pray with liveliness and a burning soul, and then the mercy of the Lord will soon shine for you. Fear these words of the Lord: these people draw near to Me with their lips, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; but in vain they worship Me, teaching me skills, the commandments of men [Matt. 15. 8 – 9 ]. I thank You, Lord Jesus Christ, my God, invincible by my iniquities, my malice, my [negligence], as I cry to You for mercy, and you cleanse my sins, and grant me Your peace with space in my heart. Is it because of food that you lose peace with your wife and love for her? and most importantly, are you losing the world of peace - Jesus Christ, who dwells in you through the incorruptible world? Do you quickly forget His words: do not do what is worthless that perishes, but do what is worthless to abid in the eternal life which the Son of Man will give you [Jn. 6, 27 ]? Disregard perishable food and be content with everything that your wife prepares, and when you don’t like what she prepares, do not be upset or angry with her. Appreciate the peace of Christ and the love of Christ, and despise the flesh, the multi-passionate flesh, the enemy of God and your own, prodigal, evil, despising and putting into nothing the Divine laws and the Lord God Himself, despising your neighbor. Remember the martyrs, how they did not spare their flesh to the point of cruel torment; remember the saints, how they exhausted her with fasting, long vigils, lying on the ground and prolonged prayers, and thus killed all carnal deeds, that is, carnal passions - fornication, malice, pride, stinginess, laziness, gluttony and other passions. How much harm has your flesh ever caused you and is still causing you, that you caress and please it with sweets? Look how it turns you away from the Lord, the Giver of Life, into what carnal abominations it plunges you into: covetousness, stinginess, laziness, coldness and insensitivity towards God and your neighbor, into hatred, envy and other passions. It must be killed and enslaved in every possible way, and not enslaved to it, so that it does not kill you forever. Make you wise and affirm, my God, Lord Jesus Christ! Behold, I am in misery with my many-passionate flesh, I sin before You, I offend You, my Benefactor, my Nourisher, my light, my shrine, my truth, my strength, my belly, my mercy, my peace, my space. Woe to me, a sinner! Children! The Savior called His disciples [John. 13, 33]. Yes, they were children - innocent, simple, gentle, humble. And we need to be children. Why did the Lord choose simple fishermen as His disciples? Because they were of a simple, kindly disposition, with an unspoiled heart. Reprove mercilessly in the home and in church. Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world, becomes an enemy of God [Jas. 4, 4]. Therefore, we must wage war against the adulterous and sinful world, we must be harsh and truthful in the society of the world. Remember the Sabbath day, says the fourth commandment, to keep it holy... the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord your God [Ex. 20, 8 – 11] (and we have a Sabbath for the devil, the world and the flesh). Let's see how we celebrate Sunday. Morning. They rest until 9 and 10 o’clock, that is [...]. Some people go to mass, but most of the so-called nobles, and even ordinary people, do not go: some are lazy or don’t want to be in the company of ordinary people, others are busy about the housework, others dress up, comb their hair, clean up - before mass? After mass they go for a walk: after all, you need to whet your appetite for dinner; while walking they talk about what? about faith, about God, the salvation of one’s soul, about eternity, about corruption, about the vanity of everything earthly? - how is it possible? These words will excite laughter in every sane person - hear: sane! O adulterous and sinful world! Will I be your friend?! - Having lunch; they sit down at dinner without prayer, during dinner they chat and laugh; they talk about everything, but almost never about God and the soul, about their purpose, about the short-term nature of everything sunflower and earthly. After lunch? - instead of wakefulness, many have sleep, for the most part there is idleness or reading secular books instead of spiritual ones, there is no mention of the spiritual (many do not have them at all, not even the Gospel); then again a walk with idle talk. How is the evening going? Let's see. Let's look into this house - I'm accepted here. What's here? They play cards, chat, laugh. Let's go to another house: it's very light here - what's going on here? I look: people flash like shadows, running back and forth in pairs. This is dancing. How? It's a holiday! When to dance on other days? Meanwhile, daddy, mummy have a daughter or several, brought up in the current fashion - French, in the spirit of the world, and not in the Christian spirit, taught to dance - after all, they paid money, you can’t live without it; well, they want to dance: it is necessary to satisfy their passion or habit, or custom, fashion - and aside the fourth commandment of God: whether to sanctify Sunday, or to devote the evening to reading the Gospel or the books of the holy fathers, or even spiritual magazines or other books of spiritual content, for example, even the lives of saints. This would be very useful, especially since many do not know the life of Jesus Christ, His teachings, and commandments. His prophecies, promises, His prayers, His sufferings and other things, or many, many do not know the biography of their saint, while the Christian faith obliges us to imitate that saint whose name we bear on ourselves; or it would be, I say, useful to read a book about the Christian Orthodox faith, about Christian duties, which many do not know, or a book about worship, which many do not understand, about the Sacraments, which they do not understand [much]. - but no: it’s better to spend the day idly, or even worse - in empty activities: playing cards, dancing, eating and drinking, partying, skating, and so on - after all, that’s how it is in the world. Well, let's see further: let's walk along that street where there are quite a few drinking houses, let's see what's in them: a meeting of commoners or lower military ranks, for whom the Church prays as for the Christian army! What's here? There is drunkenness, idle talk, foul language, and sometimes fighting. Let's look at this house, which [bears] the stamp of rejection and disgust. But let not my mouth speak of the deeds of men [Ps. 16, 4]. Let's look at the shops: here they sell bandages for sinful bodies, various toys, trinkets, items of whim and luxury. Let's take a look here: here they are playing with their faces, admiring them, filming them on cards. Oh, if you would paint your soul before you, if you could see the image of your soul with all its sins and passions, with all its spiritual ignorance, with its future destiny! You would stop removing these cards, and would begin to portray yourself 27, or restore the broken and desecrated and distorted image of your soul according to the Gospel and the writings of the holy fathers. You would see that you were created in the image and likeness of God, and you disfigured him with your passions, attachment to [perishable things] and pleasures; you would see that Christ has not yet been imagined in you. 4, 19], which should be characteristic and, as it were, natural to every Christian; that you carry in your heart the devil, who teaches you everything that is contrary to Christ and, among other things, worldly idleness and absent-mindedness; you would see yourself with horror, would turn your gaze away from the [image] of your soul, would desire to immediately restore the image of God in your soul, which should be the goal and main concern of the life of every Christian. So, both as the Forerunner and as the Lord Himself, I lift up a voice to you, my brethren: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand [Matt. 3, 2]. Produce fruit worthy of repentance [Matt. 3, 8]. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. [Matt. 3.10]. O Christians, Christians! How will Christ, the King of glory, the Judge and your God, deal with you? Somehow you will appear at the Last Judgment, will you answer something to the immortal King, Whose commandment you despised, Whose commandment you did not keep? What will happen to you, to you who have scattered the law of your Lord, who have despised His commandments? Where is your fear of God? Fear of the blessed commandments of your King and Lord? What kind of disastrous fearlessness of life do you all have? Did you really create yourselves, prescribe everyday laws for yourself, are you your own gods, kings, and judges? Isn’t there the Lord Lawgiver, the Judge above you, aren’t you slaves of the Creator and your Lord? Isn’t He a Personal Being, isn’t He just, isn’t He true? Does He indifferently look at our life, at our deeds, He Who gave the commandments, commanding them to be fulfilled and promising those who did them eternal life and unspeakable bliss, and eternal torment to those who violated or despised them? Is it possible to believe in Him and not believe in Him, of whose words not one iota can remain unfulfilled [Μ f. 5, 18]? Is the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment, a blissful or painful life a dream? Oh, my brothers! We have all lost our way from the path of truth and the light of the Lord does not shine upon us! Let us shed all our tears for our vain life and for the great wrath of God, which we have inflamed with our untruths, and let us each turn from our crooked ways. Solea is a church staircase that connects earth to heaven. You say: Heavenly King, Comforter, Soul of Truth... but do you fulfill the commands of the King, do you comfort your neighbors, do you love to speak the truth, not tolerating lies? Glory to Your name, Lord! One heartfelt memory of him saves me from the machinations of the enemy, who plays dirty tricks in my heart, outrages and darkens me. Glory to Your name, Lord! It pacifies, enlightens, expands me. O glorious, all-saving name! I glorify Your providence for me, a sinner, which never leaves me! I glorify Your vigilant eye, my Lord and Life-Giver! January 22 days 1865 The devil reigns in us as a proud man, a hater and despiser of our neighbors (especially the poor and pious), God Himself and His saints; as guile, hypocrisy, partiality, servility, negligence, stubbornness, disobedience, insolence, blasphemy against God and His saints and against all the holiness of the faith; as grumbling against God and people, as disgust from God, from faith, from the Church; as an addiction to earthly things, or greed for food and drink, money, as a passion for clothing, housing, pleasures, fun; like laughter, like despondency and cowardice, like impatience and irritability, like envy, stinginess, like dissatisfaction with our lot and what we have, and a thirst for more and better; like fornication and all uncleanness, like lies and deception, laziness, idleness and absent-mindedness; as doubt in the truth, unbelief, heresy, blasphemy, as embarrassment and fear, false shame (embarrassment), impatience, irritability. The serpent of hell has many teeth (the tooth of pride, the tooth of malice, envy, stinginess, love of money, greed, gluttony, fornication, despondency, impatience and irritability - either one will suffice you, then another, depending on the circumstances; if not for the Lord, he would have eaten you, tortured you). It is a grave sin to rush during worship, for how much do we work for the Lord? and we don’t want to serve Him properly, with feeling, without haste. Tell me: why are you driving service? Don’t you have time to fuss around outside the church, won’t others have time to get caught up in vanity and sin outside the church? All diligence must be used in the church in order to serve the one Lord with all diligence. So, never rush, but calmly, with firmness of heart, complete your work of faith. Write a difficult essay - your life, that is, not with words, but with deeds, bring your life into the correct system and harmony. You condemned your comrade, Father Pavel Lamanov, saying: how he weakened, allowing his students to play pranks in the class, but you lifted yourself up, thinking about yourself: I am so not weakened and I know how to keep my students in class; That’s why the Lord allowed you to weaken, and even so much so that you would not be arrogant, and would not feast on or be satiated the day before or that day. Every gluttony stands as a strong barrier between God and the soul, like the power of the devil, and everything about bread is a concern and addiction to it and sweets and taken away from one’s neighbor. You say: Master Lord Jesus Christ, my God, but what kind of Master is He to you, when your master is the belly and various sweets: sweet tea, coffee, chocolate, pies, wine? You say: Lord, what kind of Lord is He to you, when the master whom you serve until you forget your Lord has money, wealth or honor, human praise! You say: My God, but your gods are your passions: pride, contempt, malice, envy, stinginess, gluttony, coldness and insensibility. I thank the Lord and His Most Pure Mother for their wonderful help during Vespers on Sunday, January 17th. I sinned: I was hurt, I was embarrassed, I was fearful, I was cowardly - and I was pardoned through my prayer: I served well and was filled with peace. Sorrows and oppression and scorching from sins admonish us, who are always erring in heart, prone to pride, contempt, stinginess, love of money, envy, impatience, irritability, laziness, negligence, fornication, etc. They cleanse our heart's eye and allow us to clearly see our sinful madness. Without sorrows we would be completely lost. That is why it is only through many sorrows that we must enter the Kingdom of God [Acts. 14, 22]. Beware of the many-headed snake - the devil: you will recognize its approach to you by its deadly breath in the soul, by confusion, darkening of the mind and heart, by deprivation of freedom, by a pleasant sting that relaxes and softens the flesh and soul, such as in laughter, fornication, delicacy, or extremely painful, poisonous, also weakening the soul and body, for example in contempt, anger, envy, stinginess, or due to some involuntary but pleasant hobby, for example, in covetousness, condemnation, gloating, malice, in card games, theatrical play, dancing, in reading romance books, etc. In general, in sin a person is not free, but labor 28, involuntarily. What answer will we give to God, our common Father and Prototype, in despising the poor brethren and turning away from them? They kiss our hands - and to us, pampered with contentment, beauty and finery, it is disgusting, as if they were pricking us with their lips, while the long-suffering Lord allowed the villains to pierce His hands and feet with nails; when, being God, He accepted from lawless people spitting, strangling and beating, the cross and death: God is from creatures, and, moreover, ungrateful and evil creatures! And the beggars thank you, kissing your hand out of love and gratitude to you, and here you even take offense at them, despise them, turn away from them. Listen: Whose image are they, Who is their Prototype - and do not insult the Creator, the Creator common to them and us, but love them as yourself, tolerate their mistakes, weaknesses, passions. Love is patient... [1 Cor. 13, 4]. One day, deny yourself forever, despise your corrupt, stupid, godless, wayward heart; do not know him, but know Christ alone, His will, His law: I am not, say, but the Lord Jesus Christ is in me, working everything in me. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me [Gal. 2, 20]. Grant, Christ! So, do not pay attention to a corrupted heart as to sheer stupidity, madness, absurdity, nonsense, nonsense. Cling to Christ with all your heart and be in Him, so that He too will be in you and everything good will work in you. Put on Christ. I thank You, my God, Lord Jesus Christ, for you have granted me comfortably, victoriously, majestically, with power, to conduct the class of sacred New Testament history (in the second grade) and the beginning of the lesson in the third grade. By Your name I was kept in undisturbed calm; As soon as I lost Your name from the memory of my heart, the enemy prevailed over me, but not for long, until a new perception of Your name in my heart and mind. But between classes, during the interval, I was defeated for about ten minutes by the demon of prodigal uncleanness - the shame on my face was great, I was ashamed to look people in the face. But my faith and prayer saved me. I said to the Lord: let not, O Lord, my heartfelt abomination prevail over Your endless holiness, just as our malice does not overcome Your goodness and mercy, - and the demon of fornication recoiled from me: I entered the class with majestic calm, talked calmly and smoothly. But one seductive glance - and the villain, like an arrow, flew into my heart and, having overpowered me, strengthened himself in me, burning, crowding and darkening me; I spent the rest of the class in great distress. Why? Because of my voluptuousness and satiety the day before: I drank vodka and wine, ate, as usual, herring, sausage, and cheese, although in small quantities, and drank quite a bit of sweet tea. All this resonated with me, despite the communion of the Holy Mysteries on that day. This is how bad it is to feast and be satiated! Yes, these were the fruits of voluptuousness! Christians (Christian children, youths, husbands, elders, young women, wives, elders) are children of God, children of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Mother of God, we must treat them with all respect, love, purity, justice - they are people of God, the property of God, because they were bought at the price of the blood of the Son of God, and for untruth they will be strictly punished from us. The Son of Man, it is said, came to seek and save what was lost [Matt. 18:11], and: whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble who believe in Me, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea [Matt. 18, 6]. I glorify Your all-powerful intercession of my humility, Lord, during two classes - fifth and second, when the unclean one stopped me with a momentary thought of fornication and I did not reflect it at the same moment, busy reading a book about worship. I read half the class (the fifth) with my soul, reflecting the evil thoughts of the evil one, but then one moment of oversight - and he, the evil one, seeks someone to devour [1 Pet. 5, 8], shot his nasty arrow. Then my face was covered with shame, there was tightness, sorrow, fire, darkness inside - however, soon, after about fifteen minutes, with the imagination of the name of God in my heart, I almost drove it away. However, he left the class not entirely peaceful. During the break I was confused and somewhat ashamed; however, the heaviness was, among other things, from eating and drinking a lot the day before. In continuation of the second class of the vile enemy, he defeated the name of the Lord by representing the simplicity of God and the simplicity of the devil, that God dwells in us through one sincere thought about Him, through one good thought, pacifying, enlightening, spreading and delighting our heart; that the devil also enters us through one unclean and generally unrighteous thought, if we do not reflect it, through one unclean feeling, an unrighteous intention, darkening, confusing and disturbing, oppressing and saddening our heart. And as soon as I was convinced in my heart of this truth, suddenly the enemy, not tolerating the truth, left me - and I calmed down and immediately glorified the Lord with a short doxology: Glory to Thee, Lord! Glory to Thee, Lord! January 22, 1865. Friday. When you can serve, be sure to serve yourself, without trusting your father, except for Vespers. My infinite sweetness, Lord Jesus Christ, what sweets did You not give me to taste in my temporary existence, what sweets did I not taste, poor, insignificant, despicable, sinful, evil-tempered! Thank you, my mercy, my sweetness! But if earthly sweets are so numerous, varied, and pleasant, then what are heavenly, spiritual sweets: they are truly endless, countless, unimaginably pleasant. Do not, O most merciful and generous Lord, deprive me of Your heavenly sweets, which You have prepared for those who love You. Do not deprive them and your other people! Let them all know You, O Lord, our sweetness. After all, You are our sweetness - everywhere and on earth, that is, Your deeds are eternal sweetness. However, Lord, grant me to graciously endure the sorrows of life: they are needed for my many-passionate flesh, for my old man. More humane! Teach them to bear kindly with your other people and let them know their need. Be patient in tribulation [Rom. 12, 12]. In the world you will have tribulation [Jn. 16, 33]. Christ is my endless, most perfect life, and food and drink, sweets, money, clothes, housing are only means of life, and temporary ones at that; Can I really exchange eternal, Hypostasis Life for corruptible means to corruptible, temporary, transitory life? - Yes, it won’t. So, having life in you - Christ, do not grieve over the loss of money, sweets, food and drink, clothes, housing, but give everything to Christ God, your whole life. I am the trumpet of God, I am the organ of the glory of God, the organ of the mother of my Church, therefore I must trumpet well, clearly and loudly, that is, read church prayers during divine services, during the Sacraments, etc., trumpet with a reflective heart and lips, slowly, with imperturbable calm. Do not extend your sacred hand, which often holds the Holy Lamb, to everyone, namely to those who do not love the Lamb of God and are swept away from His church. Conduct yourself with the dignity befitting your rank and do not humiliate your sacred dignity, the dignity of the Church, of which you serve as a representative. Extend your hand thoughtfully. Otherwise they will say: he extends his hand to us - that means we still mean something, that means our affairs are nothing: you can go on a spree and not go to church. Reveal to me, Mother of God, that You are the Queen, all-powerful, all-good, all-holy, unshakable, so that my enemies will understand that You are my refuge, strength, and shrine, and deliverance. God! Teach me, strengthen me not to transgress Your law even one iota! Everything is possible for You! God! Teach me, strengthen me not to serve the enemy even one iota. Everything is possible for You! God! Give me a word of wisdom! You don’t like this and that, and the third and the fifth and the tenth: the face, the voice, the look, the step, and the manner - but is everything good about you, are you perfect? How many voluntary and involuntary shortcomings, weaknesses, sins, passions do you have? Look at yourself - you are not an angel either. Oh, how today I have angered Your goodness, Your bounties, Lord, Your spirituality by attachment to the corruptible things of this world. One poor woman told me that my servant Catherine was stealing food supplies from me and sending them to a poor widow at the Navigation School, and I was very upset with the servant and performed the Sacrament carelessly. But if I loved my neighbor as I loved myself, then I would not be sad, but would rejoice at the fact that a poor widow feeds on my bread and salt (especially God’s) and that our leftovers, the excesses of my meal, go to the benefit of the same people of God, my brothers, my sisters, and for the servant who sinned, I would pray to God, so that He would forgive her sin and admonish her and not allow her to die for the sake of theft. But no: I was greatly saddened, I suffered during the Sacrament of Baptism, the great and most heavenly Sacrament. I would have to trample on everything earthly, consider everything as rubbish and not be angry with the servant, but pray to God for her complacently, so that her soul does not perish because of theft, if she really steals, and with joy accept the plunder of her property, knowing that she has property in heaven [Heb. 10:34], but I accepted it with extreme sorrow and performed the Sacrament only outwardly, having committed a grave sin, for cursed is everyone who does the work of the Lord with negligence [Jer. 48, 10]. I should have neglected my property, but I pitied it too much and neglected the Lord and His heavenly Sacrament. Forgive me, Lord, my sin! Am I, a communicant of the Divine Mysteries, Brashn, who abides in the eternal belly, taking pity on the corruptible Brashn? Am I, who needs so little, little? And how much can a servant take from me? Oh, how necessary it is to trample on all earthly things and philosophize decisively about heavenly things! Otherwise, because of your addiction to earthly things, you neglect the things above and the Lord! The villains, the devil, greatly, terribly confuse us because of our attachment to the flesh and the things of this world - money, food and drink, clothing, housing, pleasures, games and the like. We must despise everything for the sake of the Lord and for the sake of the real warrior, and place all our hope in God. God! Forgive me for what happened: because of my addiction to earthly possessions, I carelessly and reluctantly performed the Sacrament of Baptism; according to the inward man I was all an abomination of covetousness in Thy sight; My heart has departed from You, my God, and painfully clung to the possessions; It was not in You, O generous Giver of all blessings, that I hoped, but in my property, as if stolen by a servant - this embarrassed me; not at you. Hypostatic life, not on You, the Existing One, by Whom everything exists, all things, but on the dust of the earth, on food and drink, in which only a certain portion consists of material life, and not spiritual; but material life without spiritual life is insignificant - this is the vegetation of a plant, and not the [life of] a person. Look at the wandering of the Jews in the desert: it depicts our journey to the heavenly fatherland under the leadership of the Savior. We, on earth, with the coming of the Savior the Son of God to earth with the granting of a saving covenant from Him to us, have things of infinite importance that must be done and which cannot be avoided without harming our salvation; therefore, insignificant matters, matters of temporary wandering, temporary things that serve the flesh and interfere with spiritual matters, must be abandoned so that they do not serve as an obstacle to spiritual work. How does it happen with us? We chase after the unimportant, and neglect the object of infinite importance. Oh, what wisdom a Christian needs! Moreover, always. Contemplation! What a wise, solid building is our Orthodox faith. Only the wise and all-powerful Artist - God could erect it! The gates of hell cannot prevail against him [Matt. 16, 18]. In this life, where sin is trying to drown us and destroy us forever, we have no time to spend time in carelessness and negligence or in empty deeds: we must stay awake and vigilant and carefully cleanse our soul, which is diligently clogged by sin. Church of the Lord; door to the church; key to the door. Wonderful are Your works, O Lord! That he might present it to himself as a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and without blemish [Eph. 5, 27]. Teach blessings to the poor and others who require blessings with meekness and humility, slowly and with patience, and God forbid that you bless with disdain and contempt in the heart of any beggar, in whose person is Christ Himself, who became poor for our sake, Himself born of a poor Mother and spending his life in poverty. I thank You, Lord, for through the prayer of my repentance and heartfelt confession of my sins, You had mercy on me and pacified me and did not shut me up in the hands of the enemy. I celebrated the liturgy peacefully and received Holy Communion. Oh, what peace, what space, freedom, lightness, joy, triumph were in my soul after communion of the Holy Mysteries! How my lips naturally moved to praise and thanksgiving to the Lord! The enemy also acts in us as lethargy and relaxation of spirit and body. Therefore, we must shake off this lethargy and this relaxation in every possible way and try to have a vigorous, lively, strong spirit, especially in prayer and when encountering people. The enemy acts in us both as physical and mental heaviness and a tendency to sleep, while we otherwise sleep enough; however, the cause of this is often burdened with food in the evening or on the same day. In this case, it is better to go and take a walk in the fresh air - then the heaviness will pass and lightness, cheerfulness and freshness of spirit and body will appear; It’s even better to go to good friends or friends and enliven yourself with good conversation. The word revives the soul and body. But avoid sleeping during the day if possible: sleeping during the day is unnatural. There's a night for that. I thank You, Lord, because I, who burdened myself with food after communion of Your Holy Mysteries and was therefore under the strong temptation of an opponent, delivered me from this temptation and victoriously granted me to sit in the first and fifth grades. I thank You for preserving my heart in purity by Your truth, [presented and constantly conveyed 29] in the heart with the word: deified, that is, Your servants and Your people in general, and by preserving the respect due to them in the heart; and when dealing with the poor, You preserve me with the same word of truth in my heart from the abomination of contempt, bitterness and irritability towards them. Our flesh is like a saltpeter match: if anyone or anything from the outside touches it, it is immediately ready to ignite with some kind of passion: pride, anger and irritability, or envy, stinginess, love of money, greed and gluttony, or fornication, or resentment and insult, despondency, or crazy, crafty laughter and etc. So watch and watch your heart, listen to it unceasingly, otherwise the sinful fire will kindle in our damned being. God! do not deprive me of Your heavenly blessings, for You are the Lord and can do this if You wish; Lord, deliver me from eternal torment, for You are the Lord and you can also conveniently do this if you wish; Lord, whether I have sinned in mind or in thought, in word or in deed, forgive me, for You are the Lord. Lord, as a man who has sinned, You, as a generous God, have mercy on me, seeing the weakness of my soul 30. So, You are the Lord and you can do everything for me, who repent and ask for Your blessings. And You, the Master of all Angels and men, all-good and all-powerful, as a formidable Sovereign, the driver and flame of all opposing forces, as conveniently able to destroy with the speed of lightning all the varied machinations of evil spirits, deliver us from all sin and strengthen us with Your power for all virtue; Make us conformable to Your Son and our God and to You, the Most Holy Virgin, Mother of our Lord, for we are called by the name of Christ, Your Son, as His members. May our name - Christian - not be an empty sound, without power, but may we all be imitators of Christ, the Head of our faith, and You, the Head of mental creation. May we all be like living stones, being built up into a spiritual church, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God [1 Pet. 2, 5]. O Lady, Lady! It is not in vain that we call You Lady. Reveal and manifest over us Your holy, living, effective, all-powerful, unchangeable dominion. Show that you can do everything for good, as the all-good Mother of the all-good King, as the almighty Mother of the almighty King; disperse the darkness of our hearts, repel the arrows of crafty spirits, flatteringly driven towards us. May the peace of Thy Son, Thy peace reign in our hearts, and let us all ever exclaim in joy: who after the Lord is our Lady - our all-merciful, all-powerful and most swift Intercessor! For this reason You are exalted, Lady, for this reason you have been given an unspeakable abundance of Divine grace, for this reason you have been given ineffable boldness and strength at the throne of God and the gift of omnipotent prayer, for this reason You have been adorned with ineffable holiness and purity, for this reason You have been given unapproachable power 31 from the Lord, so that You may preserve, protect, intercede, cleanse and save us, the inheritance of Your Son and God and Yours. Save us, O Most Pure and All-Good and All-Wise and All-Powerful, - For You are the Mother of our Savior, Who of all names was pleased most of all to be called Savior, just as His very name is Jesus, or Savior. It is common for us who wander in this life to fall, for we are overlaid with many-passionate flesh, surrounded by spirits of malice in heaven, seducing us into sin, we live in an adulterous and sinful world, tempting us to sin, and You are above all sin, You are a true shrine 32, You are the brightest Sun, You are the most pure and all-good and all-powerful; It is in Your nature to cleanse us, defiled by sins, just as a mother cleanses her young children, if we humbly call on You for help; It is in your nature to raise us, who are constantly falling, to intercede, protect and save us, who are slandered 33 from the spirits of evil, and to instruct us to walk along every path of salvation. When your wife wants to take in someone else’s child for feeding and living with her, or when you are asked to take him in for living and feeding, accept him as your own or, even more so, as a child of God, and do not alienate him, do not lose heart towards him because of the idea that he will need enough bread-grub, tea-sugar and the like, for the Heavenly Father will send his share in abundance: after all, we all children of God, and He cares for us all and provides for us, like a most tender Father. Remember also that we are all one, under one Head Christ and are animated by one Spirit of God. Do not eat in excess, otherwise the excess will turn into pus and clog your body with it. Always be abstinent, and food will turn into fresh blood and juices. You ask others for prosperity 34 in life and faith and spiritual reason 35 - are you asking sincerely, unfeignedly, or with one tongue? Do you wish them this success with all your heart? Are you successful yourself? Aren't you wallowing in passions yourself? Look: the Lord sees everything with His brightest eyes - you must skillfully ask Him, in the simplicity of your heart, with a burning spirit. When, due to various impurities accumulated in the stomach and intestines, you feel unwell, in disposition, and when in this state your prayer is cold, heavy, filled with despondency and some despair, do not despair and do not be discouraged then, for the Lord knows your painful, difficult state. Fight against weakness; Pray as much as you can, and the Lord will not despise the weakness of your flesh and spirit. You feel like an unclean, nasty, evil, blasphemous sinner, and therefore you don’t want to approach the Lady and pray to Her. But pray fervently because you are such a sinner; do not lie in the mire of sin, come to the Lady, stand before Her image in the hope that She herself is here, show Her without shame your sinful ulcers, have disgust for them and ask with all your heart, with tears, ask Her to cleanse you from this spiritual leprosy - and you will not be ashamed: the All-Good One will not despise you, the Most Pure, All-Powerful One will cleanse you, as the Lord cleansed you ten lepers. Yesterday, when I went to give communion to a sick person at the Sevastopol Hotel, the enemy, or my evil heart, overwhelmed me with sinful impurities, and I was confused and upset internally when I came to the sick person. The Holy Mysteries lay on the table. So I bowed my knees before the Lord and said: Lord! resolve the sinful union! And immediately the Lord broke the bonds of sin, and my heart calmed down, and I boldly accomplished my work - I read the prayers, confessed and administered the Divine Mysteries to the sick person. January 27th day [1865] How inconsistent, blind, self-contradictory I am! I teach others to despise the flesh as transitory, and to be diligent about the soul, things more immortal, 36 and I myself immediately violate what I advise others to do, namely, I caress my flesh with pleasant foods and drinks, I get irritated when they make me worry about going somewhere beyond my expectations and without special reward for my labors. How contradictory and ridiculous I am! Where can I find a true Christian who would teach by his very deeds to despise the flesh as fleeting and to be diligent about the immortal soul? Where can I find such an uplifting husband? On earth, among the living, it is difficult to find, although of course there are such men, but in the Church of the firstborn, written in heaven [Heb. 12, 23], in the heavenly Church there are many such men, like the stars in the sky. Rejecting themselves as an old, corrupt, pernicious person, like a broken vessel unable to contain water, they took up their cross and followed Christ and gave up their whole life to Him, despising the flesh and the fleeting world. They heard the Speaker; What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? [Mk. 8, 36], and they knew that the flesh and the world would pass away and be no more, that our soul, among other things, is priceless because it, being the image of God, is immortal and because the whole world means nothing in comparison with the soul, because it is transitory, for heaven and earth will pass away [Matt. 24, 35; Mk. 13, 31], according to the word of the Savior. And at every step, with our own eyes, we are convinced of the transitoriness of the world, for everything in the world walks and spins and everything passes: the earth spins, the elements are all in motion, the seasons spin, as in a round dance; Some people are born, others die, some get married, others lose their wives; some are being built, others are losing their homes and property; Some cities are built and beautified, others are burned by fire and turned to ashes. Everything on earth passes away, which means that the earth itself will never pass away. If everything in the house catches fire, then the house itself will burn. Heaven and earth... dishes for fire [Russian: preserved]. The first world was drowned and destroyed by water. But the present heavens and earth... are destined for fire for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men [2 Pet. 3, 6 – 7]. Where, even after this, will I find true Christians who would despise everything earthly as transitory and strive with all their might to please God, their immortal King, and to save their souls? Where can I find such an exalted man who, like a king or like some kind of god, would despise the earth and everything earthly for the sake of God (and not out of contempt) and courageously subjugate to his mind, or the law? God, all the passions and addictions of life? Who would be zealous with God's zeal for the salvation of the souls of his fellow men and take care of their enlightenment, purification and strengthening in faith and virtue? God! Erect such lamps on the candlestick of this world, on the candlestick of Your Church, may they preach Your glory, may they be zealous for Your glory and for the salvation of Your people! God! Everything is possible for You. How long, Lord, will the vanity of this world surround us? How long will we turn away from You, our Creator and Savior? As you wish, Lord, arrange a thing for us. January 28, 1865 Do not be seduced by money and do not enjoy these sweets: they will become a barrier between God and your heart, between you and your neighbor; they will turn your heart into cold stone, so that you will not be able to sympathize with the misfortunes of others. Consider all jewelry as rubbish, all sweets as pus, and then you will love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. And without this you are not a true Christian. What am I saying? Without this you are an idolater. Do not demand back from him who took what you have unrighteously [Lk. 6:30], but humble yourself and yield to him, hoping that the Lord will reward you a hundredfold for the insult from your neighbor. Be ready to give more than what they take or want to take from you, and for the sake of peace and love with your neighbor, despise money and property in general, so that the Angels will cry out about your Christian wisdom, seeing how you philosophize on high, despising everything that is worse, honoring the peace and love of Christ above all else. Remember that your Lord Jesus Christ’s bodily life was taken away by His enemies - and He did not resist, did not become irritated, but voluntarily surrendered to spitting, strangulation and beatings, to crucifixion, to cruel torture and death. What are we, who call ourselves Christians, doing? If others take our ruble unjustly, and then we are ready to quarrel with them, we will get angry, we will be upset with them - do not touch ours. How many good deeds, how many good deeds, how many good deeds manifest to me from my Lord! And how many secret ones! And they all have no number. What shall I repay to my Lord for all that is good? - Grant me, Lord, to love You with all my heart, and my neighbor, as I love myself, for at this very time, when I write these words, I do not love You with all my heart: love for my multi-passionate flesh and addiction to temporary blessings tear my heart away from Your love, and equally from my neighbor as I love myself: I love myself more, my neighbor much less, I even feel coldness towards my neighbor, sometimes hatred, envy, internal ill will. You are the power of love. God! Give me this strength. Reflect and contemplate with your heart when you pray about this. who you pray for or what you pray for. And it would be good to contemplate all the prayers. When an alien, proud and evil spirit confuses you before reading and while reading prayers to the Lord God or the Mother of God, then vividly imagine that all those present are children of the Heavenly Father, almighty, beginningless, infinite, all-good, and that the Lord is their Father, and boldly, peacefully, joyfully, freely pray to Him on behalf of everyone, without fear of ridicule, contempt, or malice of the people of this world. Do not be crafty, ashamed of human faces. Do not hesitate to sincerely pray to the Heavenly Father, especially read the Lord’s Prayer with reverence, peacefully, and without haste. In general, read all prayers calmly, evenly, with reverence, knowing before Whom you are speaking them. Do not turn cares for the flesh into lusts [Rom. 13, 14], - this means do not feast, do not drink, do not smoke, do not play cards, do not sleep at the wrong time, do not sleep long in the morning, do not take long walks for the sake of, as they say, health (such walks are idleness and absent-mindedness), do not dress smartly and elegantly. There are so many Christians who say: I believe in God, but do not believe in deeds. How many lips grow numb when it is necessary to defend in society the glory of God and His [holiness], which is blasphemed by the son of this age, and they become numb before them. Others are silent when they need to keep the conversation going God or when you need to stop some outrage or insolence. Many people say: I believe in God, but if trouble, adversity, temptation happens, they become lost, faint-hearted, despondent, sometimes grumble—and where does all the faith go? Here it would be necessary to show devotion to the will of God, to say; as the Lord willed, so it was: blessed be the name of the Lord [Job. 1, 21]. Otherwise, it is clear that they believe in God only in times of happiness, and in times of misfortune they reject Him. The Heavenly Bridegroom has betrothed our souls to Himself through suffering, just as the first Passion-Bearer Himself did. Carnal sweets are disgusting to spiritual sweets and crowd them out. Therefore it is said: No one is worthy from those bound by carnal lusts and pleasures to come or draw near or serve Thy, the King of glory 37. Why? Because sweets bind the soul, tear the heart away from God, make it a slave of sweets, a lover of sweets, not God. And God is a jealous man, does not tolerate rivalry in love, especially does not tolerate us being tied in love to anything carnal, which is unworthy of us and contrary to the essence of things, for our soul is the image of God. Carnal deeds - confusion, senselessness, anger, contempt, partiality, envy, stinginess, gluttony, fornication, despondency, cowardice, hypocrisy, impatience, grumbling, dissatisfaction with everything except the most pleasant, dissatisfaction with the actions of others: putting firewood in the stove incorrectly, mopping the floor incorrectly, opening doors slowly, taking off a fur coat, coat, overcoat not smartly, looks wrong, speaks wrong, walks, sits wrong, sings wrong, reads wrong - everything in others is wrong, bad, wrong, and he gets irritated, embittered, embarrassed by everything - but in himself everything is fine, or at least not right, but nothing will do, as long as others don’t notice, but if they do notice, he will be embarrassed, as, they say, I am so (or so) perfect man, stumbled, sinned, why did I find myself on the disadvantageous side (oh, hypocrisy!). See, I need to be seen only from the good side, despite the fact that there is a lot of imperfection and bad in me! I want to seem perfect! O my flesh, blind, stupid and absurd flesh, you are all lies and ugliness! You shouldn’t be trusted in anything, not even your dreams or confusion! You are a slave of the devil! You are a tool of Satan! You need to be put on the cross, crucified. Human! Endure everything with meekness, all everyday troubles; do not be irritated by anything, be meek and condescending to everyone, knowing that you yourself are the first to need the condescension of others. One must feel sorry for a person and not spare anything for a person. God the Father did not spare His Son for the salvation and bliss of man; The Son of God did not spare Himself and gave Himself up to suffering and death. And we must lay down our lives for our brothers [1 John. 3, 16]. But we do not feel sorry for our neighbors, but for them we feel sorry for the dust of the earth: money, food, drink, clothing, housing, etc. And the bitterness of coal, spreading through the room, is useful for the spirit, and perhaps for the body - after all, you can’t taste sweets, smell pleasant aromas, and breathe pure ether - you’ll be very spoiled. And you need to grab a little bit of bitterness in order to at least crucify your accursed flesh, which constantly resists the love of God and neighbor. And she, the accursed one, is angry at bitterness and at those who caused this bitterness because this bitterness is a pacification for her and in order to suppress her evil passion, and in order to suppress it, she must find fault with something. Anger is looking everywhere for a pretext for itself, throughout life, all everyday incidents, all collisions with people, it is ready to turn into a reason for discovering it. A person stands wrong, looks wrong, acts wrong, speaks wrong, sings, reads wrong, sits wrong - everything seems wrong to an evil person. But he doesn’t look at himself, at his own heart: is everything okay there? He doesn’t notice that anger, impatience and irritability are very wrong, disrespect and contempt for one’s neighbor are very wrong, that whim and discontent are very wrong. Oh my God! How absurd, crazy, contradictory, blind we are! We turn carnal, insignificant troubles into an excuse for spiritual troubles, we upset our spirit, the church of God, and we lose our Lord for our addiction to the flesh, or for our excessive love for the flesh, for our pity on the flesh. In others we see little things that are wrong and we get irritated, angry, often lose our temper - we have huge problems with ourselves, and we neglect them or madly increase them with new ones. We want everything in our house to be in our own way, in the owner’s way, but we ourselves do not fulfill the will of our God; We want others to be our infallible servants, but we ourselves are not afraid to be a hundredfold faulty before God! Be patient with everything, my accursed flesh, and do not anger the Lord any more. Today I sinned before the Lord - I was hostile to the servant Anyuta because she supposedly let a lot of bitterness into the room by closing the chimney early, but there wasn’t a lot of bitterness at all. Why did I not love my neighbor and despise the Lord’s commandment? Because of a little trouble for the flesh. Damn man I am! May the Lord not test me in how I love my neighbor - His image, and how I love Him, and whether I despise my flesh, whether I crucify it, whether I spare it, the enemy of God, too much? Am I not caressing her, am I tenderizing her? Do I not despise my neighbor because of it, do I not despise His commandments? Oh, my damned pus! How much worry I have because of you! I anger God and despise and insult my neighbor! I thank You, Lord Jesus Christ, my God, for I cried out to You, the Savior of the world, with living faith for help, when unclean passion carried me away, oppressed me, darkened me, scorched me, plunging me into dishonor and shame of my face, and You immediately helped me, driving away the thoughts that were raping me, and I was pacified and triumphant in the power of Your fortress. Oh, how powerful, obvious, and quick is Your intercession. January 30, 1865 Saturday. By being upset and annoyed by something unfavorable to our health, for example, by the bitterness of coals, you do double harm - both to the soul and to the body. It's better to be at peace. Let the harm from the substance affect only the material body, and let the soul be above materiality. Remember how many people live in stuffy, smoky, and even fume-fueled or dusty homes and remain calm. And you are so pampered by the clean and wide rooms and clean air! You can’t even tolerate a lot of incense. By being upset and irritated with your neighbor in vain, because of everyday things, you sin against God, against all the saints, against the Angels of the Lord and against all people, for the Lord Jesus is the Head of your neighbor and of all Angels and men, and they are all His members and are all one in the Lord. Do not be afraid of people of every class and condition when performing church services and Sacraments, for example Baptism, Marriage, Blessing of Anointing - they are flesh and blood. Conduct yourself in this way regarding the flesh, when something unpleasant strikes you, as if you did not have it, but only had one soul, especially during worship: and indeed, it is a vapor that appears for a while and then disappears [Jas. 4, 14]. And the bitterness from coals, I learned from experience, is not harmful either to the lungs or to the body in general. Just empty anxiety and the whim of an old, evil man. Irritability is the same fornication with the devil, the same satanic absurdity. I thank Thee, O Lord my God, for through my prayer Thou hast delivered me from the fire and the distress that befell me as a result of my irritability. How absurd passions are: a person gets irritated by soulless things and throws them, breaks them, and tears them. Do not be annoyed by the people standing noisily in the church before and during the wedding: these are demons in them, demons of absent-mindedness and talkativeness. I sinned before God: yesterday I was at the deer race, on the sledding hill. Everything about us is ungodly: the mountains, the running of deer and horses, and music in the mountains - but where is the work of saving the soul? Where is the concern for pleasing God? The soul perishes in sins, but no one thinks of saving it. What is this short life given to us for? Is it for fun? I thank You, Lord, I thank You, Lady: You delivered me, O Lord, through the prayers of giving birth to You from the hordes of demons who rushed at me before and during the wedding. Oh, how bitter they are! And for my gluttony, for eating meat. How long will I serve demons through gluttony? Are we Christ? - No, we are pagans. Where is the Gospel reading? Where is living according to the Gospel? Where is the imitation of the lives of the saints? Where is the obedience to shepherds? Where is the abstinence? Where is selflessness for God and neighbor? Where is the crucification of the flesh with passions and lusts? Do not turn cares for the flesh into lusts [Rom. 13, 14]. Gluttony is, as it were, a law for us: if you please, drink tea every day in the morning, when there is no need at all: it is, of course, hot and pleasant, convenient to pour into the larynx, but doesn’t it pamper our flesh more than nourish it? Oh, how conveniently we could stay without tea until lunchtime! But if you please refuse the legal decree: the samovar has boiled according to custom, the tea has been brewed, sugar is on the table, everything is ready - how can you refuse to make a sacrifice to the womb? Especially if someone else has a weak will and is inclined to delicacy - and who among us is not inclined? No, samovars must be hidden during Lent. Let us at least deny this to our flesh for the sake of the Lord, just as we have previously denied the Lord many things for the sake of our flesh. Why do we please this evil enemy of ours and God’s so much? To make her commit more fornication? Was she arrogant, angry, irritated, broke, stubborn, alienated from God’s commandments, despised her neighbors? The berries are good. You will endure the difficulty and painful sting of the operation, but you will be healthy. We are talking about confession. This means that in confession you must reveal all your shameful deeds to your confessor without concealment, even though it is painful and embarrassing, shameful and humiliating! Otherwise, the wound will remain unhealed and will ache and ache and undermine mental health; it will remain a leaven for other spiritual infirmities or sinful habits and passions. The priest is a spiritual doctor: show him the wounds without shame, sincerely, openly, with filial trust: after all, the confessor is your spiritual father, who should love you more than your relatives, father and mother, for Christ’s love is higher than carnal, natural love, for you he must give an answer to God. Why has our life become so unclean, full of passions and sinful habits? Because so many people hide their spiritual wounds or ulcers, that is why they hurt and grow, and no healing can be applied to them. Hate, despise all flesh with all its feelings - in deed, and not in word only and on paper. Do not be upset at the sight of the poor following you and asking you for alms, but give and give to them from the abundance of your heart, and give willingly and with affection and in abundance, so that the Heavenly Father, who has generously rewarded you with all the gifts of His goodness, will reward you with His generous and generous gifts. Remember that those who are not truly poor and not in need will not follow you and spy on your entrances and exits. Love them as your children, as sisters and brothers, as fathers and mothers in Christ. Do not obey the devil, who grieves and irritates you against the lesser brethren of Christ, so that you do not anger them and Christ your Lord, who in their person receives from us alms, grief, abuse, and contempt. Tolerate stench and excessive, unpleasant, offensive odors; Consider everything carnal as nothing and do not deprive yourself of peace of mind and a gentle disposition of spirit, and do not be upset with your neighbor because of anything material or carnal, considering everything as fleeting smoke. Keep the sanctuary of your spirit, in which the Lord of glory dwells. If you despise the flesh and everything carnal, it will pass away 36. It gave off a stench - nothing. Oh, wickedness! Oh, malice! The evil devil denigrates, defiles, and blasphemes the holy, most beautiful, magnificent, majestic, amazing creation of God, such as man is the image of the Creator Himself, holy, blessed, most beautiful, majestic; denigrates and defiles, humiliates other creations of God - animate ones, which are also all beautiful, kind and pure. All this is good [Gen. 1.31]. But may you be damned yourself, unclean, nasty, disgusting, and alien spirit! And I will admire the works of the hands of my God. God! Prayers, prayers, prayers for children! God! Teach them to pray. God! My simplicity, my goodness, I thank You, who delivered me from the snares of demons and pacified me. I have nothing of my own: the blessing taught by me is God’s, not mine; a good thought, a good desire, a good word, a good deed is a work of God’s grace. My only sins, my only baseness, abomination, insignificance. My wealth, Christ God, my nobility, my existence, my strength, glory to You! Do not complain and do not be upset with the deacon because of the prosphyra, who distributes the prosphyra without your knowledge: do not pay attention to the bread - with the Bread of Life, do not offend the Lord by clinging to the corruptible bread, the trash that is perishing; Serving meals is a deacon's job. And there is no need for you to please people - to send out prosphyra at mass to offend others. And the deacon will always leave you the prosphyra, and even if he didn’t leave it, then you have the Lord Himself - the Bread of Life and the Antidoron. Is it difficult to buy two or three prosphyras? Are they expensive? And being upset with the deacon, how much sin, crampedness, grief, spiritual and physical troubles do you accept, how do you offend the Lord? There is so much shame, humiliation in front of people and in front of yourself! There are so many deprivations - so many grace-filled gifts! The Holy Mysteries turn into nothing for you: what am I saying? - To judgment and condemnation, as one who is partial to earthly things and abandons the Lord. So, today I sinned with partiality (not to my taste, not to honorable persons, not to those to whom I would have wished, the prosphira was given, although I myself gave it at my own request), extreme pride, love of power (I give it myself, but the deacon don’t dare give it), man-pleasing (to Sinebryukhova), embitterment towards my brother - fellow deacon Alexander, addiction to the perishing meat (I regretted it, greedy, the prosphyr of two given by the deacon), neglect of the Lord, who had just been received inside, into the heart, while I should have forgotten everything earthly and breathed and lived by the Lord alone, saying together with David: What am I in heaven; and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh disappeared (as if they did not exist at all with the living sensation of the Lord in my heart and filling it with the Lord), the God of my heart, and my part, God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. Oh, how weak and insignificant is our love for the Lord, who richly gives us all things to enjoy [1 Tim. 6, 17], and how strong is the love (addiction) for the earthly gifts of God - food, drink, money, various things. To whom should we cleave: to the Giver of goods or to the benefits given from Him? So, love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, and look at all earthly things as rubbish, dust. Hate yourself, just as your old man hates your new, reborn Christ. Be your own enemy, your adversary. Remember the simplicity of your soul and the simplicity of the Lord - your belly, your light, your strength. Glory to Thee, God, my omnipresent, merciful, benevolent Savior, who delivers my misery, my weakness from the burning and shock of hellish fire and the shock of anger, irritability and discord, and who pacified me when I called on Him with faith, walking and then standing in prayer. When the spirit of anger and discord [that began with my sister-in-law [...] sister and maid began to outrage and shake my entire being, especially my insides, I immediately, in spiritual distress, turned my thoughts and heart to the Savior and cried out to Him: Lord! You see my beginning anger in me! God! I believe that You fill everything everywhere and everything, just as this air surrounding me, inhaled and exhaled by me, fills everything, that You surround me on all sides and penetrate me - deliver me, Lord, from the spirit of hostility, confusion and irritability and do not allow it to reign in us - to outrage, upset, quarrel us, but pacify us with the grace of Your Holy Spirit, extinguishing us at the very beginning hellish flames that threaten to burn Your members, the churches of Your Holy Spirit. After my prayer, all hellish confusion disappeared like smoke! This is how savingly it is to call on the sweetest name of the Lord! This is what spiritual troubles and illnesses it saves those who call upon it. This is how saving our Christian faith is! If you don’t immediately turn to God with a prayer for help, passions will overcome you, the power of the enemy will overcome you, and you will be indignant and upset mentally and physically, and even like sometimes! - so that you will be unwell for several days - and even then it happens that after strong disturbances many people died! What terribly confuses me, overshadows and darkens my mind and heart and separates me from the Lord and from my neighbor? Love, addiction to earthly sweets - sugar, jam, soft and elegant white bread and [spices], various delicacies, money - it is obvious that in order to love God and one’s neighbor one must despise everything, in general everything that is considered pleasure in the world, as something important - despise, value nothing, namely: gold, gold and silver things, various sweets, cookies and jams, beautiful and precious clothes and various decorations - still pay attention to your soul, to your heart and to what gives him peace and silence, light and strength, joy in the Holy Spirit and spiritual space. And what does all this give him? – Lord God, clinging to Him alone as the Giver of Life and the Treasure of all good things. Do not neglect a single commandment of God or the Church, no matter how small it may be, apparently for example the commandment about fasting on Wednesday or Friday: do not break a single Wednesday or Friday unless absolutely necessary. You ate, let’s say, a small meal on Wednesday - you have already violated God’s commandment, you have committed a sin. And who is the chief of sin? - Devil. You thus paved the way for him into your heart and drove him out of the heart of Christ. God! My weakness lacks words of gratitude with which I could worthily thank You for Your wondrous, constantly showing me help in the spiritual battle against the passions that are at war in my affairs. Accept this single word from me: thank you. What kind of tricks does the evil one release: when you come to visit or to class - what angers, darkens and oppresses you? Instills poisonous doubt about the fur coat and hat, pity and fear that they might be stolen. Otherwise, for no apparent reason, he will put the sting of regret for sweets into my heart: no matter how they ruin me! Oh, earthly vanity! And all this is rubbish, absurdity! Chimera, dream! Madness! Anomaly! So that you can experience whether [the theater] is beneficial or harmful for your soul, stand up after the theater for prayer at home and notice your heart: does it pray to God as willingly as yesterday and the day before, when you were not in the theater or when you had sorrow in your soul, and if you notice that it has become colder towards God, is shy and turns away from Him, then know that the theater has a pernicious influence on the soul. Or notice: do you go to church with such eagerness and stand in the church when you go to the theater - or do you rather stand in it, with greater reverence and tenderness, when you don’t? They say that theatergoers don't like churches, is that true? If true, then there is no need to prove that theater is poison for a Christian. However, I do not have the will to despise my neighbor: I tolerate violence. Having sinned against You, my God, I despised the sick man, rejected him in my heart and desired corruptible food rather than serving You in the person of the sick man. Oh, how disgusted it was for me to see a woman inviting me to see a sick woman while I was on my way to lunch and hurrying to the gymnasium - you see, damned me, I preferred pleasing my belly to serving my neighbor, or even more so, Christ Himself in the person of my neighbor. However, in church I came to my senses and, instead of being upset, thanked the Lord for stopping the desire of my carnal will for food and drink and turning me to serving Him in the person of my neighbor; but later, having come to the sick woman, he again stumbled and despised her, did not recognize in her the sick Christ Himself (he came sick and took Me [Matthew 25:36]) or the rod of Christ (I am the Vine, you are born [John 15:5]), a member of Christ, personal, living and animate: you are the joy of Christ [ 1 Cor. 6, 15]. I stammered, I was cramped, embarrassed, upset, and completely weak at heart - and this was after communion. All this is due to gluttony and breaking the fast the day before, and from instant hatred of brother Matthew, a worthy brother, kind, compassionate, intelligent, conscientious. [End] words: willingly and joyfully serve every neighbor in his spiritual and physical needs, as Christ Himself, not sparing your strength and not sparing yourself, and do not serve your belly, despising it and all your flesh for the good of your neighbor. Like lightning, fulfill God’s commandment to love God and your neighbor. God! I'm in trouble - help me. Don’t go to gambling evenings, don’t eat or drink there – the devil is there. I thank You, Lord, I thank You, Lady, for You delivered me from such 39 and grave sins through the prayers of You who gave birth to You, and after the storm of confusion and demonic oppression that lasted for several hours Wednesday (even in sleep and after daytime sleep), You delivered me and pacified and spread me. May I avoid gluttony and satiety. (I read: Have mercy on me, O God... Lord, forsaking by repentance... Undefiled, Unblasphemous... Highest Heaven... Silently to the Mother of God... Intercessor...) Look, thank God not in happiness, peace and silence, but also in misfortune, in sorrow and spiritual storm, in cramped conditions and sadness. Will we really accept good from God, but not evil? [Job. 2, 10]. As it pleased the Lord; and so it happened [Job. 1.21]. God is faithful; Who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it [1 Cor. 10, 13]. Knowing the grave and bitter violence of passions in man, the violence of demons, look condescendingly at the temporary, involuntary falls of a person, regret him and pray to the common Creator and Savior, may he be snatched from the pit of passions and from the hand of a murderer. The glutton is completely indifferent and cold, insensitive as a stone to the suffering of his neighbor, contemptuous and disgusted by him; his heart longs for the peace of home or for food and drink, especially if he has in mind a dinner party or [pie]. A gluttonous priest is disgusting - he is a bad shepherd: then, as he eats and drinks, the mental wolf plunders his sheep. Great sorrows of the heart, great troubles of the soul are needed for a glutton to soften and make sensitive his heart, hardened and petrified from intemperance. And these sorrows are great blessings for him, although they can be painful, like hell, and their source will be revealed in his bad performance of his duty, which stems precisely from his gluttony and the delicacy or hardness of his heart. It is true for you, Lord, but for us it is a disgrace to our faces [Dan. 9, 7]. Righteous is ecu, O Lord, and Thy judges rule [Ps. 118, 137 ], because with righteousness and true judgment you bring all things upon me. Wednesday's fast and our heel to friends and guests only continues: guests have come - and let's allow everything. The Lord and His Church aside with His commands. Oh, hypocrisy and fickleness! Where to show others an example of obedience to the Church, strict adherence to its statutes. Humanity! This is how our entire faith falls from pleasing people. Away with my carnal, [gnawing] wisdom 40, I rely on the Lord in everything, and I myself will seek the Kingdom God and his truth. [Lord, it is Yours to provide me with everything that is necessary for my bodily needs]. For a moment I longed for silver while admonishing a sick person with the Sacraments of Repentance and Communion - the enemy took possession of me, oppressed me, darkened me, humiliated me, brutalized me, plunged me into the dirt, cooled me towards God and towards the sick woman and towards the people around her. What a terrible poison love of money is! What a terrible combination with the devil! Oh, damned me! Having before my eyes the King of kings, the belly of all, for whom I should burn with a burning love, I coveted corruptible money, the idol of this age, and showed the partial, criminal love of my heart for it; Having such an endless life within me and before my eyes, I longed for soulless dust. God! An endless belly and an endless and inexhaustible treasure! In You is all life, in You is all treasure; You are infinitely superior to every life force on earth; You are infinitely higher, more precious than every earthly treasure; You are a beauty infinitely superior to all beauties in the visible and invisible worlds; You are a power infinitely superior to all power; You are sweetness, infinitely sweeter than any earthly sweetness. With You, everything on earth is nothing, even in heaven. What do we have in heaven? and what do you want from the earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. What joyless evil, what torment there is in this world without You. You are my belly, You are my everything, all my good. You and keep me in Your simplicity! Do not desire silver, sweets, persons, other people’s property, do not have hatred for your neighbor even in thought, for all this is the work of the devil. Desire one God, despise everything else for the sake of God, and not for the sake of the objects themselves and for the sake of the fact that the devil seduces with them, like Eve with the forbidden fruit, and through desire (like a spirit) moves into the heart. All the earth and rubbish, and the body itself. Amen. Consider yourself worse than everyone and yourself alone worthy of the hatred and contempt of everyone. Our heart passionately consumes food and sweets, and food and sweets are the heart; That is why we are cold towards God and our neighbor. Like grass and hay, eat all food and sweets, without partiality and greed, giving thanks in your soul to the Lord and enjoying the Lord Himself while eating and drinking, who gives us everything abundantly. Look with indulgence at the simple-minded manners in singing and reading of a simple minister of the church, or watchman; his simple-minded outburst, although discordant, is more pleasant than your outward goodwill, not your heartfelt one, for in your heart you have pride, contempt, hatred of your neighbor, fatness and hardening from contentment, delicacy and satiety, while his heart is simple, humble, gentle, like a child. Honor all well-behaved, pious lower church servants, who work almost for you and do not complain because they serve without compensation, or are satisfied with the smallest contribution from the income of the cathedral brethren. Do not be upset at the one who broke your vessel, for: 1) he himself is already punished by his embarrassment, fear and regret; 2) the spiritual vessel of the heart is infinitely [more expensive] than a perishable vessel, and it must be protected in every possible way from damage and breaking, for grief and anger at someone who breaks a material vessel breaks the heart; 3) because of the loss of a thing, it is reckless to lose love for the person who is to blame for the loss, for a person gains a thing, and not a person’s thing, for a thing is for a person, and not a person for a thing; 4) you yourself often broke or lost things (and you can lose them again) and were lenient towards yourself in this or others towards you, and you, wanting this, be lenient towards others, for you must love your neighbor as you love yourself, and in everything, as you want people to do with you, do the same with them; 5) grief and anger at someone who has broken or lost a thing means attachment, addiction of your heart to earthly things, and you must consider everything as rubbish, for you are a Christian, a citizen of the Heavenly Kingdom, which is not food and drink [Rom. 14, 17 ], which flesh and blood will not inherit, in which people will be like angels in heaven and the bodies of people will be spiritual. So, let your love for your neighbor be unchanging; Let nothing separate you from it - neither sin, nor the passion of your neighbor, for it is common for every person to sin and be overwhelmed by passions, and we all strongly need leniency and [quietness] towards us, the sinners, from our neighbors. Carry in your heart the commandment to love God and your neighbor - the image of His glory incessantly. February 6. How quickly You answer, Lord, the prayer of faith! God! I cried out: save me, and You instantly saved me from the oppression and humiliation of the enemy. I thank You, Lord my God! (Faith and hope must be inseparable, alive, firm, unshakable.) My flesh is in a hurry, it loves that there is no, even the slightest, momentary obstacle on the way, but it itself does not know, blind, why it is in a hurry and how much it will gain from it (for it will come to a certain place and wait for what it came for, or spends its time in vanity), and if someone interferes, puts up the slightest obstacle, delay or makes awkwardness, it gets angry and annoyed. The accursed woman herself loves that there are no obstacles in her way, but she constantly puts obstacles for herself on the path to fulfilling God’s commandments. Calm gradualism. I learned all the terrible harm from delicacy, from the bliss of the flesh, I learned how [pampered by delicious food and drink] the flesh grows cold towards God and neighbor, turns away from God and neighbor, places the soul and its salvation at nothing, laughs at the truths of faith, is a hypocrite in prayer and falls into extreme misfortune. You need to eat some black bread, some crackers and water, and leave everything for the fast. We need to tame her, otherwise she will get out of hand. The soul dies. Do not count the number of pieces, spoons, cups and plates eaten at your table by others, and do not say in your soul: this overeating and overdrinking will be harmful to him or her or them - believe me, this is a demonic pretext, this is stinginess, this is pity on one’s neighbor for food and drink, self-love, jealousy about saving pleasant foods and drinks for oneself. You won’t regret simple food and simple drink, but what is pleasant. Here your addiction to food and drink is exposed. Take away wickedness from your soul. Remember that everyone has their own mind, their own worldly experience, their own measure of appetite and measure of food and drink consumption. Every age is his own master, his own guardian, his own responsibility, not you: know yourself, your sins - you will answer for yourself. Why are you looking at the speck in your brother's eye? [Matt. 7, 3]. O wicked man! O wicked flesh! All addiction to earthly things and coldness, dislike for one’s neighbor. It is necessary to starve the evil, insane flesh, the enemy of God and the slave of the devil. Don't trust her one bit about anything. Be confident and bold. Turn yourself away [Matt. 16, 24]. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts (delicacies) [Gal. 5, 24]. I thank You, Lord, and You, the Lady, who saved me from the viper of stinginess with your wondrous salvation!.. And what despair the enemy brought upon me before communion! Oh, horror! I couldn’t see the Light of God! But I just said within myself: my anger will not overcome Your unspeakable goodness and mercy - and immediately I communed in peace, and I felt so good, good, calm, joyful! Do not be burdened by the poor who follow you: remember that you are giving to Christ Himself; Remember also that the needs of the poor are great and these needs cannot be satisfied with pennies: food (expensive in the city), clothing, and an apartment are needed - and everything needs to be bought. That's why they follow you. A terrible habit and passion for cards. Cards are the gospel of people of the present time: they spend so much time playing cards that if they wanted to. a thousand times at this time they could have saved their soul, which they are destroying precisely through their addiction to playing cards, since they do not have enough time to delve into themselves, into their heart, into their state. How can one not cry over Christians’ neglect of the Gospel, about their failure to read and fulfill it! But I don’t even play cards, but I ruin my soul with gluttony. God! Turn me to the path of repentance. Sweets relax the soul and body, cool one’s feelings toward God and one’s neighbor, and greatly dull our senses—the heart: you read prayers, or the word of God, or the works of the holy fathers—and you don’t feel the power of God’s words, like a stone. How the heart will feel the sweetness of prayer, the sweetness of the word of God, when it feels the sweetness of food and drink, the bliss, sleep induced by food and drink. I thank You, my unashamed hope, Lady! I thank You for my unashamed hope, Lord Jesus Christ, God, who shone forth from the Virgin into the world for the salvation of all! I serve shamelessly in church, I treat students shamelessly in class, despite all the machinations of the enemy, despite all the violence of Satan and his angels. Glory to You, Lord, and Your Most Pure Mother! Read prayers and say exclamations and litanies with all your heart, wide open, simply. Do not disdain your wife as unclean when she puts on your clothes (cassock), for you and she are one flesh, you and she are an image of Christ and the Church, and in this sign you are both holy. An unbelieving wife is sanctified by a believing husband [1 Cor. 7, 14]. If, in particular, each of you does not control your body at home, in your home, then how much more, if necessary, your wife can put on your clothes, not for show, of course, to people, but in the bedroom, alone. If the Holy Scripture says: A woman should not wear men's clothing [Deut. 22:5], then this speaks, of course, in the sense that a wife should not dress up in men’s clothing for show to people. Oh, worldly dating! Oh, disgusting trips! Oh, eating and drinking! God! Weigh my iniquities. You know how gluttonous I was today, how irritated I was! God! Forgive me my iniquities! God! Turn everything for my benefit and for us: correct evil and turn it to good consequences. We sin in thought, word, feeling and deed - and we must repent mentally, heartily and [by accepting] a firm intention (in the will) not to sin. My treasure is priceless and comprehensive, Lord, glory to You. Most Pure Lady Theotokos, my all-merciful and swift Intercessor, glory to You! February 13, 1865. For my voice and to soften my chest, I considered it useful and necessary to consume and consumed dairy cream and cow’s butter in sufficient quantities - but this is also vanity, because they immediately produced heaviness in me and a strong, irresistible urge to sleep, darkened and burdened my thoughts and heart and did not allow me to read with meditation, or to meditate, or to pray with meditation. A healthy body is a modern idol; for health - mountains: drinks, food, etc. O all-evil and multi-passionate flesh! Should I give you [the grace] of health? But for what? So that you become more possessed by passions and retreat from God and from love for your neighbor? The saints of the world have to judge, that is, worldly people [1 Cor. 6, 2]. How? They will show in themselves how, in a body obsequious to us and with a soul obsequious to us, with their constant zeal, they pleased God and saved souls, were saved, while we, through negligence, solely through our negligence and ingratitude to God, must perish forever. I am the thought of the Father, the creation of the Son, the quickening and sanctification of the Holy Spirit. God! I thank You for You heard my prayer and delivered me from my stinginess. God! Teach and confirm me not to spare anything for anyone, for everything and everyone is Yours, and everything is for man - Your most beloved creation, Your image and likeness; everything for the beloved brethren of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for the members of His body. God! I thank You that yesterday (February 13, Maslenitsa Saturday) you gave me the grace of victory over me, over my heart and to overcome dislike for guests and despondency hastily, without thoughtfulness or sinful suspiciousness. So one should not hesitate in anything pleasing to God. If you worry about food and drinks, then you will necessarily neglect the salvation of your soul and the souls of men, about heartfelt prayer, about reading the word of God with meditation, about the love of God. This is a constant experience, and the word of God says: No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will be zealous for one and neglectful of the other [Matt. 6, 24]. And what I cling to with my heart, what controls it, what is his soul, that is my master. Here are the crying poor - without clothes, without bread and salt, and here there is revelry - drunkenness, excess, money is flying away; there [skating] – rubles don’t matter for pleasure; here are the dead - and there is crazy fun, masquerades, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and worldly pride [1 Jn. 2, 16]. The flesh, the world and the devil hold us in their hands every day and do not allow us to even think about God, about truth, about eternal judgment. Poor people do not know what kind of war we have now with the ruler of the darkness of this age, how he fights in us the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life - he fights through food, drink, amusements. Our dislike, coldness or hatred towards our neighbor is all the more culpable, the more ardently we are loved by the neighbor for whom we feel dislike or hatred. If we must love those who hate us and do good to them, then what can we say about those who love us with pure, unselfish love? Our dislike for our neighbor is all the more culpable the more insignificant the pretext for which we hate him, for example food, drink, an offensive word, etc. I thank You, all-powerful and most kind to the Lady, zealous Intercessor, as you always cleanse me through my prayer from my sins and deliver me from misfortunes and sorrows and circumstances. We imprint the sign of the cross on ourselves, but we do not crucify our flesh with passions and lusts; We depict the sign of the Crucified One, who laid down His life for us, on ourselves, but we do not fulfill His commands, we do not love each other, as He commanded. What's in the sign of the cross? After all, it will not save us if we do not have Christ crucified in our hearts and do not crucify our intemperance, pride, contempt, malice, envy, stinginess, love of money, greed, disobedience, laziness, impurity, free-thinking, or the vanity and contradictions of a false mind. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified [1 Cor. 2, 2]. The work of the flesh is to say prayers with the tongue, but not to sympathize with the words with the heart and not to fulfill them with deeds and, thus, to be a hypocrite before God. O flesh! My wife's love for me is touching. I must love her and every neighbor so much, if not for the sake of the neighbors themselves, then for the sake of Christ, by Whose name they are called, especially the poor (even if there were unworthy ones among them) or the sick, although they are grumpy and grouchy, irritable, stubborn, evil. For the sake of Christ, forgive everything: just as God in Christ forgave you, so do you. When I am greedy for food and drink and eat immoderately, then I am the living dead: I feel cramped, gloomy, stuffy. It is necessary to fast and despise food and drink. The beginning of my life is one - the Lord, my life is one - Jesus Christ, to the one and only One, and let me cleave; He is in everything, that is, His gifts: He gives me everything. It was all 42. Heaven and earth, created by the Lord and existing, acting and moving by Him, give understanding to me, me who is one spirit with the Lord! Why should I be sad when I am and can always be one spirit with Lord? I will cast all my sorrow 43 upon Him. Heaven and earth have existed for several thousand years by the Lord, by His power and laws, while they are soulless, inert, ineffective, weak matter. And the grass, and the wild flowers, and the trees, and the birds, fish, etc.? How all this teaches us to completely rely on God’s providence! Do not despise a single person, any poor person, but treat with complete respect and goodwill every well-meaning person, especially the poor, or the ugly, or the sick, especially the poor, as members of ours, or even more so, members of Christ, worthy of pity. Otherwise, you will cruelly wound your soul. Oh, how easy it would seem to be to live in the simplicity of love - and how difficult it is for our corrupt heart to live in love! At every step there are pretexts for enmity against one’s neighbor, insignificant, imaginary pretexts, for example, like the following: he or she often comes to eat and drink with me. The flesh uses analysis of earthly things - sweets, money, clothes, gives them a high price, but the spirit uses a general synthesis and puts all things under the category of rubbish, dust, smoke. But how long will we be seduced by the tickling of the flesh? By tickling her five senses? If your servant is the same and eats just as well and pleasantly as you, then rejoice in the fact that you are fulfilling the commandment of the Lord: love your neighbor as yourself, and do not grieve over the fact that she is given the same amount as you - she is equal to you; they are the same people, they have the same rights to the gifts of God as you do, and to them, just like to you, the whole earth is subjugated under their feet. Ecu conquered everything under his nose [Ps. 8, 7]. Let us make man in Our image and in Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the wild animals, and over the livestock, and over all the earth [Gen. 1, 26]. All people: I am alone - as if not a person. We are members of one body. Oh, how true this is! Oh, how peaceful and life-giving this truth is for the heart! It was precisely at this time that I was the only one who expressed it! To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace [Rom. 8, 6]. Respect everyone as you want others to respect you, and do not say: this and that is not worthy of respect: this is the slander of the devil, a pretext of the evil flesh! There is no person without sin - everyone is sinful. Are you not a sinner and a great sinner, yet you want others to treat you with respect and call you, not you, and generally have respect for you - how can you deprive your neighbor, your subordinate, or your pet, or the poor, of due respect? Consider yourself worse, lower, poorer, weaker, more despised than everyone else, for you are poor and needy in soul, blind and naked not in body, but in spirit. God! Help! I thank You, Lady, my wondrous Help! You delivered me many times on this day, February 17, during Lenten services. We fast in order to return simplicity to the soul, depriving it of excessive fleshiness and addiction to food and drink, and in order to return its spirituality to it, for due to sweet and fattening dishes it becomes fleshy. Simplicity during communion, in prayer. Whoever diligently celebrates the Dormition of the Mother of God will be honored with a peaceful, blissful death. Master Lord Jesus Christ, my God! I thank You, who listened to my inner prayer during evening tea, when the passion of stinging sweets consumed me all over and strongly carried me towards indignation and outbursts of anger at the untimely guest (Elena Nikolaevna) and sister-in-law Anna, who invited her to study piano at the Great; I felt sorry for the delicacies, namely sugar on top for idle people. Oh, how he embarrassed, scorched, oppressed, carried away, with what cruelty the evil one incited me to pour out his anger on the kidnappers, as it seemed to me, of my property! I was apparently reading a magazine, but I was angry with them; but then I began to forcefully call on the Lord for help, and the Lord heard the cry of my heart, and helped me, and pacified and gladdened my soul. How I suddenly became calm, majestic, joyful, like a winner who had taken a fortress. And he spoke calmly to those sitting. When you are overcome by laziness and sleep during prayer or anger, envy, pride and other passions outside of prayer, remind your soul of its simplicity - and these passions will pass. Remind yourself more often of the simplicity of your soul - and you will be freed from the wickedness of sins and you will have a simple eye [Matt. 6, 22], according to Spasov. You are constantly busy with work, and protected by the prayer of faith and the communion of the Divine Mysteries, and this is due to your oversight, due to addiction to your own flesh or to the flesh of others, or to earthly things, the passions of the flesh act in you with captivating force. What can we say about those people who are idle, pray little, without living faith, coldly and insincerely, and who rarely partake of the Divine Mysteries? Their enemy can sow them like wheat [Lk. 22, 31]. Have mercy on them and pity them, as those suffering torment and violence from the enemy of the human race; pray to the Lord for them, may he drive away the rapist from them, may he take away their madness from them and send them the strength from above to fight sins and send them His everlasting light. There is one Beginning that gave me life, that feeds me, clothes me, illuminates me - the Lord God - and I must place all my trust in Him. If God is our Father, will He forget to give us food in good time or clothing? Will a mother forget to feed her baby? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your Father in heaven feeds them. Aren't you much better than them? And which of you, by caring, can add even one cubit to his height? And why do you care about clothes? Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin [Matt. 6, 26 – 28]. What do you have to worry about? Isn't this crazy? The devil teaches you all this anxiety. Friday of the first week of Lent. God! I thank You, who has beautifully strengthened me to confess Your people (one hundred and fifteen people). Came at 11 pm. The Lord is inexhaustible in His gifts: if a wife prepares such dishes for dinner that remain either untouched or little eaten, do not feel sorry for them that are left: they will be used somewhere, but they are not used - do not feel sorry: they are earth and pus, dust. And let your heart be all in God. Oh, how in many different ways and craftily the enemy ties our hearts to earthly things and separates them from God! Even if you had to lose everything, don’t be sorry. You see how the enemy catches you and laughs at your attachment to the dust of the earth, to earthly sweets! And it deprives you of peace, and freedom, and spiritual space, and the gift of speech, and a bright face, because it darkens and distorts it, and love for those around you, because it puts enmity towards them in your heart for no reason at all. And how crazy are you that, having within you a Hypostasis belly, simple, all-perfect, all-powerful, wise, righteous, all-providing, you care and worry about corruptible waste! Love God with all your heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself. Remember that God Himself stands before you every minute and speaks these words to you. Have great respect for them and fulfill them with action. For example, a guest or a stranger comes to you - the enemy of God and man inspires you to spare him money or a sweet treat. Do not listen to him, but listen to what the Lord God, who stands before you, says to you, whose commandment is eternal, and immutable, and blessed. He tells you: love him as yourself; in everything, whatever you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. With what attention we stand or sit in front of a guest who has come to us, or in front of our boss. With what attention and reverence should one stand before the Lord in prayer? How to speak, how to repent? The Holy Spirit is jealous with great zeal for his bride - the human soul, not allowing her to cleave to the corruptible things of this world and leave her God, Life-Giver, Nourisher and Provider. That is why the soul, clinging to the blessings of this world, experiences great sorrows, humiliation, internal shame, fire, and oppression. Children rely on their father that he will not stop feeding, clothing and providing for them or taking care of them. How can we, Christians, not hope in our Heavenly Father, the all-good, omniscient, omnipresent, wise and omnipotent Provider? How easily our faith or lack of faith, trust in God or lack of it, and instead trust in earthly blessings are tested and recognized; love for God and neighbor or the absence of them and instead addiction to perishable things unworthy of man - money, sweets, clothes, room utensils! A person comes to us when we are sitting at the table, eating and drinking. Those of us who trust in God, in His providence and love God and our neighbor - His image, are glad to see a good guest and willingly offer him to taste and drink what they themselves eat and drink, and are with their hearts with him, this guest, and not with food and drinks, and willingly, in the simplicity of their hearts, as with a brother or sister, talk with him, not allowing themselves even one evil thought or movement stinginess, dislike and aversion to him; and those who are sick with hope in earthly things, when their neighbors visit them, feel coldness towards them, they are stingy, sparing for them what they themselves eat and drink, as if they are not our brothers, as if the Lord God is not our common Father and Provider and will not reward us for this five times more according to His bounty and His truth! This is how conveniently a person is tempted in his life and how conveniently the great ailments of his soul are recognized - lack of faith and trust in God, the Provider Father, trust in earthly things that cannot give life to our hearts, lack of love for God and neighbor and addiction to the corruptible things of this world! Having recognized yourself as such, do not hesitate, man, to soon correct yourself. Your illness is dangerous. Acquire rather faith and trust in the one God and love for God and man - His image and brother, your fellow member. Remember that people, and especially Christians, are like a tree, nourished and watered by God. There are many branches on a tree, but they all make up one tree. I am the vine, and you are the branches [Jn. 15, 5]. Oh, how great is the ulcer of my pride! He would consume everything pleasant in food and drink himself, and give to others what was worse; I would like more for myself, and less for others. It’s okay if they give me a lot, generously and give me the best - I rejoice and have fun; the trouble is, if they give a lot and generously to others, I am tormented and tormented. Such is my pride! So I don’t love my neighbor. So I, the accursed one, resist in my heart the commandment of my God: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39]. I am so passionate about sweets, I value them so much, I value them so much when I should despise them! And why, you ask? As if the Lord had ever left me with anything before? Never. Oh, my heart is truly insane and absurd, my old man! Every man is a lie [Ps. 115, 2] – the word of the psalmist is true! Oh, how deceitful is my eye! Someone else’s piece seems large, but your own, even though it is the same or larger, seems small. And my old man has his own sinful laws, about which the Apostle said: in my members I see another law, warring against the law of my mind [Rom. 7, 23]. But why don’t I consider sweets to be dust? What's the secret? We are constantly sick: we constantly need the Doctor of souls - Christ. Our illnesses are passions and sins in general. Sweets, or, more precisely, addiction to sweets, completely turns the heart away from love for God and for neighbor, even for those closest to us - father, mother, wife, brothers, sisters, children: if they take a lot of them from us, we hate them. Sweets are the devil’s trap: he catches us with them, just as we catch fish with bait that is sweet for it. One must certainly hate earthly sweets or be indifferent to them. Because of sweets, spiritual life, spiritual contemplation, spiritual reading, meditation, spiritual conversation, friendship, faith, and hope are neglected. Sweets kindle irritability, anger, envy, and stinginess. One must certainly hate sweets precisely because because of them spiritual life is neglected and love for God and neighbor, or for human souls, is lost. God! Let me make the beginning of this good work! The enemy acts on us with his simplicity! In an instant he is overcome by one passion or another, by one sin or another! The more we consume sweets, the more we become satiated with them, the more they control us, the more they torment us when they are taken from us, when we are deprived of them. Fierce ulcer - sweets! A strong barrier between souls is sweets! They breathe on us with murderous malice, stubbornness, and laziness. Blessed are those who are alien to sweets! To break down in front of a wife means to swear at her, to humiliate her moral dignity as a person and the image of God, as a member of Christ, as a living church of the Spirit of God. The candle is thin, burns dimly, and the carbon burns up quickly, black as coal - just take it off. The church cannot be left unlocked for a minute when there is not a single well-intentioned person in it: thieves will just come in and steal something. Understand the same about the inner spiritual church. Managing a person - angry, capricious, dissatisfied, whimsical - is the science of sciences, the art of arts 44. In the very torments of the passions, the Lord, like a skilled physician, provided a cure for our sin-prone nature. It hurts, but it’s useful, and the more the heart hurts and the body suffers, the better, the more reliable and lasting the cleansing. Whatever one sins, that is what he is punished for [Wis. 11, 17]. Whom he loves, he punishes [Heb. 12, 6]. We live so badly, so earthly, carnally, passionately, so unworthy of Christians - let us finally be ashamed of our The head of the faith and perfecter of Jesus Christ, our Most Pure Lady Theotokos, our elder brothers - the heavenly angels, looking at us incessantly, our elder brothers - the holy men of God: patriarchs, prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints and all the most perfect people. After all, we and they are one Church, one family of God under one Head - Christ. What do we think? What are we doing? Where are the laws and their implementation? After all, every well-ordered society has its own laws, through the implementation of which the goal of the members of the society is achieved. The enemy, with his simplicity, suddenly hurts us, instead of any arguments, he instantly acts on our feelings or on the heart - and the heart is simple. In simplicity of heart, we must consider all earthly goods as rubbish. That's wisdom! And how peaceful, cheerful, verbal, spiritual we would be in this case! And this and that binds us, and another, and a third, and a tenth. So many things, so many networks; so many sweets and beautiful faces and things, so many heart wounds, tightness, darkness, lights. Our grief! What a disaster! What a delusion! God is everything to everyone. We must be carefree 45. I thank You, Most Blessed Lady, for the peaceful dispensation that You granted me through my prayer during the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Even when I consume sweets or anything dear, my wife loves me; let her consume sweets. And I spare her sweets, but she doesn’t consume them. She spares nothing for me - and I should do the same. Moreover, the Lord has mercy on her: she is quite healthy - if she were sick, wouldn’t it cost much more to buy medicine? Let us leave voluptuousness to the flesh, especially those who are bound in their hearts by worldly pleasures, whose pleasures are at war in their lives, who because of sweets feel hatred towards their neighbor. Strange thing! Yesterday I myself drank four cups of coffee at once - and it’s okay, it’s not a pity, as if it should be so, but it’s a pity to give people - servants - three pieces at a time. It is this immoderation in the consumption of sweets that is at war in my life and is cutting me off from God and my neighbor. I thank You, my Master, Lord, the hope of the unreliable and the salvation of the desperate, as in the weakness, despondency and hopelessness of the 46 world you wonderfully stood up and saved me from opposing forces and weakness into strength, despondency into greatness and joy and hopelessness into strong hope. I saw, Lord, I saw Your power and Your mercy, for I carried Your name and Your simplicity, the simplicity of Your being, in my heart and I felt Your almighty power within myself. May you, O Lord, have thanksgiving from me, who is indecent. Master! I have defiled Your fast with the voluptuousness of the flesh: have mercy on me. I came to visit Your servant and willingly allowed her to give me sweet tea, and then at home I drank a glass of sweet tea and ate fish soup (and fish), and from all this a sleepy voluptuousness happened to me. Those who have sinned: cleanse me. Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me [Ps. 50, 13]. God! Behold, I am Your vessel - fill me with the gifts of Your Holy Spirit, without You I am empty of all good or, moreover, full of all sin. God! Behold, Thy ship I am - fill me with a load of good deeds. God! Behold Your ark - fill it not with the charms of love of money and sweets, but with love for You and for Your animated image - man. Human! Where has Your nature been exalted in the person of Jesus Christ the God-Man? To the throne of the Divine. Where is your nature elevated in the person of the Mother of God? Above the Cherubim and Seraphim. For whom? For you, so that, having freed you from the corruption of lusts, I would make you a partaker of the Divine nature. How do you respond to this intention, to these deeds of the Divine, to this all-good providence of the Lord? You have been given all the Divine powers for life and piety - how do you use them? Are you neglecting them? Haven't you stuck to the ground like a snail? But fear the Last Judgment. I thank You, Lord, for yesterday (February 23, Tuesday) You heard my prayer, when I cried out to You in sinful distress, upset at the poor orphan girls because they often ask me for alms, and You saved me from great distress and embarrassment and cowardice, and You granted me the Holy Sacrament of Baptism in the face of the nobles of the world to perform with God-given boldness. I thank You, for another time You saved me from great distress, when I, having spared my brother’s sweets, became indignant with him and was wounded, wounding him with my heart. What harm is there from a piano? “It takes time away from soul-beneficial activities, it kills time.” For example, now it's a post. Instead of reading the Holy Scriptures or the works of the Holy Fathers, Christians and Christian women rattle something on the piano, and it is no longer sacred. Sin! When your blind flesh, your carnal heart, vaguely and maliciously regrets sweets for your neighbor, for your brother, don’t you notice that it wants them hellishly proudly for itself, in order to fill itself with these sweets to the point of excess, or if not to be filled, then at least not to give them to your brother and not see his pleasure? Don’t you see here envy of your neighbor’s well-being, pleasure, and the most selfish dislike, hatred of your neighbor? But despise sweets, as they tie the heart to itself and strongly turn it away from love for God and neighbor - despise them all the more, the more they tear the heart away from our only treasure - God and from our neighbor - our heart, our brother, our joint member and future joint heir of heavenly bliss. Hate, trample, despise sweetness - love your neighbor, and not the other way around, for we love sweetness and hate our neighbor, who destroys our sweets, which exist precisely to destroy them, for everything is for the service of man, for his benefit and pleasure. I am the king of the earth - and so is my brother. Let's create man... and let him possess... all the earth... [Gen. 1, 26]. Otherwise, we are possessed by earthly things, subjugated by God above our feet. According to the great gifts of God, Christians are required of them to do great deeds, great attention to themselves, great abstinence, and, above all, great love for God and for each other. He who does not fast rejoices in vain at the rapid passing of the Lenten season and the approach of Easter, for he himself has not moved a single step forward in pleasing God and has not in the least achieved the goal of fasting. God did not spare His Only Begotten Son for us and gave Him to suffering and death, but we spare our many-passionate flesh, an opponent of the Divine commandments and a despiser of Divine promises and threats, we caress it in all possible ways, whereas it would be necessary to crucify it, like a fierce snake that destroys the image of God - the soul. But don’t we notice that the more we please it, the more we satisfy it, the more it arms itself against us, the more it destroys us? But, oh our Savior! Quench the rebellion of our flesh and put to rest all our earthly and material wisdom 48 . We pray, we pray - and we still lie in prayer: the lips and the mind, or memory, act, but the heart does not move, nor does pious activity take a step. What is in our prayers? God! Have mercy on us! The poor, who daily ask us for alms because of their constant poverty, daily need our compassion and help, just as we, who ask God daily and many times on the day for mercy and forgiveness of sins, need daily and many times on the day of His gracious condescension and mercy. February 24, 1865. I thank You, my wondrous salvation, Lord Jesus, my quick salvation, my all-powerful salvation, my sure salvation. Glory to You, my hope, my strength, my help, my holiness, my cleansing. Oh, how wonderfully You saved me during two classes! What boldness You are, my greatness, my peace, river of words! My holy mercy, glory to You! When it comes to treating your neighbors, do not enter into everyday petty calculations and do not indulge in stinginess, for a person is dearer than the whole world and the whole world is submissive to him, and the Lord, whose children we are all, will reward you generously for a generous treat. It is not loss, it is not loss that goes to please one’s neighbor, for we are all members of Christ; Just let us please our neighbor for good and not for evil, and let us not indulge his whims. They make me something sweet at a party, even during Lent, and I drink it with pleasure. My wife treats her guests sweetly - I get upset, irritated, faint-hearted, indulge in stinginess, Oh, pride! Oh, greed! How to pity for a man - a king, the image of God! And should I please my multi-passionate and voluptuous flesh, sparing my sweets? Even if you take them all away from me, even if you take my very body away from me, it will be better for me in the Lord, for my sinful body has been afflicting me for a long time, working with various passions and constantly tearing my heart away from the Lord. I want to be with the Lord, with my belly, with my simple belly, to Whom I want to cleave, and clinging of the heart to sweets is death for my heart and for my body, sorrow, crampedness, darkness, humiliation, shame of the face. Rubbish, everything is earth, all sweets and treasures, and my very flesh is pus. Earth ecu, and you will return to the earth... I am earth and ashes [Gen. 3, 19; 18, 27]. You are crazy, my soul, to what you at other times despise and trample upon, you cling to! Be simple and consistent! Don't put everything upside down, don't put your feet up and your head down. Thank you, my most merciful Savior, for saving me from anger towards my neighbors! But deliver me from idle people, Lord! Let them not overrun my dwelling. Save me, Lord, all the days of my life from any anger towards my neighbors: do not allow me to be upset with them because of any disorder, sin, or insult to me, and do not allow me to add to one misfortune another, worse one - the malice of the devil. God! May I be simple and always kind, and meek, and merciful, and condescending to others, joyful and hospitable and benevolent. What trifles we sometimes pay serious attention to! Because of what trifles we get angry and look askance! It’s just not worth paying attention, but here whole twenty, thirty, forty minutes, an hour or more pass in anger, caprice, quarrel, lip-sucking - we don’t want to talk, we regret trifles. If he imagines, he will find such darkness, such stupidity! And all because of sweets! Oh sweets! How much evil you are guilty of, or, even more so, voluptuous hearts! Sometimes you don’t like the untimely arrival of guests - but tolerate them and be kind and polite to them. Conquer yourself. Beware of yourself. Don't trust yourself. Oh, accursed flesh, or, more specifically, me, accursed and all-evil! Guests will come to visit during Lent, my wife will make sweet tea - I say to myself: why such a waste of sweets during Lent? Nowadays it is necessary to consume sweets as little as possible, and I actually consume few sweets when I have guests. But why? Out of stinginess, in order to instill a lack of sweetness in others. But the guests left, I was left alone, and the sweets were with me, and I ate them to my heart’s content, until I was satiated! Oh, accursed, proud, crafty and stingy! I myself am ready to take food and drink twice in a row and eat until I am satiated, but I feel sorry for others and let them eat with contentment and pleasure one day! But love your neighbor as yourself. You do not spare sweets for yourself, and do not spare your neighbor, and do not spare anything for him, as for yourself. Wake up! Amen. God! Help! Oh, how my flesh worries (sorrying sweets for its neighbors!) about itself, in order to fill itself with them and make my soul, my new man, incapable of anything, demanding godly and soul-beneficial activity, in order to burden itself, weaken it, and cause me to fall into illness. How blind, crazy, evil, and proud she is! How else can you trust her after this! How to pay attention to her! To despise the flesh is because it is insane. Don't look at all her thousand whims. Oh, ugly beast! Fierce, greedy, selfish! Angry, irritable, stingy, voluptuous, wayward, stubborn, impudent, disobedient. It seemed that I had not eaten enough, had not drunk enough during the common table - and let’s eat and drink again. Oh madness! Oh, dreaming! Our soul is a simple being, like the image and likeness of God, therefore, when it is well-ordered and lives in accordance with the will of God, then it is peaceful, and light, and joyful, and when it deigns to sin, or commits a sin, or is forced by the enemy to sin, then it is restless, gloomy, and heavy. So, constantly do the will of God and you will be simple and peaceful, but if you sin, you will not have peace. Do not become 50 with the enemy: he brings into the soul his languor, oppression, darkness, fire. Take away wickedness from your souls [Isa. 1, 16]. We got used to our priceless faith and the Church and the word of God, we began to regard it as nothing, it became some kind of ordinary everyday thing, household furniture. This is how it happens with things: at first we admire them as something new, then we get used to them and cool down - then we regard them as nothing. But God forbid that this should happen to our faith: we cannot joke with it or neglect it; to neglect it means to neglect one’s eternal salvation, to neglect the economy of God, the suffering and death of the Son of God. How severe a punishment do you think the one who tramples on the Son of God will be subject to? [Heb. 10, 29]. If someone is walking on the other side of the street, we no longer take off our hats, we already avoid the chance to [meet] him. The simplicity of the soul is violated by addiction to food and drinks, to money, to clothes, to many different earthly things, also by the passions of anger, pride, envy, stinginess, disobedience and stubbornness, condemnation, adultery, theft, etc. God and my soul are simplicity. The image of God - my soul - is buried by passions. But seek, O Lord, Your image. My sweetness, deliver me from the charm of worldly pleasures. What kind of benefits do we have in the future, what kind of peace, when here we want to experience and do experience all possible carnal pleasures and even become satiated with them, when here we try in every possible way to rest our flesh, to console it, to please it? Is it really possible for two gentlemen to work? Is not our flesh the enemy of God? Are we not taught by our Christian faith to crucify her? And we caress and pamper her in every possible way. Let us receive our carnal consolation here. Let us not be deceived, my brothers, by the temporary peace of the flesh, by temporary blessings - there are other, higher blessings, enduring, purest, spiritual; There is another peace, eternal. Let us strive for these blessings, for this eternal peace. Despise the flesh so that the spirit may live. How is it that I become attached to my temporary casing, to my shell - to this multi-passionate and evil flesh, and work for this dust and corruption instead of my Lord? How can I care for her and not care for the immortal soul? What kind of transformation, what kind of perversion of the Creative order? Why do I have such blindness, such unreason? With one hand I create good, the salvation of my soul, and with the other I immediately destroy: I give alms, so that I will have mercy, and I myself become gluttonous and satiated, indulge in greed, stinginess, hatred, irritability, self-will, stubbornness, contempt, love of money. If You, Lord, do not establish my feet on the stone of Your commandments, my heart, then I will not create the house of my salvation, I will not cleanse, I will not improve and I will not decorate Your church, the inner beautiful tabernacle. Yourself, Humanity, quench the desire of passions, You yourself quench the rebellion of my flesh. A heart hardened by carnal pleasures does not have or feel a taste for spiritual goods and does not desire them: it thirsts only for bodily pleasures, just as a drunkard is consumed by a thirst for wine, like a theater lover thirsts for spectacles and the sweet speeches of actors and actresses. In order to acquire and develop a taste for spiritual blessings, for spiritual contemplation, for prayer, for the word of God, one must despise sensuality, abandon carnal pleasures, for two masters cannot work; So our flesh strives to dominate us, to force us to fulfill its will, while we have only one Lord, and we must fulfill His will, good, perfect, life-giving. And our soul is one. The carnal man despises his faith, the Head of faith - Christ the Lord, His incarnation, teaching, miracles, suffering and death for us are considered nothing, His Church - God's holy prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints (he doesn't seem to care about them - he is alien to them in his soul), the Sacraments, worship. He values ​​the pleasure of food and drink, money - the idol of the world, the theater, the club, cheerful meetings, games, secular magazines. This is his world! And what a world! Judge everyone. What are we doing, brothers? We're definitely savages! We are definitely foolish children! Savages, for we look wildly at our Creator, the Heavenly Father, at our mother - the savior Church, at everything that is holy, we flee from the Lord and from the Church, while we must all be the holy Church, know and feel our kinship both with the Lord and with all the saints, members of the one body of Christ. A glutton is hypocritical in prayer and in dealing with others, for, not having those thoughts, contemplations, desires, feelings that he reads in prayers, but having carnal thoughts, desires and feelings, he must pretend; on the other hand, having no love for his neighbors, because someone who is passionate about food and drink cannot have true love for his neighbor other than carnal love, he again, in a conversation when confronted with them, pretends and flatters with his tongue. God! Enlighten, correct and save us! Everywhere, everywhere we anger You. What should I rejoice in my wife and pray to God for the affirmation of what in her heart, namely for her affirmation in simplicity, goodness of heart, sociability, generosity, affection - about this I, damned one, am sad and angry with her for her simplicity, goodness, sociability, cordiality, hospitality, generosity. But strengthen her, Lord, in all these virtues, not allowing her to become excessive in them. May her virtue be wise, simple, and pleasing to You, and without temptation for me. Let it be Your praise and my praise for Your glory. February 25. How many carnal, passionate uprisings that disturb the soul, and how many deliverances of the Lord as a result of inner vision of the Lord and prayer! Thank You, Lord! The wisdom of a Christian: God is one - the God of my heart, and not a man, no matter who he is, not sweetness, not money, not beauty, not nobility, not wealth; I trust in Him alone with all my heart, I love Him alone with all my heart, I cleave to Him alone, for His love I despise everything, for loveliness strongly hinders the love of God. The neighbor is the same me in another person, in the third, fourth, fifth and so on, and according to the commandment of God and according to the feeling and duty of nature, I love him as myself, as my own member, and for him, as for myself, I do not regret anything, for him, as for myself, I wish all the good and good, especially the salvation of the soul; I look at his shortcomings, weaknesses, passions with regret and pray to God that He will enlighten His mind and heart to the knowledge of His laws and destinies and direct him to the path of truth, goodness and salvation. The earthly gifts of God's goodness are varied and pleasant. Food and drinks, money, beautiful clothes, magnificent furniture, beautiful dishes and every material thing that captivates a person’s feelings, occupies his thoughts and sticks to his heart - there is earth, rubbish, dust, which, if not with your feet, then with your heart, must always be trampled upon and imputed to nothing. Barnabas laid the money received from the sale of the village at the feet of the apostles [Acts. 4, 36 – 37 ]. This is an example for everyone how to handle money and other things respected in the world. Ecu conquered everything under his nose [Ps. 8, 7], says the holy king-prophet David about the royal dignity of man, - so man should rule over nature, creatures, and not creatures over man. How do creatures possess us? Establish this wisdom, O Lover of Mankind, in my heart and in my life and in the hearts of Thy people and in their lives, correct our steps to the doing of Thy commandments and beautify our life for the glory of Thy most holy name, for Thou art blessed and glorified forever. Amen. For your father and mother, do not spare any sweets, any jewelry - but you don’t know the number of things when you need to satisfy their needs, give them endlessly or allow them to take from you according to their needs. Subdue everything under their noses. When sweets, or money, or honors, or beauty cling to your heart, tickle and wound it, then show them a place under your feet and tell them with authority: this is your place, and this place (heart) is God’s, a holy place. Let nothing be in this holy of holies except the Lord. What kind of charm, what kind of untruth is it that we offend the poor and ignorant and helpless people of this world, if not in words and deeds, then in our hearts, becoming embittered towards them, despising them? What kind of absurdity is this? God! Have mercy on us! God! Enlighten the eyes of our hearts, so that the darkness of demons does not cover us. Give us the grace to love every person, especially the poor, this toiler, this sufferer, this defenseless, this one who suffers poverty and shortcomings in everything, for they are worthy, Lord! Otherwise, in our world it is accepted as a rule: the rich are not a friend to the poor. O proud flesh! I would give everything to myself, but I don’t care about my neighbor - and my neighbor is the same me. O you blind one! Oh, you're evil! You need a little for yourself, but also for your neighbor. Yes, and God sends us not only to me, but also to others, for He Himself gave me the commandment to love my neighbor as myself, He said: Blessed are the merciful [Matt. 5, 7], or: Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you [Matt. 5, 42]. Give, and it will be given to you [Lk. 6, 38]. There will be enough for everyone, we will all be fed and clothed - but excesses are harmful to our soul, they are a burden for it, they increase its sins and worldly addictions and cut off from God, the source of life for all, the source of all blessings, all contentment. They make us proud, self-loving, stingy, angry, irritable, stubborn, wayward, voluptuous, money-loving... and they corrupt our soul, and kindle the fire of hell for it. Do not meddle in the affairs of a servant with restless zeal in time and untimely: accept in this also the wiles of the devil, which inclines us to be angry with our neighbor and to despise him and seeks to deprive you of peace and silence. Be kind and gentle to everyone at all times, respect the intelligence, abilities, freedom, rights and deeds of your servants, as you would like others to respect your rights and deeds; do not interfere in other people's affairs unnecessarily, just as others do not interfere in your affairs. Lord, forgive me! Sinners! All natural senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, all natural needs and impulses, for example, eating and drinking, sleeping, copulation for procreation - our common enemy uses as instruments of his will, to violate the most holy will of our Heavenly Father and to our destruction; He turned our entire body into his fortress against God and against ourselves, in which he drove and strengthened himself and, so to speak, shoots from there into the sky and at ourselves, kindling us like a furnace with sweets, desecrating us with his abominations, malice, pride and perverting everything in us with his perverted and distorting vileness. Oh, a lamentable life, many sins, a charming life, during which I, willingly and unwillingly, constantly anger my God! Oh, perverted life, in which everything is perverted to the last detail and placed upside down by Belial 51 in defiance of the Lord our God! Oh, life, full of constant dangers on all sides! You must watch every minute carefully, and listen carefully, and eat carefully and little (and often tastelessly), and smell with fear, and touch with caution, and sleep on time and little... Otherwise, you can die from your own flesh. That is why it is necessary to exhaust your flesh with fasting and vigil, prayers, and labors! The devil especially fights strongly in our flesh through sweets, and through them he ensnares us most of all. O God almighty and all-merciful! Protect us and do not let us perish in our iniquities. Yesterday, February 26, twice I fell into trouble from intemperance and delicacy, namely into the trouble of carnal abomination and into the trouble of bitterness towards those who repent at the beginning, and into the trouble of devilish haste - I neglected the Lord’s work and wanted to end it quickly for the sake of carnal peace. Lesson: we must pay attention to ourselves every minute and breathe in prayer, so that we do not fall into misfortune [Matt. 26, 41]. He told the story of the Savior’s suffering among the Jewish high priests through the action of the devil without any feeling, indifferently, with an unclean heart, defiled by the vile breath of the devil, which is why the children sat ill and despised me, for they felt with their pure souls my sinful abomination, my humiliation from the devil. Have mercy, Lord! And two classes before this class (the second; conducted with dignity, and calmly, and majestically, and conversably! However, in this class, too, the Lord finally heard me and had mercy on me, pacified me and gave me a majestic posture. And at confession I was bad - irritable, weak, restless, non-verbal. Phew! How hard it was. I ate mushroom soup, a sweet, dried bun with cabbage sauce, and drank a glass of tea. You must be calm in the face of temptation and not break down, not make faces, but call on God for help. Why was I tempted in class? I think that this is a boast, he boasted about his diary in the fifth grade. God! Forgive the sin! What's my diary? Not my praise. He is the story of my sins! Because of substances, because of money, because of food and drink, because of sweets, because of clothes, because of books, paper and other things, do not be angry with a person who is the image of God and a member of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a great man! And if we also remember that each of them has a Guardian Angel, who always sees the face of the Heavenly Father [Matt. 18, 10], holy, blessed, great, omnipotent! How can one, after this, become angry with a person because of ashes, especially with a beggar! And we shouldn’t become embittered over anything, even if we were scolded, beaten, or spat on! Oh, we, sated and pampered! Put yourself in the place of the beggars! What is it like to endure their fate? But what a comparison with the substance and the neighbor, with his soul! But to make Christ Himself His debtor is not this the greatest honor, not the greatest bliss? Christ, make you wise, confirm, complete! Wake up! Think about what enormous advantages you have over the poor: you are educated - they are not; you have great spiritual pleasures from the word of God, from worship, from reading the books of the holy fathers and various preachers and other various books - they do not have this. You have great wealth - they are deprived of it; you have a beautiful table, elegant clothes, a spacious, clean apartment - they have everything thin, poor, rough, unclean - a table, and clothes, and a home. You know how to pray - many of them don’t even know that. You have money - they don't. If you have such great advantages over the poor, then have this advantage over them so that you value nothing the dust of the earth - money, food and drink, clothing, housing; Give them alms with joy, without regret. Otherwise, how educated are you when you are worse than a beggar, greedy for money, delicacies, etc. Is it the fault of the poor when they ask you for alms that they suffer every day in need, every day they want to eat and drink, to dress, every day they have to pay for the cramped corner that they rent from cruel and unmerciful owners? But compare your life with the life of beggars, and then you will not be angry with them because they ask you for a few kopecks every day. So as not to anger your Lord with luxury in food, drink, clothing, housing, household utensils, always willingly give alms to the poor, the lesser brothers of Christ, and do not be upset with them, leave hatred and contempt for them, so that the Angels and holy men and the Lord Himself do not despise you. Avoid malicious suspicion of your neighbor, which is instilled by the enemy in order to incite you to anger towards him, to despise him. Tell him: untruth, lies - my neighbor does not think this about me, he does not have this in mind, he does not laugh at me, he is not angry with me, he does not despise me, does not envy me, does not feel sorry for me - and if so. then I forgive him, because he does all this at your own suggestion. May the Lord have mercy on him. He is my brother, my father, my son. Or she is my mother, sister, daughter. From the fruit you recognize the enemy in your heart - from poisonousness, violence, burden, darkness. The snake poison has its effect. Where the spirit of God is, there is freedom, peace, light. The devil teaches us the many different defilements of lawlessness and then teaches us to hide them, instills false shame; inhales pride, imaginary fear, fear of losing people’s good opinion of themselves. But this is a demonic lie. If you were not ashamed and were not afraid to commit sins, then do not be ashamed and do not be afraid to open them - otherwise it is impossible to heal a sinful ulcer: how to treat a sick person when he does not tell about his illness? But in spiritual terms, confession is a real medicine: you said a sin or sins, sighed, condemned them, disgusted them, received permission from the priest - and now you are healthy. If you hide your sins, you will drive ulcers into your soul and you will suffer from them - such is the moral order! So, do not be afraid and do not be ashamed, even publicly, to tell your sins and publicly disgrace them, and do this with firmness. Evil, deceitful spirits hinder or prevent people from sincerely praying, and many, not noticing their cunning or not trying to overcome their coldness of heart, pray hypocritically, only utter words, but do not feel their strength. But through labor and pain you must overcome [your] insensibility and pray with your true heart. Also try to be sincere with people. Greed for food and drink, for money, pride pave the most convenient way for the spirits of malice and lies into our hearts; those who are greedy and evil, irritable, cold and hypocritical in prayer, stingy, envious, proud, disdainful, lazy, cowardly, timid. Indifference to food and drink and to money, abstinence with prayer is guilty of 52 many virtues. It has been proven by experience that the soul, from greed for food and drink and sweets and from satiety with them, can become so coarse that it itself becomes flesh. And the word of God speaks about this. My Spirit shall not abide in these (antediluvian) men, for they are flesh [Gen. 6, 3]. Oh, how difficult it always is for me during divine services after I had eaten and drank contentedly and daintyly the day before! What mental anguish, what torment! How the enemy triumphs in me! What despondency, anger, irritation, powerlessness, despair brings! With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. For example, you honor your father - you will be rewarded for this: the father himself will honor you or serve you, love you, wish you every good, pray for you, be touched for you. Yes, and God will measure it to you - others will honor you, children will honor you. What are churches for and why go to churches? So that those who go to the church themselves learn to build themselves into a church to God, a living church, so that they become sanctified in the church and receive all the Divine powers for life and piety. All are created by God and live by God and are beautiful by God; therefore to God alone be glory and love. Carnal, charming love is devilish love. Seeing a beautiful maiden or woman, ascend mentally to God - the first Beauty and glorify Him and love Him with all your heart, for the work of His hands is all beauties and all people, as His images, and think what the beauty of God and the holy Angels is! It's sweet in the mouth, but heavy in the stomach and heart. This is the character of all earthly sweets! Why are we greedy, feasting on ourselves, becoming satiated? All because of a moment of pleasure! Oh, how greedy we are for pleasure, for bliss! Only it is not here, this bliss, not true bliss here, but there, in heaven, in union with God. If foods and drinks that bring temporary, bodily life are so pleasant, then how sweet is communication with the Source of life - God! The well-fed do not know this sweetness. My enemy, the devil! What do you do with me before each Sunday liturgy, both weekday and presanctified, and during the liturgy? How many of your intrigues, fires, burdens, suffocation, incitement to despair! But my Savior, with my courageous resistance to you, destroys all your tricks, overthrows them, and turns them into nothing. However, what is your strength over me? By my gluttony. God! Let me trample on my womb. My enemy! How did you attack me when I was in the second grade of the gymnasium and spoke about the suffering of the Savior among the high priests of the Jews? How did you disgrace me by hitting me, beheading me in my relaxation with the sting of carnal uncleanness? But my fervent prayer drove away you, a simple, mental, unclean spirit. The impurity disappeared and I calmed down. My enemy! How you humiliated me again through my gluttony and drowsiness after vespers on the second Sunday of Great Lent at the prayer service! You got into my heart, weakened it, and with doubt in reading the Gospel about the ten virgins, you tied my tongue, and I could not read the Gospel. I began to read it later in private and calmly, without any problem, read it with feeling - otherwise I read it without feeling at a prayer service. How many intrigues! But protect, Master! Protect, Lady! My enemy! How you hurt me yesterday with your insincerity, malice and contempt for your father! How I suffered after that, or how you tortured me! But I thank the Lord who saved me. If, when starting to drink tea or have lunch and dinner, you feel a restless greed for food and drink and haste in order to quickly [indulge] in the pleasure of food and drink, then first calm down and suppress your greed and then, without greed and haste, with reflection, thanking God, the Giver of all good things, eat and drink in moderation, for the glory of God and for your health. The sinful flesh spares its pennies of luxury for the obviously poor, but the spirit does not hesitate, in case of need, to lay down its life for its neighbor, not just money. The flesh becomes angry at the sight of those often asking us for alms, but the spirit is filled with goodness and rejoices at the opportunity to do a work of love and show Christian mercy to the one whom Christ loved to the cross and death, whom he wants to make the heir of eternal blessings, whose soul is the image of God, the bride of Christ and the Holy Spirit, who is a member of Christ. The flesh despises the poor, does not want to look at him - the spirit highly, looks at him with respect and humbles himself at the sight of him, seeing in his poverty the image of his spiritual poverty, which is especially intensified and threatens death in a luxurious person who eats sweets and lavish meals, and is ready to be like a beggar, remembering the word of the Apostle: has not God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom? [James. 2, 5]. In order not to stumble when reading the Gospel and prayers, read with your heart in mind. Do not be angry with guilty students, but pity them (and love them the more, the worse they behave) as if they were perishing. You were and are the repository of all iniquities - this is what your conscience tells you. You were the devil's receptacle, and the devil is the abyss of all iniquities. Do not lie before God in your heart, being ashamed to utter certain iniquities before people, as if you had not committed them, and being afraid to expose yourself to them. Feel free to expose yourself to them. Put them to shame. We have eternal excuses for not loving our neighbors. But away with these excuses. We are all sinners. And we must pray for our enemies. Why don’t pretexts for virtue, for the love of God and neighbor, appear to us just as quickly as pretexts for sin? Why don’t we catch all the opportunities for virtue, but either don’t notice them, or run away from them, or pretend not to see them? O blind, evil, sinful flesh! Do we reject pretexts for good, but do we greedily seize pretexts for evil? Vile enemy of God! Those who are sated with food and drink are satiated with pride, malice, contempt, envy, greed, stinginess, and covetousness. Take away wickedness from your souls [Isa. 1, 16] - wickedness, pride, malice, envy, gluttony, fornication and all uncleanness, covetousness, hope for earthly things, lies, despondency, hypocrisy, doubt, lack of faith. Our flesh spares others money, food, sweets, clothes, or envies the well-being of others - for what? To seize everything for yourself, to indulge in voluptuousness, to bask, to rest, to accept honors, and to kill your soul, and to separate you from God and your neighbor. Don't trust her. Oh, what bliss it is to hunger and thirst for God’s sake, to endure need and be ready to give everything and your last! Apostles of Christ! You were in hunger and thirst, in heat and nakedness [2 Cor. 11, 27]. Teach me to live like this voluntarily, so that my spirit will come to life. Do not judge your neighbor, you do not know how and do not have the right to judge your neighbors, for who knows all the internal and external circumstances and conditions under the influence of which a person sins? You judge superficially, but God looks at the heart and at the temptations and weaknesses of the flesh and spirit. Judge yourself carefully and impartially. We are afraid to humiliate ourselves through humility, while humility elevates us (especially the humility of those of us who are high in some way by the grace of God), delights us, surprises us, and conveniently disposes our hearts to imitate. Who gives us such a wrong opinion about humility? The devil and our natural evil. Just love your neighbor, without thinking or examining his life. Prepositions are a dream. The law is not due to the righteous [1 Tim. 1, 9]. You can love anyone safely. Ask people for forgiveness in church fearlessly, boldly, sincerely, with firmness: evasion from this is the devil’s dream. Remember Archimandrite Apollos. Let’s say your brother is a sinner, a lover of money - but you are sick with love of money, and greed, and delicacy, and satiety, which is all incomparably worse. But your brother is not greedy for food. Prayer to God and the saints, who are one in Him and in whom He abides forever, should be as natural, simple and easy as breathing. The Lord, like air, surrounds us on all sides, is in us, and in Him we live, breathe, move and exist [Acts. 17, 28]. The Gospel, prayers, words, church conversations are my food, my life; I must devour them with holy greed. But the sinful flesh turns away from them, shuns them, or doubts: shouldn’t we read them in the ears of the people? Stupid, evil! I thank You, Lord, wondrous, simple mercy, my wonderful omnipotence, for you have preserved me now for two classes from the vile machinations of the enemy through the affirmation in my thoughts and heart of the words: Lord and flattery (sin), for the name Lord kept me in holiness and supported my strength, and the name flattery reflected the flattering devil, who instilled in me his abominations. What a struggle! I was constantly under siege; battering guns were directed against me, as if against a city wall, but they bypassed me, and in the name of the Lord I resisted them [Ps. 117, 11]. March 1, 1865 Yesterday the enemy wounded me, or I was wounded. And how? On the baby, whom he baptized with faith and calm grandeur, I noticed a large gilded or golden cross. The brilliance and beauty caught my eye, and my heart was instantly stung by desire and passion, while I did not have gold and do not have it and would not want to have it. O addiction to the flesh! To food, to gold and silver! How long will I be carried away by sweets and burden myself with them? How long will I not guard my heart like the apple of my eye? How long will I not take care of the church of God? How long will I corrupt him with gluttony and sweets? How long will I take pleasure in food and drink? O Long-suffering! Every day You expect my conversion, and every day I betray You! But how long will I desecrate Your image, Your portrait, which is my soul? Never eat or drink with all your heart or with all your mind, greedily, without thinking about anything extraneous, but eat and drink so that your spiritual wisdom is not drowned out by carnal needs. Eat and drink, and at the same time think as a Christian that all these are gifts of Christ God, that you must love Him with all your heart, and not cling to worldly things as perishable. Temptations, like a spiritual knife, cut off the wild growths of passions on our heart. It is painful to undergo this operation, but there is nothing to do: otherwise souls cannot be healed. What bodily operations are not painful? Sins enter through sweets and pleasures in general, but are expelled and taken away by pain. For everything, glory to the Lord, who Himself deigned to suffer greatly for our salvation and to endure the cross, and in this showed us the need for the cross and suffering for the sake of salvation. Who dares to deny suffering and sorrows, illnesses and misfortunes, when our sinless Lord Jesus Christ Himself was subjected to them? And if the righteous are barely saved, then where will the wicked and sinful appear? [ 1 Pet. 4, 18]. Oh, think, think, brothers, what will happen to the dry tree [Lk. 23, 31 ] if the justice of the Heavenly Father punished so much for our iniquities, then, so to speak, mercilessly, raw, filled with all kinds of fruits of righteousness, the living tree of our Lord Jesus Christ? And if the righteous are barely saved, then where will the wicked and sinful appear? [ 1 Pet. 4, 18]. Therefore, let us endure with meekness, humility, devotion to the will of God and complacency all the sorrows and illnesses, troubles and misfortunes that God allows us to experience, purify and admonish. My father is the head of the house, not me. I must always look at him as the head, with respect and love. Do it, Lord! Eat and drink in number, measure and weight [cf.: Prem. 11, 21]. Excessiveness entails spiritual disaster. True. You, my friend, should be busy with God and your soul, but you are busy with food and drink, gold and silver and various, various pleasures, but God and your soul are completely on the sidelines, and you don’t care about them! But everything earthly, my friend, passes away like a dream, but God and the soul are eternal. If earthly and carnal addictions crowd out love for God and care for one’s soul from the heart, isn’t it better and fairer to completely give up addiction to the flesh and to earthly things and pleasures, and to cleave all your thoughts, all your heart to God and to your soul, and only in God to look at everything earthly: at your flesh, life, at other people, and all things and pleasures - and in God, with God and for the sake of God and for the sake of love for his neighbor to use them, not counting anything as great, but counting everything as rubbish. If your eye is bad, then your whole body will be dark. So, if the light that is in you is darkness, then what is the darkness? [Matt. 6, 23]. You see, our soul is an eye, a light. Take care of this eye so that it does not darken, take care of this light that is in you. My God! My God! Every day I corrupt my heart with my greed for food and drink, overeating, over-drinking and delicacy; that is why my heart and all my inner spirit convict me when I pray to You, and they are powerless for heartfelt prayer, and my tongue changes and becomes numb. [I have sinned, I will not stop sinning, Lord]. But I appeal to You: have mercy on me, stop the greed of the flesh and teach me abstinence and fasting. Give me hunger and thirst for Your righteousness, and not flesh and blood, not food and drink, not clothing, not the corruptible things of this corruptible life. Take away from me all the evil thoughts of this visible life 53 and strengthen the heavenly desires of treasures. Wake up! Wake up! Do you want to be sure whether you love God? Here's how you can be sure: notice, if you meet a beautiful girl or woman in society and multi-passionate flesh arouses lust in your heart, and you immediately raise your thoughts and heart to God and pray to Him that He will not allow your heart to be defiled by carnal lust and in a beautiful person glorify the author of beauty - the most pure God, and you look at the beautiful face of a person as the image of God, with with all purity, this is a sign that you love God; if you are carried away by carnal lust, you do not love God, you are flesh and blood, at least at this time, the devil does his will in you. If you do the same at the sight of gold and silver, valuable and beautiful clothes, precious and pleasant food and drink, if you consider all this as trash, without being hurt in the least by your heart, without sparing it for anyone, without being greedy for it yourself, then you love God. God is the treasure of your heart, the God of your heart. If you see a poor person and show him mercy, then you love God; If you rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, then you love God. If you see an offender, an enemy, and are not indignant in your heart, do not feel hatred for him, but feel love for him as a brother, as a weak member, then you love God; if you are angry with him, breathe vengeance, then you do not love God and serve the devil. Love, said the Lord, your enemies [Matt. 5, 44]. And: whoever loves Me will keep My word [Jn. 14:23], and His word, and His covenant to all His followers is this: love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another [Jn. 13, 34 – 35]. But note: our enemy does not care about anything so much, does not work on anything so much, does not sweat (so to speak), as to create enmity and disorder between us: all his intrigues tend towards this; and then to attach our hearts and our flesh to earthly blessings and immerse us in sensuality, so that we completely forget about our true patronymic and about preparing for it and about cleansing ourselves from all filth of the flesh and spirit. This is what ails the world. Take a closer look and you will see. All pleasures and pleasures, everyone talks about pleasures, strives for pleasures. But the faith of Christ says: crucify your flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5.24], or: through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God [Acts. 14, 22], - this means that no one will enter there with earthly pleasures. Or: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted [Matt. 5, 4]. The proof is the apostles, martyrs, saints, saints, unmercenaries. Do not get excited if, after doing good, you encounter temptation or attack from your family, but endure this attack with meekness and humility, for Christ’s sake. My wife loves me, despite my sins or covering them with love, but I don’t love her and look at her proudly, contemptuously, damned, when I see the special whiteness of her face, concluding from the fact that she ate a lot and drank greedily. I do the same thing myself and forgive myself, and I ask God for forgiveness, but I don’t forgive her and I’m ready to punish her for it. What kind of mutual love is this? And also the head of the wife. If I do not have love, it does me no good [1 Cor. 13, 3]. I thank You, Lord, who saved me repeatedly during two classes by Your name and Your simplicity. March 2, 1865. Why do we have lack of faith? Because they [students] do not know the system of the Christian faith, its development, its foundation, its harmonious whole - the beginning, continuation and end, because the faith is taught scholastically, strainedly (also out of gluttony). So, the duty of the teacher of the law is to show the beginning of our faith, the creation of man in the image and likeness of God, the subordination of all creatures to him, the giving of commandments to him, as his obligations to God for his creation in his image and likeness and the subordination of all creatures to him, and to express obedience to God as the Creator and Lawgiver; the fall of man through gluttony, greed and pride; the punishment for sin is curse and death; the promise of the Savior; sacrifices, revelations, prophecies, preparation of the Virgin Mother; The Church in the Jewish chosen people, providence for this people, the fulfillment of miracles, the harbinger of the miracles of the New Testament, prophecies. The Lord's faithfulness to Himself, His promises. (Israel received His servant, remembering the mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, Abraham and his seed forever [Russian: He received Israel His servant, remembering the mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed forever] [Luke 1, 54 - 55]. Don’t believe your heart, when it is indignant at someone because of some thing, pouts, gets angry, despises - then it does the will of the devil. How dare you, how can you despise a person created in the image and likeness of God, even though, let us assume, he sins in some way? By despising the image of God, you can easily reach the point of contempt—forgive, Master, this insolence—of God Himself, His name, His commandments, His words—you even do it; such is the hellish sequence of sin! Despise sins, but not the sinner, but pray and cry for the sinner, admonish the sinner, reprove, punish with pity, and not with cruelty and malice. Humble yourself before man - and you will be humble before God, who, in the person of man, Himself accepts your humble service to Him, and will exalt you in due time. The one who humbles himself will exalt himself [Lk. 18, 14]. And in order for you to sincerely humble yourself before everyone, remember your many, many sins - the sins of youth, manhood, and in general, present and past, about their greatness, guilt, shamefulness, about your numerous and extreme weaknesses, shortcomings and omissions; Remember also how many times you despised or coldly, indifferently, insensitively, hypocritically treated the shrine of the Sacraments, worship, prayers, chants, how you were cold with your neighbors, indifferent to them from the heart, careless about their spiritual benefits, about the salvation of their souls; how often you prayed for them insincerely, how you cared more about yourself than about others, even about your own family. And then you will see that although you are placed high in society, in the essence of the matter, in your heart, you are worse than everyone else, because you did not properly fulfill the many responsibilities entrusted to you, you did not serve God and your neighbors properly. And in general, the higher someone is placed, the more dangers there are for him, the more stumbling blocks, the more responsibility before God and people. The strong will be greatly tormented 54 [ Prem. 6, 6]. Think about your answer before God for the people entrusted to you. Serving God and your neighbors is your life, your pleasure. With joy, perform divine services, the Sacraments, prayers, admonish the sick, give alms. Fight against the habit of a relative or acquaintance who lives with you or who often visits you, or even your own [wife], or your own father and mother, or father-in-law and mother-in-law - and do not despise them because they are constantly in front of you and, perhaps, subservient to you, for our pride is such that sometimes the more they please us, the more our relatives and relatives love us, the more we despise them out of our malice hearts. Be constant in love and respect for others, as you wish others to be constant, loving and respectful towards you. Do not pay attention to a person’s flesh, to his ugliness or good looks [...], to his weaknesses and shortcomings, of which you also have many, to how much he eats and drinks and what he eats and drinks, but pay constant attention to his soul, which is the image of God, the living image of the highest, most beloved and all-loving God, and invariably love a person, despising the flesh, that is, despite its goodness or badness, not being carried away by it and not turning away from it. Wake up! Wake up! And don’t look at your flesh, at your face; constantly pay all your attention to the face of the soul. March 3, 1865 I thank You, most holy Holy One, Lord Jesus, for Your salvation from the abominations of vile spirits and my vile heart through Your most pure name, carried with faith and hope in my heart. Thank you for bestowing calm, greatness and importance before your students and instruction. On my own I am nothing, but with You it is a wondrous thing! I can accomplish a lot. Oh, if only You - but what am I saying? - visit, O Lord, O Lord, these grapes; and guard what Your right hand has planted [Ps. 79, 15 – 16 ], and save the summer growth 55 of it. Do not hesitate, do not hesitate to put all the delights of this world under your feet, for example, the beauty of a woman or a man, and say to yourself: beauty! you will soon be under your feet and mingle with this dust, which is trampled by passers-by; say to sweets: you will soon become a stench; clothes: you will soon also be decay, which will be disgusting to look at. However, glorify the Creator for the works of His hands, but if a creature turns away from the Creator, despise it and immediately turn your gaze to the Author of all creatures and to the Author of your being and re-being 56 . Run away from sweets: they are the enemy’s snares; despise sweets and money most of all - these are the enemy’s snares. Through them, he tears us away from God, from loving our neighbor, from caring for the salvation of our souls and the souls of our neighbors, from thinking about heavenly things and inclines all our thoughts and hopes to the earth. Oh, how much, how much we all lose through our momentary addiction to earthly goods. Oh, how strongly my heart is addicted to the sweets of food and drink and how it is bound by them! These are iron shackles for the soul! He who loves and is indignant at his neighbor with love, having in mind not his own benefit, but his, not from a carnal view, but from a spiritual view, with the goal of turning the carnal man to God and to spiritual life; He himself tolerates the carnal deeds of his neighbor, just as the Lord is patient with all kinds of our sins. And for us, who sin a lot and are long-suffering from the Lord, first of all we need long-suffering towards our neighbors, who sin a lot, like us. Love is patient and merciful [1 Cor. 13, 4]. Our earthly, corruptible, busy, multi-passionate, multi-passionate life, which greatly angers God, and all the means to it must be hated and counted for nothing, hastening with thoughts, hearts and deeds towards that ageless and never-ending life. Flee the spirit of enmity, like the spirit of hell, like Satan himself, and let no pretext incite you to it: let them take your property, your sweets, insult your honor, hate you, persecute you, but do not fall away from love, as from God Himself, Who is love [1Jn. 4, 8], and to the evil of your neighbor, do not add, out of the madness of your heart, another evil, your own - hatred towards him, which is the devil; endure, trusting in God, and be content with little. God will not leave you. Seek first the Kingdom of God and righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. Every minute the Lord provides for you and the news that you require before you ask [Matt. 6, 8]. He who provides for every creature provides even more for you. Don't worry: He is the Father. And despise sweets: after all, they remove you from God and flesh out your heart, making it white. And we regret with love about insidious and evil people and about kidnappers as those who perish and, unknown to them, are robbed by the enemy, who are pleasantly struck by [the enemy] for their old man and who are often pleased with his defeat and laugh at their defeat and at their sinful successes and at the fact that they deftly know how to prick and harm their neighbor. Have complete aversion to evil in yourself and in others, but for those who breathe evil, as if infected with hellish poison, hellish spirit, regret and pray. Breathe love. God! Help! All hope for food, drink, sweets still remains in me, and dislike, dislike, and disdain for my brother, to whom everything has been put under his feet, because of sweets. But I read in the Holy Scriptures that for a cup of water given to a thirsty person, we will not lose our reward [Matt. 10:42] and that to the one who seeks the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (and all righteousness is in love: love is the fulfillment of the law (Thim. 13:10); most of all, put on love, which is the totality of perfection [Col. 3:14]) all will be added [Matt. 6, 33 ], all earthly blessings: food, clothing, etc. For those who have sinned, Lord, have mercy on me. I was jealous of bread and sweets with zeal of the devil, but I despised my brother, for whose sake everything—heaven, earth, and You Yourself, Master! The enemy uses all the things of the world as a weapon to turn us away from God and to contempt and hatred of our neighbor, whereas everything should serve as a reason and incentive to cleave to God, the Giver of all good things, to love our neighbor with all our hearts as ourselves, for everything is given for all of us, and not for one, not for a few, everyone is made the owner of the earth and all its blessings. Possess... the earth [Gen. 1, 28]. I love Christ in all members, that is, Christians - this is what I must say and prove my words with deeds. One iota will not pass from the written word of God and from the faithful and found in liturgical books: miss one word, one syllable - you will immediately be wounded in your heart, the Lord will immediately punish you, and until then you will suffer until you sincerely come to the sense of reading everything down to the iota and repent of your haste, which is often instigated by the devil, or from your false shame of the words of the Church before noble and beautiful of this world, or the shame of sins listed in prayers. The Lord is true, unchangeable, righteous. The same order of God’s truth is in the entire moral law: one unrighteous thought, for example, evil, unclean, covetous, is punished strictly and severely until a person heartily repents of his madness, for every sin is voluntary madness. A beggar in rags kindly kissed - do not be offended, but rejoice: Christ Himself kissed you in the face of the beggar, for he is a member of Christ and Christ is in him; Yes, remember that you yourself are a beggar in your soul, which is completely filled with the stench of passions, that you are alien to good deeds, that you are lower than everyone, worse than everyone. Do not let your heart rise above any beggar, do not let him consider you better than them: this is empty arrogance; We are all brothers in Christ, co-founded and glorified with the Father and the Son. When your heart strives to be angry with your neighbor for any of his sins, real or imaginary, then immediately remind yourself that you yourself are an abyss of sins and infirmities, that you should only be angry with yourself for not fulfilling the law of God, and not with others who will give an answer to God for themselves; that you do not have the right to judge your neighbor, who has the Lord - the only Lawmaker and Judge, who can save and destroy; that your duty is to pray for your brother as for yourself, for without God we cannot do anything good: without Me you cannot do anything [John. 15, 5]. Avoid being angry with your neighbor so that it does not turn into a habit in you, for anger has its own extremely strong, everlasting desire 57: to constantly be angry with your neighbors for every little thing. Evil tirelessly strengthens to establish its throne in me through measures of arrogance, violence through malice, envy, love of money, gluttony, voluptuousness and voluptuousness, despondency, coldness and petrified insensitivity to God and neighbor, pride, disobedience, willfulness, self-will and stubbornness. Intercede, save, have mercy and preserve us, O God, by Your grace. If you notice that the enemy is tempting your voice or your brother, it is better not to sing. I sinned grievously before You, Lord: before kissing the cross on the Week of the Cross, on Saturday, during the all-night vigil, I became embittered with my brother Deacon Alexander because I sang lowly and not for me to Your Cross... Oh, what pride even at the sight of the cross, what pharisaism! What is the exterior without the interior! And so I am a hypocrite! God bless you in future. May I, Lord, succeed in love! Grant me to hate all appearances in myself for the sake of inner virtue, meekness, humility, love, patience and long-suffering. I also hate my voice, with which the enemy traps me in his malice! I hate the eye that seduces with its sight of faces and things; I hate the taste that leads to sin through sweetness; I hate the sense of smell, which is relaxing with fragrances; I hate the touch that seduces with softness. Never respond to coldness with coldness, but, on the contrary, respond with kindness to the coldness and dislike of others, and in general overcome evil with good. For love is omnipotent, and anger is powerless. Do not become embittered for any plausible excuse. What [be] a plausible excuse for malice, which is madness and absurdity? None. Of course, you shouldn’t get angry under any circumstances. Do not want to surpass everyone with your voice and harmony of singing - this is vanity; the enemy can attack you with anger here too. And what is all the harmony of your voice with the anger of your heart against your brother? - Nothing: she is worse in the eyes of God than any absurd, uneducated voice of a commoner or anyone else who sings in simplicity and kindness of heart. When the heart is absurd and angry, then what harmony is there in the voice? And he gets upset, because out of the abundance of his heart his lips sing harmoniously. When the heart is evil, the singing mouth is vile, discordant, and absurd. You have learned from thousands of experiences how love for your flesh and earthly pleasures prevents you from loving God and your neighbor and even always leads you to malice, envy, stinginess, pride and contempt. Despise with firmness both your flesh and everything earthly. Love one another diligently from the bottom of your heart [1 Pet. 1, 22]. In order to love God and your neighbor, you must deny yourself, consider yourself for nothing, hate yourself and surrender to God and His commandments, to know His only will. Love is the breath of our soul: just as it is natural to breathe, so it is natural for us to love; just as it is unnatural to choke, so it is unnatural to become embittered. Out of nothing I was brought into being by the Lord God; The Lord has given me everything, I have nothing of my own, I can do nothing good without God: God works in you to will and to act according to His good pleasure [Phil. 2, 13]. All my hope is in Him. Like breathing air, so serving the Lord, the Mother of God, the Angels and the saints, life in God is lightness, spaciousness, coolness. Reluctance and stubbornness are from the devil. Deign to serve God all day long. Willingly and joyfully rush to serve God, the Lady and the saints at the request of parishioners. Do not rejoice in serving the belly, do not rejoice in pleasant foods and drinks. But with us it often happens the opposite. If God is in your heart, then you just said the word - and now your subordinates will listen to you. If God is in the heart of a teacher of the law, then there is silence in the classroom. Do not be angry with the guilty students, but feel sorry for them. Why is there no fruit of communion in me? Why don’t I love my brother as I love myself, why do I regret for him my sweets, or God’s sweets, which are so harmful to me? By the way, how little sweets a brother needs to give him something to drink at least once a day! O madness of the heart! Oh, malice of the heart! Oh, ungodly addiction to sweets! All this comes from carnal, sinful, blind love for oneself. Everything would be for oneself, and nothing for the other, while everything is common. The piece in the hands of your neighbor seems large! It seems that my brother will eat and drink everything and leave us nothing. What a dream! What a mirage! But grant me, Lord, to love him diligently with a pure heart [1 Pet. 1, 22 ]! Nailed to the cross for our sake, Lord, teach us to love as You have loved us. Confirm us in perfect love. Hell every minute intensifies to invade our soul and kill us forever, and partly invades the soul, and the Lord allows it to invade us for our negligence, pride, malice, lust, so that we would at least partially learn from experience what would have happened to us if, by His ineffable goodness, the Son of God had not become incarnate and suffered and died for us on the cross and had not interceded with this terrible sacred rite. The Heavenly Father has the power to forgive us our sins, and what will happen to us if we do not use the merits of our Savior, our faith in Him, for our benefit! Oh, what a terrible languor of eternal torment awaits inveterate and unrepentant sinners! What crying, what gnashing of teeth! What hellish sorrow and cramped conditions happen to us here, when we are sometimes only on the threshold of hell! From my many-passionate flesh I have made an idol, a deity, and I obey it, its many-different passions, despising the life-giving commandments of God. I suffer greatly from serving her, and yet I do not stop serving her; I am absolutely blessed from fulfilling the commandments of Christ, and yet I am fickle and unfaithful, imprecise in fulfilling them! I'm a strange person! Pathetic, ridiculous! God! teach me to despise the flesh and all its dreams and to strive to please You alone and my neighbor for good, for edification 58 . In me is He Who is life, Who is in me He Who created all things. What do I have in heaven? and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26 ]! God is in me, and with God I have and will have everything. All things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. Oh, abide in me, O God! What absurdity is it that I love something that is harmful to me and separates me from God? Worldly sweets, sugars, teas, pies, etc., make our heart coarse and alienate it from Christ and our neighbor. Experience. What from here? Trample sweets. Those who live in contentment are tormented by their very contentment, for they are wounded every time when, against their will, they must often offer their sweets out of politeness, and for a long, long time the evil one sometimes torments them with regret for sweets or money and with indignation and hostility towards those whom they were supposed to treat or supply with something. And they suffer worthily, so that they learn not to cleave their hearts to the dust of the earth, and not to place hope in it (as in God), and not to despise their neighbor - the image of God, their brother, because of the corruptible, insignificant blessings of this world. We are pupils, disciples of God, being raised on earth for the Kingdom of Heaven, for heavenly citizenship. Just as in worldly schools students use everything ready: food, clothing, housing, teaching aids, guidance from mentors or parents, food, clothing, etc. - as long as they study, so we from the Heavenly Father have and will have everything ready for us, all the needs of life, as long as we are educated for the heavenly fatherland, for heavenly citizenship, according to its spirit, despising the world as transitory. God! Give patience and love to those who offend me and to those who rob and eat me. The Church celebrates great holidays, makes memories of saving events related to the sacrament of the incarnation and the redemption of us from sins and eternal death, but hell, and Satan with his minions intensify and do their hellish deeds in us - they scorch, oppress and torment us with various passions; they don’t care about our holidays - what am I saying? they bring upon us even more their darkness, their coldness, their aversion to the saving sacraments and events of faith, they further inflame in us the passions of the flesh and spirit, lust, pride, malice and others! Just make a mistake, stop paying attention to yourself - now they will overcome you, and then goodbye to the whole holiday, all its memories! Hell will make its own holiday in itself - sorrow, despondency, cramped conditions, crying. During the holidays we should despise everything carnal and diligently love one another. The will of your heart - the will of passions, the will of the devil - renounce, reject it. Sweets have done me so much evil, so much anxiety, so much torment, why don’t I despise them like dust, like mucus, like pus - for my peace of mind? Why do I feel sorry for my neighbor? - I envy his bliss: why does he eat and drink sweetly? I think he will eat and drink. But love him as you love yourself, be glad of his contentment as if you were your own. Love him as you love yourself, according to the commandment of the Savior: as you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. And you are pleased, you don’t reject it when they make you sweet tea. But remember, who do you often receive communion from? – God Himself, the Sweetest Jesus Christ. What do all sweets mean before Him - infinite sweetness, the culprit of all sweetness? Nothing. For all sweets are momentary. And the Lord is eternal sweetness. I give to others, and God gives to me - who is more generous? Be ready to sacrifice not only sweets, but also your body, your labors and sweats and your life as a sacrifice of love for God and neighbor; run away from peace and pampering, which kill both soul and body. Simply, instantly, the enemy taunts you with his dreams - and you simply reflect him. As soon as I let the sting in, it was immediately out, or - what am I saying? As soon as it begins to undermine, immediately take measures so as not to let its sting come into play. All of Christ, all of God: if you do anything for your neighbor, you will do it for Christ Himself, of Whom he is a member, albeit a sick one. And whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you are Christ’s, truly I tell you, will not lose his reward [Mk. 9, 41]. Why do we take offense at those who often eat and drink with us? The more we eat and drink, the greater the reward they prepare for us. We will reap everything in the future. All our hopes are in the future. Oh, how sublimely, with what love, with what reverence should one look at a Christian? He is Christ's, he was bought at the price of the blood of the Son of God, for him Christ died. And how low we look: we are ready to sell it for sweets, for a piece of bread, for a few money; We don’t even put it on for anything. Oh, crazy, evil wisdom of the flesh and Belial! Oh, earthly acquisitions! Oh, earthly sweets! How you must be despised and imputed to nothing in order to love with all your heart only God and your neighbor! There would be agreement, peace and love, and God would arrange and provide everything else. Remember that the Lord is called and is the Lover of Mankind and, out of infinite love for mankind, created many different fruits for man and gave them for food and enjoyment to him, that is, to all people, and not to you or some. Therefore, love your neighbor as God loves you, give him from God’s gifts, as He gives to you; give all the more willingly because He credits you with merit, as virtue, accepts it as if it had been done to Himself, and promises you reward according to His inexpressible love for mankind, in order to induce you in every possible way to virtue, in order to reward you for something. He knows that this is not easy for you, he knows the enemy’s machinations over you, but look at the rewards! What gracious help! What powers have been given to you! If you want and decide, then you can do anything. By offending your neighbor in your heart with malice and with an evil and disdainful gaze, you offend God and all humanity, all living and all holy people of God who exist in heaven, starting with the Most Pure Mother of God to the last saint, because the offended neighbor is an image and a member of humanity, and we are one by nature and one in spirit. So, don't insult anyone. Be a lamb. They cut your hair, rob you, lead you to be slaughtered - don’t be embittered. Through addiction to sweets we commit fornication, unite with the devil, are defiled by his communication, his malice, pride and other passions, and we retreat from God. Yes, we are getting it from the enemy for this retreat! How much fire, cramped conditions, humiliation! Oh, how seductive passions are! A person subject to passions, like me, begins to pray - and at the first words he lies. He says to God: Sovereign Lord, while with him (or with me) the ruler, the Lord of the heart, is a certain passion with which he works and because of which he does not fulfill the commandments of his true Lord. What an endless difference between the Body and Blood of Christ and between food and drink, between this dust and water! But the Lord does not spare His Body and Blood for his neighbor, as well as for you, and you spare your neighbor this rubbish, these same gifts from God. The Lord has prepared for man the endless sweetness of heavenly bliss, but you are sparing momentary sweets for him. Oh, incomprehensible evil! How good it is to be simple and unstingy! He is calm, happy with everyone and everything, cheerful, bright, not tied down, pleasant to God and people, always inclined and capable of thinking about God and reading the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. But what a harm it is to be stingy! I am restless whenever others indulge in excess consumption, for example, of our sweets, money, or when we have to share our property with others; We are often dissatisfied with many people, we hate them, we are sad, boring and gloomy, bound as if by iron chains and disgusted with God and people; completely incapable of thinking about God, and also incapable of reading the Holy Scriptures; We upset the soul and body, for stinginess deprives the soul of peace, peace and freedom, fetters, scorches it, the body dries up, compresses and relaxes. What happened to me today during the unction of Yakovleva and during the Sunday liturgy - fear, and that’s all! I was all sickness, irritation, sorrow, crampedness! What a torment! I have never experienced anything like this! And all because of sweets. How fierce the enemy is before the holidays! No urine. What if the Lord allowed him to torment us at will. He would torture everyone, strangle them and drag them into hell. To those who angrily reject the existence of evil spirits: are you joking with the Holy Scriptures? What does it say? If someone is disrespectful or treats you coldly, then do not be angry with him, but out of a sense of humility and justice, attribute the reason for this coldness to yourself, your unworthiness, your wretchedness, that the multitude of your sins repels your neighbor from you, and treat him as kindly as possible. Otherwise, out of pride, we usually blame others for everything, forgetting that the way you treat God or people is the way people treat you. Why do we despise and hate beggars, why do we not favor frequent guests, don’t love them, and hate them? Because of the addiction to mammon, to worldly sweets. It’s a disaster if our sweets are wasted—they touch our hearts, as if they were tearing the skin off our heads or from our stomachs. What are they? Nothing - mucus that tickles pleasantly for a minute. And the heart - how much trouble it causes: it binds it, separates it from God and from its neighbor, butts it, scorches its insides, blinds its mind and heart! Oh, how scary it is to fall in love with sweets, how many betrayers of Christ because of sweets! My brother goes to drink tea or something like that, but he comes to tea - after all, his voluptuous heart hates him for no reason: my sugar came like simple crackers, that is, an excessive amount and over the top. Oh, how angry the voluptuous one is for the overlay! What is he? I don’t need it, says the moderate and not voluptuous, it’s food. [Arson] of passions, pus and stench soon, petrification of the heart, forgetting God and falling away from Him, clinging to the present life, forgetting about the future. Yes, my neighbor needs so little of these sweets that it will never ruin me. And the sweetness will set the teeth on edge. And most importantly, I must remember that the Lord hits me for my love of sweets, hits me hard. I thank You, my most gracious and most swift Intercessor, Lady Theotokos, for having delivered me from the fierce demonic despondency and mental and physical relaxation that occurred from stumbling during Matins in prayer: Save, O God, Thy people... - and the stumbling itself came from the ineffability of the prayer and from doubt as to why I became the wrong voice for it read. From now on, read every word with all your heart. Monday of the Week of the Cross. Be kind to the poor and willingly flexible. In general, don’t be upset with anyone. For grief comes from the devil. Consider all the machinations of the enemy as a dream, as smoke, which from faith, hope, unfeigned prayer, and opposition dissipate like darkness. If the intercourse of a husband and wife is sweet for the reproduction of another living being similar to them, then how sweet is the union of faithful souls with God, the source of life and all sweetness, who created and blessed the union of husband and wife! And how pure and holy the union of a husband and wife should be, precisely in the spirit of union with God and with the thought of the union of pure souls with God! How disgusting must be illegal, carnal (without any spiritual thought), bestial unions, with the aim of obtaining bestial pleasure! Neither harlots nor adulterers... will inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor. 6, 9 – 10], for not to have insight into anything is bad or unclean. Having such promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God [2 Cor. 7, 1]. Master Lord Jesus Christ, my God! How could I be as affectionate as Your servants Andrew and Maria are affectionate to me; If only I could treat all people with such respect and love, especially those close to me 59! All-good, all-powerful power! You see the anger, greed, and stinginess rising in me! You see how at times I breathe hatred towards my brother, who does not spare my sweets! See how the demon of greed for sweets, malice and contempt takes possession of me! You can, Lord, save me - save me. Oh, what the highest honor, what bliss! By serving my neighbor, I serve my Creator, by doing mercy to my neighbor, I favor the Creator! But with what humility, how willingly should I serve my neighbor and show him mercy! What kind of guts should I have when giving alms, when showing mercy in general! Do not fall into despair from the violence of demonic malice, when, for example, the devil inflames anger in you against a brother who consumes your sweets (and that is why they are given - they are given not to you, but to everyone; and they are harmful to you alone, they would be unnecessary), or against your neighbor, for whom I perform the services - confession and communion or the blessing of oil and other Sacraments, but endure courageously and complacently, resist firmly, and this will be counted against you as martyrdom. And say to the enemy: may your malice and your contempt, which you have planted in my heart, be imputed to you and return to your head. I, although I recognize and feel anger in myself, do not deign to it. Do not argue with elders, especially with parents, about any thing, for example about a property, about its purpose, but make a concession to them and remain silent when they stubbornly stand their ground, even if they speak unfairly; do not be upset with them for their false judgment. This is their weakness, their weakness. Remember these things, testify before the Lord, and do not contradict your words [2 Tim. 2, 14]. Whether you cough badly, whether you are sick with something, whether you have to get up at night without sleep, work until you are tired, whether they scold you, laugh at you, whether they beat you - do not feel sorry for yourself at all and say: all this is the work of my lusty, pampered, multi-passionate, sin-loving flesh. Meanwhile, our flesh is so evil and peaceful that it not only does not tolerate the slightest touch of another (the lowest of us) at other times, but if he slightly moves in [our] sight towards us, it becomes embittered by this and is ready to quickly stop the one coming towards us; in the same way, she is terribly susceptible and sensitive to any passion: at the slightest inattention to herself, one thought, one careless word - and the hellish fire of anger, pride, envy, love of money, avarice, voluptuousness, or fornication and adultery, or despondency, impatience, vexation, murmuring, blasphemy, wickedness, laughter, doubt, dumbness, ignited. Do not be seduced by pretzels, pies and drinking a lot of tea - they are a delight, a disease and a relaxation of spirit and body. If the Lord is so generous to the wicked that He gives them, and often in abundance, earthly blessings, then will He abandon the pious and not give them everything they need all the days of their lives? All these things will be added to them [Matt. 6, 33]. So, love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, be kind, generous, meek, patient - and you will not be deprived of any good. Do not rely on sweets, on food and drink in general, on money, consider them for dust, for nothing, but trust in God in everything, knowing that He sends and will send and will send everything until the end of your life, and in the confidence that if we give, then it will be given to us: give, and it will be given to you: good measure, shaken down, pressed down and running over, will be poured into your bosom; For with the same measure you use, I will use the same to measure it to you [Lk. 6, 38]. Let us not listen to the stingy and blind flesh. Let us obey the laws of the Lord. Thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness [Matt. 3, 15]. In the simplicity of our hearts we will love everyone, enduring everything for the sake of love: insults, losses, difficulties, and various sorrows. Thou hast commanded Thy commandments to be kept strictly [Ps. 118, 4]. What vicissitudes and vanity in the world! Here there is excess, and here there are deficiencies in everything; here luxury - here poverty; there are games, here there is a struggle with need; there they throw away the gifts of God for nothing, here they are happy with a piece of bread; there is joy, here there is crying; there is flourishing health, here there is illness; there life is in full swing, here death; there the chambers are spacious, here they are like a barn, like a manger. Where is the compassion from the rich to the poor? No. Instead of compassion, we see only hardness of heart. The study of Old Testament history leads to knowledge of oneself, one’s strengths and abilities, one’s fall and corruption and powerlessness to restore oneself or be reborn without God’s help and grace, especially to the knowledge of the all-goodness, wisdom and omnipotence and immutability of the Creator and His continuous providence for the restoration or rebirth of us and for elevating us to the first bliss through His Son – the Creator (behold, I am creating everything new [Rev. 21:5]), and the faithfulness and immutability of the words of God about the corruption and insignificance of the world and all things and our bodies. The study of Old Testament history shows the basis of our love for God (we are from Him as children, as His image and likeness, as having received everything from Him) and for our neighbor: we are all one, from one Father God, all the image of God, the all-good and all-knowing Father cares for everyone, all are redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, all are called to the incorruptible inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom. Do teachers of the law have this goal? Is it shown to children? The study of Old Testament history also leads to the knowledge of the enemies of our life, our peace, in general our good and salvation - the spirits of malice in high places, their deceit, dreaminess, the absurdity of all their suggestions, their wickedness, abomination, eternal alienation from God and eternal enmity against God and people - His images and likenesses - His dear children in Christ, and teaches how to preserve our life, peace and especially to escape; inspires in us the extreme, inevitable need for the Almighty Savior, the need for faith in Him, trust in Him and love for God and neighbor; inspires us with fear and trembling to work out our salvation, to fulfill the commandments of God and the Church, to preserve peace or peace of mind through clinging our hearts to the Savior, calling on Him unceasingly, doing His commandments; teaches us to appreciate the infinitely great sacrifice of the Son of God, in which He offered Himself for our salvation; do not neglect your salvation and despise this charming age. What reliable result did I come to after all the temptations, especially during the liturgy? To the fact that the whole world and its sweets and various delights are nothing; that it is good to cleave to the one God and love Him and your neighbor as yourself; consume simple food and drink, in the most moderate quantities, in accordance with bodily needs, and do not trust the evil appetite. Known measure is always a holy thing, but immensity is the work of Satan and rejection of God and His commandments. Look, the Lamb of God, the Son of God for you, is slain and celebrated almost for you alone every time you celebrate the Liturgy, for you alone often receive communion, although the sacrifice is made for the whole world. How will you repay the Lamb of God for this ineffable mercy? - Be yourself a meek lamb to everyone, be merciful, be self-controlled. Every word in the Gospel or in the holy books is greater than me. Why? Because I, all people and the whole world came from the Word and everything is held together by the power of the Word of God. With what reverence one must pronounce every word of the Gospel and the Holy Scriptures in general, and prayers, and church songs! What about us? – We get arrogant and sometimes we miss a lot; we are negligent to the words of even the Gospel itself. Oh, habit! Glory to Thee, Lord, the all-good and all-powerful conqueror of the hellish forces that act fiercely in me, producing abominations, humiliation and despair in me and setting me on the threshold of hell. I thank You, Lord, for in Your sovereign and omnipotent name you save me and make me pure, calm, majestic, verbal. And you do all this to me, the most unworthy! How can I deserve Your mercies, so numerous? Teach me to thank You worthily. Just about, I think, I will perish from my sins, from my abominations, I will completely burn from humiliation, and You save and save me! And I, beyond all hope, emerge victorious through my prayer. How do the saints - the Mother of God and all the saints of God - see and hear us? They rest in God, and God rests in them, and God is all the eye, all the hearing. Just! If you love to rule, rule over yourself, over your flesh, over your old man, over your thoughts, over your heart, over your [aspirations] and passions. Here is a government that is God-given, and God-pleasing, and saving. Be everyone your own boss. This leadership will bring you eternal glory. I thank You, Lord, for through the prayers of the One who gave birth to You and Your Forerunner, whom I called for help in a demonic situation, I had mercy on me and turned the machinations of my opponent and slanderer to nothing. Love God with all your heart, that is, pray to Him with all your heart, having Him alone in your heart and not being seduced by anything worldly, not being tied down: neither by the beauty of faces, nor by money, nor by worldly pleasures. Otherwise it happens like this: a person prays, for example, at home or in church and only bears the name of God on his lips, but does not have Him in his heart, does not pray to Him with his heart, does not praise Him, does not thank Him; judging by his lips, he seems to be close to God, but looking at his heart (I’m talking about myself), you see that he is far from God, God is not the object of his heart, his reverence, love, glory and thanksgiving. He worships another god or other gods, idols: the beauty of faces, silver and gold, food and drink and various sweets. In his heart he commits adultery incessantly with worldly charms, while everything in the world is earth, ashes, grass, hay. Love your neighbor as yourself, that is, for example, pray for him as for yourself, without any distinction, do him the best possible good. Don’t be upset with your wife because she makes tea several times for visiting guests; Remember how with all diligence these or other of your acquaintances or relatives make tea again for you, while they had already drunk it shortly before and, perhaps, you yourself drank it at home. Tea and everything eaten and drunk is a transitory and coming thing: it came out, this thing ended - and will come again; everything is like a shadow, like a dream, and our very body is like a shadow and a dream, like a bubble of water or like grass. And love and peace are priceless treasures. And man is the eternal image of the immortal God, the king of the whole earth, to whom the whole earth has been subjugated under his feet by God Himself, and I have no right to argue with my and his Lord in this, and out of pride, out of passion, willfully deprive him of the gifts of God, which are dust and moisture, trampled underfoot. So, let everything be like dust for me, and I do not regret anything for a person. Do not accept any plausible pretexts of the evil, greedy, stingy and blind flesh with respect - they are lies and dreams. Live on everything like hay, like grass, trampled underfoot, and do not cling to anything with your heart. When you feel sorry for your neighbor's money, or the fruits of the earth, or bread, wine, remember where the money is obtained from, what kind of land it used to be, where it grew and from where, on what land colored fruits grew, from what fertilizer - and be ashamed of your insane stinginess; think about why you cleave with your heart and how you can cleave to that which is the earth, what you may have recently trampled underfoot, and in any case what was previously in the earth or on the earth and was trampled underfoot. Everything is earth, earth, earth - both the body and everything that nourishes the body. The earth is nourished by the earth and will again be the earth, that is, the body. Remember the end. He is tempted, just like you - have pity on him. He was angry that he didn’t say where exactly - at the top or bottom of the house - he lived, although he said, and why he didn’t meet him; but if he was rich and more reward was expected, he would not have spoken out, but willingly remained silent; gave little - dissatisfied; the room is cramped, you can’t baptize in the house - but with a rich person it’s possible. He’s tired, it’s hard, but he willingly lays down his love and soul for others. O wicked flesh! Oh, holy people of God! How you became saints! What reverence you deserve! Since our flesh always has its own sinful law - the law of self-love, the law of stinginess, envy, pride, covetousness, then we must constantly carry in our hearts the law of God - love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, and thus tear away the law of sin from your heart. God! Teach me to do Your will. I am sinful through pride and disdain for my neighbor and for sacred things - for the holy words of prayers, for the names of saints, for the names of the highest persons. Oh, how this pride of the heart manifests itself everywhere! And it is good for me that the Lord humbles me with sorrows and humiliation. Let us silently sing with our hearts and lips... The Glorious Mother of God... This Mother of God, confessing that she truly gave birth to God incarnate for us, and praying unceasingly for our souls... 61 Those who pray do not cease, they say in church prayers for sleep. Hence our duty to always pray to Her without laziness, sincerely. What thoughts should come to mind when looking at the spherical firmament of the sky? To the one that we are enclosed in God from everywhere. This age and world are delightful: we must despise it and strive with all our might for that age in which eternal truth reigns, eternal joy and which itself has no limit, for that age which the Son of God has acquired for us through His suffering and death and resurrection. Grant, Lord, that we all love that age, and despise this age as the age in which Satan lives with his minions, having great power, the power of delusion, darkness, violence and malice, pride, voluptuousness, covetousness and other passions with which we are entangled. Alas for me, Lord, I drowned my soul in intemperance and became a receptacle for unclean spirits. Teach me, Master, abstinence! Deliver me from opposing forces. The Lord returned to me tenfold for my neighbor, for feeding and giving him something to drink. What to talk about? Why be angry or embarrassed? Sweets turn one away from God and one’s neighbor, they cool the heart toward God and one’s neighbor—hence the need to despise them as the most deadly poison, to consider them worse than any dirt, and not only not to hate the neighbor who eats our sweets, but to love him. Strange thing! It wouldn’t be a shame to give money, for example, ten kopecks, even twenty kopecks, but five kopecks would be a pity for sugar, because they are sweet. Oh, the sting of the devil! Oh, the blindness of malice and stinginess! It’s not a pity to give twenty kopecks in silver in one coin, but it’s a pity to give ten kopecks in kopecks. The damned, greedy flesh would grab everything for itself, all the sweets, all the blessings of the world, and the neighbor would have nothing or something worse. Sweet for yourself is good, sweet for others is painful. Oh, self-love! Sweets produce the bliss of the flesh, which must be crucified, and lustful thoughts and movements in the heart and in the flesh, also blasphemous thoughts. We must turn away from them. Because of sweets, you don’t even love your wife. What about the rights of all people to the gifts of God? And your father's rights to your sweets! After all, he raised and nurtured his daughter for you - [your] wife. You should be happy to please everyone. The flesh and the devil are one; flesh and lies are one. Spirit and God are one; spirit and truth are one. Leave the nasty greed behind. Scold myself for the sins of my youth, say that I was an unclean dog, a pig, worse than any livestock. God! Help! How good I feel today as a result of my abstinence at evening tea! Today we consulted with sister Anna Konstantinovna to start a choir of singers in the Cathedral and decorate the Cathedral itself, if the Lord blesses us with a lot of winnings of 35 thousand. If two of you agree on earth to ask for anything, then whatever they ask will be done for them by My Father in Heaven [Matt. 18, 19]. I told Anna Konstantinovna with confidence in my soul that the Lord would fulfill our desire. March 13th, 1865. My joy, Lord! I glorify Your holy and wonderfully powerful name and thank You for saving me from my unclean enemies. I carried Your name in my mind, I hoped in it, and I was not ashamed. Do not yield one iota to the enemy in reading the word of God and church prayers: by missing one word or sound, the devil can enter you and overcome you. Read smoothly, calmly, firmly. God is the One, or One, everything in everyone and in everything, and holy is the Lord our God, and holy are His rational creatures (the essence and [should be]), and all creation is good. And the devil slanders everything and everyone, trying to present everything to you in an unclean form, being himself unclean and vile. But the dream, the lies are all his machinations. I thank you, Lord, for through my prayer you have had mercy on me, who envied my brother Archpriest Paul, that with the abundance of his means to raise his daughter, he begged the merchants for consent to raise her at their expense. Let this be wrong on his part, but it is his weakness, illness, delusion, flattery of the heart - attachment to money; we must feel sorry for him, pray for him, and not envy him; one must rejoice in the success, contentment, and well-being of one’s neighbor as if one were one’s own; After all, I have everything necessary for life, and thank God, and excesses in property are excesses or aggravation of sins. Yes, yes. Having food and clothing, we will be satisfied with these [1 Tim. 6, 8]. The very envy of the external well-being of our neighbor is the predominance in us of the carnal, the old, trusting in the substance of man, and not in God. That is why we, sinners, are all chasing after the things of this world, and not after God, we cling to things and pleasures, and not to God, not to our neighbor. A heart greedy for money and for food and drink retreats from God and from its neighbor and associates with the devil. It cannot work for two masters: God and wealth, God and Belial. For a moment, my heart wished for money for the demand - for confession and communion and unction of the sick - and woe was to me from the ethereal villains: having instilled a desire in me, they fired and pressed me terribly: I could not speak. Oh, all this earthly trash - money, food, and the body itself! Let us desire one Lord - He is the God of our hearts, He is the top (edge) of desires - the souls of our neighbors, the images of God, and the desire for earthly blessings is a lie, a dream of the devil. When we serve the Lord and our neighbor in his spiritual needs, then most of all let our flesh be dead and not think about anything earthly, but let us humble ourselves before the Lord - our belly, Who is the life of our bodies, and not food and drink or money separately from God, as the enemy suggests. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your Heavenly Father feeds them: you see the work of the Heavenly Father - to feed every creature, especially man. Look at the lilies of the field... But if God clothes the grass of the field, which exists today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, God clothes it so much more than you, O you of little faith! [Matt. 6, 26 – 30]. Woe to the one who squanders his heartfelt feeling on the delights of the world, on the charm of silver and gold, food and drink, expensive and beautiful clothes and other things: his feeling will become dulled, coarsened and he will be unable, without great sorrows and losses, to feel love for God and neighbor, or to breathe love for God and His image. It itself will become carnal, and moreover, devilish. Hence, it is necessary to count everything in the world as rubbish in order to love God and neighbor. Horror, like an enemy, attacks the soul through material so-called benefits! But everything is earth, real earth, dust of the earth. And the body is grass, hay, reed. The enemy uses sweets as a weapon for voluptuousness, and illness as a weapon for despondency, cowardice, despair, murmuring, and blasphemy. I will strip off My garments: may I strip off from you the shameful garment of passions, woven for you by the accuser, the garment of corruption, and may I clothe you in the garment of purity and incorruptibility, says Christ the Lord crucified. I thank the Lord for my fierce sorrows, knowing firmly that they are very useful for me, humbling and crushing my old man, my prodigal, evil, blasphemous, evil, stingy, etc. The flesh goes mad at the sight of our sweets being consumed when for some reason it itself cannot eat (not because of illness, for then it humbles itself), and when it itself consumes them, then it does not go mad, because it is satisfied, because it works for the enemy, and the enemy leaves it alone. Oh, crafty one! Why am I so concerned about the revival of the flesh, which constantly seeks to destroy me and deprive me of my eternal life, which causes so much torment in my spirit, so much of the most sensitive, painful torment? What does this mean? God! Enlighten the mental eyes of my heart and save me. Enlighten the eyes of Your people and save us all. Everywhere and in everything the Lord, and the Lord bears and preserves everything, and therefore is called the Almighty - I must be carefree. From insignificance we are all called to the existence of God by omnipotence and, as insignificant in ourselves, we cannot do anything with our own strength without God or support ourselves in life, therefore God is everything for us - life, and our strength, and our light, and our air, and spiritual food and drink, and clothing, and everything; He created and provides everything for our material body - light, air, warmth, food, drink, clothing, and housing. Blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3], blessed are those who do not trust in anyone or anything except God; Blessed are those who are always aware of their insignificance and the omnipotence and omnipotence of God; carefree bliss in this life; blessed are the simple-hearted; Blessed are those who surrender themselves to God in everything. To ourselves and each other and our whole belly Let us surrender to Christ God. Just always be with God - and everything will be given to you, will be added to you. Seek first the Kingdom of God (in yourself and in others), and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. Let only God be in your hearts; always be inseparably united with Him - and everything in life will be added to you. Just do not attach your heart to anything of this life, for your part 62 is God, the God of your heart. God is inexhaustible wealth, an ever-flowing source; where God is, there is every good thing. For the lover of God, like a shadow following a body, all good things follow. God! I, a great sinner, sin against Your commandment: love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her [Eph. 5, 25 ]! God! I have no tenderness for my wife, no ardor, no sincerity of love; God! I am unrequited: the more she loves, respects, caresses me, the more cold, rude, even contemptuous I am towards her: I am not condescending in my heart towards her bodily infirmities and mental illnesses. Have mercy on me, Lord, satiated, spoiled, arrogant. I am unworthy, my Mercy, of this dearest creation of Yours, which You united with me out of Your ineffable love, like a Guardian Angel. God! Transform my heart from evil to good. I can’t do anything without You. What are our bodies? Rainbow bubbles appearing and disappearing for a minute. Food does not bring us closer to God [1 Cor. 8, 8 ]: whether we eat sweet, bitter, sour, salty, or unleavened, let us do everything for the glory of God and let us not begrudge each other anything, let us not envy each other in food and drink, but be jealous of love, which in every fast and not during fasting is the only thing needed. Let us not be jealous of rich and stingy people whose meals are meager - let our meals be generous to the glory of the most generous and generous God; May all our household be happy, not sad and not grumbling. Let us love harmony, peace and love, which desires contentment and prosperity for everyone. We will not spare the precious world and sweet dishes for our loved ones. For sweets were created for the pleasure and benefit of man. May God be glorified by Jesus Christ in everything, may we glorify the sweet Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of all sweets, for all sweets. Carnal passions - gluttony, love of money, stinginess, etc. dull the heart and make it insensitive to everything spiritual - to the word of God, to prayer, to spiritual conversation. A greedy glutton does not feel the power of prayers; he reads them and does not seem to understand them: they glide through his soul, leaving no beneficial influence on it. Don't trust your flesh when it comes to food and drink: indulge in sweets during Lent! - he says, don’t need them, it’s a sin, - when others eat, and when he eats himself, he says: this is good, and useful, and necessary. Oh, crafty one! We are all brothers and sisters, how can we think anything unclean about each other or get inflamed at each other? This land is good, beautiful, but not mine - why should I look at it, much less how can I sow on it when it is not mine, when the Lord did not order it, giving me a plot of land that actually belongs to me for sowing? Seed and sowing were not given for pleasure, but pleasure was given for willing and lazy sowing and thus for procreation. How can I be cold towards my neighbor when the Lord told me to love him as myself, or as He Himself loved us? And I am cold towards my neighbor because I am greedy for sweets and excessively proud. Meanwhile, I must fast for everyone. So, my soul, let us reject sweets and intemperance, so that we may please our Master. The fewer earthly blessings you have, the fewer sweets, clothes, books, the better for you, because you will not so soon reach the point of satiety and heartfelt falling away from God. Blessed are the poor of this world or the needy. And abundance almost always leads to satiety and heart petrification, coldness, contempt, anger, and envy of one’s neighbor. How did he seduce me hitherto, why did he cleave me to, through what did he have power and strength over me, and through what did he laugh? – Through sweets and earthly wealth, which is decidedly harmful for me, which is the fornication of my sinful flesh (sweets) and petrification of the heart. Master! Help trample passions. I sinned - I slandered my family, I was angry with my wife, sister-in-law, and father. Everything is fine, if only there were Christ’s love between us, and peace and harmony. If your brother sins against you, reprimand him; and if he repents, forgive him with the joy of love [Lk. 17, 3]. If your wife repents from her heart for her offense, forgive her from her heart. If it were not for the Lord and not the Lady, not the Guardian Angels, not the saints - the devil and his minions would have stopped the mouths of all of us and would not have allowed us to glorify the name of the Lord - this would certainly be so. How do they try to do this now and how do they sometimes succeed, albeit somewhat, in this? Who kicks priests during services? - Devil. We must never forget that we are all one body and should encourage each other to love and good deeds; especially we, shepherds, must remember and do this. Yes, we must remember that if we are bright in soul, stand firm in faith and piety, then our flock becomes firmer, brighter and purer in life: if the head is bright, the members are bright, and if we have darkened our souls from various passions, the body of the Church - our flock - will be darker, because there is a close connection between the head and the members, between the shepherd and the flock. That is why the Lord said: So let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven [Matt. 5, 16]. If the light that is in you is darkness, then how great is the darkness? [Matt. 6, 23]. So, do you think that your gluttony, your covetousness does not have a disastrous effect on your flock, firstly, because of your carelessness about souls, for what care for souls does one have who cares about rubles? – none; He has long been a malicious and flattering Judas: he talks about saving the soul for money and for show, so that people will praise him. Yes, if the light in the shepherd is darkened, then it is necessarily darkened in the flock due to his close spiritual connection with it - head with members. You commit sins at home, for example, you are greedy, stingy, envious, quarreling, and this is reflected outside, on the parishioners: your soul has weakened, and their souls even more so. You stand strong in your spiritual virtues - and they are firm. You stand in prayer and pray earnestly for them - and they feel it; If you strengthen spiritually, they too become stronger; if you relax, they too relax. God! Have mercy on me! (Note: as it happens in the classroom with students and with you, so here in the parish - the walls of houses mean nothing to the spirit. Or as happens when you encounter people: you feel good - and they do, you feel bad - and they feel bad, you are tempted - and they suffer temptation.) Our body consists of earthly elements: light, heat, air, water and earth; It will decompose into these same elements after his death. Light and heat will unite with light and warmth, air will unite with air, water with water, earth with earth. We get together and resolve again. Glory to Your creativity, Lord! Let us know and remember our earthiness, our short-term existence, and let us revere the Creator. We are all the work of His hands. The sheep of His pasture [Ps. 99, 3]. Our life is a continuous flow of God’s ineffable mercies - hence it should be unceasing thanksgiving and praise to God the Creator and Benefactor; especially, there should be unceasing love for God and our neighbor - His image and our fellow member: loving our neighbor, we love God, honoring every person, we honor the image of God - God Himself - and ourselves, for our neighbor is the other, the fifth, the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth, the millionth, etc. - I. There are many leaves on a tree, but they are all one tree, they live the same life, have the same origin, have the same appearance, the same beginning, the same end. If you doubt whether the icon of the Mother of God before which you pray is consecrated, then know that the original Lady herself has been consecrated for one thousand eight hundred and eighty years, still in the womb of her parents - Joachim and Anna, then at birth and in the temple of Jerusalem and finally by the ineffable incarnation of God the Word from Her: She is always holy, most holy - eternally, unshakably, unchangeably, and She is on every there is a place, it is inherent and characteristic of every icon, and with one outline of Her face and name and the face of Savior and His name, it already sanctifies the substance itself, His face and the outline of names. In the simplicity of your heart, look at every icon, and doubt is from the devil, in order to distract you from heartfelt prayer. Tell him: the whole earth is holy, in every place is the dominion of my Lord and His Most Pure Mother - the Lady of the whole world. I look at Her, the Most Pure One, with the eyes of my heart, and do not worship the board - the image was made only to help my weakness. I am not worth the gifts of God - and they are not mine, but those of my family and all my neighbors. I am a sinner of sinners and am worth nothing except bread slops. Why should I caress you, sinful flesh? I despise the flesh and everything that pleases it. The poison of the devil is ever known. The Lord laid down His life for us, but we do not want to voluntarily sacrifice our sweets for our neighbors, sweets that are nothing, that are harmful to us, petrifying our hearts and deforming them, making them earthly, bestial, cruel, irritable. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things (food, clothing, etc.) will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. I believe, Lord, help my stupid unbelief [Mk. 9, 24 ]; I hope, Lord, help my stupid lack of hope, cowardice, despair, take away from me stinginess, love of money, gluttony, anger, envy, pride - the products of lack of faith and lack of hope. Self-love is expressed and in what ways? In acquiring various things for ourselves: books, images, dishes, furniture beyond our needs, and in rudely refusing to beggars when they ask us for alms. But it’s better to give it to them - it’s better not to buy yourself various things that you can do without, and give it to the poor. I thank You, Lord, who has graciously strengthened me to confess Your people, and who has made me wise, and who has provided me with love and zeal for virtue, and who has taught me to converse with my spiritual children. March 19, 1865. All sorrows, torments, deprivations, and illnesses are allowed by God in order to drive out seductive sin and plant true virtue in hearts, to give experienced knowledge of the deceit, arrogance, madness, tyranny and lethality of sin and to instill disgust for it and experienced knowledge of truth, meekness, wisdom, the gentle dominion of virtue over human hearts and its life-giving power. Therefore, I will endure all sorrows generously and with gratitude to the Lord, the physician of our souls, our most loving Savior. Why am I still greedy and carried away by the pleasantness of food and drink and, for the sake of pleasure, do I neglect moderation and abstinence? I sin badly before God. Why do I drink three glasses of tea when two would be enough? Why don't you look at the end, sensualist? Now eat and drink sweetly, and tomorrow there will be heaviness and melancholy in your heart and relaxation in your limbs. Now you eat and drink sweetly, and tomorrow during the priestly service the soul, cut off from God by its voluptuous flesh, will curse its voluptuousness. Now you eat and drink sweetly, and after death, your soul will be bitter, and perhaps it will be bitter forever for the sake of worldly voluptuousness. Why are we getting carried away with the present and not looking at the end of everything? Where is the mind? Where is the thinking? Kindly fulfill the requests of parishioners to satisfy their spiritual needs, putting yourself in their place, that is, imagine that you yourself have this need, and you yourself ask your spiritual father to satisfy it, and how pleasant it is for you if the priest receives you kindly, with love, and readily promises you his service. Remember that your flesh, your old man, is an evil, poisonous and deadly snake, which hisses and emits its sting at both God and your neighbor, and constantly seeks to bite and destroy you. That is why there is no need to feel sorry for her and caress her, but to crucify her in every possible way. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. Don’t look at her that she is angry and disdainful of the unpleasant smell from people’s mouths, the smell of the room, even the excessive smoke of incense; do not look at her that she is carried away by pleasant aromas, dishes, drinks, clothes, noble and beautiful faces or money, and also magnificent houses. This is all her lust. Don’t feel sorry for her that she has to worry, serve many, but be a servant to everyone. Give her a measure in everything and do not allow her immensity - know the measure in food, drink, clothing, in words, in everything. As our attention to our flesh and to carnal things and pleasures increases, our attention to God and to everything Divine weakens - to prayer, to the word of God, to the Divine Mysteries: you cannot, it is said, work for God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24]. So, do not be greedy for food and drink, for money, for various decorations, but be attentive to God and to your soul and work out your eternal salvation with fear. Just as it is natural, sweet and easy to breathe air, so it should be natural, easy and sweet to breathe the Holy Spirit, Who is the breath of our soul. Just as it is natural, easy and pleasant to love oneself, so it should be natural, pleasant and easy to love every person. For we are all one, one God of creation, one God images and likenesses, we have one breath, the same soul, one appearance. With great attention and respect, pronounce the words of prayers, especially the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, the names of the Lady, the holy heavenly powers, the saints of God, remembering that God Himself is called the Word, God Himself has a name and from Him all names. I am the most stinking, the most fetid in soul and body. In every collision with a neighbor, contrary to God’s commandment to love him as oneself, the enemy breathes into the heart either anger, or pride and contempt, or envy, or impurity, and thus intensifies to defile us with his hellish breath; in relation to God, in contact with something sacred, he tries to instill in us unbelief, doubt, coldness, insensibility or dullness of mind and heart, irritability, blasphemy, and deceit. Feel the power of words when you pray, and don’t just chatter words. Do not think that you are better than any of the brethren, for example Father Matthew or anyone else - no: everyone is better than you, and you are the most vile and evil of all, the vitality of 63 all filth of sin, all passions. You are the worst of all, that is, me. So, humiliate yourself according to your dignity - you are a natural abomination. Everything good in you is the grace of God, not you. What hatred I have for Brother Matthew, and I wonder where it comes from - probably from my conceit and pride. But I thank the all-merciful and most pure Lady who, through my prayer during Vespers, so graciously and quickly delivered me from anger. This miraculous image in our Cathedral is local. And don’t be angry with Father Matthew as a hypocrite. This is a demonic plot. Love him as you love yourself. After all, you were angry with Elena Nikitichna, and also in vain. I saw it myself afterwards. Do not be angry with anyone and do not become like the devil - love and honor everyone. Father Matthew as his father, his wife as his mother and everyone as mothers and sisters! Hate yourself - that will be true and safe. Don't forget to fast. When you feel in your heart a fierce incitement to anger towards your neighbor, know that this is the action of the spirit of anger, and arm yourself with prayer, patience and resistance to it until you again feel in yourself a peaceful state of affection for your brother. Pray for yourself and for the one for whom you feel hatred, do not blame him for anything, otherwise the anger in you will increase more, but directly consider the anger to be your dreamy, absurd, insane anger and hostility and ask yourself for mercy from God. Do not be discouraged and do not despair of God’s mercy - it is God who tests your love for your neighbor. Know that in this temptation you are pleasing to God if you firmly fight the enemy, and the Lord is preparing crowns for you for opposing the enemy and will grant you a share of martyrdom for torment from the enemy if you do not succumb to his malice. Understand this also in those cases when the enemy fights you with the passion of fornication, the passion of pride, envy, stinginess, covetousness, despondency, doubt, etc.: if you patiently and firmly fight them, then the torment you endure from the enemy will be credited to you from the Lord as a merit. And I am proud, disrespectful and contemptuous, and malicious and envious, and lust-loving and greedy, and a glutton and a satiated drunkard, and an adulterer of all kinds, an abominable Sodomite and a people-pleaser, and a seer and a hypocrite, and a careless and lazy, and a miser and a money-lover and a lover of material things, and a lover of mankind and little faith, and cold towards God, and crafty, and a blasphemer, and a murmurer, and cowardly and sad, disobedient and stubborn - and the abode of all sin. God! Have mercy on me and correct me! I can’t do anything without You. Your name is Lord! Glory to Your name. March 23, 1865 Most immaculate Lady, most offering and most swift Intercessor! I thank You for quickly delivering me from anger towards brother Matthew through my prayer, and from demonic fears, and for the unfailing pronunciation of the royal house and prayer: Save, O God, Thy people! Brother Konstantin told me that he always treats me with love. Confessed to him that he was angry with him. Oh, the machinations of the enemy! The Lord says: love your neighbor as yourself, but the enemy whispers: hate, and makes you hate with your very heart. It will cast a shadow on this one, on another, on a third. He will despise and humiliate this one, he will hate this one, he will envy this one, he will take pity on this one and will attach his heart to shine, will instill disgust to what is not shiny, will create attraction and aching in the heart to sweetness, or disgust to food, to contemplation of the flesh and attraction and burning of sweetness. But, Lord, save us with the prayers of the One who gave birth to You. Wake up! We allow dogs to caress and lick themselves, but we do not allow the unseemly and ragged beggars to come to us and caress, out of demonic pride, forgetting the common nature and its honorability - and all because of an addiction to earthly splendor, because of mammon. But we are worse than the beggars, for we are poor in spirit, poor in good deeds, dressed in the shameful, devilish rags of passions. With You, Lord, I am not a sire anywhere. These words are wonderful. They are a glorious amulet for me by the grace of God. Remember that the belly is the enemy of God and man, and despise the belly: it, insatiable and greedy, loves itself, is stingy, is proud, despises, hates, envies, loves money, and is voluptuous. There is a carnal attraction to gold, sweets, and beautiful faces. Before the strong and rich, timidity and humiliation of spirit; before the humble and poor, pride, arrogance, contempt, and negligence are from the devil. Towards one's own - coldness and disdain, towards strangers - servile respect. Cling to the Artist, and not to His artistic work, not to the work of His hands. If my wife threatens me with disrespect and dislike, I despise both her disrespect and dislike. This is pride and dislike for his wife. God! Have mercy on me. March 24. From what terrible, hellish oppression the Lord delivered me through the communion of His Divine Mysteries during the Presanctified Liturgy, what heavenly peace, what joy and lightness he poured into my heart! Oh, I have come to life, I have perked up! Glory to Thee, Lord! God! May I not condemn anyone, since I myself am an abomination from the heart to the last member of the body. Our entire faith, all church patristic writings, especially the writings of the holy apostles, is the truth of God, is a priceless treasure that must be accepted and used with a joyful and grateful heart for the benefit of oneself and others; there is a saving medicine that must be applied without hesitation, with trust in the Holy Church and its representatives, especially its Head - the Lord Jesus Christ, to spiritual wounds; there is light that must be used with love, without understanding how this light is composed and whether it is useful, for can light be unhelpful; there is air that you must diligently inhale into yourself and be filled with it, there is food with which you must daily nourish your mind and heart and strengthen your will in good dispositions and aspirations. Oh, how the sweets, and satiety, and wealth, and the honors and dignities of this world turn us away from God! These are slippery paths! Blessed are the poor! They are necessarily far from the sweets and satiety and pride of this age! The miraculous icons of the Mother of God and other saints teach us to look at every icon as if it were the saint to whom we pray, as living persons who converse with us, for they are close to us just as and even more than icons, if only we pray to them with faith and heartfelt disposition. The same should be said about the life-giving Cross. Where the Cross or the sign of the cross is, there is Christ, and His power, and His salvation - only with faith depict it or worship it. All of me is the work of God, all of me is God’s; May God preserve me in my sanctuary. When you pray to God using familiar prayers that you get used to, say in your heart: Lord! You are always the same. My heart changes, grows cold towards the words of prayers - and yet their power is one and the same, just as You are eternally the same. If temptations happen to us, this is good: it means our path is according to God, for God’s path is narrow and sorrowful. If there are no temptations, it’s bad: a sign that the path is not according to God, wide, spacious. Words of Arseny, Hieromonk of Athos. March 25, 1865 What pride, what conceit I have: what I do in the matter of faith is good, and what another brother does is bad, while I, with this way of thinking, really do bad, for what is high among people is an abomination to God [Lk. 16, 15], but the brother does well, for it may very well be that he humbly does his job. What is there in my alms in all if I condemn my neighbor, but how inclined am I in my heart to condemn him! God! Grant me to see my sins and not condemn my brother 64. And where did I get it from, disgusting, despised at heart, multi-passionate, voluptuous, earth-loving, proud, evil, envious, contemptuous, stingy, adulterous, nasty, cowardly, sad, that I am better than others? God! Eradicate all conceit from me, so that I do not humiliate my brother at all. I am worse than every murderer, every adulterer, every drunkard, thief, lazy person, envious person, miser, money lover, every person. Glory to the Divine Mysteries: the demon came out of Martha with a strong cry: I will come out, I will come out - Vera the crooked neck has spoiled me. (March 25, 1865.) Father Pavel Trachevsky served. Reproach yourself day and night. A humble person will not condemn anyone, because from his heart he considers himself worse than everyone else, worse than any drunken adulterer. I am greedy and envious: my friend, they feel sorry for sweets, but I don’t care about their abundance. I myself take as much as I want and, as they say, a tasty morsel, but others feel sorry for him. When I eat, especially sweets, I feel like someone possessed: my mind is darkened, my heart is confused and constricted, ready to take everything into its womb, my tongue is tied and the word freezes on my lips because its source - the heart - is cluttered, overwhelmed, clogged. Lord, have mercy on me! God! I owe You countless gifts! Without number You forgave me my sins, without number You gave me Your peace, boldness, help, strength, patience, kindness. How much fresh air I have breathed with You, how much I have eaten and drunk of Your sweets, how many sacred books I have read - this living water, how much spiritual sweetness I have tasted from reading and listening to Your word! How many clothes I wear and wear! How many caresses and tender greetings I saw from Your people, and therefore from You; how many times have You delivered me from great and [mortal] hardships and sorrows and illnesses! How many elevations have I climbed! How many good relatives You have given me! How You honored me, unworthy, by Your mercy! How much you have endured and endured my sins on me! I thank you for everything, my most gracious Lord! Greedy, gluttonous, stingy, irritable, angry, proud, contemptuous, envious, sad, wayward, stubborn, crafty, cold, blasphemous, prodigal, thief, ungrateful. When you pray to God, you talk with Him face to face, and talk with Him as with a King, eye to eye; talk with the Most Pure Mother Queen as if she were alive, with the Angels and Saints - just like eye to eye, and let your heart not be occupied with anything extraneous at this time or attached to anything, for, tell me, will you, while talking with the king or queen, begin to do something extraneous and unimportant at this time, for example, look out the window at people passing by or examine the things in his chambers, etc.? and wouldn’t this be an extreme insult to the royal majesty? How can we do something similar and much worse than this when talking with the Lord? Sorrows are a great teacher: sorrows show us our weaknesses, passions, and the need for repentance; Sorrows cleanse the soul, sober it up as if from drunkenness, bring grace into the soul, soften the heart, inspire disgust for sin, and confirm faith, hope and virtue. What a close connection between the Church of heaven and earth and the underworld, what love the Church has! Look: she constantly remembers, calls in prayers and glorifies the heavenly Church for the exploits raised on earth for God’s sake; prays unceasingly for the earthly Church and intercedes for the underworld Church - for the dead in the hope of the resurrection of eternal life and communion with God and with the saints! Immense love! Majestic, Divine love! Let us enter, brothers, into the spirit of this maternal love of our Orthodox Church and let us be imbued with the spirit of this love. Let us consider all our neighbors as members of ours, ourselves and their members [and soul] of the body of the Church and actively love them as ourselves - then we ourselves will be living members of the heavenly Church, and she will be our active and quick-to-obey helper and prayer book for our souls. Say: he is not good, but his dick is mine; he is in rags, but he is my member; he is low, yes he is my member; it is true that in my soul I myself, as a vile sinner, am not high, but low, lower than everyone, for if I have something good, it is not from myself, but from grace God], - but others are better than me in other respects, and others are unknown to me: God alone [knows the inside of a person]. March 27. God! I thank You, for with Your Divine Mysteries You delivered me from the most severe sorrows, which brought upon me complete powerlessness, humiliation and spiritual disappearance, and crampedness, darkness, and hopelessness 65 inexpressible, and instead of them you gave me sweet peace, silence, lightness, boldness. Great is Your name, O Lord, the hope in it is not shameful. The wicked flesh - if I work a lot and come home because of my labors, it says to me: you lay down your life for your family, but they live for nothing, do nothing - and instills anger towards them instead of love. And you tell yourself: I’m like that, that’s what I need, damned one. I rejoice that God has granted me to serve my neighbors, and especially my relatives: this is a special mercy of God. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant [Mk. 10, 43 ]; and: The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His soul as a ransom for many [Matt. 20, 28]. So philosophize about the Lord that in your prayers of repentance you do not express many of the sins of which you were sinful before, and even now, that the sins expressed are only a drop from the river, and therefore not only do not be ashamed to publicly pronounce all your sins in your prayers of repentance (as if you were not sinful in some - God save you from this destructive conceit, from this imaginary righteousness whispered to you by the demon), but say firmly in your heart that very little is said in these prayers, that you are still sinful in countless sins besides these, that you are an abyss, an abyss of sin, and do not be ashamed, if necessary, to declare in words or in confession to your confessor that you are a vile sinner without any exaggeration, that there is no one more sinful than you, for you are a sinner not out of ignorance, but with your mind, be wise, knowing the meaning, importance, gravity and responsibility for sins, often approaching the communion of the Divine Mysteries, in which you receive great reinforcement, reading the word of God and the writings of the holy fathers and having before you the teaching of faith, rules and examples of Christian life. Do not be ashamed of your sins, which you were not ashamed to commit, but with boldness, in simplicity of heart, with sincere self-reproach, admit them, consider yourself the first sinner, the most abominable of people. But do not despair of God’s mercy: your sins are many, an abyss, but a human abyss, but with the Lord of mercy the abyss is not human, but Divine, and the purification is immeasurable, and the sacrifice for your sins is endless, so that there is no sin that could overcome the love of God, which God could not cleanse. Do not be ashamed to humble yourself before everyone, to humiliate yourself for your sins in front of everyone: where there is self-reproach and humility, there is purification, there God’s grace rests, there all the machinations of Satan, woven by him out of our conceit, out of the false confidence that we are righteous and mean something in ourselves, are crushed, while we are simply one sinful abomination, for God acts in us for everything good. Without Me you cannot do anything [Jn. 15, 5]. The flesh is self-loving, proud, alienated from God, alien to man, all-evil, voluptuous, money-loving, covetous, amorous, greedy, satiated, demanding, impatient, evil, envious, stingy, prodigal, lustful, alien-loving, parasitious, hypocritical, hypocritical, idle, rebellious, stubborn, rude, dull, cowardly, dumb - in every possible way drags me to destruction; That’s why I need to crucify her so that she doesn’t crucify and kill my soul. Because of some empty pretexts, for example, because of bread and salt, because of the imaginary or actual inaction of our family or relatives, because of our real or imaginary labors, the enemy is in the habit of arousing anger in our hearts, especially when entering a house, our dwelling, and when meeting our family or strangers who are doing nothing (allegedly). But this is a dream, vanity, the malice of the enemy: we must courageously endure and resist. It will pass soon. Remember the words of the Lord's prayer: Thy will be done. They oblige you to ensure that throughout your life, every day, hour, minute, you go against your heart, against the will of your old man, that is, to not be proud, not to be angry with anyone, not to be angry, not proud, not to envy anyone, not to be stingy towards anyone, money-loving, material-loving, prodigal, voluptuous, earth-loving, sad and cowardly, self-willed, stubborn, free-thinking, fanatic 66, hard-hearted, disobedient, lazy - and strived with all his might for the opposite virtues. I sinned - I felt sorry for people (servants), black caviar and pushed my wife, which gives a lot, and upset her. I sinned - I wanted money from the confessing officer. He repented and had mercy. He sinned - during the all-night vigil he regretted (for a moment) that he was spending a lot of money at home, and for this he was punished with cramped conditions, humiliation and darkening of the spirit. He repented and was pardoned. There is only one God of our heart - the Lord God, and not money, not food and drink, etc. The enemy knows that our heart is simple and cannot serve two masters - and so he ties it [...] to the flesh, to the earth, to glitter, to money, food, drink, clothing, a beautiful home, furniture, set, to gold and silver watches, etc., and turns it away from God. Look at your godmother as the Mother of God, so much so that [...] She is in the Church, treat her with childlike simplicity; Do your denial of the Mohammedan faith with firmness, knowing that Mohammed was an instrument of the devil, and [we curse] him and his teaching with firmness as the devil. You got used to the royal house, you became arrogant with it, you became proud in front of it - so you don’t read it from the heart and you stumble. And for the sake of Christ’s bright resurrection, speak it all out. His vessels will be plundered [Matt. 12, 29]. The devil lived and lives in people, like some liquid or color in vessels. The church of God is natural [1 Cor. 3, 16 ]; The Spirit of God lives in His chosen ones and, like a fragrant ointment, spreads throughout their entrails. Matter, as we cling to it with our hearts, passionately desire it or feel sorry for it with others, kills the soul by moving away from God, the source of life. The heart must always be in God, Who is the endless source of spiritual and material life, for who is the cause of the existence of all creatures and organic life - plant and animal, the existence, order and life of all worlds, great and lesser? Lord God. Everything material must be considered as rubbish, as unimportant, insignificant, transitory, decaying, corruptible, disappearing, but we must pay attention to the invisible, simple, immortal soul, which cannot be destroyed; despise the flesh, it passes away, but be diligent about the soul, the immortal thing. Prove it with action. Fast, give cordially to the poor, cordially treat guests, spare nothing for your family, read the word of God diligently, pray, repent, mourn your sins, strive with all your might for holiness, meekness, humility, patience, obedience. I thank You, Lord, for through the prayer of my repentance you delivered me from hellish troubles - from my terrible cramped conditions and disappearance. It rained, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew (both spiritual and material - in nature), and fell upon the house [glory: asking the church] of my soul and body [Matt. 7, 27]: and she almost fell; However, she fell into despondency, but through unceasing prayer she rose again. I thank You, who do not forget me in my disappearance. The spirit of greed for earthly goods is a demonic spirit; through this greed the enemy turns our hearts away from God. Fasting and impartiality to everything that flatters the external senses in this world are necessary. Seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God [Col. 3, 1]. I ate with great appetite (greed) a sufficient amount of very pleasant food - and now I have lost interest in the Lord, my heart is already shy and alienated from the Life of everyone, it bows to the earth, to earthly thoughts, feelings, and deeds. Oh, how wisely one must live! We must despise the flesh and its appetite, or, better yet, its greed, and not give it what is especially pleasant, otherwise the heart will cool towards God, the spirit, or the demon of greed will enter the heart and nest in it. As long as we lead a carnal life and do not approach God heartily, as long as demons lurk in us, hiding under various passions: greed for food, lust for lust, pride and proud free-thinking about faith, about the Church, about works of faith, about the Holy Scriptures, about rituals of faith, malice, envy, stinginess, love of money, so that we live according to their will; but when we begin to sincerely work for the Lord and touch the living demons of our passions nesting in us, then they arm themselves against us with all their hellish malice, all their insurances, fiery and [overpowering], some kind of addiction to earthly goods, until we drive them out of ourselves with fiery prayer or the communion of the Holy Mysteries. Likewise, those possessed by demons are at peace until they are brought to the shrine, but when they are brought to the shrine, where will the extraordinary power come from, aversion from the shrine, blasphemy, spitting on the shrine, a piercing cry. Here, gentlemen, is an explanation or solution to your bewilderment, why demoniacs, or so-called cliques, scream in church during mass or when they are led to holy relics: this is because demons encounter a good force, hateful to them and stronger than them, which scorches, oppresses, strikes them righteously, drives them out of their beloved home. Is it because you are indignant at the beggars who ask you for alms every day, because they have a constant companion with them every day - need and poverty and want to eat and drink every day? Is it because you are indignant at your family because, due to their circumstances, they live calmly and carefree and want to eat, drink, and dress every day? The devil, acting in us, pretends to be strong, while he is powerless without God's permission and even has no power over pigs unless the Lord allows it. Therefore, when he bothers you, tell him that he has vain power, empty, illusory. Poor people are still complaining, and at the Last Judgment they will complain to the Lord about the rich and proud who despise them here, and say: our soul is filled with the reproach of the gobblers and the humiliation of the proud 67 [Ps. 122, 4]. Oh, how the enemy strives and changes our hearts during the celebration of worship, especially the Divine Liturgy and during the celebration of the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Repentance, Marriage and Blessing of Anointing! God! Behold, you see! It plunges you into some kind of cowardly fear, sometimes into contempt, anger, irritability, hardens you and plunges you into insensibility! Oh, how we must pay attention to ourselves and constantly call on the name of the Lord Jesus so that we can have a heart free from the slightest attachment to earthly things - money, food, drink, flesh, clothing, etc. Be afraid, like a snake, of the slightest hostile feeling towards your neighbor, especially towards your relatives, so that through this feeling you do not let the devil into your heart. Let enduring love, condescending to the weaknesses and sins of your neighbor, be your unceasing breath. Avoid also greed when consuming food and drink, for it is through greed that the devil [usually] enters the heart. Do not impose your malice and deceit on another and thereby do not offend your neighbor, especially your father; don’t say: I would let him serve, but he will be indignant at me and say: he yoked me to the yoke - bear it for him. Be extremely careful in your words: pay attention every minute to your heart and its movements, seek peace and blessings [Ps. 33, 15]. Frequent and excessive caresses relax the soul; Severity with some severity is also needed. How do we maintain contact with the spiritual world, with the heavenly Church? Through calling them in prayers, through celebrations in their honor and church services. For the Church is one under one Head – Christ. How do we keep in touch with the deceased? Through prayers for them, especially those combined with the offering of a bloodless sacrifice. How do we keep in touch with living Christians and all people? Again through prayers for all of them in the church of God and even at home. This is how we maintain contact with the tribes 68 in heaven, earth and hell. Great is the Christian faith. The mental teeth of the wolf of hell, the mental sting of the snake of hell - anger, pride, contempt, blasphemy, doubt, perseverance, disobedience, envy, lust, gluttony, drunkenness, love of money, adultery, despondency, embarrassment and fear, laziness, impatience, irritability, hypocrisy, partiality, man-pleasing, trust in man, on the substance. If the ineffable goodness of God had not [conditioned me so favorably, I would have become a drunkard or an overeater, or both, or an evil hater of men and a lover of money. Glory to the Fatherly goodness of my Lord! Everything is the Lord – I am only sin or moral nothingness. Without Me you cannot do anything [Jn. 15, 5]. God! Look at my poverty and emptiness. He who thinks himself to be something when he is nothing deceives himself [Gal. 6, 3]. Because of my sins, I am worthy of the hatred, contempt and disgust of all my neighbors as a vile member of humanity in my very heart, and yet, in my Pharisaic self-dreaming, I think that many are worse than me and therefore have no fellowship with me, because they recognize my superiority over them and their badness, their sinful ugliness! Oh, ridiculous dream! Oh, if this were actually the case on the part of my neighbors, then they are blessed, and I am damned, for they are humble and out of humility they consider my damnation better than theirs and themselves worse than me. But I am the reproach of men and the humiliation of men [Ps. 21, 7]. If Godfather David so humiliated himself - the king of the chosen people, filled with the virtues of meekness, humility, patience, that he called himself a worm and not a man, then I, who do not have these virtues, which should be natural in every Christian, and am filled with all the abominations of passions, how should I humble myself and humiliate myself according to my property? Alas for me, alas for me, my Savior! Save me. You care about love, but he tries to constantly sow anger in you; you desire, seek purity, are jealous of it, but he diligently treats you with his abominations, dirty tricks, and absurdities; you have work ahead of you, you need strength, clarity of thought, zeal for the work, and here he is trying to relax you, dispel you, darken you. Please continue to fight here. Joyfully distribute money and necessary things to the poor, as a steward of the Lord’s estate, for which the Lord will demand an account. Love does not seek its own [1 Cor. 13, 51], she has no words: my own, this is mine. And she willingly denies herself even what she needs when she sees the glaring need of her neighbor. She says: this is God’s good, this is my neighbor’s, not mine, I am unworthy of God’s gifts, especially unworthy of excesses and I have no right to keep them with me without moving when I see my brothers in extreme need. In you, all members receive the same attention and nutrition. Why is it not so in the public body? - By the error of our hearts. Look: the stomach receives food and drink in order to nourish the whole body; the eye receives light to shine on the whole body; mouth, nostrils, lungs - perceive air to refresh the whole body; the sense of touch protects the whole body; hands make, legs walk, the mind thinks, the heart feels, desires, the will decides, chooses, undertakes, acts for the whole being, for soul and body - what is in the church and civil body? Where is the concern for mutual benefits, where is the sympathy, helping each other in diverse needs? Selfishness and pride – isn’t it a terrible disease of our spirit? Love your neighbor as yourself [Lev. 19, 18], says the ancient law. Love one another [Jn. 13:34], says the Lord in the New Testament, the Testament of His blood. Love yourself in your neighbor, love yourself in general, as a part of the whole, and do not live a separate life, closed in on yourself. In the real world, on the one hand, the infinite materiality of things appears, on the other hand, the infinity of the inner world of thoughts and feelings (or meaninglessness and sinful insensibility, or sinful, passionate thoughts and feelings). But all materiality is nothing, and one noble thought of a person, one feeling of love is infinitely more valuable than all materiality. Drinking tea with sugar is healthy and calm: my father-in-law is always healthy and cheerful from tea. And my wife, God willing, is healthy. Let them eat for their health. Remember that every person, according to the Lord’s word, is the owner of the earth, its king. and not only you and not another so-and-so. Let them possess, it is said, all the earth [Gen. 1, 28]. Only our pride appropriates the gifts of God exclusively to ourselves. You work for your own spiritual benefit: work is a necessity of the spirit. But God’s work, God’s gift, generously rewards you for your work. Others work harder than you and receive much less reward for their work. This is a lesson to you: if you receive generously, give generously. Do not begrudge anyone God’s gifts, neither your own nor those of others—all are God’s children. God will pay. And how little a person needs. After all, the charm of enmity to the flesh is great: we think that they will devour us, drink us, but then a piece or two, a cup or two - and the person is full, and no more goes down his throat. And impose it, but it won’t work. Do not hesitate to treat or give alms. I will always have this rubbish - money, food, drink, clothes, etc., and in abundance, as long as I am with God, love Him and my neighbor. Every sin in our neighbor and in me is a demonic dream, an ulcer, the dirty trick of our common enemy, our common weakness: to despise it, to impute it to nothing - but since it, that is, sin, is still a lie, and an ulcer, and weakness that harms the soul and body of our neighbor and us, and a dirty trick that is disgusting to God, then we pray for ourselves and for our neighbor to God, so that He will enlighten us and heal us plague, drove out the dirty tricker and established us in the truth. In Christ, everything is the Most Holy Theotokos, all the Angels, holy men and Christians living on earth, form one Church, one body. One Church having made Angels and men 69. Therefore, they hear us quickly, conveniently, and see in God all our spiritual needs, as in the bright Sun. How can one not honor the saints, when he who is united with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6, 17 ]? Lutherans and the English do not have true communion - this sacrament that adores us, and therefore they do not allow the veneration of saints and think that this is contrary to God and smacks of idolatry. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him In. 6, 56]. Holy ecu, our God, and you rest in the saints 70. Through the mind and body of the saints God entered, say the holy fathers 71. Don't spare her. My sinful flesh is truly the devil: proud, contemptuous, evil, hater, crafty, blasphemous, nasty, lustful, adulterous, envious, malicious, malicious, stingy, greedy, money-loving, irritable, stubborn, wayward, disobedient, frivolous, laughing, lazy, idle, sad; I am offended when they say or do something that is not for me, when they treat me rudely, I am inclined to respond with insult for insult, annoyance for annoyance. After extreme cramped conditions, bitterness, humiliation, darkness - what peace, what sweetness, what space, what spiritual greatness the Lord has vouchsafed to me! O sweetest Jesus, have mercy on me with eternal mercy and deliver me from the troublemaker devil, who seeks to destroy me forever. But what sweetness will there be with You in paradise, if here some firstfruits are so blessed? But what will be the bitterness in hell? And if the Savior on earth had not suffered for us, we would have languished like this forever. What did the enemy captivate me with yesterday, what made me hellishly sad? Because I became angry with the beggar and despised him. We must love each and every one, for we are all members of the one body of Christ and must provide for each other willingly, without stinting, not with grief. Just as God is generous to us, so we should be generous to the poor, for look how generous the Lord is to you: from the poor he made you rich, from the ignorant - noble, from the dark, ignorant - enlightened, knowledgeable; daily cleanses the multitude of your sins, gives you His grace, His light, His peace; almost every day he deigns to be a partaker of His most pure Body and His most pure Blood and frees you from all the snares of the demons and gives you in His Mysteries the guarantee of eternal life and the most powerful and sure means to Christian perfection. After this, how can one not be generous in giving alms to the poor, generous from the heart? Peter the Apostle denied the Lord three times, and we deny Him with our hearts every day many times over and cling with our hearts to the various vanities of this world, we deny Him in the person of the poor, the sick, the unfortunate, when we do not want to help them, we generally deny Him in the person of our neighbors, when we are cold towards them, unsympathetic, unfriendly, stingy, envious, when we breathe contempt and hatred towards them, malice, vengeance. Just as wax near a bright lamp, when the lamp is burning, is in a molten state and hot, and when the lamp goes out, it cools and hardens, so is the human heart: when the gracious fire of the Holy Spirit burns in the soul, until then it is fiery, soft, calm, meek, kind, pure - but only the fire of the Holy Spirit will abandon it for its inattention and negligence Spirit, how she will immediately cool down and petrify and again become rude, angry, proud, restless, impatient, irritable, unclean. This is our grief, that we do not cling with all our hearts to God and to His holy commandments, but through sinful, carnal self-love, we more willingly fulfill the lust of our flesh and cling to it, the accursed, and to the things of this world. Despise the devil, who is contemptuous of the words of God: he forces you to despise the words of prayers and the names mentioned in prayers, and introduces his own absurdities. Be strong, servant of God, and say every word of your prayer heartily, sincerely, slowly, calmly. Both people and you will have time to fuss. He was upset with Deacon Peter for not revealing the Gospel in time - he forgot, damned, that the Lord He Himself served His disciples, He Himself washed their feet and dried them with a towel, showing us in this an example of humility and service to each other. Oh, unparalleled humility! God, who created the world, washes the feet of His disciples and wipes them with ribbon. But we want only us to be served, and we proudly and arrogantly treat our servants or subordinates, generally inferior ones. O we who are lost! God endured spitting, and beatings, and strangulation, and the cross, and death from the ungrateful and malicious Jews and Romans, from the high priests, scribes, Pharisees, elders, but we do not want to tolerate the slightest sin, the slightest malfunction in our neighbor and are angry with him, we breathe malice at him, we are ready to take his head off, as if we ourselves are perfect, as if we are responsible for his neighbor, and not he himself will be responsible for himself. We forget that love covers everything, endures everything, and never falls away [1 Cor. 13, 4 – 8]. Paint a photograph of your sinful heart, see yourself in all your sinful nakedness, in all the truth, for we see ourselves in a false light, and then you will not want to take photographic portraits of yourself, that is, from your flesh. Then you will want to mourn your sins from the bottom of your heart, you will seek solitude and will have no time to admire your face, disgraced by sins. Then you will see that you have not yet put off the old man and have not put on the new, renewed in the image of your Creator, have not become a new creature in Christ, do not have a new heart and a new spirit, that you are still the old, Adam, the devil - and intemperate, and proud, and angry, and impatient, and envious, and stingy, etc. Love your neighbor as yourself, consider him as one with you and all his shortcomings, sins, passions as your own and their pains as if they were your own, treat them, eradicate them as if they were your own. Do not add wound to wound, disease to disease. Always and in every possible way be kind to the poor: not with deeds, not with alms, but with kind words; Do not look among the poor only for faces that are sad and crying or emaciated and emaciated, just to help them, but meet with joy the happy and cheerful and even healthy faces of the poor, especially children, and do not be upset that among the poor you see healthy and cheerful people: the Lord gives the poor contentment and joy, which the rich often do not have; The Lord also gives them health, which the jaded and over-concerned rich very often do not have. We have been given by the Heavenly Father in Jesus Christ such spiritual blessings, before which all earthly blessings are dust, ashes, smoke, fleeting steam, which, however, the providence of the Heavenly Father will never deprive us of, to the extent that we need them, if we diligently seek the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. This is why the Savior commanded us not to cleave to anything earthly, and also because attachment to earthly things separates us from God, from His Kingdom and His righteousness, and plunges our spirit into sorrow and oppression, killing all our spiritual aspirations. Our highest nobility requires that we not cleave to earthly things, but only to God, the giver of all good things. He said his sins and they melted away. He sighed, regretted his sins - and they were gone. The words of your iniquity... may you be justified [Isa. 43, 26]. As they come, so they go. A dream is a dream. He realized that they were a dream, an absurdity, a madness, and he intended to behave properly from now on - and God cleansed them through His servant and through the Holy Mysteries. No matter how fierce the sorrows, they are necessary, and one must endure them without fail, because they [...] clear the whitened heart, cleanse the growths of passions and unite them with God. You see how the enemy begs you: pride (you cannot tolerate comments from inferiors, equals and elders), willfulness, irritability and resentment, contempt (contempt of the poor) and bitterness, love of money (you think about money during confession, lest it be stolen - do not regret this rubbish); impatience and haste (the slightest embarrassment - and you began to hurry), envy (you envy the peace of your neighbors, wealth, contentment: Father Matthew does not serve or does little, he gets everything for himself, and you have to share with everyone; that everyone at home is calm and little active); stinginess - I feel sorry for the brethren of sweets and often visiting guests, I am indignant at them; cowardice, despondency, murmuring, boldness of heart in case of stumbling and falling from temptations, temptations of the devil (and here we must endure and not lose heart, but be strong and have hope: the enemy seeks to stifle us with all possible sins and lead us into despondency and murmuring); despair that God has turned away from me, does not listen to me, does not help me for my sins, which the enemy teaches me; gluttony and voluptuousness ([...]); evil and nasty, blasphemous thoughts... The medicine of love is a universal medicine, it goes to all mental ailments - pride, contempt, anger, hatred, condemnation, envy, cursing, stinginess, love of money, greed. If anyone is proud before you, bow to him with love; angry - treat him kindly. Cleanse out the old leaven [Russian: old leaven], so that you may become a new mixture [1 Cor. 5, 7]. I thank You, Lord, for the cleansing of my sins, my sweet salvation, my most beloved peace, my light... how You consoled me with the communion of Your Divine Mysteries on April 3rd on Holy Saturday! But the enemy first grabbed me into his clutches, and when I, after communion and before the communion of the fasting preparatory prayers (I believe, Lord, and confess...) spoke with difficulty, but then quickly believed in the Lord that He was in me and I had nothing to fear - and everything disappeared... Then, before consuming the Holy Gifts, I faltered again... and again with the prayer of faith and the sacrament I drove away. Glory to Thy power, O Lord; remember that the name of the Savior is not idle or idle, but the work itself. The enemy the devil, being himself simple, puts in our hearts disdain for the simple beginnings of our speech - words and syllables, hurries and teaches us to skip them, and through the omission of one word, out of doubt and confusion, the accursed one takes possession of us. Each word must be pronounced clearly, as an image of the Hypostatic Word of God, who created everything with the word. What stinginess, what wickedness, what envy of the heart when giving alms to the poor, when serving Christ in the person of His lesser brethren: we give a little, and then we think whether we have given too much, whether they have not received sufficient alms from anyone other than us, whether they are overindulging. He will give, as they say, a penny and a penny, but we sin against the poor for a ruble. Well, at least they would give us rubles, but then they would take it away, otherwise it would be pennies, and then there would be a search. Christ, as the giver of life, as the all-perfect God, as the Creator, Provider, trustee and Savior of mine, is quite sufficient for me, for the fullness of my life. No things are needed for my immaterial heart: they are needed only for the corruptible and transitory body, but the body has everything it needs daily and usually by the goodness of God and His bounties. The lusts and whims of the flesh, or the old man, are countless, but they are a dream, vanity, a ghost, nothing; they are darkening, turning and ruining the spirit. In God alone is my peace and my life. From now on I see that the enemy always begs me about trifles: it’s all passions, dreams, nonsense, the turning of an evil spirit. Hey, amen. Glory to Thy truth, Lord! God! Grant me to impute to smoke, or to nothing, all the machinations of the enemy the reproacher, all his malice, his pride and contempt, his envy, his stinginess, his love of money, despondency, his fears, fornication, adultery and all his uncleanness. Wake up! April 3, 1865 Irritability and anger towards one's neighbor, stinging one's sweets and silver produce the same fruits in the heart - burning and restless passion, sorrow, cramped conditions, darkness, slavery, lack of freedom. The desire for sweets and silver when performing a holy act of faith, such as prayer, also has a deadly effect on the soul. Taking in some excess food and sweet drinks also has a predatory effect on the soul during prayer and even outside of it at the slightest inclination of the heart to pity or wish for oneself. Oh, how carefully one must handle sweets and things! One must be content only with what is necessary and not be whimsical, and do not spare anyone to use them to satisfy needs, because that is why they exist. To have one treasure of the heart - God, consider everything else as rubbish. Let there be no gods for you [Exod. 20, 3]. I believe in one God, 72 who provides everything abundantly for enjoyment. Through our addiction to the things of this world, the devil seeks his dominion over us; also through pride and anger and disobedience... My one soul, one my heart is my life, one God of my heart, and He is everything for me, without Him everything is nothing, worse - all sorrow and ruin and destruction of the soul. When, instead of torn and soiled rags, they give us clean and beautiful clothes, we willingly leave the rags and neglect them and are ready to kick and trample them; when, instead of a cramped, dirty, wooden hut, we are settled in a beautiful, spacious, clean and well-decorated house, we willingly abandon the old hut and do not regret it at all if it is broken. Now, instead of this passionate, corruptible body, which is the temporary shell of our soul, the Lord promises us an incorruptible, glorified, eternal body - why do we pity it, protect it so much, cherish it, adorn it, tender it in every possible way, why don’t we crucify it with passions and lusts? Instead of this temporary dwelling of our soul - the body, or this house, the Lord promises us a bright, eternal palace of paradise - why do we not neglect our body as a sinful abode or our temporary home, why do we not look at the world itself as temporary, insignificant, why are we seduced by the many different things and pleasures of this world? Where are we called? Why are we seduced by the pleasures and beauties of the world, when they all distract us from God, make us enemies of God (or an enemy) through our addiction to them? Let us hasten to an endless, all-blessed life, where God will be all in all [1 Cor. 15, 28]. And here [He] is everything in everyone, but we don’t understand this and think that we are everything to ourselves, money, people. Through the fear of spiritual death, cramped conditions, sorrow, and darkness, we are guilty of the work of the enemy hitherto. We are afraid of the deadly machinations of the enemy. Captivates, damned one. And we are of little faith. God! To the conqueror of hell, I thank Thee, for through my prayer thou hast conquered the power of demons in me - the demons of panache, pride, willfulness, self-indulgence and disobedience, and malice, and envy: give me, by all means, good Eustathian vestments, in which they served Easter Matins, and not the old brocade ones (gold eyed ones), - it tickles, bothers, oppresses, accursed, and only brings shame and humiliation to the face. And then he threw blasphemy against the Lord and abomination of the heart during mass after kissing the cross - what an abomination! Surely there will be one, but it will work directly on the heart, you damned one! Oh, if only the word of God and all the prayers of the church acted in the same way and with the same power on my heart and the hearts of the people! I prayed and did not lose heart, and in contrast to him, the blasphemous scoundrel, I glorified the faithful and simple shrine of God, and the Lord had mercy - the truth triumphed in my heart. He performed the Liturgy loudly and without stumbling. Easter, first day. April 4, 1865 I endure the bitterness of tobacco in the house with dignity and righteousness, for I myself always grieve the Lord with greed and intemperance. Have mercy, O Most Holy Master, who has loved me so much, who has descended and condescended to me forever! Behold, frugal food - and the appearance of the face changed: it made it somehow rough, dark. Got to the eggs and meat! - and this is soon after the communion of the Divine Brush! Oh, obscene Esau! How long, O my soul, will you not kiss and love self-control! Yesterday (April 4, the first day of Easter) the enemy overwhelmed me with a feeling of anger towards my brother Father Matthew and greatly hurt me, oppressed me, humiliated me, but all in vain. [So] live healthy, because he - the enemy the devil - needs to sow some kind of enmity between us; He will present to you that your brother is so-and-so, dry and unkempt, and evil, and proud, and covetous, and deceitful, and he will present you yourself as a model of perfection and will convince you that you have the right to judge almost the whole world. Meanwhile, my brother is always my brother, the image of God, a member of Christ; while his sins are ulcers placed on him by the envy of the enemy or the consequences of his carelessness, negligence, addiction, which no one is alien to, and in any case, sins are a lie, a dream of the devil, which must be defeated and dispelled by the truth of God and Christian virtues - meekness, humility and the substance of all virtues - love. In fact, it is easy to say that every person is the image of God, what a treasury of perfections a person can and is, and in any case, how many inclinations of good there are in every person! But the enemy inspires us in our dreams to humiliate our brother, the second me, the other me, this image of God, because of his unpleasant appearance, for example, senile, wrinkled, not tender, not smooth, because of a sickly face or unattractive, or because of a beggarly, unkempt appearance, or because of shaggy, rough, unclean clothes, that is, all because of dreamy reasons that should serve more to excite us. pity and compassion, not hatred. The flesh is nothing - do not impute it to anything, as a temporary shell, but pay all attention to the immortal soul, which is the image of God, and to the word of the Savior Christ: love one another; just as I have loved you, so you also love one another [Jn. 13, 34]. Today (April 5) the enemy stunned me with a feeling of hatred towards my father - for what? because he has an old, wrinkled, ugly face. O dreamer! Well, is the old man to blame for this? Is it the fault of an old tree that it has rough, cracked, blackened, mossy bark? - No. This is a consequence of years, outdated body juices and air changes. It is obvious that this disgust from an unseemly person because of an empty pretext is a dream of the enemy, not worth attention as a ghost, a dream. There is no truth in him [Jn. 8, 44]. Truth is love, meekness, humility, long-suffering, mercy, goodwill, kindness, and forbearance. The opposite dream is the addiction of carnal, unclean, absurd love for good-looking people. Oh, how the villain intensifies to desecrate, pervert and turn everything upside down, as the proverb says. Well, may all your dreams be damned forever, to the enemy, no matter how many of them there are. I thank You, Lord, for granting me to always recognize the enemy’s feet within me, heavy, suffocating, unclean, proud, humiliating, evil. Give me, Lord, simplicity of heart. Grant me, Lord, to constantly remember that we are all Your images, Your vessels, that we are one in You. The enemy constantly quarrels against me every day in a hellish, cruel manner - why on earth would I still be his accomplice and quarrel with others at his instigation or despise others, etc.? All sins, passions, all evil are his elements. You begin the work of God or are already engaged in the work of prayer, perform the Sacrament, and the enemy puts something else into your mind and heart, sometimes bad and blasphemous: either doubt, or an unaccountable, absurd fear, or anger, contempt for someone, condemnation of someone - but do not pay any extraneous attention to anything and say to yourself: here, my soul, is your subject, to which you must now completely devote yourself. with all my thought and with all my heart - let everything else be for me now as if it did not exist. Or say: I am in God and now I do not want to think about any creature or any of its accessories. (This is what I did during the temptation at the funeral service of Father John Tsvetkov over his mother-in-law - and the Lord blessed me.) If you are the miraculous icon of the Lady (I said at Sorokin’s), cleanse me now from the filth that surrounds me, and soon the abomination will disappear. In your life, do not allow yourself to overeat on meat, lest you become like a beast. Don’t trust your family: sometimes the devil himself gives you treats through them, hiding behind the guise of love and goodwill. Always know when to stop. But it is better not to eat meat, but eggs, milk and butter. Excess in food and drink is accompanied by relaxation and heaviness in the body and soul, restless, unpleasant dreams, darkness of the mind and senselessness of the heart, decline and despondency of the spirit, irritability, reluctance to talk to anyone, withdrawal from people and the search for solitude, aversion from prayer, from the church and liturgical books. The one who overeats becomes like an animal: the features of the image of God in him are distorted and, as it were, erased. Binge drinking and his brother drunkenness are grave sins that bring the wrath of God upon those guilty of them. The Savior says: Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and lest that day come upon you suddenly [Lk. 21.34]. Binge eating and drunkenness are the works of the people of this adulterous and sinful world. What did Noah's contemporaries do? - They just ate and drank, and built, and got married and were given in marriage. Lot's contemporaries too. What did the godless rich man say? - soul! you have a lot of good things lying around for many years: rest, eat, drink, be merry. But what was he told? - This very night your soul will be taken from you [Lk. 12, 16 – 21]. God! Have patience with us, sinners, greedy, greedy for the pleasures of food and drink, who often eat and drink when there is no bodily need, when the belly is full. It’s not enough to only accept God’s gift well and with dignity, you also need to preserve it. What good is it if you receive it well, and then throw it into the mud and trample on it? For this is what those do who, having reverently received, with faith and contrition for sins and with a thirst for the righteousness of Christ, the Holy Mysteries of His Body and Blood, after receiving communion at home, allow themselves to become satiated and drunk, or even worse, something else? Obviously, such deeds, such neglect of the holiness of the Body and Blood of the Lord expose the guilty person to the wrath of God and His terrible judgment, and he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment for himself [1 Cor. 11, 29]. I thank You, Lord, for by Your mercy, by Your name, I have saved you from many spiritual troubles. The name of the Lord is the name of purification, holiness, strength, peace, freedom, space. God! Having now created in the Church of the Epiphany great power over Thy servant, great cleansing and bestowing upon my soul peace, freedom, space, glory to Thee! (He condemned Archpriest Porfiry’s father in his soul for his love of money, while he himself was the same lover of money.) It’s not too lazy to stand or sit at a table, in a theatre, during an idle conversation for several hours; in church it’s hard to stand an extra quarter of an hour or an extra half hour; they complain about the priest, they say: so-and-so has been serving for a long time; there is reluctance and aversion to prayer, sometimes murmuring to the point of insolence. Oh, adulterous and sinful people! As a due tribute and in gratitude for deliverance from a thousand evils and for the unceasing day-and-night prayers for us, we should always pray to the Lady with the joy of our hearts and sing songs of praise and gratitude to Her and generally serve Her always with an abundance of feeling and time; But for the most part, it happens with us sinners that it’s the opposite: where comes the reluctance, the aversion to prayer, the heaviness of the body and soul - so that you don’t want to pray at all. Oh, ingratitude! Oh, evil! Oh, frivolity! Always look at every person with love and respect, as the image of God, although he bears the wounds of sins placed on him by the envious and murderous devil. Do not condemn anyone, although you know someone has committed grave sins, remembering that you yourself have the same weaknesses, the same passions, and while your brother atones for them in some way with virtues, you do not have these virtues. You are all a sinful, fetid scab. Your job is to mourn your soul, not to judge others. God is the true, unfeigned, most skillful Judge of all. Who are you, judging another man's slave? [Rom. 14, 4], you are evil, ill-wisher, malicious, proud, envious, stingy, etc. Sleep from April 7th to 8th (on the fifth day of Easter). What is my greed: I gnawed and ate silver pennies and also asked: why do they eat silver pennies? Then I started thinking, what am I doing? What absurdity? And he spat out of my mouth my penny, which had formed into some kind of copper-colored fruit, and then began to spit out a lot of copper filings that filled my mouth. What does it mean? This means my great greed, according to which I would be ready to eat everything, if possible, even the money itself. Indeed, last night, having already been full, I ate veal again with my brother Alexei. Every person is the image of God, no matter how sinful he may be, no matter how ignorant or deluded he may be, no matter how covered he may be in the darkness of wickedness. Therefore, do not despise anyone, but, remembering the common nature of all, honor everyone, even Mohammedans and idolaters, and be sick and pray to God for them, so that He will enlighten them. Love everyone as yourself, even idolaters and other unbelievers, remembering the parable of the Samaritan [Lk. 10, 30 – 37 ]. Be rude if you set the trumpet, and do not pay attention to anything - neither to the demonic insurances, nor to the multitude of secular and military people, to whom it is especially necessary to proclaim the truth of God loudly, and since you are a living, intelligent, feeling trumpet, then blow the trumpet intelligently, with feeling, and everywhere the same, both among the noble and the ignorant, both among the poor and among the rich. The demonic hobby is to instill fear for no reason at all. Criticism of one's thoughts, feelings, desires, words, actions - in a word, criticism of one's life, a reasonable, in the light of God's word, look at oneself and one's life - this is what our criticism should primarily do, and not a proud, contemptuous and bilious assessment of the works of other people. I know, I understand you, my accursed enemy, who begs my mind, heart and lips in service - with your false fear you inspire disdain for the golden, true words of the Holy Church, instilling in all Christians good hope of God’s mercy, guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth; You, smart, simple, evil creature, inspire disrespect and contempt for the word of truth, and because of this sinful neglect we fall into your dreamy fear and sometimes become dumb before the people. But if I look at every word with respect, as it should be, if I speak words with humility, sincerity, with sympathy, I will never stumble, and you, my enemy, will not defeat me, armed with humility and thinking about the Lord Savior. Just one more condition: since good deeds, like evil ones, have a close connection with each other, then you need, in addition to humility, you need to have abstinence in food and drink, without which humility is impossible. You instill in the heart a false fear of man or yours, damned one - and why should I be afraid of people, these sheep of the Lord, me, their shepherd? Why should I be afraid of you, when without my Lord and yours you cannot cause me the slightest harm, when you have no power over pigs? Why should I be afraid of you, dreamer - a mere dream, absurdity, nonsense, lies? My Lord, Lord Jesus! Help me against my evil and false opponent. The Lord allows you, the enemy, to upset us, to do countless dirty tricks on us, so that sin and you, the culprit of it, may be completely disgusted to us, may sin be bitter and disgusting for us, may we cleave with all our hearts to our sweetest Lord and Savior, may we hate lies and cleave to the truth, may we despise the world and everything that is in the world, and let us philosophize on high, for You, O enemy, are mixed up here with all things, everywhere and in everything are your machinations - in food, and in drink, and in clothing, and in housing, and in the air, and in fire, in all the elements, and in all the vanities of life; you are intertwined with everyone and everything, with all things. You are the god of this age, the prince of this world. You condemn your brother and father for being angry, rude and abusive, but you yourself suffer from the same things and often reveal these qualities of your own. You condemn your brother for greed for money, and you yourself suffer from the same passion, you would be ready to collect as much as possible, even from those sheep that are not from your yard or parish, and you part with your money with pity when you often give it to the beggars who ask you, while your surplus is undoubtedly the property of the poor. You are angry with a brother from another church for collecting money in your parish. But remember that by accepting money from your parishioners, he takes upon himself their sinful leprosy, like Gehazi to Naaman [2 Kings. 5, 20 – 27 ]; remember that for these sacrifices he must stand in prayer for them day and night, so that the Lord will not destroy them with their iniquities and have mercy on them. Also remember that until now you had everything you needed and lacked nothing, you helped your own and others, that your income did not decrease, and will not decrease in the future, and, therefore, in everything, let there be glory to God. Glory to Thee, Lord, who pacified me with this wisdom. I suspected the servant of stealing, and the enemy defeated me. What keeps you from theft? Fear of God. Well, the same fear of God and a sense of honesty protects others. Do not be suspicious and do not offend your neighbor by being suspicious and distrustful of him. Love him as you love yourself; If you don’t want people to think slyly about you, don’t think that way about others; It hurts you when you are suspected of something - do not offend others with suspicion. Do not serve the slanderous and evil enemy in any way, and suspicion is the work of the devil. Renounce, according to Spasov, all your property, as if you did not have it at all: do not enter into anything. Let the wife be in charge of everything, and you go and preach the Kingdom of God [Lk. 9, 60], think on high, not on earth [Col. 3, 2]. 74 You are satisfied with the past time of life, spent by you in the bustle of everyday life - it’s time to take up things above, it’s time to begin to please God with all your heart and save your soul and the souls of your neighbors. Oh, what a great thing this is! And we pay our attention least of all to him. Earthly vanity, our passions have taken possession of us and hold us in their chains, like captives. Why do you need to renounce all your property? Because it is the net of the stumbling enemy: through it the enemy constantly catches us, like birds, like greedy animals; Through addiction to our property, we are constantly in his clutches. Break the net and he will have nothing to catch you with. Crucify your flesh with passions and lusts: find your whole life, your contentment, peace, bliss in God. Carnal, sinful, devilish wisdom is death, but spiritual wisdom is life and peace [Rom. 8, 6]. Because of the clinging of our hearts to this perishable property, to this languid dust, there is so much enmity, dislike, and envy of our neighbor. O our God! How cruelly, boldly, unspeakably, we anger You, how gigantic are our sins, how great they are and almost reaching to heaven! We have sinned, we have been lawless, we have been untruthful before You, we have been inferior to observance, inferior to those who have created, as He commanded us: but do not betray us to the end, God of the fathers! 75 Do not viciously despise your neighbor, who sings or reads rudely and badly, so that you do not associate with an all-evil and contemptuous enemy and do not be hurt by him fiercely during the prayer itself, for the all-evil one carefully seeks how to hurt you, how to confuse and lead you into confusion, and through you and others. Despise every sin! Recognize every sin quickly! It acts on the soul as a spiritual thorn, goring, confusing, like an evil force, enslaving or forcing to sin and various passions. So, be forgiving of your neighbor’s weaknesses and consider them the weaknesses of nature, common to all of us, the weaknesses of his nature corrupted by sin, which is also corrupted in us, and do not be an accomplice to the devil, do not multiply common evil, that is, do not be embittered towards weak and many-sinful people, but pity and pray for them brotherly, for they are your members in Christ or, moreover, the weak members of Christ, for whom Christ, the common Physician, left various healings in the Church - repentance, communion, blessing of oil, public worship! Some people sing rudely with their lips, but with their hearts they sing tenderly and pleasingly to God, because they come from a kind, simple heart. God looks at the heart, but man looks at the face; a person hears the voice of the mouth, but God hears the voice of the heart, which sometimes quarrels greatly, having pride towards a brother, anger towards another, or envy, or stinginess, or stubbornness. Love everyone as yourself, especially the weak, the old, the poor, the poor, the unfortunate, the simple, those who are in a low lot and who uncomplainingly endure large, rough, unclean labors. If anyone has a weak voice, have compassion on him and do not force him to sing well. Where will he get it when God did not give it? False honor is when I want to be approved for my good singing and when I get angry at my neighbor for singing badly: who has what voice, who has what God has given to whom. You can’t change everyone in your own way. And most importantly, the enemy, out of a plausible pretext, which is really empty, seeks through you malice and contempt towards a simple, unseemly, rude, poor neighbor. This is your pride and contempt expressed in anger at the poorly singing and reading watchman. I have sinned, Lord! Help me to get rid of all malice and contempt and to look humbly at everyone, and to look at the very shortcomings of others as if they were our own, for we are all, through our sins, full of many different infirmities. This should lead us all to humility, and not to anger and contempt. Who are we all? “Earth and ashes, and all we have is only what God gave, and what God didn’t give, we can’t take it anywhere, even if we wanted to.” We are weak, extremely limited. When you are in the house of a boss or a person highly respected by you and talking with him or just being in front of him, aren’t you completely occupied with the thought of how to restrain yourself in front of him in a simpler and more decent manner and at the same time how not to violate your respect for him with any rude or unnecessary and indecent word, with any disrespectful movement of the body; Will you allow, being face to face with him, leaving him, to deal with the things in his room, pay all your attention to them, without at the same time paying any attention to the owner? Yes, you say, I am completely busy with my boss or a respected person and try to please him in every possible way and do not allow myself to deal with his things in addition to him in his presence, neglecting him himself. How do you, my friend, do this constantly in relation to the Lord God, before Whom you are constantly face to face? How are you not only not entirely occupied with thoughts about Him, but for the most part are exclusively occupied with the things that are in His great house, neglecting Him Himself? How do you not take care every minute to behave with Him simply, decently, without violating your respect for Him with a single thought, word or deed? How are you preoccupied with things that are in the Master’s house and assigned for our benefit - money, gold, silver, precious stones, beautiful and precious vessels, elegant and valuable clothes, various decorations on the body, furniture, etc., while neglecting the Master Himself and pleasing Him? How do you not constantly thank Him? How do you love things, but don’t love Him? Do you trust in things and not in Him? Listen to yourself. Every person is the king of nature: do not spare anything for him, no matter how good and benign and pleasant it may be; just as the best of all the kingdoms of nature is provided for the king, so for every person do not spare anything that is best. Look how your cousin Ekaterina Stepanovna warmly received you yesterday and with what readiness she treated you to the best gift of God - the best cream, coffee, etc., how pleasant it was for you! And you spared Evgeniy extra sugar, and your face was disgraced. O evil eye! Every Christian home, even every Christian room, represents an infinitely great house - the universe, heaven and earth, in which the Lord dwells. Therefore, in every Christian room we see images of the Savior and the Mother of God, inherent in these rooms and listening to all Christians who resort to Them. Every Christian room is heaven and earth together. The time of sleep does not pass in vain for a Christian - and it is a time of temptation for his fidelity or coldness to faith, his chastity or unchastity, abstinence or greed and intemperance in food and drink, his meekness or irritability, his goodwill or envy, his unmercenary or love of money, his pride or humility, his compassion or hard-heartedness, etc. And in sleep the soul human either practices some virtue, or indulges in some vice; Thus, someone who is greedy for food and drink often sees himself at a table laden with many dishes, and greedily consumes one dish after another; one who is zealous for faith sees himself with zeal, with ardor defending his faith from those who insult it. Crucify your flesh, that is, your carnal, passionate heart. Crucify the sweets that have caused you so much harm, so many deaths of the heart, put you to shame so much, humiliated you so much and made you worse than an animal, caused so much enmity against your brother, armed you so much against God, so much hindered you in doing works of prayer, reading the word of God and the writings of the holy fathers, in composing works of a spiritual kind, in writing letters to relatives, comrades, countrymen, acquaintances. Like evil vipers, crucify the sweets - let them be destroyed. Tell yourself: they are kicking me hard on the path of salvation; they cut off my heart from God and my neighbor; They completely cool me off towards God and my neighbor, or it is not they, but the enemy through them. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter [John. 14, 16]. The words of Jesus Christ Himself. Having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out what you now see [Acts. 2, 33]. Words of the Holy Apostle Peter. What do these words prove? That the Holy Spirit comes only from the Father. Pronounce every word in prayer heartily, otherwise you will serve the liar enemy, not God. Today's smart people say that there is no soul in a person. As the Savior said: do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul [Matt. 10, 28 ]? When you are troubled by the thirst for honor and its dissatisfaction, or the thirst for money, the sting of it, the loss of it, or the sting of food and drink, sweets, or addiction to other varied things of this world, then tell your heart: is not my God one, is not your Lord one vital, all-perfect principle? Why do you invent these idols for yourself, which cannot give you life and cause you grief and distress, darkness, humiliation, shame of spirit and face? No: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, who holds my heart in His right hand, satisfies it and gives it rest. A person who is passionate about creatures swears at the Creator, defiles himself - His creation with his vile thoughts and passionate movements of the heart, and His other creatures, which are all the work of His most pure hands and are all very good. It is the evil spirit that has entered into them, it is not they who are armed against me, they are embittered at me, but the devil - they themselves are suffering creatures, just like me, who is offended by them. My job is not to be offended and to be calm, always affectionate, compassionate towards my neighbor, the erring, the possessed by passion, and to pray for him, like the Lord: Father, let them go, for they do not know what they are doing [Lk. 23, 34]. And consider your heart, indignant by various passionate feelings, as stupid and never trust it, except in those cases when it obviously acts according to the law of God, and even here it is not always trusting to look at it, but to check its movements and [actions] with a strict, impartial court of reason and the word of God. Every person, that is, the inner, or heart, is a lie [Ps. 115, 2]. Have pity on uneducated, unenlightened people who live and act according to their foolish hearts. Advise them, pray for them. And all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution [2 Tim. 3, 12]. And a man’s enemies are his own household [Matt. 10, 36]. If you are persecuted unrighteously, they take offense at you, become embittered, become bitter for no reason at all, out of one whim, out of one pride, self-will, self-indulgence, stubbornness, out of their own malice - do not be offended yourself, but take pity on those who offend and pray for them, knowing that they are a pitiful tool of the persecutor of all who want to live godly - the devil, and laugh at him tricks. What are all the sorrows, troubles, and misfortunes leading to? To the crucification of our multi-passionate flesh, to its pacification. So, if you yourself do not voluntarily crucify her, God will crucify her through the devil, through various sorrows, for this is very necessary and useful for you. Otherwise, the flesh would kill the soul, its holy, cherished aspirations. Know, man, your spiritual trouble and firmly, constantly pray to the Savior of men to save you from it. He does not say to himself: I am not in danger, I am not in trouble: I do not need to pray often and much for deliverance from a disaster that I do not comprehend and do not know. This is the trouble that you, being in the greatest trouble, do not know your trouble. This trouble is your sins. All wisdom, all the occupation of a Christian should consist in crucifying his many-passionate flesh with its passions and lusts, in order to put off the old man and put on the new, for whoever is in Christ is a new creation [2 Cor. 5, 17], new wineskins, new robe, new mixture [1 Cor. 5, 7], that is, union with the Lord. I make all things new [Rev. 21, 5]. My Blood, New Testament [Matt. 26, 28; Mk. 14, 24]. Look at your neighbor who sins as if you were a sick member. Do not be united with the devil through confusion, his most deceitful, dreamy fear, but be united with the Lord through peace of heart. Listen to your heart. After the mercy, generosity and love of our Lord Jesus Christ has been given to us in hope of a future blessed life, should we attach our hearts to the blessings of this temporary life? - No. How much has God done for us and how do we correspond to His intentions and deeds, perfect for our future bliss? - Either not at all, or worse. Just as in everything you need calmness and gradualism, in all deeds, so in the word: you need to calmly, word by word, pronounce prayers or the royal house, etc., and not hastily and as if wanting to pronounce everything together. The highest persons are the image of the Highest God in Three Persons. Reverence them, pronounce their names with respect and love. Otherwise the proud serpent inspires, from the habit of neglecting them, to pronounce them carelessly. You involuntarily remember the words: To be equal to my desire, put the all-evil serpent into the Creator, like a captive: By You, O All-Pure One, I was called, deified most truly: For you, O Mother of God, gave birth to me who deified me ecu 76 . And then they admire me like a prisoner. Win with humility. I am worse, lower, more sinful than everyone else, I am worse than any pus, feces, because my spiritual and physical are rot; I am spiritual and bodily feces - all ulcers, all uncleanness, all stench, in truth. What a spiritual misfortune! I am full of sins, I am an abyss of all kinds of sins and I am ashamed to pronounce them out loud, I am ashamed to admit them, I am ashamed to sincerely ask for forgiveness from the people of God! God! I can’t do anything without You. And help me with this! Don't let me be ashamed to admit them! Allow me to repent openly, humbly, and with disgust towards them. What if the Lord began to beat you while you were asking Him for mercy - how would it feel, would it be good for you? Wouldn't you fall into great anger and into a pit of despair? But you are often persecuted by beggars, and you become irritated against them, even pulling their hair and ears - what is this consistent with? Instead of the expected mercy, do they suffer punishment from you simply because they have many needs, because their needs force them to follow you? You should cherish this opportunity to show great mercy, you should rejoice at this opportunity to sow abundantly, for blessed is he who sows, and blessed is he who sows, and blessed is he who will reap [2 Cor. 9:6], - only about blessing, freely, and not out of sorrow, for God loves a cheerful giver [2 Cor. 9, 7). Do not forget that you are the steward and distributor of the gifts of the Lord; Serve humbly to the poor brethren, and remember that they are the least brethren of Christ. Christ Himself is not ashamed to call them brethren [Heb. 2, 11]. They are members of Christ. Until now, I had been occupied by a sugar dream - I was imagining everything; I was simply jealous of the pleasure of others; I always had the usual amount of sugar, and the Lord always sent it to me in abundance for us and for good people. Away with the dream. I don’t pay attention to any of the various earthly dusts, whether sweet, or shiny, or soft and colored, nor to my body or others, which is the same dust, the same dust, and to my sight, which seduces me so much, which will be the same dust. Glory to Your enlightenment, Lord! What are we enticed by, humans, what do we cleave to, and whom do we abandon? We leave the source of living water - the Lord and cleave to the dust; we leave the image of God - our neighbor, we turn away from him and cleave to the dust instead of him; we leave the image of God - our soul, its salvation, concern for pleasing God, and we chase after dust. This is our life! This is our vanity! But let me constantly remember that my flesh will soon become food for worms. Glory to spiritual wisdom, which is life and peace. Oh, how the destroying enemy, the scoundrel, the desecrator, seduces us! But you are simple, nasty lightning! Just my heart! Just my thought! Simple and my God! Simple Being, Lord, help me! Just as you are aware of yourself internally, as you expose yourself internally, mercilessly, unfeignedly, so open up to your confessor, expose yourself mercilessly. Does the shine of gold seduce me? – light awaits me, like the sun. Whoever does not regret sharing the sweetness with his neighbors here, the Lord will deign him to share the sweetness of His Divine vision together with the Angels and saints, he will be deigned to enjoy future bliss together with His chosen ones. Simply ask people for forgiveness. The horses work their master until they drop, until they are exhausted. Without hope of any reward for it. Man works for his Lord with the hope of reward in the endless Kingdom of Christ, the reward of eternal bliss. Shouldn't a man serve his Lord with all his soul? And is our life long? Do we endure grief and sorrow because of serving God? The more joys the enemy, who brings sorrows, has in store for us in the future. Don’t we taste peace and joy when serving the Lord? – We eat, and many times. The enemy is trying to obscure Christian hope with all the delights of this life, all the clouds of hell, the mountains of hell, so that Christians do not think about future blessings or imagine them. He tries to keep them in extreme darkness regarding the future life. Instead of having the fear of God in my heart, I am overcome by an absurd, dreamy fear of demons. Lord, have mercy on me! It’s the same as instead of clinging to God, the one life and source of all good things, we cling to the various things of this world and leave with our hearts the Source of life. Why do you let the Lord Jesus Christ out of your thoughts and heart during worship? That is why the enemy abandons you as he pleases. Don’t you know that in every word there is the Lord, a simple Being, and that every word must be spoken with the Lord or about the Lord? These are the words of God, these are the words of my holy mother - the Church of Christ, His immaculate, glorious bride - how can I miss them, how can I neglect them? How can I allow the devil to steal them from my heart, from my thoughts, from my lips? For if, out of absurd fear and negligence, I hide words during worship, then I allow the enemy to steal them from me and I myself steal them with him. Let this not happen, Lord! Love fasting - and these evil creatures will not have power over you by the grace of the Lord. All sweets, when taken internally, later turn out to be rubbish, clogging the heart, burdensome for the soul. Simple food is better. How dare you become upset, irritated, or embittered at the image of God? How dare you despise him? I mean the poor and the lower and members of the household. Always honor every person, and regret his shortcomings. Give alms to the poor as generously as possible. Give always without grief, with joy, knowing who accepts the poor in the face, and knowing that He is able to make all grace abound in you. Stinginess and grief from the envious devil. Every sin, every passion is its own punishment; so anger is its own punishment, envy is its own punishment, stinginess is its own punishment, pride and contempt are its own punishment, gluttony and delicacy, gluttony and drunkenness are its own punishment, theft is its own punishment, laziness is its own punishment: anger burns, scorches, oppresses, darkens, greatly torments a person, envy also devours with internal fire, dries, changes, distorts facial features, stinginess too, and so are all sins. Do not have any attachment to this rubbish - to money, then you will not be embittered towards the poor and despise them. Acquire imperishable blessings with decay and dust. When we want to save money out of love for money, then it hurts us if others often ask us for it, because our heart loves money, and not our neighbor, for whom money exists and whose needs we do not want to know and satisfy. What does the psalm say? All conquered ecu under his pose [Ps. 8, 7]. Oh, we indecent ones! Instead of being compassionate and helping the poor, we become embittered towards them. For what? Is it because they need every day, every day they want to eat, drink, dress, that they need to pay rent? But every day God generously gives to us, and we, or God through us, give to them. The beggar is left for you to eat 77 [Ps. 9:35], and through him you too will receive mercy. Oh, the wisdom and omniscience and omnipotence of God! Sparing perishable goods for my neighbor is my torment, my darkness, rejection of God, non-observance of His commandments and resistance to them. Teach me to despise these blessings, Lord, so that I may love You alone with all my heart. And the time of my life is short and is shrinking day by day. Grant me to cling to You alone with all my heart. The Lord my God abides in me through the communion of the Holy Mysteries, and I am in Him, and in God all... will take place [Russian: everything... stands] [Col. 1, 17 ], everything is in Him; in me is Jesus Christ, in Whom all things were, in Whom all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. When you become irritated and angry with the poor, then the spirit of pride and malice, the spirit of love of money, operates in you, and when you become angry with guests and relatives who come to you and eat from your table, then the spirit of voluptuousness operates in you - both of these mean that you have no love for your neighbor, that your heart is not right before God. Humble yourself: deeply honor every person, but despise all earthly blessings. Love. God! Help! That is why, my accursed flesh, you are annoyed with the beggars who often ask you for alms, and with the frequent guests, your own and strangers, who come to you to eat and drink or so for conversation - because you are insatiable, greedy and would like to take possession of everything yourself, to eat and drink everything pleasant; Yes, this is truly so: when you get to food and drink, you are ready to absorb everything, especially what is more pleasant, tastier, and you will not be full of food, ready to eat and drink for an hour and two and three, and would have eaten all your life if the Lord had not put tight limits on the insatiable belly and if excess had not been accompanied by harm to the soul and body. The sign of the cross means that we are Christ's heritage, that Christ is always with us, that His power is always with us, and inspires us with the need to crucify the flesh with passions and lusts. Whatever the enemy does in you, try to do everything on the contrary: inspires despair - rather be hopeful; inspires stinginess - rather be generous; love of money - rather be unmercenary; inspires carnality and voluptuousness - consider the flesh for rubbish and stench, for earth and ashes, inspires despondency - be cheerful and trustworthy; inspires hatred - all the more love your neighbor, against whom there are so many cunnings of the enemy. So that we do not engage in the only thing needed - heartfelt service to God and neighbor and the salvation of our souls, the enemy plunges us into anger, pride and contempt for our neighbor, into envy of him, into stinginess, into addiction to money, food, drink, shiny clothes, insignia, etc. Oh, how kind simple people are in their simplicity and kindness; they are the simple, simple people. And the noble and rich - oh, how rare it is to find simplicity in them. God! Give me simplicity and goodness. The womb is the enemy of God, the neighbor and the very one who pleases him. Eat and drink with satiety and dainty - and all your passions will grow like giants: pride with contempt, and anger, and envy, and stinginess, and laziness, and despondency with melancholy. Did you regret the soul of Mikhail who shot himself? - No, I didn’t regret it. He mentioned him coldly, as if he were not a person. O wicked heart! Cold, not loving your neighbor as you love yourself! And all earthly sweets were swallowed up by love for one’s neighbor! You want to dress in shiny vestments, you have a zeal for this - this is the spirit of covetousness and vanity in you - suppress it. More humble garments suit you. This is what you are like, sons of men - filled with the gifts of My goodness, but you are hard-hearted towards people like yourselves! I have taken you into My complete care: why are you faint-hearted, stingy, trembling over pieces of silver, over delicacies? Why do you eat and drink greedily? So the dream has exposed you. We are all terribly [intertwined] with many different iniquities, like thin grass in the ground, and none of us can or has the right to judge another. [Everything] can only be judged by the Lamb, who took away the sins of the world, suffered, died and rose again for us. But we are all in sin, and everyone must judge himself mercilessly, truly considering himself the first sinner. When we pray, we do not think about the power of words, not about the fulfillment of the prayer, but about how to read it as quickly as possible. Oh, what the greatest benefit for a person is fasting and prayer! How it soothes, relieves, enlivens, delights, and enlightens the soul and body! (Experience.) It was hard before prayer - I started praying, and suddenly it becomes so easy, easy! Oh, miracles! Oh, the grace of God! In the fast and fast times, it would be enough to be content with just sweet tea. We keep fasts, which in themselves are wise and salutary, foolishly, because we become satiated with fasting food, feast on it, or eat unhealthy food. God! Brashno does not place us 78 before You [1 Cor. 8, 8 ] - plant love in us, plant meekness and humility, compliance, obedience in us. You don’t spare rubles for strangers, but for your own people, from whom you have everything after the Lord God, who work for you, who get all their pleasure and food from you, you spare a piece of sweets, while you yourself eat as much as you want, four or five times more than they have - where, out of Christian love, would you rejoice that your family gets pleasure and enjoyment from you, just as others who treat you rejoice that you are with them? you eat and drink that there are occasions to treat and please you (how pleasant it is for you to be treated to others)! So, rejoice with love in the contentment of others. Remember that your servants are the same beggars. How little they have against you! And what pleasure do they have with a tasty morsel from your table, a morsel [which they don’t see from anywhere], while you see it everywhere except your home. Oh, greed! Oh, envy! Oh, demonic stinginess! God of bounties, have mercy on me! You are generous - and we are stingy! You are good - and we are evil! A sinner, a lawless one! I sinned again against the Lord - I spared my servants sweets, while I had no father-in-law at home, while the Lord sent me ten times more for them. Oh, the beauty of this sugar! Oh, my greedy flesh! Oh, spontaneous madness! Oh, waywardness! Oh, self-love! He himself would eat and drink all the sweets, and would like something for his neighbor, but on the contrary, the spirit wants everything for his neighbor, and at least nothing or something for himself, because he considers himself unworthy and harmful. When you breathe malice and contempt at someone, then in order to avoid this passion, which is so destructive for yourself, immediately say an inner prayer in the face of the very person against whom you breathe malice and who, perhaps, breathes the same malice at you (or maybe not at all); say: save and have mercy on such and such Thy servant or such and such Thy servant, and with their prayers have mercy on me, a sinner or a sinner, and believe, your anger will disappear from your heart, the fire and oppression will also disappear, and you will calm down. This is said from experience. Always do this. And when stinginess overcomes you, then be ready to give your last. April 15. Glory to Your name, Lord! Carried constantly in my heart, it saved me from great troubles. The slightest excess consumption of food and drink, especially sweets, is extremely harmful to the heart, which becomes coarse and cold toward God and neighbor. Blessed is he who confines himself to the most moderate, essential amounts of food and drink, consumes them at the right time, and does not touch them at the right time. Blessed is the one who does not worry about what to eat and drink, and generally does not care about this matter as the most unimportant, the lowest, animal, but pays all his attention to the affairs of his calling as a Christian and as one who owes a certain service to the Church and society. Blessed is the one who is ready to give up even all the sweets, all the pleasures of this world to others, and remain with only the most necessary and simplest and least pleasant, for a heart that retreats from love for God and neighbor is easily attached to everything pleasant. Be wise, Lord! Confirm, Lord, my heart in You alone! Grant me to walk in Your commandments! What strange changes sometimes happen in our relationships! Here we are in friendly relations with each other, when we agree with each other in thoughts, desires, and aspirations towards the same goal! But our thoughts regarding any subject are different, desires, aspirations diverge in different directions - and the trouble is: we become the worst enemies, ready to get excited, scold, fight, almost wipe each other off the face of the earth. Because of something empty, we often become enemies, even if we didn’t want to. Whose playground are we, poor people? A playground of self-love and one’s passions. Christian love does not seek its own, is not irritated, covers everything, endures everything, does not boast, is not proud, and never falls away [1 Cor. 13, 4 – 8]. If our love falls away and is cut off, it means that it is untrue, earthly, self-loving, selfish love. True love also loves enemies, even when they beat us, scold us, gnashing their teeth at us; she prays for them, so that the Lord will not put this sin on them. God forbid eating and drinking several times over a short period of time: this causes satiety of the body, overflowing of all vessels of nutrition and heaviness, melancholy of the spirit; sleep can be restless, painful, subtle. I, as a useless member of society, was now sentenced to death, to execution, for something, and everything was already ready, and I was already completely prepared. But, finally, I remembered that I have a wife, sister-in-law, father, mother, relatives, sisters, that I can still be useful to them, and I began to cry and beg someone with tears to lobby for me, even with the Metropolitan, to abolish the death penalty for me. Some handsome old presbyter appeared and denounced the judges for the injustice of the execution, and he himself treated me so kindly, so kindly. As if this is St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Cream is an empty, stupid treat! So many times I united with the Lord in the Divine Mysteries and then through gluttony, greed, stinginess, satiety, anger, pride, contempt, self-will, stubbornness, I again united with the enemy of God - the devil! Oh, damned me! What then are the Divine Mysteries for me after this? Is it not every time that I judge myself by eating and drinking in them? Be patient! How can You still tolerate me on earth? Always having Your goodness and tasting it, I neglect it through inattention and lack of understanding and ingratitude and addiction to my many-passionate flesh. How You still bear with me, O Long-suffering One, me, more vile than every pagan, every lawless one; I sin as no one sins. The Lord lifts me up to heaven almost every day through the communion of His Holy Divine life-giving and terrible Mysteries, adores me, and I myself daily fall to hell - myself, of my own free will, out of incomprehensible nonsense, out of addiction to the flesh, out of a stupid habit of such the highest, most heavenly Sacrament. When will I be Your servant, Lord! When will I live up to Your endless love for me? In my youth I angered the Lord of my life with fornication: the Lord saw my sins from the heavens of His saints and was patient; Now I anger Him with gluttony, delicacy, greed, stinginess - the same fornication! Oh, damned one! O old adulterer! Oh, the endless patience of the Lord! And I eat the Holy Mysteries - the Body and Blood of the Lord - and I commit adultery with food and drinks, silver and gold, houses, beautiful things and rich clothes, with all the attractive vanity of this world. I was not jealous of Moses and Elijah in fasting and John the Baptist, I did not follow the Lord Jesus, who fasted for forty days and nights, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, John and other reverend fathers. Cry, my soul, with bloody tears for your sins. From satiety, a disease can finally form in the heart - the devil can gain a foothold. Let the will of the abbot, as the will of God, be sacred to you, and obey it willingly; otherwise, know that the spirit of pride, self-rule and arbitrariness is in you, and if you violate or want to violate the will of the abbot for the sake of your decoration and splendor in service, then the spirit of vanity and vanity. Remember that the wedding garment of the soul is obedience and humility, and the stinking rags of the soul are pride, disobedience and arbitrariness. Strange thing! I myself reluctantly obey the abbot, but I myself want the lower brethren to carry out my will unquestioningly, and I think that this should be so. If the archpriest is the superior of the brethren, then he must be obeyed in many different cases. Remember the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiron [Num. 16]. I myself am angry with others - this is how it should be: I justify myself with excuses: he is like this and like that, he did this and that to me; others are angry with me - trouble: how dare you? what did I do? Although I have indeed done and continue to do many bad things and treat my neighbors unkindly. I myself am again ready to use other people's goods, bread and salt, clothes, linen, money, etc. - and this is nothing, it should be so: am I not worth it, and how much do I need? Others eat and drink with me, etc. - it’s a problem: how can they do this shamelessly, why would I give them food and drink, eat them and drink them! This is how evil, absurd, and self-loving our heart is! This is how corrupted we are by sin! Meanwhile, my neighbor is absolutely the same me, my image, even my weaknesses, just as in its pure form I [and he] are the image of God. The enemy of the human race is trying by all means to distract us from focusing on ourselves, our soul, our salvation and occupies us with the vanity of the world, with what is outside of us, although in us, on us and around us - food, drink, clothing, money, what is happening in the world, what others are doing - states, public and private people, as if we care about them, as if we will have to answer for them, and our own soul remains neglected. Why don’t we judge ourselves righteously? [ OK. 12, 57]. At first, we approach a well-known prayer reverently, until we get used to it or do not constantly experience the power of its words in practice - but we get used to it from long use, and become arrogant, and read it carelessly, often without [heartfelt] attention. It’s the same with people. While a famous person is new and we are not accustomed to him, we treat him with respect, feed and drink, and having become accustomed to him, we treat him carelessly, and then with contempt if he visits us often so that we can have something to eat and drink. This is the deceit of the flesh. This is the devil's gradualism. It also does not suddenly drag us into sins, so that it is not very noticeable, but gradually, as if it were a natural thing. Oh, wickedness! The evil spirit is simple, and in the simplicity of one thought, one word, one feeling, it can and does stump our soul; therefore, resist him in simplicity of thought, word, feeling, take care of your thought, word, feeling, so that they will forever be in God and about God. Show me your friends and I will know your morals; show me your books and I will know your inclinations,” said one ancient sage to some of his fellow citizens. This means that by the qualities of our friends with whom we like to treat, and by the quality and content of the books we like to read, we can know our inclinations and dispositions. Apply this to Christians. I appeal to you, my brothers: tell me, what books do you like to read: the Gospel, the writings of the holy fathers, shepherds and teachers of the Church? Wonderful. I see your good disposition, I see that you think, care about pleasing God, about achieving Christian perfection, and are engaged in the salvation of your soul. But if you read only secular books, magazines, novels, newspapers, play cards and don’t read anything The Gospel, nor the writings of the holy fathers or other spiritual edifying works - this is a bad sign: you - forgive me, I’ll tell the truth - you are not Christians, you do not love Christ the Savior, you do not care about pleasing God, about the salvation of your soul - this is the matter of the greatest importance on earth, this is the only need. You are wasting the time and talents given to you by God for use and growth. The fate of the unswitchable 80 slaves awaits you. Think, brothers, and try to improve immediately. Many lived like you, now they are in hell, in torment - they would like to return the lost precious time, but they cannot. The desire for earthly reward distracted my thought and heart from You, Lord, It is not fitting to reward each of us according to our deeds [Rev. 2, 23]. God! Having sinned, desiring glory from people, despising Your glory alone. We must run for earthly glory, so that God Himself will glorify us. And how can I desire distinctions and rewards for me, who is not worth any reward, but, on the contrary, all punishment and torment! How do I live, how do I do my work, with sincere desire and love, or from the heart? - No, rarely as it should, most of the time unworthy - that’s what my conscience says. What is my reward for? Christ in the heart is my greatest reward. Victory over the enemies of salvation is my trophy; sorrow for sins - here are my crosses - St. Annin’s, Vladimir’s, St. Andrew’s; various virtues: meekness, humility, self-sacrifice for the good of others - these are my ribbons, these are my stars; a clear, peaceful conscience, a calm heart, a sane mind - these are my laurels, my wreaths. And all earthly rewards are [external], all the charm of the eyes and the pride of life, all decay, earth, children's toys. There is spiritual blindness and spiritual deafness. This is blindness, not seeing anything in oneself, one’s own state of mind, deafness to the word of God, to prayer, to the cries of the poor and unfortunate, deafness to the convictions of one’s conscience. Why, they say, call upon the saints to pray for us? Why are priests appointed in the Church to pray for us? Why is this in both the Old and New Testaments? “That’s how God established it,” you say. And God also established this so that we call upon the holy saints and friends of God and ask for their intercession for ourselves before God. The point in itself is clear. Moreover, the same God rests in the saints, for the saints are His venerable eternal vessels. So, if you do not reject the prayers of the priests for yourself, then do not reject reality and the prayers of the saints for us. What was I? I was an ignoramus, I was a scoundrel [...], I was of low birth, I was poor. And now? Educated, purified by the grace of God, high, for what is higher than the priesthood on earth? I have become rich and don’t need anything. For all this, glory to You, most generous God! The Lord listens to every word, thought, and movement of the heart, and so does the Lady. Oh, with what heartfelt attention one must pray! The devil is insolent everywhere: in people, even in animals, in things, in water, in food. Shouldn't God, the Lady, or the saints inhabit icons? Should not God Jesus Christ dwell in bread and wine and transform it into His Body and Blood? Is it not His grace to dwell in water, in food, in clothing, in housing? The devil is a thief, a robber, and the Lord is the Lord of everyone and everything. The devil is a thief, a robber, who makes people and things his vessels; Shouldn't God, the Lord of all, make people and matter His vessels? Make me, Thy creation, O Lord, Thy vessel from now on and forever. Wake up! Imperceptibly, the devil often takes possession of our thoughts and hearts, so that we attribute his intrigues to ourselves; but even more imperceptibly our Guardian Angel instills in us good thoughts and feelings, so that we consider his suggestions, his holy thoughts and feelings our own. Governor - Guardian Angel. Holy men of God are one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6, 17] and therefore they see the future as the present, they see into the depths of human hearts, they know their thoughts. Do we constantly remember that God constantly sees all our thoughts, desires, feelings, hears words, sees deeds? No. And it is necessary. My Lady, Most Holy Theotokos, I thank You with all my heart, for now, during the Liturgy, You have delivered me three times from the deceit of bodiless enemies and from the oppression of sin. Do not leave me at other times of my life through Your intercession. What a storm of demons and sins has engulfed me today during the meal. How cramped! What irritation, humiliation, shame, kindling of the heart! What a shame of face! We must regret the sinning brother as a sick member of ours and show him greater love, the greater the danger he is in, imitating the Savior and the apostles in this. Remember what the Apostle John the Theologian did with one who was converted to the Christian faith and then became an ataman of robbers 81 . And what do we, crazy people, do with sinners, being sinners ourselves? We despise them, we become embittered at them, and thus we want, as it were, to finally drown our drowning brother. God! Teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves! Teach us how to love according to Your will! Give me strength and the ability to love! Let us see our own sins, for which we are worthy of extreme regret and the tears of the holy Angels of God, holy people who clearly see our spiritual misfortunes, and all our neighbors. Internal disobedience, bickering with the boss, self-indulgence, arbitrariness, conceit, self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement, humiliation of others, stubbornness, anger, doing the opposite. Oh, how cruelly on Sunday the enemy caught me with 1) ambition, and 2) love of money, and 3) in both cases - with bitterness and contempt. The merchant Philip Stepanov, having taken the blessing, did not kiss my hand, and for this he became embittered with him and despised him, and could not serve the prayer service; sexton Vasily Mikhailovich Yaroslavtsev gave a memorial during mass, and for this reason he became embittered with him, how can he give a memorial to a sexton without money, when other, monetary memorials are enough? Oh, what a temptation, what sorrow and distress, what shame and disappearance of the spirit resulted from these low, instantaneous, involuntary feelings! Moral teaching: 1) do not seek or desire honor from anyone: you are the same person as others, even worse than everyone else; your title, dignity, service is a gift from God not according to your worth; 2) do not be a lover of money and consider money as rubbish, as nothing; Consider it a gift to pray for people living and dead; Freely have you received, freely give [Matt. 10, 8 ]; God will reward you for the sacrifice of love. April 19. I thank You, Lord, because in Your name and through my faith in You and trust in Your name, you saved me from great spiritual trouble now during two classes - the second and third. The sign of the cross during prayer means 1) a symbol of our hope in the Heavenly Father, that He, who did not spare His Only Begotten Son for the salvation of ours, but gave Him up to suffering and death, gives us everything with Him; 2) the fact that we dare to ask all our prayers to the Heavenly Father only in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said: If you ask the Father in My name, I will do it, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son [Jn. 14, 13]. Just as you yourself want to eat and drink pleasantly and in sufficient quantity every day, so do your parasites whom God has given you. Wish them to always be full and satisfied. Invite them to the table with joy and affection, serve them diligently and with a bright face. The cause of pride and bitterness in our neighbors is mostly ourselves, angry, proud and rude. If we ourselves were always kind, meek and humble, we would overcome evil with good and turn many of the tigers into lambs. Our incorrigible malice assumes that others are so stubborn in it that they do not want to and cannot correct themselves, and in this secret assumption we treat our neighbors as incorrigible, as with real malice - proudly, contemptuously, maliciously, slyly, incredulously, while kindness, affection, meekness can immediately soften and change the heart of an evil and proud person for the better. (Experiments.) Every person, out of delusion of heart and false opinion about us, becomes angry with us, assuming pride, malice, ill will in us, but when he sees that we are meek, humble, and benevolent, he himself will immediately change, seeing the falsity of his view. April 20. Tuesday. Master Lord Jesus Christ, my God, my wondrous help, I thank You, for You work in me so much power through Your countless bounties. I don’t know how to thank You, how to glorify You. My tongue, my mind, my heart are perplexed. I only know to say that I am nothing, an abomination, emptiness, damnation, poverty, misery, blindness, nakedness, weakness, and You are my purification, truth, my sanctification, my fullness, wealth, enlightenment, clothing, my strength! Glory to Your bounties. Our bodies are pus, dust. Look at the end of our bodies, that is, at what they are now and will be later. Aren’t our bodies even now cobwebs, aren’t they filled with pus and stench? And the stench of passions? Do not seek, do not desire glory from the people of this world or from the adulterous and sinful world, but desire and seek glory and honor from the one God through cleansing yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, because: 1) human glory is erroneous, often false, for people do not know the inside, but judge by the outside; 2) it is fickle and transitory and 3) it separates us from God, feeding us ambition and pride, conceit and self-indulgence. On the contrary, joyfully accept being treated with honor or even dishonor itself, which with its bitterness kills the worm of ambition nesting in us. Do you love worldly honor when you feel damned, prodigal, poor, blind and naked? Remember at the same time what dishonor, what shameful death the sinless and most holy Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, suffered from people! Do you want honor from the world that crucified the Lord of glory, delivering Him to such a shameful execution? - No, joyfully accept dishonor as a cure against the passion of ambition nesting in you, for honor feeds the worm of ambition and increases it. (I’m upset, you see, why am I not named by my first name and patronymic in the memorial book of the magazine of the Ministry of Public Education, and yet I myself am sometimes too lazy to remember even imperial persons by their first name and patronymic, and I am absolutely ashamed to call many of my inferiors that way, and with the same measure I measure, it is measured to me.) The mental wolf the devil bites us with mental fiery scorching teeth - fornication and adultery, malice, pride, envy, stinginess, love of money, fear, despondency and melancholy, blasphemy, doubt, unbelief, evil stubbornness, lust. The demon of adultery tripped me today during prayer, or, more importantly, I myself, living fornication and having a prodigal heart, stumbled and could not serve the prayer service with all my heart, and during the great water-blessing prayer I stumbled and missed many words out of false demonic fear, not being able to read. God! Forgive my sin! War, real war is our life - stay awake every minute, don’t doze, don’t yawn, take courage, fight, always stand fully armed. The words of prayers are the words of the Holy Spirit: do not dare to omit or change them. Passions retard freedom of thought and will, darken the heart: they are the enemies of our spiritual advancement, our spiritual life. What are these passions? - Gluttony, greed for food and drink, satiety and heavy drinking, fornication, ambition, pride, malice, envy, stinginess, cowardice, despondency. These are domestic dogs that bite us mercilessly. Excessive consumption of tea is very harmful to the purity of the heart. Do not begrudge tea - this leaf of wood that rots under our feet and is trampled underfoot like rubbish; and these sweets - sugar, that is, do not regret. This is a treat to run around with. We must endure everything and thank God and rejoice over the passing of corruptible, pleasant and sweet foods and drinks and the beautiful things of this world; reflecting on their transience, the heart will not become attached to them with love and will not have time to become attached to them. Woe if these blessings and our very bodies [did not] soon pass away and turn into pus and dust. Then passions would become extremely ingrained in us. If they now have time to take root, what would happen then? All earthly lusts oppress, scorch, darken, torment - so that I may desire only the Lord, so that I may cleave to Him alone, the God of my heart, and distance myself from all earthly love, so that I may love my neighbor as I do myself. Let love be the element and constant breath of your heart - a simple feeling. Grant, Lord! Countless pretexts for hostility are a dream. Love is peace, joy, bliss! Yes [will be] unchangeable, never falling away. Give it, Lord! How does the dark enemy paralyze us during our sacred service in the church or in the homes of our neighbors? Either by a false fear, or through an instant desire for something worldly, it inhabits us (and oppresses) and entertains our thoughts and hearts, or with some kind of bitterness and bitterness, blasphemy and stubbornness against the sacred and aversion from it, or the same against the neighbor with whom we serve, or with nasty, crafty and blasphemous thoughts, or with the feeling and sensation of prodigal (prayer service in Petrovskaya’s apartment), or laziness, relaxation. Deliver us from the evil one, that is, from all the evil of sins and passions warring in our lives, and from the leader of all evil - the devil. While we are alone, the evil in us seems to be dormant, sleeping, and does not bother us, but as soon as we encounter a person or people, it immediately awakens in us and begins to confuse, scorch, oppress and disturb us, forcing us, without any reason, to simply be angry with our neighbor and invent various empty excuses for malice, hatred and contempt towards us. Oh, how firmly and constantly you must hold in your heart the commandment of the Lord: love your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12, 31]. Wherever temptations come from - from others or from us, we must remember that evil is always evil, that evil spirits, no matter from whom they rush at us, are always dreamy, evil, absurd spirits and all their machinations are evil, dreams and absurdity. Live in the simplicity of love. Grant, Lord, this simplicity of love, the power of love: I have no strength, Lord, to love everyone as myself, and not only everyone, even my family. - Behold, you gave it. I thank You, Quick to Hear, Lord! He alone is speedy in intercession, Christ our God! 82 Always give this love. When anger comes to you against someone, then arm yourself not against the person against whom passion forces you to become embittered, but against this anger itself and against yourself and against the devil, the author of anger - and most importantly, immediately turn with an inner heartfelt prayer to the Lord, so that He will deliver you from anger and grant the power of love for your neighbor, although the neighbor bears the wounds of sins, although he is at enmity against you. What is the rationale and is there any sense in setting your own house on fire and sacrificing it to the flames? It is so inappropriate to kindle the fire of passions in yourself. Or again, is it consistent with common sense to put out fire with fire and, in order to put out someone else’s fire, to do this, start a fire in your own home? And this is exactly what people do when they respond to the anger, pride and contempt of others with the same passions. Not tolerating the anger, pride and contempt of others for themselves, they themselves become embittered at those who are angry, they themselves are proud of them and despise them, instead of extinguishing the spiritual fire of others with the water of love, which is strong to extinguish all enmity. Every passion is a fire in a person; in order to extinguish the fire of passion, it is necessary to rain on it with the opposite virtue: so on pride and contempt, rain on anger with love, on envy with goodwill, on stinginess with generosity, on kindling fornication - with purity and sublimity of the view of the person of man as the image of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, a member of Christ, with purity of thoughts, feelings, words and treatment and Ave. I am a servant and representative of Him, before Whom slave and master stand together, rich and poor in equal dignity, therefore I must not look at faces, but treat everyone equally. April 22. God! I thank You, for through Your name you have solemnly preserved my lewdness and abomination in dignity and purity of heart and have not overcome the resisting unclean forces of what you have done (first and sixth grades). I glorify Your power, Your power, Your holiness. The Lady is written with raised hands in order to constantly remind Christians that She, the Most Merciful One, day and night incessantly prays to Her Son and God for peace, especially for pious Christians, especially for those who pray to Her, and to remind us of our duty to pray to Her tirelessly, with the hope of Her intercession and protection. Oh, what an honor humanity has been awarded through the incarnation and incarnation of the God-Man! He became human, that is, he not only became human, but also dissolved with humanity, just as leaven dissolves with dough. Let us all cleanse the old kvass, let us be a new mixture, cast aside passions, and live in the shrine of Christ. God's holy men purified the old leaven within themselves and became a new mixture [1 Cor. 5, 7]. From You, Mother of God, the all-blessed God has clothed all of me as a human being: and, having clothed yourself, unite to Your Divinity with an ineffable union, O Virgin! 83 Despise every sin, every sinful abomination as demonic absurdity, lies, demonic dreams in yourself and in others, and the Lord will despise all your sins and cleanse them with His Holy Spirit. Pray for those who sin as pitiful victims of demonic deception. Do not suspect your neighbors of sins that you do not know about. Let your eye be simple, flee from sinful deceit. In failures when reading prayers and in sorrows, one must endure and admit one’s weakness, one’s sinfulness, one’s passions, for which one is deprived of the help of the Spirit of God, and not become irritated, not despondent, and not grumble at God and people. Let everything be a reason for humility and patience. Let bad rumors spread about us - we are known to God, and He, the Righteous Judge, will judge us. We have no reason to appear righteous and perfect. Let's be fools for Christ's sake. Let them laugh at us. But let us not please the demons with our cowardice and murmuring and powerless malice. Run away from meat, pies, cream and butter. Until now I have not yet bridled my womb. How long will I be a frivolous child? I say: eat more sugar - but I regret it in my heart; Eat more, drink pleasant foods and drinks, but I regret it myself. I lie with my tongue and my heart. Be careful that the rivers of inner sorrows and misfortune do not tear you away from the Lord Jesus Christ, for the enemy tries in every way to distract us from the Lord: through the delights of pleasure, and the burden of adversity, like Job, and especially through inner tightness and sorrows. Endure everything, giving thanks to God, for for those who love God, all things work for good [Rom. 8, 28]. Remember that you yourself confess daily in prayer to God that you are because of your sins, with which you always anger God and His Most Pure One. Mother and all heavenly powers and the holy Guardian Angel, you are not worthy of His love for mankind, but worthy of all condemnation and torment - and now the Lord shows you His truth and at the same time His love - visits you with sorrows and distress, and humiliation, and shame, in order to cleanse your heart, soften, thin it, humble it and make it worthy of His church. The Lord punishes whomever he loves; he beats every son whom he receives... Any punishment at the present time seems not joy, but sadness; but afterwards he brings to those who are taught the peaceful fruit of righteousness [Heb. 12, 6; 11]. The sin that you do not deign to commit is not imputed to you, for example, involuntary [stumbling] in prayer, bad and blasphemous thoughts, involuntary anger with which we diligently fight, stinginess with which we turn away - these are all attacks of the evil spirit. Our job is to endure, pray, humble ourselves, and love. Stumbling comes from the coarseness and fleshiness of your heart, suppressed by overeating and overdrinking. It's my own fault. If you please your belly, let it help you in your sorrows, if it can. Science for you. Do not leave the source of water alive. How often does a lover of money, during prayer at home or in church, turn his heart to his money vault, and that of a woman addicted to clothes to the treasury of her clothes or to the outfits she is wearing, to the precious earrings, cufflinks and bracelets that adorn her ears or hands! But if the heart is there, then it is no longer with God and cannot work for Him heartily. You cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24]. If you have to endure strong misfortunes, sorrows and illnesses, then do not be faint-hearted, do not be discouraged and do not complain, do not wish for death, do not say daring speeches before the all-seeing God, for example, such as: oh, what an unbearable disease, oh, what a fierce sorrow, oh, what an attack beyond my strength! - It would be better for me to die, or it would be better if I killed myself! God save you from such cowardice and murmuring and insolence! But endure all this generously, as something sent to you from God for your sins, and repeat with the prudent thief: I will accept what is worthy according to my deeds [Lk. 23, 41], and look with your mental eyes at the Savior suffering on the cross. The holy men of God labored so much in this life out of love for God and their neighbors, but we do not want to remember their names in order; The Lord placed them, like luminaries, on the mental firmament of the church, but we don’t even want to look at them. What insolence and self-will! Without despising the everyday pleasures of food and drink, money, it is impossible to love God and neighbor. He who loves sweets responds to the very affection of even relatives who eat from his meal with malice in his heart, suspecting them that they are being affectionate only because they eat and drink his goodness. If this were really so, we should rejoice about that! God bless, [...]. The flesh is rude, weak, proud, evil, angry - the spirit is affectionate, sociable, humble, kind, quiet and benevolent, like a mother to her child. The flesh is stingy and chases after trifles and because of them is always ready to be hostile to its neighbor, but the spirit counts great things as nothing, despises them and is devoted to love in every possible way, despising materiality the more, the more it distracts from the love commanded by the Lord. The flesh is stupid to the extreme, to the point of disgrace: so one person could never be cordially disposed towards his family - why would you think? Because the family drank sweet tea in bulk and brewed a lot of tea; he could not speak to them kindly, cordially, and was always gloomy and silent when he sat with them at tea. And this happens day after day, month after month, year after year. This is the kind of trifle that can possess a person so strongly and be the cause of dislike and enmity towards his family and make him daily an enemy of God, instead of using the gifts of God, given to us all in common, as a reason for mutual love and gratitude to God. He would have to constantly be aware: as much as all this belongs to me, it belongs to them, and through them I got it all. This is not mine, but everything of God, I am a wanderer and an alien. The spirit is wise: it considers everything earthly to be rubbish and sacrifices everything to love for God and neighbor, like the hospitable Abraham; if he has a child, he does not spare the child for God or for his neighbors, but brings it, like a verbal slaughter, as a sacrifice to God or gives it to the service of his neighbors. He does not think about himself, but about others, about the good of others, does not care about his own benefits, knowing that the Lord cares about him, but about the contentment and peace of others. Love does not seek its own [1 Cor. 13, 5]. The flesh places its life in sweets and trembles over them when they are destroyed, as if its life was being taken away (and indeed a sinful, devilish, dreamy life). The spirit despises sweets and considers them worse than pus, for they kill the spirit and alienate them from God, and rejoices when they are destroyed, destroyed as idols of his heart, and clings more closely to God. But what sorrows, in truth, goodness and wisdom of God, does our passionate, ever-delusional heart deserve! And how can we not endure sorrows after this, how can we not endure them with gratitude, how can we not be beaten, humiliated, or put to shame? What would happen to us without sorrows, what would our passions reach! Beat me, Lord, just save my soul! We would become fleshy, we would become beasts without sorrow! Look: be elusive in trifles, in insignificant things, so that the devil does not stop you with all his rage and plunge you into a long-lasting attack. Be as little dependent on earthly things as possible, be entirely in God and trust in Him alone. Leave foolishness, and live and walk in the way of understanding [Prov. 9, 6]. Remember: God the Father, who knows what we need before we ask, He feeds the birds of the air - are we not better than the birds? [Matt. 6, 26]. We are of little faith! We have become accustomed to excesses, and through excesses the enemy captures us. It is better to sow from hostility [Russian: what is beyond this is from the evil one] [Matt. 5, 37]. Addiction to food and drink and money is the cause of our pride, contempt and malice and envy of our neighbor, this image of God, a member of Christ. We must trample and love God and His image - man. Like food and drink, sweets war in my souls, in my insides, as they oppress, burn, deprive me of peace, joy and love - and I still cleave to them with greed and consume them a lot! O God of peace, God of my life, why do I deprive myself of Your presence in me because of my addiction to my flesh? O deceiver, adversary, killer of my spirit - flesh! Why do I still believe you? The whole world is material, everything material should be alien to my heart; all this is external, all this is not me. not my life, not even my flesh, and she is not me: she is earth and will go to earth, but I, my heart, my belly, the God of my heart. Do not at all give room to feelings of hostility, or suspicion, or envy, or stinginess, but treat everyone simply and with love, as you would like to be treated with you. Give thanks for the caresses of your family, as for the caresses of strangers in whose home you are, and do not neglect them: this is offensive to those who show affection and makes them cool towards you. Be friendly to everyone and affectionate with everyone without servility or humiliation. Remember: with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you [Matt. 7, 2]. Mr. Krasovsky N told me the great truth that an extra spool of food taken into the stomach already causes harm to the soul and body. We must always observe moderation. Don't forget to communicate [Heb. 13, 16]. You go yourself and receive them. You behave with a free spirit in the company of the host’s guests - and treat your guests with an open and spacious heart, considering everything offered to them as nothing, like rubbish and slop. I have sinned, Lord: I have hated Your members, my brethren and Yours, the temples of the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a divider is my body, my carnal heart, my passionate one, from God and my neighbor! You must count everything as rubbish in order to always be a servant of God and a servant of your neighbor and deny yourself, so that you can lay down your health and your life for others, not just your property. Always maintain love for God and man, if he is not an enemy of God, for if he is an enemy of God, then we must also be enemies of the enemy of God. But because of earthly things, because of earthly vanity, because of earthly dust, let there never be enmity against one’s neighbor and at the same time against God, for he who is at enmity against his neighbor is also at enmity against God. Word of God! Have mercy, as Your verbal beings, created in Your image and likeness, have offended inwardly! Supreme Mind - Father! Have mercy, as I have offended Your intelligent creature to the heart. Holy soul! Have mercy on me, as the spirit of the rational-verbal creatures animated by You is saddened, for I have taken up the spirit of malice and suspicion and deceit against them. Have mercy on me, Soul of truth, for I obeyed a demonic dream and saddened my brother because of his dream. Ah, how excess in food and drink weakens the soul and makes it easily tempted and ensnared by the devil! What is higher than the sweetness of Christian love? For this sweetness, you can give your neighbor all the sweets just to have the sweetness of love in your heart. But worldly sweets and addiction to them dry up this sweetness of love and [change] it to enmity. Don’t blame anyone around you for being subject to passions, but blame yourself alone – suspicious, dreamy, and always justify others. Look - the martyrs did not fall away from God and from love for their neighbor even when they were tortured in various ways, and no one lays a finger on you - and you fall away from love out of addiction to sweets and your sinful flesh, which must be crucified, which must be denied everything pleasant and that which is undead. And be kind to everyone around you, and the more you are tempted by them, the more earnestly you pray for them, for the enemy will become angry with them through you. You are an instrument of the enemy and at him, but be embittered at sin, and not at people whom you need to love as yourself, as your members, members of Christ, images of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, as brothers and sisters, as your own flesh and blood. Despise their sins as a demonic dream, as plagues placed on them by the enemy. The truth remains the same, that is, they are the image of God - a great name, a great truth! And the proud devil inspires us to consider them as nothing. Hate pride and all sin, like the offspring of the devil. How can I be embittered against someone whom God loved so much that He gave His only begotten Son to die for him (that is, for man)? How can I despise someone whom God has honored so much that He Himself has clothed Himself in all of Him, that is, man, and feeds Him with His flesh and blood? How will I grudge food, drink, money, clothing to the one to whom the Son of God Himself is given as food, Who Himself covers his nakedness and shame, for all... those who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ [Gal. 3, 27 ]? How will I become embittered against the image of God? How can I, a vile sinner, me, a nonentity, be proud and arrogant before the image of God, me - ungrateful, ill-willed, stingy, envious, the scum of the world, a worm, not a man, blaspheming people and humiliating people? Lord, have mercy on me! He was dead, and behold, he is alive forever and ever [Rev. 1, 18]. And we will be dead and then alive forever and ever. Behold Christ, risen and ascended, and again 84 coming after us, to render to every man according to his works [Rev. 22, 12]. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good [Rom. 12, 21]. If you see intentional evil against you, do not be angry with those who do evil, but pray for them, for their soul is in danger. Feel sorry for them all the more because they are sick and do not feel their illness. Excess in food and drink and delicacy is the cause of hardening of the heart and intensification of passions. Abstinence and fasting soften the heart and weaken the power of passions. Educated people, especially military men, are lawless people: against them it is necessary to raise the voice of the truth of faith, it is to them that we need to talk about subordination to the throne, about obedience to the Church. Where the enemy [plants] doubt in your heart to do something good, be inspired by hope and say to yourself: this means that with [God’s help] I will certainly do this, for the enemy is an adversary who strives to do everything opposite to God, and a dreamer: all his machinations are a dream. 1) God Himself subjugated everything under the nose of man, nothing is mine; 2) a person needs so little - it’s crazy to regret; 3) God Himself, the all-good Father and Provider, will send everything we need. He is the Father of bounties and the Rewarder. The so-called educated people, in their stupid mind, have laid down their lives and do not look at the commandments of the Lord and the statutes of the Church: here is Saturday, the all-night vigil is going on in the church, and the faithful children of God go to bless a Sunday or holiday, and the educated sit down to play cards or to the theater. You eat a lot and then you would be glad to throw away the food, but you won’t: it weighs on both the spirit and the body and can lead into great temptation. Can I allow myself to be addicted to corruptible foods and be consumed by pity for them, when I so often taste the incorruptible foods - the most pure Body and the most pure Blood of my Lord and God Jesus Christ? Isn't this the greatest madness? Do not do the things that are worthless that perish (that is, do not worry about the things that are perishing), but the things that are worthless that remain in the eternal life which the Son of Man will give you [Jn. 6, 27]. I despise corruptible waste. Leave the madness that has existed until now. God! O obscene servant of Thy, I thank Thee, the all-merciful and blessed Lord, for Thou hast granted me to overcome the evil lust (of malice) towards my brother Konstantin and Nikolai and Alexander and with a calm spirit sit with them at meals and treat them cordially. And I can’t do this without You - I’m so full of many different evils! I thank You also for the mortal sorrow that You brought upon me for my sins during the Liturgy and after it, for You arrange everything graciously and wisely and there is no malice in You, but You bring fiery sorrows upon us, and remove evil lust from our hearts, burn away evil lust, and soften our hardened hearts. God! Is it not for Your name that I suffer, enduring during the Liturgy and services the treachery of the devil, his fiery attacks, cramped conditions, sorrows, darkness, despondency? O most loving and righteous Judge, will You not reward me for these sorrows with the joy of Your face, and will You not cleanse my sins? Cleanse, Lord! You can. Amazing thing! As soon as you regret sweets for a moment during prayer (for your neighbor, for a servant) or wish, your heart will now grow colder towards God, and towards the saints, and towards your neighbor. In order to burn with love for God, we must not care about all sweets, everything earthly, all precious things must be reduced to nothing, like dust of the foot, for through the love of earthly blessings the devil tears our hearts away from God and takes us into captivity. We must remember, moreover, that our heart is simple, and the God of our heart is simple; Let our heart be in simple God, and let us be one in God, and whoever is against God and serves as a temptation, let him move away from us if he does not correct himself. I constantly live in passions: in my home - in passions, in the church - and here I am overwhelmed by passions; in the open air in passions, in society I am overwhelmed by passions. Woe to me, wretched one! Savior! Take away from me the heavy burden of sin and teach me through Your justification. If you pray at home, there are no temptations; in church, at home there are temptations, and sometimes very, very strong, depending on the persons present at the service and the number of them. And I would like to serve without stumbling, with a free, peaceful spirit, but you cannot without extreme and prolonged efforts, without prayer of repentance and petition before public prayer, and even without abstinence. Why, when I pray at home, do I not doubt the words of the akathist and reverence and admire them, but in church or where do the laity come from with doubt and disrespect for the words? What kind of double-mindedness is this? What kind of false shame is this? O enemy! Oh, pleasing the adulterous and sinful world! Oh, betrayal of the truth of God! April 26. Oh, the sweetest name, the most holy name, the almighty name, the name of my Lord Jesus Christ! My victory, Lord, glory to You! God! We are Your members, we are one body, You are our Head. God! May all passions flee from us! May the demons flee from us! God! Give us the grace of love, who will never fall away! God! May we show respect and love to each other, as You do Yourself and as those adored by You. Love no longer exists [1 Cor. 13, 8]. How does it happen with us? If a brother comes two or three times in a row to eat bread and salt, drink tea and sugar, we already have hostility towards him, as if he will eat and drink, while he needs so little, as if he means nothing, while he, being a member of Christ, is so great, so noble, so exalted, for he is the brother of Christ, a child of the Heavenly Father, deified by Jesus Christ, heir of God, joint heir with Christ. We must consider it a blessing that a brother or any Christian in general visits us. There is no need to pay attention to demonic dreams, to stinging for bread and salt and sweets, to feelings of hostility or attention. If a brother is clearly sinful in some way, convict him, pray for him, and don’t be angry with him. Oh, how we often get angry in vain, in vain, against our brother! God save me! Trample sweets! The affection of a daughter or son towards a father is natural - imitate them in dealing with younger and older people and with everyone, and do not look at it with evil slyness. You yourself eat as best as you can and as much as you want - do not look with evil, envious and greedy eyes at the eating and drinking of others from you, especially from God, for everything is God’s, and you are nothing. We, who are many, are one body [1 Cor. 10, 17] - therefore, one must rejoice in the peace and well-being of another as one’s own, and grieve over the anxiety and misfortunes of one’s neighbor and alleviate them or destroy them; rejoice in everything good in your neighbor as if it were your own good; Consider everything good in your neighbor as natural and not look at him with evil eyes. My heart is full of pain over the daily waste of earthly goods or about the so-called excesses in drinking vain tea and coffee and sugar. Let the earth go to the earth, and let my soul cleave to the one God. Oh, all-evil, greedy, envious, gluttonous flesh! Because of you, I still don’t have peace, clinging to the one God, I still don’t have contempt for the world and its earthly blessings and for everything that is in the world. God! Grant me to impute nothing to this whole world, to rubbish and filth, with all its benefits and to my body... Why do I stuff myself with food and drinks and through this affirm the connection of the flesh with the world? Oh, how the enemy has been laughing at me, stupid, through the same things for more than ten years now. We are members of one body of Christ, and all together are His body, and He is our Head. Hence the love for everyone, as for yourself, as for your body. But the devil teaches us to love only our flesh and, out of love for it, teaches us to be at enmity against God and our neighbor. Make me wise, Lord, to treat everyone as simply as I wish to be treated with me. For this is what I lack, Lord. I want to be treated with sincerity, from the heart, with attention, affection, respect, but I myself do not observe this in relation to many, and precisely to those whom I am accustomed to, to my family, to comrades, to subordinates, to commoners, to the poor. I sin, Lord, often and very often: have mercy on me and cleanse me and teach me to do Your will. Well, whatever your neighbor does wrong, forgive him out of love and have pity on him, because love is merciful, because it is long-suffering, does not become arrogant, is not proud, does not get irritated, does not think evil (about the neighbor), covers everything and never falls away, and we - oh, damned ones! because of a trifle, because of nothing, because of dreamy suspicion, we fall away [1 Cor. 13, 4 – 8]. It only harms, only harms us a lot of food and drinks, or, better yet, greed for them, and extremely strongly rejects us from the love of God and neighbor, and the heart disposes and compels us to daydreaming of many different passions. Just as you become attached to one dream, you will involuntarily be drawn to others. Oh, how one must be indifferent to all foods and drinks, to all sweets, to consume everything in moderation and without the slightest greed, in simplicity of heart; to be also indifferent to money, and to all the jewels and beauties of the things of this world, and even to the beauty of faces, as the same things are corruptible and fleeting and even weaker than other things of the world, for they soon become fetid pus and food for worms, while other things often smell fragrant when decomposed. And our body, both during life and after death, emits a stench! And everything is a sin! This is what evil, what a stench, what a stench - sin! Hate sin and the culprit of sin - the dreamer of the devil, and love man as the image of God. God is all in all saints [1 Cor. 15:28], because His grace is in them all. Just as the infinite God is near each of us, so are the saints, in whom God rests; and as they rest in God, [then they] are near everyone who calls them in truth, as one spirit with Him [1 Cor. 6, 17]. Glory, Lord, to the never-failing power of Your cross: when the enemy oppressed me with sinful thoughts and feelings, and I did not have freedom in my heart, and I depicted the sign of the cross on my stomach several times with faith, then suddenly my sin fell away from me, and the tightness disappeared, and I went free. Glory to Thee, Lord! God! May nothing tear me away from You, nothing carnal or material. May I always be with You! How good it is to be with You! How good it will be with You for Your chosen ones there in heaven. God! How all the delights of earth are painful for the heart! How detrimental to the heart is an instant addiction to anything earthly! And in You what peace, what freedom, what space, what light! What a joy! My father-in-law 1) is an old man, but almost the face of an old man, it is said, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God” [Lev. 19, 32], - which means that if you do not honor him, then you will not revere the Lord God Himself, for man is the image of God, and if you do not learn to pay respect to the visible image of God, then how will you give it to the invisible Prototype? He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? [ 1Jn. 4, 20]. 2) My father-in-law is my father, for his daughter, born by him, is one body with me; she is his upbringing; 3) he is an archpriest who has served the Church of God to the utmost of his understanding and strength for 35 years and for this alone is already worthy of all respect from me; 4) I took his place and got everything with his daughter. Therefore, I am indebted to them all, to the whole family, and I must serve them, as called to this by God, and not grumble that you are at work, and they are at rest. Glory to Thee, Lord, who shows me the path to salvation, and who thwarts the obstinacy of my erring heart. Grant me, Lord, the grace to be satisfied with everyone and everything and to always impute the guiltiest and worst of all to myself and to always have condescension for the weaknesses and sins of my neighbors, and not to be irritated with them. Give me a simple feeling of meekness, humility, love that never falls away. After lunch, do not drink more than a glass of tea if it was a liquid dish; if there were none, two or even three. In the evening, two glasses of liquid tea. These are all gifts of God for you, not for me; I am unworthy, I am the sinner of all; these gifts are especially for innocent children. Let me at least be your zealous servant - and that is my happiness. God's gifts are inexhaustible: the more you give, the more you receive - God will reward. Be happy when you give. Sadness comes from the devil. God! Those who have sinned: I have coveted foreign flesh - this pus, this dust, this stench, this trampling of feet, sowing the earth! God! Are you not the only one who must be the edge of my desires, the God of my heart and my part forever [Ps. 72:26 ], always, all the days of my life, unceasingly! Was it for this, Creator, that I bound my soul to this mortal body, so that through it it would depart from You - was it not so that, together with it, it would always glorify You with purity, with mutual, collective holiness? Look at the end of all carnal things, my soul, and do not be deceived by anything! Remember whose this charm, this sinful sweetness is from the devil, the seducer, the rapist, the oppressor, the darker; In general, stay away from all the sweets of the flesh! And sweets promote the devil, and the weaknesses of the flesh too, because through them the devil weakens the soul with despondency and cowardice. God! I thank You, for You have delivered me from fornicating, violent lust. I fell to You in front of Your image, asked for Your help to avoid evil - and You delivered me from this abomination. Immediately I felt within myself the grace-filled power that took away sin and sanctified me, and I immediately felt peace and freedom. I thank You, Lord, for Your wondrous help in the fifth grade, and in the second as well. Going to the 5th grade, I was crushed, bound, darkened, humiliated by the enemy; but now I placed all my hope in You, I said: I am from nothing and I am nothing, You are everything, disappeared in You internally, mentally - and You moved into me and became everything to me! And how wonderful I spent the whole class with You! April 30, 1865. There is no need to rub your stomach to drive out the devil from within: faith in the Lord Jesus and constant looking to Him is enough. I always win in class this way. Military officers and various noble people are lawless people: they are both freethinkers and proud, who do not properly respect anything sacred - neither royal power nor church power. It is against them that we must raise our voice like a trumpet, boldly denouncing them, praying to God loudly, separately, listing the royal house separately. Oh, gamblers! On holidays they are not afraid or ashamed to play. This is an ordinary thing for them, as if it should be so. The Lord has overturned the tables of the money changers, but at least throw away the players’ cards when you see them playing, especially on a holiday! If we were not partial to the sweets of this world, to food and drink, then we would not be irritated by the beggars asking for alms, and with love, with joy and a bright face we would give what they asked for! Oh, how disgusting this addiction is! Oh, what a god is this money, these sweets, food and drink! You cannot work for God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24] - by mammon we mean all earthly blessings: food, drink, money, rich housing, earthly honors. A series of continuous experiences in my life, from my youth to the present day, constantly confirms the truth of these words of the Savior. Concern for the things of life, thirst for earthly goods, pity for them, worry about them in the future - trouble, death for me. I shouldn’t worry about them: the Lord is my trustee, provider, giver; I must be carefree - carefree not only regarding external goods, but also regarding my body, for everything I have is God’s, I am all God’s, and on my own I am nothing, I cannot do one hair for myself - but if I cannot do even this trifle by myself and everything for me, both great and small, has been arranged and built by God, then why should I worry about anything else, whether it is great or small? I am nothing, everything is God. What is clearer than this axiom? I haven't been here recently; then God created me out of nothing and shut me up in this shell of a body - He will support me, preserve me, and save me. May we love Him and each other. Help, Lord! Why don't we love each other? Because of mammon. The doctor came unexpectedly: we are angry with him, we despise him, we are alienated from him - for what? Because of the addiction to mammon: for money, we say in ourselves, we came, because of money we speak kindly. We give money great importance and consider it to be the lever of all thoughts and words of our neighbor, but we place the soul at nothing; that our neighbor is the venerable image of God, we forget this. Oh, away soulless dust! Be gone, charming one! Let us love each other, let us not think evil of each other, let us be simple-hearted and sincere; What we do not wish for ourselves, we do not wish for others. I don’t want people to think slyly and basely about me, but I won’t allow myself to think that way about others either. Oh, simplicity! Where are you? Shrine, where are you? Come and move into our hearts! Do it, Lord! Abstinence, abstinence! Just as the Lord of creation has constantly given me air for breathing, light for illumination and fire for warming, water for drinking, clothing for protection from bad weather and cold, so he will and will continue to give me food to nourish and nourish the body. This is a necessary consequence, because nature is a single whole despite the differences in the elements. God is everything to nature, and I am part of material nature in the body, therefore, for me He is everything. Let me dwell only on the soul, on the Kingdom of God and the truth of God 85. If God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more so than you, O you of little faith! [Matt. 6, 30]. Oh, how self-loving, unbrotherly, hard-hearted and stingy we are! We ourselves eat and drink the best, but are ready to leave only the worst for others; If, from the abundance, others also get the best food and drink from our table, it becomes a pity, although they themselves are, as they say, full! We ourselves love it when they give us a lot of something, either pleasant to taste, or beautiful to look at, or money, or something else, but for others, if we give our good, it becomes a pity. Oh, our grief! Oh, our passions! We would like everything good for ourselves, but others don’t need it, as if others don’t have the same soul as us, don’t have the same nature, don’t have the same heart, don’t have the same infirmities, don’t have the same passions as us; as if they did not have the same feelings of pleasure and joy or sorrow and displeasure as we do. Anyone who receives excess from us is glad; anyone who receives excess from us is grieved. Who in me pities perishable sweets? Devil Who do I have regrets with? With the devil. Spare nothing, crucify everything, despise everything. Trust in one God, pity Him alone, that is, part with Him and regret for a moment. Oh, the deceit of the flesh! One should regret parting with the Lord, but she doesn’t regret it at all, but regrets parting with sweets or thinking that she is parting. Are they given to you alone, or are they not given to everyone? Are you worth it? Are they useful to you? Are they separating you from God? Truly. When you read prayers of thanksgiving to the Lord in church or at home, read them with all diligence, because we must thank God every minute, constantly receiving great benefits from Him. Do not listen, it is said, to empty rumors [Exod. 23, 1 ], And we greedily listen to empty rumors, rumors and gossip about people. In church and in the homes of parishioners, pray as you pray at home, constantly remembering that you are standing and speaking before the omniscient God. When praying to the Lady, Angels and saints, remember that they, being in God, know what is in man. If, while living on earth, the saints had the gift of clairvoyance, how much more so when they are in heaven, in God - the Sun of righteousness, before Whom everything is naked and open [Heb. 4.13]. Slaves, sometimes we are afraid and ashamed of our simple slaves when we pray and when she accidentally goes into our prayer room for something. Why be afraid? What to be ashamed of? Are they their own sins? But we must be afraid of them when they do not confess to us, they hide, they remain unconscious and unfelt. And when they confess, then there is nothing to fear, then forgiveness from the Master will shine upon us. Is it not that we sincerely recognize and feel them and repent of them - this is what we are perhaps afraid of and ashamed of. So you need to sincerely recognize, humbly feel and confess - and things will get better. By praying for the members of the royal family, we fulfill the commandment of the Apostle: I ask you to make prayers, petitions, supplications, thanksgivings for all people, for kings and for all those in authority [1 Tim. 2, 1 – 2], and: pray for one another so that you may be healed: the fervent prayer of the righteous can accomplish much [Jas. 5, 16]. Here we fulfill the commandment of love. Let us pray sincerely, from the heart, for the members of the royal house, as for ourselves. Let us humble ourselves before the sovereign power, so that we may also humble ourselves before God. In him, for example, in this poor man or in this relative of mine - brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law, etc., is the same as in me, the same image of God and the same sinful damage and corruption. During worship, the devil tries to scatter us with various dreams, malice, evil thoughts, nasty, blasphemous, doubtful, timidity of heart. However, we need to do something. Always maintain abstinence and chastity, do not be greedy for food and drink, and always consider this the last thing to do. If I think well and do poorly, it is of little use. Let's do things - abstinence, meekness, humility, kindness! One who is greedy for food and drink cannot be a true lover of God. Experience. It is a bad thing if the mind is exercised, but the heart remains empty and is not cleansed of passions. It will work out, even if you drop everything. The main thing in a person is the heart, it is the lever of both the mind and the whole life. Abilities become dull. Be careful not to cool the hearts of students by studying many abstract sciences, for the heart becomes very cold when only the mind and reason are formed, not paying attention to the heart, to feelings; it also cools from greed for food and drink, from the pleasures of life, from playing cards. Use your feelings more, teachers! Don’t drink sweet tea, lest you fall into any fornication. Without serving the creature, it is said, God’s wisdom is greater than the Creator 86. And we constantly serve, damned ones, more than the Creator, we serve sweets, or the womb, money, a card game, or cardboard idols. Where is the memory of your purpose? Where is the desire for the intended goal? Do not eat or drink unless necessary. Sometimes eat and drink only once a day. As little white bread as possible is both a delicacy and clogs the stomach. Black bread, a glass of milk - this is food and drink! Show me what you eat and drink; let me see you, how you eat and drink, and I will know the degree of your spiritual sobriety, whether your spiritual life is sober or whether you are sleeping in spiritual death. Oh, how quality and quantity and greed in eating and drinking weaken the soul and deprive it of spiritual sobriety! You must always have such a sober heart that you are ready and able to pray to God at all times and pronounce every word with the strength that it contains. How dearly your wife loves you and how cold you are to her! How dearly the Lord loves you and how cold you are to Him! If you don’t love your wife, how will you love God? He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? [ 1Jn. 4, 20]. He who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much [Lk. 16, 10]. Why do I sometimes write poorly? The weapon can be bad. Why do I sometimes pray poorly? Feeling sick? Because the weapon is bad, the body is painful. I will be like a child in the house of my Heavenly Father - carefree, contented, committed to Him alone with all my heart. What is flesh? Death, destruction, constant change, transition from one state to another, or the disappearance of some principles and their replacement by others, the slow path to destruction and decomposition into component elements. So I, my body, will turn into these inexhaustible elements. What is spirit? Life. Many thousands of times [...] the inadequacy of food, drink, sweets, money to revive the soul and repose it has been tested - on the contrary, they always destroy it, I bring it down! into darkness, despondency, cramped conditions, sorrow, speechlessness. The Lord is always the life, the peace of our soul, its light, its spaciousness. Glory to Thee, Lord! The Lord is everything for soul and body - let me submit to His will, as the whole universe submits. I am a work of art of the Creator, I am a vessel of the Creator, used, stored and supported by the Creator and the Artist. Let us commit ourselves and each other and our whole life to Christ God... God as spirit. as a simple being, he simply had [and could] create the world with a single word and command, or desire. The symbol of this simplicity of God and at the same time His eternity was expressed in the sphericity of all solid celestial bodies. After this, let not the idle talk of secular wise men that it took several hundred thousand years for the creation of the world and that the holy prophet Moses is telling lies. All saints are pure images of God, and God rests in them. How close they are to us at all times and how conveniently they see and hear us at all times and in all places! How conveniently, with what faith, hope, and warm love we should pray to them! They see and hear us - this is what, by the way, we should have in our minds and in our hearts when we pray to them and with the Most Pure Mother of God at their head! All Christians and all people are created in the image and likeness of God; in Christians who believe and are pious, God rests, but those who do not believe are darkened and bound by the enemy; how one must love and respect the former, how one must sympathize with the latter, these withering, wasting members of humanity! With what respect, love, meekness, kindness, humility we must treat everyone! With what humility and meekness help Christians - members of the body of Christ! But without You, Lord, we cannot do anything. Help us to walk in Your commandments, so that whatever I say, I will follow, and whatever I teach, I will do first. Let the royal house always speak without stumbling with high priority respect. From the Strelnikovs, learn respect for the personality of a person and a priest. What meekness, tenderness, courtesy, courtesy! Oh, what reverence touches the soul! So be you! Why does this person have no respect for human personality? Because in his youth he lost his chastity, desecrated, corrupted his nature and, having lost respect for himself, lost it for others, transferring his abominations to others. Why is this man hesitant in society? From lack of self-confidence and cowardice, or because he is double-minded, unsteady in the truth and afraid to expose lies and untruths. Why does this priest timidly serve? Because he timidly denounces social vices from home and in church. He is defeated somewhere by an enemy in society - and now he is defeated in the church. Despise sweets and stench, trample everything. I am earth and earth: stinking. Humility. We are one body: we patiently endure each other’s hardships, insults, and stench because we ourselves insult others, we ourselves emit a stench. Communication of wealth, non-covetousness, lack of self-love - love for everything. Love in general and in all members. Consume only what is necessary to maintain, [protect and preserve life]. We are all one tree, watered by the Lord. If I, a sinful, passionate, evil, stingy man, feed others at their request and even without asking, how much more the Heavenly Father, from whom every fatherland in heaven and on earth is named [Eph. 3, 15], Father of mercies and God of all comfort [2 Cor. 1.3 ]? What am I before Him? What is He? He is infinitely good, great, wise, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, and unchangeable, the all-satisfied and all-blessed God, Even though I would [live] so well without food and drink: I am so tired of the enemy because of her, she is so murderous to my soul, so heavy! So the enemy catches me through it! And how little food and drink I need! Extremely little. There is nothing to think about! Oh, demonic lies! How much anxiety, sadness, fuss because of a piece of bread, sugar, because of the saturation of the fetid belly, which defiles the soul and infects the soul - my being, to which everything is subordinated, for which everything is, which builds and acquires everything. Woe to me and my evil flesh: I get angry at the stench, I get angry at too much fragrance, I get angry at too much incense (while it is a useful, healthy, pleasant substance), I get angry at the cold, I get angry at the warmth - I get angry at everything. But despise it, man: the stench, the incense, the cold, the warmth, the shocks, the beatings, the hunger - despise everything, impute everything to nothing. Whether they scold you or slander you, don’t care. Have complete impartiality, even hatred towards her, as alien, hostile to God and allied with the devil, like a snare, a snare of the devil. I have sinned, Lord, have mercy on me. And lust is kindled for everything pleasant and beautiful! Oh, you devil, my flesh! Oh, my impatience. my tenderness. excessive care for the flesh and negligence for the soul and souls: those who have sinned, Lord! Take care of the calm and integrity of your spirit and do not be irritated with anyone or anything, for anything, even if someone said something or did something absurd against God, because irritability will not help anything, but, on the contrary, you will ruin the matter by adding a new evil to one evil. Do not be angry with the poor who follow you: their need, their need is great! They deserve every pity! And ignorant, and poor, and homeless, and orphans, abandoned by everyone! All other citizens are settled, live in contentment, in ease, bliss or in the labors within their power, go to visit, are consoled in various ways, but what about them? They find consolation in this, to eat a better piece, because for the most part they have to eat simple bread with water and kvass, or porridge and cabbage; Many people don’t know what they will eat tomorrow. And you always have everything in abundance. You're always fed up. And they often hunger and thirst and are hungry. Confirm in me, Lord, true wisdom about Your people, especially the poor! The incense drowns out the stench of the dead; incense, as acquired by God and His church, has in itself the grace of God: its fragrance is doubly pleasant and desirable; it is a sin to shun it and become embittered by its excess. The abundance of incense signifies the bounties of the Lord, His generous gifts. Kindness, kindness! Kindness! Will I, having so often partook of the infinite sweetness - Christ of God, be jealous of the perishable sweetness and pity it biasedly for my friends, for my acquaintances, relatives, Christian brothers, members of Christ, who are rarely, rarely rewarded with the original Sweetness, which created all sweets - Christ the Lord? Should I, so enlightened by the Lord, remain blind? Should I, who am so wise from Him, go crazy? Let there be one God of my heart - Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit! Despise real sweets [and impute them to nothing]. God! Give me [God's] understanding. God! May all [earthly] blessings lose their charm for me. Lord Jesus Christ! I thank You, Your indecent servant, for the cleansing of sins, the removal of hellish tightness from my heart and for the heavenly peace that You have given me upon communion of Your Divine Mysteries! And You took away demonic despair, like a cobweb, like nothing. May 6, 1865 Thursday of the 5th week of Easter. Samaritans. God! You are my reward: do not allow me to passionately desire an earthly reward and not desire anything on earth from You, according to David: What do I have in heaven; and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. Otherwise, earthly differences are often the gods of our hearts. May I remember the day of Your reward. My reward is with Me, to render to everyone according to your deeds [Rev. 22, 12]. There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me [2 Tim. 4, 8], - and earthly judges are often unrighteous, What was the reward for the apostles? - Mortal crosses and swords, and beatings and abuse, and prisons. All those sins that I condemn in others or for which I feel indignation towards others were or still are in me. I am indignant and embittered at the covetous merchants, and in my youth I was a thief, because I stole and concealed government paper, feathers, candles, and who knows, if now I were in the place of the merchants, would I not act the same way as them? One pretext for anger is the extortion of merchants. I myself am the first covetous person. Everyone will give an answer for themselves to God. You are not responsible for their covetousness, deception and theft; they themselves have reason, conscience, the Gospel, they listen to the word of God in church; instill in them during confession. Be angry with yourself, not with others - this is just anger. When you yourself are under the influence of passion, then do not punish anyone, for you must first punish yourself for being carried away by passion and for causing disorder in others with your passionate passion. What an inexhaustible wealth of God’s bounties - the air that we constantly breathe, in which we constantly live and move! But what an inexhaustible wealth of God’s bounty is the All-Holy Spirit Himself, who revives us, in Whom we find cleansing of sins, holiness, peace, mental enlightenment, space, consolation, strength, spiritual joy! Oh, what will we render to You, Lord! One must separate oneself from passions and not consider them a natural part of oneself, one’s self. They belong to our enemy: he teaches them and plants them in our thoughts and hearts; therefore, we must resist them in every possible way and not allow them, as an evil, alien principle, to act in us; call upon the grace of God to help. Many, loving themselves excessively and falsely, including me, consider passions to be their property and fight not against them, but for them, and, instead of being alienated from them, eradicating them, they become more and more comfortable with them, so that they form in them their own hellish spirit, character, and thus root them in themselves. From the root, with the ax of your repentance, plucked out the ulcers of my passionate heart; instill, O Lord, Divine dispassion and the purest fear of God, all malice from alien cabbage soup and me 88 . So, do not consider passions to be only yours at first - they are from the spirit of malice. Also, do not consider the good in yourself to be yours: it is a work of God’s grace; what's yours? Yours is opposition to sin, zeal, striving for virtue, yours is striving for repentance. Just as one who is carried away by passions is one spirit with the devil (we see this), so those who stand in virtue are one spirit with the Lord. Everything is either from the Existing, infinite God who created everything - this is good, or from the abyss of evil and all lawlessness and ugliness - the devil. How beautiful, life-giving, pure this wisdom is: we are one body of Christ and members of each other [Eph. 4, 25 ]; Our head is Christ! How wonderful is this wisdom if you establish it in your heart! How victorious, how all the machinations of the instigating enemy, all the passions, are crushed against him! Oh, what wisdom, what grace, what life-giving, enlightening, cleansing power is contained in the Holy Scriptures! This is where our life is! Where are we looking for it, in what? What is my body? The fat of the earth, or, as today's scientists put it, the extract of the earth - it will go there, into the earth. Is it reasonable to be seduced by the flesh and that which is for the flesh, and because of this anger the Creator and violate His laws? Do you desire and seek rewards from the world? And what did he reward the Savior of the world with? - By spitting, strangling, beating, crown of thorns, sticks, that is, blows with sticks, the cross and shameful death. And do you want to be in friendship with this world, and do you crave rewards and distinctions from it? Sugar and sweets are the property of babies and children, but we shouldn’t indulge in them, we shouldn’t feast on them, but blame them for litter and childish fun. Our daily bread is what is essential to us. In order to preach the truths contained in the Gospel, it was necessary for the Son of God Himself to descend from heaven, live on earth for 33 years, suffer and die. But we do not deign to read them, neglecting God’s word as not essential or not at all necessary, and even some will speculate about it in their own way, distorting it, like heretics. Oh, may we often read and remember the contents of the New Testament - the testament made to us by our Divine Savior. Let us not be jealous of anything earthly, but let us make every effort to acquire eternal blessings. A wanderer, setting out on a long journey, takes with him as [little] different supplies as possible, so that it [is not] difficult for him to go, so that weights do not hinder him, do not occupy him or stop him, and, in the event of an attack by robbers, so that the latter do not have anything to become attached to and because of which to kill him. Christians are also all wanderers. You, friend of Christ, do not value earthly blessings at all, whatever they may be. The world gives them a high price, as does the flesh. But the spirit considers everything to be dust, including the human body itself. He gives a price to one thing - this is God and the images of His glory - Angels and people. For the spirit, a thousand rubles and one kopeck have the same dignity, that is, it is better to say, they have no price. How long will we be occupied by blocks or circles of these shiny stones - gold, silver, copper? Or lumps of this sweet debris 89 called sugar? How long will the little things in life, these toys, occupy us? Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. How will it apply? Just as it was given to the Most Holy Virgin Mary, to Whom an Angel brought food, to the Prophet Elijah, to whom Angels and Crows brought food, as to the people of Israel in the desert, as to many reverend fathers who lived in the desert, as to all pious people who are never abandoned by God in [everyday] needs. When we need to satisfy our taste, we don’t discern whether a thing is expensive or not, or sweet, big or small, and the more expensive, sweeter, bigger, the better; Why not observe this, if possible, for our neighbors, who are one body with us? Do not listen to the stingy flesh, say: God, our Heavenly Father, is generous - I also want to be generous, moreover, the whole earth with everything that fills it is His property, like everyone living on it, it is subjugated to all people. The Lord is fire, the Angels are fire, the saints are fire: pray with fiery, fiery prayer to the Lord and His servants and His faithful friends. Alleluia - Angel's song. The praise of simple spirits is simple and laconic. But how much thought, feeling, reverence, amazement at God’s perfections are in this one word! How much gratitude for the blessings of God! Oh, if only we, like the Angels, could ardently glorify the Lord the All-Creator! Success in loving God and your neighbor is visible from how you fight against malice towards your neighbor, which is instilled by the spirits of evil, with various lusts or worldly addictions that drive out the Lord of our hearts from the heart! Therefore, do not be faint-hearted when you feel anger towards someone, but fight courageously and with all your heart against the spirits of evil; when lusts beset your heart, do not weaken, but resist them with all your might, calling on the Lord Jesus for help. July 9. My God! How confused, worried, plunged into cramped conditions, sorrow, humiliation, despondency, darkness was the desire for an earthly reward - the kamilavka, and some kind of envy of the brethren who received the awards. I have sinned, Lord, before You, in Him is all my reward. My reward is with Me [Rev. 22, 12]. I became like children or frivolous and vain, vain women who believe their happiness is when they are smartly dressed, when, for example, they are wearing a red shirt, or a beautiful hat, or a gold bracelet, a cufflink, in general when they see something beautiful and shiny on themselves. How can I wish for a reward for me, so sinful, weak, and omitting so much in my duties? If I do anything good, the glory is to the Lord, not to me, for His power is made perfect in my weakness [2 Cor. 12:9 ], and mine are only sins, imperfections, passions, stumblings, embarrassments. How long will I pay attention to the external, ignoring the internal, neglecting the internal because of the desire for external decorations? For you cannot work for God and wealth. Do not desire external and material crosses, but internal and spiritual ones, so that you may suffer cleansing for the sake of your soul to the Lord, for your sake who suffered. Sorrow and distress for the purification of a soul that has sinned and is constantly sinning against the Lord - this is your reward! Enduring internal and external humiliation for sins is your reward, for after this the soul is cleansed from the filth of sin and becomes more humble, patient, more chaste, kinder, more spiritual. These are your rewards, and not these earthly and material ones that puff up, tie you to the earth and its blessings and distract your eyes from what is above. Heavenly blessings are obtained through sorrows and great labors, selflessness for the Lord and neighbors, and not through earthly rewards. If we work for God, then our reward is in God and from God, and not from people. I will give to everyone according to what you have done [Rev. 22, 12]. The end of everything, the denouement of everything in heaven, at the Judgment. The flesh desires and seeks decorations, distinctions, rewards - the spirit, on the contrary, does not desire and is not concerned about earthly decorations and rewards and is more willing to dress in rags; He considers his sins and various infirmities to be his difference: I am the most sinful, the weakest, the most useless of all - that’s my difference! I am a worthless and ungrateful creature: why do I so often have no peace? - From my free madness: from addiction to earthly goods - sweets, jewelry, money, and because I don’t love my neighbor as myself, and I grieve for his sweets, jewelry, money, contentment. Satan! – Do you mourn when you have abundance in everything, don’t you rejoice? Do you mourn when others are pleased with everything and readily offer you, with love? I give generously, to my own people, not to strangers, although we are all our own to each other, so that through this the Father of generosity and the God of all joy may be glorified. How few comforts the servants have: let them be comforted, even from me, from us, and glorify the bounties of the Lord. Give me, Lord, the grace to be generous - I can’t do this without You. Be generous to your servants, just as God is generous to you, His servant. All their consolation, all their wealth is in you, just as yours is in God and His people! Or what do I say: in you? - In God, for God Himself gives them His gifts through you, providing rich providence for all of us. Oh, how generous the Lord is to people and how stingy people are to each other: rich to poor, great to small, strong to weak! Your good? Oh, how pleasant it is for you: you melt with tenderness and pleasure. Beast! Observe this in relation to your neighbors: as you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 2]. And you, beast, want people not only to treat you equally well, but from time to time to treat you better, or at least equally well, to reward you, and you grieve, turning your nose and heart to the side, you don’t want to go to places where you were treated poorly, sparingly, with low-quality edible substances. What you don’t want for yourself, don’t do to others; what you don’t want from others to yourself, don’t do to others, especially those close to you. Live in the contentment with which the Lord has blessed you; Be kind to everyone, be generous to everyone. It is good for your neighbor, your relative, very good - thank God, say, I thank God for him as for myself, for I, say, would be pleased and would thank God if it were just as good for me. And don’t envy the servant’s ordinary measure of satisfaction (enough is what it should be) - remember that you yourself often do not know the measure. Remember also that the servants have this one pleasure, but you have many others, material and spiritual, which they do not have, especially the spiritual, priceless ones brought by education, spiritual enlightenment, which they are deprived of due to their ignorance and lack of education. God! Give me Your simplicity: I am full of being seduced by the sweets and beauties of this world; May I find all my bliss in love for You and my neighbor. Holy simplicity, resting all in God, placing all sorrow on God, come to me and live in me! I thank You, Lord, for spiritual wisdom that revitalizes and pacifies me. How does addiction to earthly goods separate you from the love of God and from the works of God, from zeal for the glory of God’s name and from love for your neighbors, from the heartfelt correction of duties towards them! The earthly goods to which we are addicted become a strong barrier between God and us! You cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24]. Do you see? You can’t... you want to, but you can’t. Five thousand for the [church] church. A tidbit of sugar, a pie, etc. - a tidbit and a reward: a skufia, a kamilavka, a pectoral cross, an order - and through everything Satan catches us with his bait and removes us from God, and from the philosophies above, inclining us to earthly things. Everything turns into the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life [1 John. 2, 16]. Are the worthy rewarded? Perhaps the recipients of the award are worthy people, only they have already been awarded before the award by their very position, the benefits associated with their title and work, honor, so that they would not be rewarded. The worthy are for the most part not rewarded, and this is for their own good: their reward is from God. Do not divide your heart between the Creator and the creatures, for even earthly artists are rightly insulted when the work of their hands is preferred to themselves or when they are respected, loved, shown affection just because he prepares things that we know and love. Do not give the energy of your soul to food and drink during the table, but give your heart to God and your neighbors who eat and drink with you; eat and drink calmly, indifferently, without greed. Force yourself to be talkative: the word drives away the despondency of the soul, calms, expands the depths of the soul, enlightens, revitalizes it; the word is a golden connection, a chain of intelligent beings. The devil often plunges us into despondency through speechlessness, not allowing us to think, feel and speak freely. Why do I often insult my Creator, that I turn away from Him, my belly, my heart? Cling to the one God at all times and to nothing but Him; clinging to something is idolatry: you cannot work at the same time for God and mammon. If the Lord took everything, do not regret it, for possessions often lie as a barrier and a wall between God and the heart of man [...] with the devil. Let go of creation and unite with God. You want better almost every day, you refine your carnal taste: how do you want to take away his usual measure from your neighbor? You are a beast, an evil, envious, proud animal. You don’t want Elika 90 for yourself, and don’t do it to others. Remember that the old man lives in you - Satan, do not trust him even an inch of anything. And by its fruit you will know it [Matt. 7, 16]. Take away wickedness from your souls [Isa. 1, 16 ]; there is a lot of different wickedness in our souls - for example, we look slyly at the actions of our neighbor, our brother: something in him seems bad, and this is bad, this in him means pride and contempt for me and for people, etc., or it is anger, envy, stinginess, love of money - and then it turns out that all this and the like is a lie, slander, a demonic dream or the dream of our old one, evil person. Let us assume that he has these sins in him, but don’t we ourselves have the same sins? You just need to look at the actions and words of your neighbor, covering his shortcomings: love covers everything [1 Cor. 13:7], forgive his offenses, do good to the enemy. The flesh does not tolerate anything unpleasant, no push, no obstacle, no exhaustion - the spirit rejoices when it has to endure what is unpleasant for the flesh, rejoices in both pushes and beatings, patiently endures various obstacles, knowing that the all-good Provider can turn everything into good, even obstacles and failures; the spirit loves labor and exhaustion, loves to exhaust its body on the earth by lying down, fasting and vigils in prayer, in order to mortify all carnal wisdom. Everything is earth and water, all sweets, all teas, sugar, coffee, fruits, all jewelry, all jewelry, all the bodies of humans and animals, all utensils - everything will go into the earth, and over time, or at a time determined by God, the earth will burn. Why are we fussing? What are we clinging to? Let's worry about dust, about elemental, transitory, disappearing things? Do we cling with our hearts to things that do not have life in themselves, for life is in the Life-Giving Spirit - to things to which it is so deadly to cling? The whole wisdom of a Christian consists in despising the flesh heartily, in deed and in truth, not to put a price on anything earthly, to consider everything as rubbish and to constantly cleave to God with all your heart and to love all your neighbors as brothers, to feel sorry for everyone, to pray for everyone, to wish with all your heart the same thing that is needed, that is, the salvation of the soul and deliverance from the passions that hold them 91 and from the snares of the enemy. Place your whole life, all happiness, contentment, all success in God, rely on Him alone, and do not give this honor to creatures - sweets, money, influential persons (or beautiful ones), that is, do not place your life, happiness, contentment, success, strength in them. This is gross deception of the heart and idolatry. There is a lot, he says, on the table, and he grieves - but why? He envies the good of his relatives, that they will be painfully full and eat deliciously. There will be a lot left, he says. All this would be fine for one person, otherwise it needs to be shared with others. What anger! I have a plentiful meal - and glory to God, glory to His bounties, otherwise I envy myself that there is a lot of cooked food on the table, a lot is prepared. Oh, malice, envy, stinginess! I am angry with myself, I envy myself, I am stingy with myself. Or again, a lot, I say, tea has been brewed, sugar has been chopped coarsely! Oh, malice, oh, envy, oh, stinginess to yourself! Oh, incomprehensible greed! Oh, blind hope for food and drink! God! Enlighten and save me! Oh, jaded scoundrel that I am! Where would I rejoice in the bounty of the Lord, I grieve. Wherever my heart expands, I am constrained by the womb. I am all flesh! But outside the table and food I am spacious, contemplative, calm, cheerful. And my meal is a net, and a catch, and a temptation, and a reward - and take out my backbone 92 [Ps. 68, 23 – 24]. But every day there is an ordinary table of tea and sugar. Why am I embarrassed? O my enemy, my flatterer, my destroyer! Get away from me. Instead of clinging to the one God and hoping in the one God, the enemy seduces us and induces us to rely on food, drink, money and with it turns us away from God, arms us against Him, cuts off hope in Him; Instead of joyfully serving one’s neighbors with earthly blessings and using them as means to express love, the enemy teaches and forces one to turn earthly blessings into a means of disgust from one’s neighbors, pride and contempt, envy and stinginess; turns them into a reason for anger towards others. Oh, villains! Oh, our darkness! Our pride! Why is it that in all houses, apartments, all fathers and mothers, all spouses and singles, in all government educational institutions, food and drink and everything necessary for life is found and offered every day? Because the Heavenly Father cares for all of them and sends everything to them daily and all the days of their life; so from the beginning of the world for 7,370 years until now and will be until the end of the century - and not just because the heads of families or people in general care! What would come of all our labors and worries if the Lord did not reward our labors? They would have smashed their forehead, but would have gotten nothing. Everything is Lord. Oh, glory to You, the wise and most kind and inexhaustible Provider! So, carelessly rely on the Father, on the Heavenly Father. He cares about everyone. And when we are content, we forget. Everything depends on me differently - thank God: there is less burden for the flesh, for everything earthly is burdened by the subtle spirit that soars towards God, towards the heavenly, and binds its spiritual wings. What a difference - freedom from flesh and blood! Do not worry about food and drink and sweets, about their destruction, even rejoice about their destruction. because they, when we cleave to them, strongly oppose piety and the love of God and love for people: whoever is greedy for food and drink becomes a hater of mankind. Let us despise everything earthly, so that we may truly live by the Spirit. I suffered greatly during the Ascension Vigil from my addiction to earthly things - to money, to food and drink: I despised the poor woman, became embittered with her, did not want to see her, because she often asks me for money - while the Lord has mercy on me constantly, generously and tunously sends me money and everything I need and, although I sin gravely many times every day, He forgives me everything through my prayer and His mercies. deprives me, continues to love me and expect my conversion and correction! What kind of love do I have for my neighbor when I do not wish for his well-being in the same way as for myself, when I do not contribute to his well-being? Why am I afraid of generous alms, when the Lord promised an infinitely great reward for it - pardon at His Last Judgment, when He promised a reward for every cup of water given in His name or to His lesser brothers? We are of little faith, we are cowardly! We are earthly! Is this how we repay the Lord, who [bowed] the heavens for us, and exhausted Himself, and stretched out His hand on the cross, and died, and rose again, and raised everything with Himself? Truly, I have nothing of my own - everything of God and man is given to me. Look at yourself, at all your family, relatives and guests during a home meal, so see that you are eating and drinking their goodness, and not they are yours, or, moreover, look at the meal as a pure gift of God’s love for everyone, given to everyone, for what are our labors, what are they and what are they worth? Our labors are often our untruths, our negligence, our impurities, our inability, our weaknesses, our slumbers, and therefore they deserve not rewards, but God’s punishment; and if they are carried out conscientiously, well and successfully, then this benefits us and those around us, the work becomes a reward for us, it calms, comforts, enlivens, expands our spirit, and material reward is a direct gift from God; if we sweat, we work a lot, we get tired, we are exhausted in our work - this is a penance worthy of us for sins, imputed to us for cleansing and serving to atone for the unrighteousness of sin, and again, even work itself until we sweat is the mercy of God for us, even if it is not sufficiently rewarded from the material side. Thus, all our material wealth is a pure gift from God; we must humbly use this gift of God, in moderation, not allowing ourselves to become satiated with it, for woe to those who are saturated [Lk. 6, 25], share it with love and in simplicity of heart with others. Know the limits in the consumption of food and drink: the devil nests in satiety (that is, in excessively taken food and drink) and torments us. And what kind of madness is it on our part to overeat and get drunk when we know that afterwards we will certainly have to suffer? Oh, the charm of the flesh, the charm of the enemy! How little my flesh needs and how much I eat and drink! How often I sin! We must live by You, Lord, but I, damned one, live on food and drink, or what am I saying? – I constantly suffer from them. I learned how painful and destructive it is to be greedy, to work for the belly, flesh and blood, and how good, life-giving, calming, strengthening, sweet it is to work for the Lord God! May I work for the only Lord God! Determination! Solid! My Lady, most holy and most blessed Mother of God, I thank You that You interceded for me at the Ascension Vigil (in the Assumption Church) and gave me the grace to perform my prayers without stumbling. Be jealous of the great Moses in abstinence and meekness: he did not have the incorruptible, Divine meat of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, and yet he fasted for forty days and nights. Will we be jealous of perishable food and drink, will we be greedy, will we not be jealous of abstinence and fasting, having this immortal food? O priests of the Lord! Look at your life. Do not drink or eat too much liquid, without measure, so that later there is no need to cry out in tears the excess liquid you have consumed - you should always be moderate and extremely moderate in food and drink. So, we need a little. Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine [Matt. 7, 6]. Who are these dogs and pigs? The satiated, the drunkards, the adulterers, the money-lovers. Who is the shrine? Holy Mysteries, the word of God. Should members of Christ begrudge the gifts of God? Every Christian is a member of Christ. We must consider it happiness and pleasure that we have the opportunity to give alms to those truly in need, and the more, the more generously, the better for us - the greater the reward from Christ God; God loves only a cheerful giver [2 Cor. 9, 7]. (But I, the accursed one, became embittered with Paraskovya Mikhailovna, and for this the devil tormented me terribly, burned me, scorched me, humiliated me, and oppressed me.) If anyone does not want to do it, let him eat [2 Thess. 3, 10]. Who is this non-doer? This is me, who does not do the commandments of Christ, especially the commandments of love; It is I who is always ready to turn the commandment of truth and love into a reason for anger and stinginess regarding those living with me; It’s me who sees the knot in my brother’s eye, but doesn’t see the log in myself. God! Teach me meekness, kindness of heart and humility towards those who sin, for I myself am the greatest sinner. Teach me kindness and friendliness towards Your people. And consider money as nothing, and all food and drink as nothing, and clothes also as nothing, so that you always have due respect and love for people and do not be upset for them, do not become embittered, do not envy, do not skimp because of attachment to perishable things. The Lord became man to heal our infirmities, to cleanse our sins, to bear our burdens, to deliver us from our sorrows, to be our light, our peace, our strength, our Savior. If the Lord did not spare His Only Begotten Son, but gave Him up for us all, then how will He not give us every good thing with Him? [Rom. 8, 32]. Let us only adhere to Him unswervingly and repent unfeignedly. He will turn everything for good, all the machinations of our enemies, like the machinations of David’s enemies, and he will bring forth, like light, our righteousness and our destiny, like noonday 93 [Ps. 36, 6]. It is a sin to be despondent with Him, even if we have done something wrong - despondency does even more harm to the sin committed, the fault, relaxing, constricting and darkening the heart: the enemy usually always tries to add another sin to sin, for example, to the fault of another - anger at him, to his own fault - despondency, in order to relax everyone’s hands for good and correction. But if you have fallen, repent immediately and rise up. The Lord is merciful and rejoices at the conversion of the erring, and He appears as a quick help to all who mourn and have hope in Him. So, Master, arrange everything for my good. I trust in You! Allow me to accept all comments complacently and with joy and gratitude, cutting off my pride and opinion about my deeds, as if they were irreproachably good. Let me show you the correction in everything. God! I thank You with all my heart for this day, the day of Your great mercy towards me, and for the fact that 1) You deigned to help me successfully perform the Divine Liturgy for the funeral in the Manege, in the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker; 2) for having made me worthy to partake of the Holy Mysteries without condemnation into the world of my spiritual powers and into space and into joy and blessing; 3) for having vouchsafed me to see Priest John (Tsvetkov) and Deacon Peter (of the Naval Department) performing the liturgy beautifully, and vouchsafed me to see in one a firm primacy, and in the other, quick, humble obedience without reflection and grief or capriciousness and embarrassment. God! Give me grace from this moment on none of my neighbors and not to have the most absurd, scorching, darkening, oppressive anger towards anything! And then she got into the habit of coming to me and playing dirty tricks! Malice is the devil, malice is death! And fornication, and all uncleanness, may never exist in my heart for any length of time. Wake up! All our sins and passions are like ulcers on the soul, and you feel that, for example, anger at your neighbor does not harm your neighbor, but it feels like an ulcer on my soul. So this ulcer aches, it scorches or stings, it darkens and oppresses, and deprives one of freedom. The same is pride, and envy, and stinginess, and love of money, and stubbornness with disobedience, and despondency, and greed for food and drink. And if so, then we must feel sorry for the entire human family, [brotherhood], and have compassion and condescension with them, and not be irritated at those who sin, not become embittered, and not exact everything from them. Castes in life, or different religions, castes in sciences - there is no unity. Who cares? Refrain from food and drink when you feel fullness and fullness of vitality in your sides and do not irritate your taste with pleasant foods and drinks, otherwise food and drink will not strengthen you, but weaken your body and soul; do not have dinner often, although dinner is prepared, refuse an invitation to the table, take care of your spirit and body for the glory of God. House of Israel... House of Christ (Christians), house of the Lord (Church). Although the wolf bites you, do not lose courage and good spirits and do your job; snakes bite you, but you know your business. The wolf is the devil, snakes are spirits of evil. When sin draws you to its side, rapes you, then show your loyalty to the Lord by not succumbing to the violence of sin; when the enemy draws you to malice, strengthen yourself in gentleness, do not allow malice to take over you, do not agree with it, do not become embittered towards your brother on your own, so that you will not be one spirit with the spirit of malice; when the spirit of fornication attracts you, stand in chastity, do not deign to lust, do not delight in fornication, lust, lest you be one spirit with the unclean spirit, lest he laugh at your carnality, at your frivolity, at your instability in holiness and chastity, at your changeability, at your disrespect for the commandments of the Lord; when the spirit of despondency or envy, love of money, stinginess, pitying material goods for your neighbor again attracts you - fight it firmly, knowing where the wind is blowing, and do not deign to the demon of despondency and sadness contrary to God, the demon of insatiable greed, do not delight in the presentation of pieces of silver, pieces of paper that have the price of gold and silver, but remember that our nature needs a little, precisely in the essential, that only the old, earthly man, friendly with the devil, thirsts for a lot, so that he, like a worm in dung, could have somewhere to grovel, burrow, feed on this earthly pus and live in this decay and pus; remember the words of the Lord: give us our daily bread today, and do not desire to possess treasures that would last for many years and which were possessed by the crazy rich man who said: soul! you have a lot of good things... so that it won’t be said to you: you’re crazy! [ OK. 12, 19]. When I look at the Holy Mysteries, I think: oh, our nobility, to what extent God’s love has ennobled and exalted us and how we use our nobility! We are likened to Cherubim, Seraphim, thrones on which God rests, especially the priests. O heavenly service! Desiring an earthly reward or regretting not receiving it, I am deprived of the inner, life-giving, incorruptible, holy, Divine reward - spiritual peace, the peace of God, the Life-giving Spirit, the Kingdom of God within myself, which is the height of desire for every Christian. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. You receive glory from each other, but you do not seek the glory that is from the One God [Jn. 5, 44]. Do I desire a vain, earthly reward, which is the subject of so much harassment, bowing, groveling, and servility? Will I seek an earthly reward, seeking which I will necessarily neglect the heavenly reward and lose the heavenly reward, for I will accept my own reward? Can I work for God and mammon? Can I be a friend of the world and a friend of God? - No; I will listen to my Lord, Who says in the Gospel: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break through and steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also [Matt. 6, 19 – 21 ]; and the Apostle Paul: I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; and now there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me [2 Tim 4:7-8]. Chief Shepherd, Lord Jesus Christ! I serve You, You penetrate me and know, You know both my falls and my uprisings; You know all my inner and outer service; You alone can adequately reward or punish me! Forgive me that I desired a perishable earthly reward and lost sight of the perfect reward - heavenly, incorruptible. Whoever loves the world, with its corruptible and vain rewards, does not have the love of the Father in him [1 Jn. 2, 15]. Oh, how terrible this is! God! Don't let me be in such a misconception! Don't let me lose Your love. Remember how dear I am to You in Your Only Begotten Son! Look at the priceless drops of the blood of Your Son, shed for my sake! Look at His most cruel sufferings, which He endured for my sake, and let me forever belong to You, the Father of bounties and the God of all joy. Crown me with Your saints - martyrs, saints and other saints! The spiritual weakness of a brother in priestly service in itself is worthy of great pity, especially if it comes from negligence or from the weakness of the flesh. If you see a brother who is unkind to you, or angry with you, or treats you with contempt and carelessness, or serves negligently in the church, do not respond to him with evil for evil, ill will for ill will, malice for malice, contempt and negligence for contempt and negligence, but on the contrary, take pity on him and pray for him, as for a weak and imperfect member of yours, especially a member Christ, - for we all bear the wounds of sins and we cannot do anything good without the Lord Jesus Christ; all of us, even the evil and weak brother, are images of God, but we all bear the wounds of sins, all the royal drachmas, although rusted by passions, and passionate wounds were laid on all of us by the enemy - therefore, we all deserve mutual complicity, mutual condolences and fervent, fervent prayer, and not bitterness and irritation, this new ulcer. Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11, 29]. Do you hear, children of the old Adam, angry and irritable? Learn from the New Adam! God remained true to Himself, creating man in His image and likeness. He always at all times highly valued His image and likeness, always called him to reunite with Himself; He appeared to Abraham in the form of [men], He spoke in the prophets, and finally, to save him, He sent His Only Begotten Son into the world. So God loved the world, His image and likeness - man. Everything is Lord, you are nothing. Worlds of the Universe! I am God's breath; I am a part of the world in my body, I am a part of the Divine in my soul. Worlds of the Universe! God bears you with His word, and my body also, and even more so my soul; through the well-being of the soul, He maintains the well-being of the body and the strength of the body, as well as through the surrounding elements and orders of physical life. Rest in God, my soul! Place all your hope, all your sorrow on Him; He is always with you, looks at you, knows all your needs, wants and can always satisfy them and satisfies them, and will satisfy them again. Then food and drink turn into health and joy for us, when we have fellowship of love with each other. Keep abstinence - and you will always be in God; keep humility, meekness, kindness - and you will always be in God. Listen to your heart: you have only one, as simple as a thought, like lightning. Bishop to priests: do you go to visit each other, do you have fraternal communication? By this everyone will know; that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another [Jn. 13, 35]. The history of the Old Testament aims to show that the whole world is a creation of God from nothingness, that man is the image and likeness of God, that in body he is from the earth and is earth and, therefore, should not cleave to the flesh, but in soul he is from God, is His image and likeness and must cleave to Him; that man was created immortal for eternal bliss in God, that the devil and his minions are deceitful and evil, and from them all evil and death are the greatest evil; that man fell into sin and distorted the image of God in himself and lost the likeness of God and, as punishment for this, is subject to all disasters, illnesses and death at the instigation of the devil; that God promised to redeem fallen humanity and prepared him for this; that in the fulfillment of God’s commandments is all the bliss of man, and in the violation of His holy laws is all disaster; that sin is a lie, good is the truth. God of love! Make my heart free from love. God! Everything is Yours to everyone, nothing is mine. Just as I sit calmly at a party at a meal, so let me sit calmly at home with my own people, sparing nothing for anyone, like God’s gifts, like the rubbish and dust of the earth, let everything turn to me as a reason for love. Grant me the breadth of love, Lord! Yes, I remember that the devil is treacherous over me during the table, that greed and pity are the devil. May I consider my service to be God’s greatest mercy to me and its very great reward, and all earthly blessings are Yours, the master’s good. We are one, we are God's children, worthy of equal care from Him - may we all live in love. You, my belly, You, unspeakable love, may my heart never lose. You are in the heart - and everything is with You. May I seek the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Who reigns in us through the various lusts and passions? - Devil. Oh, most absurd in manifold passions! God! Grant me the simplicity of Your life. Grant me to despise the flesh, but to appreciate You alone and Your animated images. There is one my soul, one God of my life, one God of my soul and my body. The devil strengthens himself to be my god, my king through sensuality, raping me with sensuality. I thank You, Lord, that in Your great mercy You have granted me to live victoriously in two classes (second and third) and in good faith. The enemy breathed into the heart from the sin of Sodom, but was repelled by the name of the Lord. (May 17.) That same day I visited Andrey Alex. Petrova; At the entrance, the enemy disgraced one of his sons, a cadet, with partiality and humiliation in his heart, and then with a desire for perishable food. So I washed away my heart. But it is reflected in the name of the Lord. Sat in peace. They said they sinned: more empty. Reverence before man as before the work of the most pure hands of God, as before the image of God. Oh, wonderful are your works, O Lord, all of you, and man in particular, have created with wisdom ecu 94. And we dare to desecrate Your creation! And the devil dares to curse the work of Your hands, O Lord, and has multiplied his curses to infinity! But You will torment him according to his inheritance in fiery hell. Your judgment, Lord, will not affect you, and it is necessary. Spare us in it, O Christ our God, and deliver us from parts of the world. You are a warrior of Christ God - what is it like to fight? Thought, word, deed are one. Take care of your neighbor’s personality as if it were your own, cherish his peace of mind as if it were your own, show him affection as you wish it for yourself, console him if he is sad as you wish comfort for yourself; Apologize to the offended, compensate for the offense, replace the loss, condescend to the weaknesses, forgive the sin, extinguish the passion [of anger] with pure love. Most commonly, the devil reigns in us as powerlessness of the heart for love of God and neighbor, as powerlessness for words, as coldness and insensitivity towards God and neighbor, as insincerity, deceit or a crafty view of the words and actions of our neighbor, as suspicion, as bitterness, irritability, envy, ill will and malice, stinginess, greed for food and drink, hope for food and drink; like the love of money, covetousness, like Sodomy and natural uncleanness, like pride and contempt; as doubt in the truths of faith revealed by the Gospel, for example, doubt in the eternity of torment, sometimes as dumbness for prayer, as aversion from prayer, from the church, from the word of God and the writings of the holy fathers and books of spiritual content in general; as false shame, for example, of the rites of faith, as hysterical laughter, as despondency and cowardice, as rudeness, foul language, idle talk, condemnation, idolatry, infidelity in words, perjury; as idleness and laziness regarding the performance of tasks assigned to us by duty, public service, etc., as relaxation for everything good and holy, as strength for everything [...], as a desire for the carnal and worldly. O hundred-headed or, more specifically, thousand-headed monster - Satan! Who will escape your clutches? - Wholly clinging to God, in simplicity and humility of heart, loving God with all his heart, choosing God as the possession of his heart, like David, and wanting nothing but Him, neither in heaven nor on earth, and loving his neighbor as himself, at all times, and considering everything earthly to be nothing, no better than rubbish, dirt, smoke, steam, and exchanging all flesh for hay (which soon fades, dries up and decays), for decay, and rightly considers Satan to be a dreamer, not having any truth in himself, a constant adversary and enemy of the south and man. We must always pray with heartfelt attention, calmly. Look at the older servant as a mother, at the younger one as a sister, and in accordance with this, have a disposition of heart towards them. Do not spare anything for them, as for your heart, for your womb. Moreover, look at your father-in-law as your own father, your sister-in-law, your wife’s sister, as your own sister, and always have a filial-brotherly relationship with them, love them as your soul, your womb, as your flesh and blood, and as yourself, do not spare anything for them. That's why God sends you everything. The whole earth and everything on it has been brought under the feet of man. But remember that we are all earth in body, and if we go to earth, we will be dust. Look at everything as passing dust, as nothing, for everything is from nothing, everything that is visible is temporary, but what is invisible is eternal [2 Cor. 4, 18]. No substance will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God [1 Cor. 15, 50]. The Kingdom of God is not food and drink [Rom. 14, 17]. In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but remain like the Angels of God in heaven [Matt. 22, 30]. Eat less, only to maintain life and strength, and not for pleasure, and you will always be cheerful, fresh, strong; remember that food is given to support life, and not for pleasure. Eating food for pleasure is deceit. Use every food as hay, without giving it value in your heart (for it is the dust of the earth, only wisely and omnipotently transformed by the Lord), and every drink - like water and slop, for it is the same water, only wisely and omnipotently transformed and revived by the Lord. Cling to the only Lord and value Him above all else; let Him be the everlasting treasure of your heart. But so that food and drink do not dominate your heart, use them in the most moderate quantities and severely, remembering that food destroyed us and through food we united with the devil, the murderer and the worst enemy of God and ours. February 22, 1865. Spicy seasonings, such as horseradish, mustard, pepper - use as little as possible: they excite and sharpen the blood. Eating fresh fish soup is good. Ides are good to eat - they are easy. A glass of vodka before dinner is good for digestion, and even in the evening before a snack - half a glass. Strengthens and encourages. From sweets, meats, milk, cow's butter, the heart becomes very coarse and turns away from God and from the love of one's neighbor. Lenten, light food thins and lightens the heart. The milk feels heavy in my limbs. You should write letters to your relatives more often. Just worry less about pleasing the womb: this is the child’s business, not the husband’s. Think about your soul. You don't need to eat salad with vinegar. You shouldn't drink coffee, you shouldn't drink sweet tea. Eating and drinking sweets is of no use. Don't eat or drink when you don't feel like eating or drinking. The director and inspector are consumed by ordinary envy of me - I will receive a salary, and a large one. The director acts through the inspector as an instrument, and the inspector tells me. But I don’t differ in front of them, I don’t do things for show. But we really need to pay serious attention to children, so that everything will work out for our good. After all, they are not jealous about bad things. Don't be too upset that children don't answer some questions. The disciples did not know the answers to when bread and wine are transformed into life-giving Mysteries. Why am I thinking? In You, Lord, I place my hope; with You I am not powerless. If I have sinned in any way, forgive me and guide me on the path of Your commandments. But it is also very useful for me to explain the Gospel and the Apostle to children before the Liturgy. Notice the weeds among your children and remove them. Not all Gospel events can be transmitted, just like the evangelists. The most necessary ones. The darkness of passions and addictions to temporary goods from the Sun of truth, from the truth of God, dissipates, like darkness with the rising of the sun. Oh, how necessary for the good of man is the knowledge of the truth of God and the knowledge of the real meaning of all things, and especially the knowledge that in the one God is the rest of our heart, in God, who is everything to us, and in addiction to things there is only sorrow, crampedness, darkening of the spirit, slavery, humiliation of the spirit, its pettiness, while it should always be great and exalted, like an eagle soaring in the heights. The coolness of the Lord in the soul, freedom, peace, lightness, space, light, sweetness. At night, don’t have a separate snack and don’t listen to anyone’s invitations to the table: drink tea with a bun or whatever, and that’s enough - don’t eat again in an hour or two. What kind of childishness is this? How long to play with food and drink? What kind of fun is this, especially for a communicant of the Divine Mysteries, who so often receives them? You must live in constant fasting and abstinence. Look, it’s dangerous to make jokes about sin. The belly, satiated with food, and the heart adjacent to it are unfaithful, contemptuous of the words of the saints, and this is because through satiety, a common enemy enters the heart - a liar, a despiser of the holy and the words of saints and [divinely inspired] men. The words of the Holy Scriptures and the holy fathers do not come to our hearts when we have eaten a hearty meal, especially meat and milk. Oh, it is necessary to hunger for the salvation of the soul, so that the soul is satisfied. Drinking strong tea is positively harmful, especially high grade tea. One glass of tea isn’t harmful, but two, especially three, will lead to severe heart heaviness. Tested. The harm in spiritual terms from enjoying food and drinks and from excess in their use is extremely great: coldness and insensibility towards God and neighbor, neglect of the matter of saving one’s soul, of which there is nothing more important, addiction to earthly vanities, which all pass away like smoke, hypocrisy, insensibility and heaviness during worship, public or home prayer and when reading the word of God, the scriptures of saints fathers. God! Inspire in me a strong and irresistible desire to eat and drink only twice a day, no more - at lunch and then evening tea; give me the courage to enter into the struggle with the womb and overcome its whims, so that I no longer work for the devil and my flesh, which is vile and disgusting to You and friendly to the devil. God! Give me, teach me to crucify my flesh with passions and lusts. Give me the everlasting memory that it is necessary for me to crucify her, for otherwise I am not a Christian, but a pagan. As it was in the days of Noah... they ate, they drank... as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank... [Lk. 17, 26 – 28]. But here they eat, drink, smoke, and play. Each word in a holy book, for example in the Trebnik, is higher and more precious than each of those present, as flesh and blood, as old, sinful people, and as renewed, saints - equally: this is how important the sacred word is, the word of the Savior, His holy Church, the pure bride, unshakable, invincible through the gates of hell. And you, carnal, passionate, how many times have these gates overcome you! Strengthen yourself in the name of the Lord. If a few features are missing from a picture, the picture is not complete; if there is a lot, the picture is pale and incorrect, does not correspond to reality. Blasphemy and slander of holy things, prodigal abomination of all kinds, or animal sweetness, shameful, malice, pride and contempt, addiction of the heart to corruptible goods, despondency of fallen pride that has stumbled in something, despondency, cowardice, dumbness in the word of faith, hypocrisy - these are the works of Satan in us. There are also demons of absent-mindedness and talkativeness that attack especially in the church, for example, during marriage, demons of laughter. Do not get carried away by the pleasantness of foods and drinks and do not allow yourself to eat a lot, but no matter how pleasant the food or drink is, know your limits; Through immoderation you harm both body and soul: you expose the body to disease, and introduce hordes of demons of intemperance into the soul. Eat less gruel and porridge. And it’s really dangerous for my wife to go to [...], now she might catch a cold. Be afraid to eat cream: it is fatty and bad for you. Tolerate the stench of your neighbor in your home and do not hate him because of the stench; do not commit a great sin because of this empty, insignificant thing. Let everything happen to you with meekness and love. Let love be your element by the grace of God. If you see a neighbor who is greedy, lustful, and satiated daily (from your household), then first rebuke yourself, condemn yourself as a sensualist, and pray earnestly for your neighbor, pray to the Lord, but do not reproach him, for reproach is annoying and does not happen in the spirit of love. Love covers everything, endures everything. When you are jealous about the correction of others, first be jealous about your own correction and think about whether you are jealous about your own flesh, about satisfying its waywardness and malice? Buckwheat spread is good to eat in moderation. Cream with horseradish and tea separately. Instead of tea, drink warmth from the horn 95. Don't trust the powder. Eat buckwheat porridge. Put your money in a special wallet. Do not eat skim milk; meat too. And don't eat whole milk. It’s hard, and the tea is heavy with it. Tea and coffee solutions are deceiving. Don't look. [...] Fresh oranges and fresh milk are good for scrofulous; oranges are weak. Burgonian. Bordeaux 96. The words of Elder Eutykhios are coming true: Paraskeva Mikhailovna got married. Police chief Svinkin is out, another is in his place. Just as a beautiful face awakens passion for it, so do soft prosphyras; [moreover] the face of a person who is unfavorable to us arouses hatred towards him. Do not serve mass at the cathedral outside the city, but leave it to the cemetery clergy. Do not offend the clergy with your interference and do not displace them. Otherwise, we perform funeral services for the dead here and in the cemetery. That’s why mental troubles happen to me. Give up greed for money, because all this is done out of greed for it. Give up greed for food and drink: because of it, neighbors, sick and healthy, are neglected, for whom needs must be fulfilled, for the greedy rushes to food and drink, and not to the sick or generally not to his spiritual children. Cabbage produces large amounts of mucus in the stomach and clogs the larynx. Do not spare your servants - the threshing oxen - tea and sugar. If you measure with them, the Lord God will measure for you [Matt. 7, 2], they too will measure with their zeal. Do not give to idle parasites, but give to them in abundance: from you alone, as from God, they look for all material blessings. Be merciful to them, as our Heavenly Father is merciful to all of us. Mercies and generosity come to you from many, and to them only from you. God! Give me a kind and generous heart. [D...] is ten times better than me. And no matter how you look at it, everyone is better than me! By the infinite goodness of God, only I am a priest and teacher of the law. Dream (Church Slavic) – an empty, false idea, a ghost. He brought the whole world from non-existence into existence. Prayer for the consecration of water from the Sacrament of Baptism. Obviously, this means Evgeniy Alekseevich Popov (1824 - 1888), archpriest of the city of Perm, a theologian who wrote many works on religious and moral topics. “Satiety is the beginning of all evil, for along with luxury and delicacies arise all types of intemperance” (St. Basil the Great). Prince (Church Slavic) - one of the meanings of the word is the top log on the gate; “princes of the gates” - the overdoors, the upper crossbars of the gate, raised to allow passers-by to pass through. “Lift up your heads, O gates,” are the gates of the Zion Fortress through which David carried the Ark of the Covenant. For the Lord, King of Kings, walking in the image of the Ark, these gates seemed small. Wordless (church glory) – meaningless, unspiritual, unreasonable. Contempt (church glory) – neglect, disrespect, arrogance. Simple – here: whole, indivisible into parts. Completion (church glory) – completion, fulfillment: consecration. Prelest (church glory) – delusion, deception; seduction. Hymn for Vespers Light is quiet... Fat (Church Glav.) – fat; sweetness (fat - plump, fat, venerable). Ever (Church Glorious) – always, constantly. Tune (Church Glorious) - in vain; for nothing. Smart (church glory) - spiritual, reasonable. Vynu (Church Glav.) - always. Existing (Church Glorious) - the same as the Son, one of the names of God - truly, truly existing, eternal. Abiding (Church Slavic) – unceasing eternal (from “abide” - to remain, to last forever). Simple (Church Glav.) – here: open, direct, clean. I will sing a song of thanksgiving (church glory) - I will sing a song of thanksgiving (I will offer up). The prayer of St. John of Damascus “Master, Lover of Mankind, is this bed for me...” from the sequence of prayers for the future sleep. Prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos from the sequence of morning prayers. Creation (church glory) – re-creation, renewal. Rejoice, Head of mental creation [Russian: Rejoice, Originator of spiritual rebirth] (Akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, Ikos 10) Synclite (Greek) – the highest spiritual or secular government. Whole (church-glorified) – simple, pure, immaculate. Zolotnik is an old Russian unit of weight equal to 4.26 g. I depict (church glory) - I represent the likeness and become like; I represent myself or have an image in myself. Worker (Church Slav.) – slave, subordinate, subject. Obnosti (Church Glav.) – to carry around, to distribute. Prayer of St. John Chrysostom from the sequence of prayers for the sleep of the future. Besprikladny (church-glory) – unparalleled, incomparable. The true shrine - that is, true, authentic. Navetovati (Church Slavic) – to attempt; plot and slander. Succession (church glory) – improvement. Second prayer of the faithful “Once again, and many times...” from the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Fr. Troparion to the monk in general. A prayer read by a priest at the liturgy while singing the Cherubic Song. Ouds (Church Slavic) – members of the body. Tolikiye (Church Glorious) – so great, so many. That is, a tendency to quarrel and dissatisfaction with others (gnawy - grumpy, grumpy, grumpy). Obsequious (church-glory) – just as susceptible to suffering, as fragile as we are. Second member of the Creed. Sadness (Church Glav.) – care, care; sorrow. “To rule over man, this most cunning and most changeable of animals, is truly the art of arts and the science of sciences,” wrote St. Gregory the Theologian (“The 3rd Sermon in which the saint justifies his departure to Pontus after his ordination as a presbyter and his return from there, and also teaches how important the rank of the priesthood is and what a bishop should be”). Carefree (Church Slavic) – having no worries, uncaring. Despair (Church Glav.) – despair, confusion. Uranity (Church Glav.) – to strike, to wound. Prayer “And grant to us, O Master Lord, when we go to sleep...” from the celebration of Great Compline. It’s cold (Church Slavic) – it embarrasses, bothers, annoys. I form (church glory) - I agree; I'm conspiring. Belial (Heb.) – lit.: insignificant, worthless. In the Bible, this word is applied to all depraved, wicked and evil people, but especially to Satan, as the main culprit of all wickedness and evil. Guilty (Church Slavic) – is the cause (“guilt” – cause, source). Prayer 4 of St. Macarius the Great “What will I bring to You...” from the sequence of prayers for the sleep of the future. Torture (Church Glav.) – strictly interrogate, test, check: demand, ask back. Letorosl (Church Slav.) – a sprout, a young branch. Rebirth (Church Glorious) – rebirth, new life. The Bath of Rebirth is called the Sacrament of Baptism. Zeal (Church Slavic) – diligence, zeal (from Greek – object of love, aspiration). Edification (Church Slavic) – creation (“edify” – create). 59 Prisny (Church Slavic) – close, dear. Prisny (Church Slavic) – close, dear. Navetnik (Church Slavic) – slanderer, traitor, insidious, cunning person. Troparion “Glorious Mother of God...” from the sequence of prayers for the sleep of the future. Part (Church Glav.) – fate, property, share. Vitalishche (Church Glav.) – dwelling, shelter. Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian “Lord and Master of my life. ." Misfortune (Church Slavic) – here it means: adversity, calamity, misfortune. Fanatic - here: a person who, while defending his beliefs, treats those who have different opinions with hatred, showing intolerance (“to disbelieve” - to certify, to convince, to force to believe). Our soul is filled with contempt from the prosperous and humiliation from the proud (translation by P. Yungerov). Knee (Church Glav.) – clan, generation. Troparion of the 1st song of the 9th canon to the Archangels. The exclamation of the priest at matins. Saint Gregory the Theologian says: “The human mind is like a mirror. If he is turned to God, then the body, this mirror of the mirror, subordinate to the mind, carries within itself a reflection of his Divine beauty.” God, according to John of Damascus, inhabits the bodies of saints through the mind (Exact exposition of the Orthodox faith. Book 4, chapter 15, art. 3). First member of the Creed. We are guilty of work (church glory) - we are in slavery. Dominates (church-slav.) – enough, enough (impersonal verb). Irmos 7 songs of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, read on Monday of the First Week of Great Lent. Rus.: The desire to become equal to the Creator was instilled in me by the all-evil serpent, who kidnapped me like a captive into his power; By You, Most Pure One, I was freed, truly united with God, for You, Mother of God, gave birth to Him who made me a partaker of the Divine. Theotokos of the 1st hymn of the canon to the apostles and St. Nicholas the wonderworker. A beggar has been provided for you [Ps. 9, 35] (translation by P. Yungerov). Postavlyati (Church Glav.) – to elevate, to erect. From inuda (Church Glav.) – from somewhere else (“inuda” – in another place). Neklyuchim (Church Slav.) - useless, worthless. The life of the holy Apostle John the Theologian describes such an incident, which is testified to by the ancient teacher of the Church Clement of Alexandria. When the Apostle John walked around the cities in Asia, in one of them he saw a young man with a soul disposed to a good deed; the holy Apostle taught and baptized him. Intending to leave from there to preach the Gospel, he entrusted this young man to the bishop of that city in front of everyone, so that the shepherd would teach him every good deed. The bishop, having taken the young man, taught him the Scriptures, but did not take as much care of him as he should have, and did not give him the kind of education that befits young men, but, on the contrary, left him to his own will. Soon the boy began to lead a bad life, began to get drunk on wine and steal. Finally, he made friends with robbers, who, having seduced him, took him into the deserts and mountains, made him their leader and committed robbery on the roads. Returning after some time, John came to that city and, having heard about that youth, that he had become corrupted and became a robber, he said to the bishop: “Return to me the treasure that I handed over to you for safekeeping as if in faithful hands; return to me that young man whom I handed over to you in front of everyone so that you could teach him the fear of God.” And the bishop answered with tears: “That young man died, he died in soul, and in body he is robbing the roads.” John said to the bishop: “Is it right for you to guard the soul of your brother? Give me a horse and a guide so that I can go and look for those whom you have destroyed.” When John came to the robbers, he asked them to take him to their commander, which they did. The young man, seeing Saint John, was ashamed and, getting up, ran into the desert. Forgetting his old age, John chased after him, shouting: “My son! Turn to your father and do not despair of your fall; I will take upon myself your sins; stop and wait for me, since the Lord sent me to you.” The young man stopped and fell at the feet of the saint with great trepidation and shame, not daring to look him in the face. John, hugging him with fatherly love, kissed him and brought him into the city, rejoicing that he had found the lost sheep. And he taught him a lot, instructing him in repentance, in which, striving diligently, the young man pleased God, received forgiveness of sins and died in peace. Troparion of the 8th song of the canon of Hodegetria, tone 4. Packs (Church Glav.) - again, again. Diligence (Church Glav.) – care with diligence, persistently. Irmos of the 7th canon of the Theotokos, tone 4. I will follow what I say, and I will do what I teach first. Ikos “Understand my language...” canon at the morning of the feast of the holy supreme apostles Peter and Paul. Troparion of the 7th song of the canon to Saint John the Baptist. Grass stone is a relatively soft, loose stone that is crushed into fine crushed stone - grus. Elika (Church Glav.) – what. Those who hold (church-glory) - those who own them. And bend my spine forever (translated by P. Yungerov). Rus.: And he will bring out our righteousness like light and our justice like noon (Ps. 36:6). Opening Psalm for Vespers. Rogom is a variety of sweet red wine.