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Resurrection. I thank the Lord, who miraculously revived me with the Divine Mysteries of His Body and Blood, for before communion I felt a fierce death in the depths of my being, I was bound hand and foot and could not free myself from the bonds of hell that befell me for yesterday’s incontinence, for drinking vodka, tea with cognac, eating caviar, etc. So many times incontinence has caused me severe spiritual death, the greatest sorrow, oppression, shame, and I have not yet come to the point of giving up gluttony and greed! So much ingrained bad habit! Truly, many are overwhelmed by wealth and the pleasures of this life and do not bear fruit [Lk. 8, 14] Kingdom of God! Oh, intemperance! Intemperance! But I will repeat: marvelous are the Divine Mysteries that have revived me today, a spiritual dead man! It is wonderful to see with my inner eyes the resurrection of the spiritual Lazarus - my soul! Suddenly death is destroyed and the life of Christ reigns in the soul. Glory to the Lord for this! Glory to His longsuffering! Glory to His mercy! And I was close to despair! We commit ourselves and each other (wife, sister-in-law and all household) and our whole life with all the stumbling blocks, weaknesses, adversities, sorrows, disasters, happiness and misfortunes, with insults and oppressions, violence, devouring and parasitism from our neighbors or from loved ones, given to us by God, seeking the only thing we need - the all-suffering love of Christ and leaving it to God Himself to arrange our lives. Let us leave zeal and malice and annoyance at loved ones who offend and devour us, for the Lord will reward us for them if we endure them without malice. I sinned before God and before myself that I ate smelt greedily on the evening of Lent in the Second Week. That's why I seem to have pain in the right side of my chest. God, have mercy on me! Or because, after hot tea and smelt, I ate cold red caviar and cold milk mushrooms and drank a little cold Sauternes. Or out of fright in Nikitin’s outhouse? As a result of drinking cold beer, especially as a result of braiding my hair after a bath, which is extremely rare, I got pain in my right side, scrofulous pain, or stabbing pain - and because of this stabbing pain I did not go to class for two days, did not receive confessors on Friday (in the third week), and paid the doctor and for medicines at the pharmacy, and did not give them to the beggars, and did not go out for air, and broke the fast. That's how many bad consequences there are due to a trifle! In addition, we must add my excitement and anxiety due to the falling out of matches that had fallen from the cabinet. I collected them in a handful, brought them to the table in the office, impatience took over me, threw them on the chair, and began to collect them from the chair. Many matches settled deep on the sides - let's chase the enemies with excitement, others went like bugs into the distant depths, I didn't catch them with my hand, tore the oilcloth, fumbled with my hand for a long time in excitement, swallowed the dust in silence - threw it, exhausted, went to the bathhouse (Monday). This is what haste and impatience mean. I impatiently threw the drapery over the crossbar and dropped the matches. (Recorded March 10, 1873. ) On March 13, I had a dream that I stuck some kind of plaster on a crayfish, took it off - and the plaster was covered in white spots or bumps. Resurrection. (3rd week of Lent.) Worship of the cross. I thank the Lord, for He did not turn His face away from me, but graciously accepted prayer and the service of Matins and Liturgy, bestowed tears of tenderness, and thus, having been pre-cleansed, He made me worthy to partake of the holy, divine, immortal and life-giving Mysteries for cleansing, sanctification, renewal, peace, freedom and joy and healing not only of the soul, but also of the body. I thank the Lord, who accepted my inner repentance through His great mercy and upon entering the gymnasium and worshiping with faith the image of the Lord and the Most Pure Mother of God, who reconciled my soul. I walked all the way from home to the gymnasium, praying and repenting of pride, malice, envy, jealousy, monopoly, covetousness, voluptuousness regarding my Anna Konstantinovna’s stay with me against her will with her children and her arbitrariness regarding non-observance of one-day and multi-day fasts. I lost sight of the fact that love is higher than fasting and prayer. By the grace of the Lord, the pain in my side went away. Today I received a parcel from the Verkolsky Monastery - wooden butter from the holy righteous Artemy. Let me use it with a pure heart. How enviable must my condition be for the devil, that I live and serve not for myself alone, but for many, and, moreover, those who take advantage of my labors for the glory of God, for the salvation of me and my neighbors? It’s obviously enviable when he comes at me every day, oppresses me, worries me, forces me not to serve them, not to please them, to be at enmity with them. Frankly, it’s hard for me to endure his incessant intrigues, his stings that are constantly stabbing into me. Strengthen, Lord, and make me wise to live for others, and not for myself - but instruct, Lord, those who live with me to live in labor, in obedience, in fulfilling Your commandments and the statutes of the Church, so that they will not be a great temptation for me when they fail to fulfill and trample on Your statutes, may they not be a burden to me in my eyes and in my soul, may they not be my enemies according to the Scriptures: they have been my enemies [Ps. [Ps. 138, 21]. Or grant me to be kind to the ungrateful and evil, although, however, my family is grateful, at least in words. God! Do not allow the enemy, through his cunning, to deprive me of my reward for the daily food and peace (under the roof given to me) of orphans and widows and many other orphans standing on the street. Not the deprivation of someone’s earthly love, any comforts of life, etc., but grant me the deprivation of Thy grace as a great misfortune, Lord, Lord! I am unclean in heart from the sins of my youth and therefore I do not have sincere love for my family, all-suffering love that does not think evil, does not get irritated, and covers everything. What else do I need or what is not enough? I have everything, I live almost separately. Just pray to God and do your job, and not get involved in the turmoil of everyday life at home. God is their judge. The soul is subjected to extreme action and violence of passions when we extensively nourish our body, especially if in our youth we had the misfortune of satisfying our passions and especially if we did not observe chastity. One person told me that during Lent on the week of the Veneration of the Cross on Monday evening, he ate with great pleasure in one house mushroom cabbage soup, buckwheat porridge with vegetable oil and drank two more glasses of tea with sieve bread, and at home a glass of almond milk, and thereby burdened himself significantly; the next day I felt within myself an extreme struggle of passions, especially anger towards my family. I barely drove away the mental beasts with prayer. I am convinced that I need to deny myself, my thoughts, my passionate feelings and movements and words. Do not speak when you would like to speak, prompted by pride, or inner agitation, or the desire to tell the truth peacefully, or to justify yourself in something. Be silent, put guard on your lips... and guard the door on your lips [Ps. 140, 3]. I thank the Lord, who performed with me a miracle of mercy and salvation before the prayer service and akathist for the Intercession of the Mother of God at Korovnikov, who took away from my womb the enmity against my sister Anna Konstantinovna and gave me the gift of easily, peacefully, sweetly, and joyfully performing the prayer service and akathist. Confirm Your gift in me, Lord, and protect my house with peace and establish every order in it, so that everyone does not do their own will, but they know and honor the elder, and most of all, let them know You, Lord, and pray to You, and thank You, and glorify, and fulfill, Great 92 power, Your statutes. I thank the Lord, who has now repeatedly shown me His salvation and delivered me from the madness of malice. I sinned before God and before myself by drinking tea and eating pretzels at home in the evening after drinking tea and eating a slice of sieve bread from Yakov Andreev. Excess harmful to soul and body! An important mistake - during Lent, during the Week of the Cross. And it tightens your stomach - awkward! If I am burdened by supporting my sister-in-law with her children and her servants, then I will not have a reward from God for supporting her. I will be content willingly, patiently, only may the Lord admonish her not to be arbitrary in my house and not to luxuriously recklessly. Make me wise, Lord, to deny myself and take up my cross and follow You; Teach and strengthen my thoughts, the feelings of my heart, my passionate will to be rejected. Passions constantly excite and scourge me, and especially the addiction to the belly and acquisitiveness, for behold, because of my family’s violation of the fast on Holy Pentecost and even on the Week of the Cross, I completely hated them for their arbitrariness and lost the main thing of the whole law - love for God and neighbor, for if you do not love your neighbor, you do not love God. Is it wrong to place us before God? Isn't it love? Why do I lose love? Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer [1 Jn. 3, 15]. God will abolish the belly and the belly, and love will reign forever. Be wise, Lord! May I mortify my belly, may I despise the waste, because of which I have so often despised the main thing in the law - love and peace. I realize and feel that I am proud, covetous, I love to have my wife serve me, my household living on my bread, to sew for me, etc., although I already have enough clothes; From pride and covetousness and displeasure of others I am angry. I sinned before God and people. Grant me, Lord, having renounced myself, to endure voluntarily and joyfully, with kindness, humility, meekness, patience, all deprivation, the inconvenience of life due to the constraint of my family, their disorder in life, in food and drink, their insults, their laziness, negligence, disobedience, and grant me to be an example in all good things. Amen. So in this too I must deny myself and endure that my wife has left me and serves her sister, indulging her in every possible way; I should not be irritated or hostile to them, but leave them to the Lord. For even if everyone leaves me, God will not leave me. Let the world leave - this is good, but let God accept. It is great gain to be godly and content [1 Tim. 6, 6]. Have a non-money-loving disposition, being content with what you have. For He Himself said: I will never leave you nor forsake you [Heb. 13, 5]. To my wife’s question: do you love me? I answer bitterly: I love somehow: you left me, and I lost interest in you. Because of the increase in my lawlessness, my pride, gluttony, lust, and indecency, my love for my wife has dried up. Lord, have mercy! The devil’s custom is to present people to us in a bad, evil, unclean and crafty form; contrary to this, one must always think well of people and speak well, look for praiseworthy aspects and praise them, and, if possible, remain silent about the bad. Thus, the enemy presents many people in an evil form and forces me to be hostile towards them. O Lord, grant me to completely overcome the feeling of hostility in myself, especially towards the household that sat on my bread; despise bread, belly, milk, butter, all sweet foods; teach us to live in Your spirit and strive for eternal life with all our souls. Gluttony, delicacy, gluttony, drunkenness, covetousness, fornication, envy, malice, pride, condemnation, murmuring against God and people, despondency, etc. passions are anti-Christianity. For Christ draws everyone to grief, and these passions to downfall; Christ commanded love to everyone, and these passions give rise to enmity. Despise the womb and the world - these are the Antichrists. Instead of a father, be for orphans, and for their mothers, instead of a husband, according to your feelings. John, John, why are you persecuting Me? This is what the Lord, the Head of His members, tells me, the widow Anna and the orphans Rufina and Elizabeth and the Guardian Angel of each of them, for I, the accursed one, harbor enmity towards this widow at the instigation of the enemy for her self-will, idleness, and disobedience. God! I no longer want to persecute them either externally or internally, but I commend myself and them and our whole life to You, Christ God, for You, the all-good, all-generous, all-wise, vigilant, almighty, Leader, Father, Provider, Savior and Judge are ours. I have never been poor in anything before, and I hope that I will not be poor in the future, according to Your assurance. May I therefore be loving, calm and peaceful. Amen. I notice that children feel dislike and disgust towards me. God and His Angels bless you. The whole storm is because of the belly, because of the dishes, because of the thickness and satiety of my sister-in-law with the gifts of God. Even if it was a thick barrel, what do I care? May I guard myself and my heart. Everyone will answer for themselves. Do not envy or be jealous of those who commit iniquity [Ps. 36, 1 ]; Trust in the Lord and do good deeds: and populate the earth, and enjoy its riches [Ps. 36, 3]. God! Forgive me the word of unlove that I said, that while I am alive, I must wear the acquired cassock, otherwise if you die, it will go to others, and they will not remember it well. Forgive me for my insistence that it be made for me for Your Bright, Beautiful, All-Joyful, Saving Easter. Adorn me with a robe of incorruption, a robe of many colors, woven from all virtues. March 16. I thank You, gracious Lord, for through the prayer of my repentance you saved me from the hostile state of my soul and from the bitter fruit of my crazy words spoken before my sister Anna K.; I thank You for peace, for freedom, for goodness. Glory to Thee, merciful and long-suffering Lord, gentle Lord! Establish, Lord, peace and love in my heart and in my household. March 16. Friday. 11 and a half pm. I thank the Lord, who graciously and miraculously saved me from hostile and contemptuous feelings towards my sister Anna K. for the incessant breaking of fasting and overeating and drinking milk, meat, butter, coffee, tea and for repeated eating and drinking during the day. The Lord heard my prayer, accepted repentance, took away hostility and bestowed a feeling of affection. Glory to my Savior, who continually saves me! Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent. Early mass. Participants up to four hundred or four hundred and fifty people. I thank the Lord, who has made me happy this day with extreme joy through the use of the life-giving Mysteries, of which a sufficient number remained after the communicants. They brought me heavenly life, health, freedom, peace, silence, space, strength, and boldness. Christ my God is gloriously glorified in me. O Christians, accept and eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood, eat and drink often, without laziness. All-night vigil for Sunday. I thank the Lord, who, through my tearful prayer, delivered me from the captivity of the enemy, who captivated me before the all-night vigil with gluttony and satiety, and at the beginning of the all-night vigil with stupid fear and powerlessness while singing the words: Come, let us worship... The entire all-night vigil was a tearful tenderness through the grace of Christ, especially when standing at the Gospel, and at the end - when reading the prayer to Christ, the Light... again I became afraid and could not utter the words, let the light of Your countenance shine upon us... etc., I became confused; he stole the release - he only said the last words, he couldn’t say forgiveness and didn’t say it. And it was because of satiety that the Lord deprived me of grace. Worthy. I repent. Resurrection. Late mass. I thank the Lord for His immeasurable mercy towards me, for He had mercy on me and forgave me my immeasurable sins for one warm and tearful repentance when I partook of the life-giving Mysteries. Throughout mass I felt extreme tightness in my insides due to yesterday’s intemperance and drinking in the evening, after two glasses of tea, two more glasses of milk. I broke my fast to strengthen my nerves, but in the meantime I got myself worse - weak nerves, an extreme burden of excess juices, and cramped conditions. Oh, intemperance! How the Lord honored my nature and how I humiliate myself with wordless aspirations and deeds: gluttony, heavy drinking, contemplation, voluptuous thoughts and feelings! How the Lord exalted us, coming down from heaven for us and accepting our nature, and how we humiliate ourselves, how we turn out to be inattentive, ungrateful and malicious, how partial to the point of madness for earthly things, instead of diligently and with all our might striving for grief! Let the gluttons, the sensualists, the money-lovers, the fornicators and adulterers, the predators, the unrighteous, of whom I am the worst sinner, come to their senses! From the old scoundrel, the old man, made up of all kinds of passions, when will we turn away, when will we crucify and kill him? O old adulterer! Oh, damn hut! The enemy blasphemes the high authorities in me and takes up arms against them, not allowing me to pronounce their names in church in prayer! How unworthy and poor in love I am that I cannot reprimand them with love, imagining something unkind in them! This is the slander of the enemy. We must pray fervently for the high authorities! By His incarnation, the Lord united us with the heavenly powers - let us imitate the life of the disembodied, let us spend time in the feats of fasting, in prayer day and night, let us live in mutual love and peace. God! Give strength to the desire to come into action. On March 20th, in the night I had a wet dream from a bad ghost due to my satiety the day before, from eating fish (roasted perch, ear ruffs, a glass of vodka at lunch, mushroom pie, sweet pie, mushroom sauce, sweet tea, almond milk at dinner). After the wet dream, he immediately got up (two o’clock in the morning), changed his underwear, washed his hands, prayed to the Lord with tears and then fell asleep again. In church I also begged the Lord to have mercy and cleanse me and served Matins, with God’s help, kindly, with feeling, without stumbling. But at the end of Matins, he became angry with the baptized Jew, the reader, for his malfunction, and the devil cruelly wounded me. For a long time I carried its poison within me. And a nice fellow, this Jew Nikolai. Everything would be fine, he says, if he served with me out of piety. It was an absurd thing that I did, that I became angry; that is why I could not say, let the light of Thy countenance be upon us, for my heart was not right before God. But the repentance was hypocritical: at dinner I again ate cold fish, and in the evening - lampreys. Oh, fickle me! O faithless one, O flighty one! Wednesday. I thank the Lord, who has made me worthy to perform all the daily services without fail - Vespers, Matins, hours with Vespers and Mass. The voice was clear and sonorous. In the evening I ate salted lampreys with black bread and drank almond milk, and walked in the evening; early in the morning I walked in the fresh air, reading my morning prayers to myself. In church I fell before the Lord in the ark with a prayer to help me. Please the widow-sister-in-law with joy and caress the orphans and her children sincerely; do not be angry with her for her previous rudeness and resistance and for various worries caused by her small children, brought up in extreme ease and fun. Avoid temptations and be patient. If you help relatives and sisters on your side, then it is your duty and holy truth to help your relatives on your wife’s side too, so that there will be balance and truth. After all, you have nothing lacking, there is nothing to cry about, there is no need to grumble, it is sinful and dangerous to anger God. Live in love, in meekness, kindness, humility, patience. I thank the Lord, who made me worthy to perform Matins with the Great Canon and the Presanctified Liturgy without stumbling, with boldness. But during the morning service I felt that from eating fish and red caviar since the evening I was callous and cold-hearted and had no tenderness, I felt an excess of nutrition; I really regretted that I had again become like stupid cattle. There was a lot of movement. I thank the Lord, who saved me many times that day from hostility towards my sister Anna Konstantinovna. He repented deeply, recognized his guilt and felt calm and content, but on occasion he again fell into hostility, and again - burden, torment, confusion, cramped conditions, hell - and again repentance! Oh, how accustomed I am to evil! I thank the Lord, who gave me tears of tenderness before the memorial service at Iskritsky (Iskritskaya). I sincerely recognized myself as a dead man and mourned myself as not having hitherto had spiritual life, but only a ghost of life. All passions are extreme absurdity, ugliness, confusion, dishonor, powerlessness, darkness, spiritual death, wasting time in vain and with extreme harm to a person. How do we still live in passions every day? God! Deliver me from this dishonor. I thank the Lord, who made me, most unworthy, worthy of His help during Matins. It was hard, hard for me to resist the ethereal enemies because of my intemperance yesterday, since the evening: I ate sauce (a plate) and sweet and sour bread and my soul was extremely weakened, my insides were burdened. When will I thin my heart with fasting? When will I deny myself, my passions and lusts? Why am I, the accursed one, subjected to daily indignation and oppression? - All because of the insatiable belly, and the belly, meanwhile, needs very little... I regret that the family consumes a lot of milk, but thank God it’s not wine, but milk: they won’t get drunk, and much less will be spent on milk and eggs than on wine. But they don’t drink wine, and I don’t know this trouble in the house. Let them eat meat for themselves during Lent if they don’t listen to my words. Because of meat, do not destroy the entire essence of the law - love, and do not live in enmity. I thank the Lord, who delivered me yesterday from the spirit of hostility and granted me a peaceful, healthy and sweet sleep after the labors of confession. I got up at three o'clock in the morning and slept completely. It's so rewarding to work! It’s so healthy to eat only once a day – in the evening! I ate caviar and drank almond milk. For everything I thank the Lord and ask His help to walk in the midst of my home in goodness of heart [Ps. 100, 2]. If mercy is shown on my part, then the wife should also show mercy to her family. Justice demands this and love for his wife. I naturally love and be kind to my people, and she does hers too. Let there be thanksgiving to the Lord. May Satan be crushed under our feet soon. Amen. Hallelujah. Saturday. I thank and extol the Lord, who has made me, the many-passionate, worthy to perform the Divine Liturgy without stumbling and to partake of peace, joy, cheerfulness, and the boldness of the most pure and life-giving Mysteries, although the enemy was trying to plunge me into despair and despondency. He said the prayers before the communion of the laity boldly, loudly, with living faith, and gave communion to everyone, up to thirty people, calmly, with boldness. Glory to the Lord, who does not abandon me with His mercy. Today, before mass, I confessed to Father Matthew in the Church of the Epiphany. I had 130 confessors on Friday in Petya Week, Father Paul had 101, Father Matthew had 175. On the Fourth Week I had 181 people. I sing and bless and thank the Lord, who had mercy on me in an instant and took away from my soul the despondency, sorrow, crampedness, confusion, dishonor and reproach inflicted on me by my sins with the participation of the disembodied enemy upon communion not in the world of the Divine and life-giving Mysteries - faith in the same Mysteries, in their wonderful, all-purifying power and trust in the mercy of God, surpassing ours lawlessness, they saved me soon. I communed and communed with Father the Deacon, but I hurried, hesitated, and became embarrassed. I thank the Lord, who has saved me many times this day from the evil slayer of the devil, who besieged me with anger at a free parasite, spoiled and pampering her children, my sister-in-law Anna. God! Have mercy on me - I am your first parasite, as someone who does nothing and as someone who sinned greatly and grievously in his youth and who sins constantly now. Have mercy on me, for I do not fast; I eat fish until I am full; I recently repented and took up my old sins again. The anger in me has not died. Gluttony has not stopped. I still praise, as long as I live, the long-suffering and mercy of God towards me, for yesterday I angered His goodness with my angry and abusive treatment of the poor through my selfishness and stinginess, but, sensing the tightness and confusion in my soul, shame and humiliation, I turned with faith in repentance to God right there on the street, and - oh! endless mercy! Again I was pardoned by the omniscient One, who looks down upon all creation from the heights of His dwelling by the Lord, and again His grace entered and dwelt in me, again peace, tranquility, joy, freedom, light! Glory to the Lord for this! In a dream, our soul appears as it is, with all its inclinations, dispositions, passions or good deeds, if they are done willingly, out of ardent love for God; she flutters, as it were, with her body in places where the objects of her love and passion are located; if a person is a glutton, then in a dream he is in sausage shops, hotels, canteens; if he is a fornicator, he imagines faces for whom he has a passion, or generally beautiful faces, with which he falls in a dream and with which, perhaps, he fell in reality; if he is a pious person, then he sees himself in the church during the praise or giving alms, and so on. Let their table be a snare, a snare, and a noose for their retribution [Rom. 11, 9]. This is said about the wicked. Alas! This happens to me when I come to my meal! Oh, how much evil and sin there is in me! How much greed, pride, self-indulgence, pride, self-justification, conceit, impatience, dislike, enmity towards some of my household because they live with me for nothing, although the Lord always rewards me for them. Behold, I have exposed myself and am continually denouncing myself! God! Correct me, who is bound by worldly lusts, pleasures and passions. Everything is possible for You! You should never eat fish at night, maybe just a little, a little! In memory of God's mercy to me. On my way today (March 27, Tuesday) to a christening in Pesochnaya Street, I met my sister-in-law riding in a cab with her child Rufina, and I thought: well, she often rides and doesn’t want to go, and in addition, every day she consumes five bottles of milk and several pounds of meat, without breaking any fast, and it’s as if she lives not as a widow, but as a rich merchant’s wife or a general’s wife and a countess, all at my expense. I took pity on my goods for such a lady, I sinned, I didn’t begrudgingly - and I was embarrassed, and I was hurt in my soul, and I walked and prayed for a long time, repenting of my sin, asking for mercy. I thought: why am I sad? What do I need? - There is only the Lord, His grace, His truth, peace, mercy, truth, love, and everything here, earthly is vanity, and I never needed what was necessary or even superfluous, and I also supplied others, the poor, and I supply her, the highly intelligent lady, with everything and have supplied. May the Lord judge her and my wife, who is kind to her. And let me hold on to love and cleave to God. My wife and sister-in-law serve as a temptation for the people: May the Lord not give rumors to me and about me. I thank the Lord, who heard the repentant cry of my heart, who took away confusion, sorrow and oppression from my soul and gave peace, freedom, lightness, boldness before baptism and especially during baptism. Oh, grant me to cling to You, Lord, unceasingly and to cling to love, to despise the flesh and everything carnal, and to be close to the souls, things more immortal 93. I myself don’t know what I’m doing, fighting for Anna Konstantinovna’s abnormal life regarding food and drink and raising children; Although I eat lean, I allow myself at home and in different houses all sorts of delicacies and wine and fish, and she only has milk, butter and meat throughout Lent. We must not forget that we owe to her, after God, the Mother of God and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, salvation from drowning at sea when we were sailing on a fishing boat from Raivolovo across a water width of 25 or more miles. I myself do not fast - how can I demand fasting from other household members? Why do I worry, languish, and quarrel? Oh, how can I not see that my carnal passions are at work here too: jealousy, envy, greed, stinginess, self-love, pride, self-will! Let them live as they want! It’s good that, by God’s grace, they are not drunkards or dissolute. I thank the Lord, who daily has mercy on me, enlightens me, cleanses me, and pacifies me. Thursday. I thank the Lord, who heard my cry of repentance and delivered me from confusion and cramped conditions, anger and gave me peace, silence, space, goodness. (What will come of Rufina’s child?! God grant that it be good. The Lord will show.) Yesterday, March 29th in the evening, I did not eat fish at night, and the secret penis did not bother me at night, but before, when I ate, it always bothered me. Today, the 30th, in the morning I ate cold fish, and from the excess of food I felt a restless itching in my back. There is no need to eat fish or anything nutritious in the morning; it is better not to eat anything at all. Evening. Ten and a half hours. Excess food, especially lean food, and mainly potato with vegetable oil, is accompanied for me by an ache in the extremity of the right or left leg, however, the fast food does the same. I need strict abstinence not only for mental benefit, but also for physical benefit. I sinned today - I ate three times: in the morning cold fish with black bread, at two o'clock in the afternoon potatoes with butter and partly smelt fish, and in the evening after confession at nine o'clock almond milk and tea with a roll. Potatoes had a harmful effect in brainy weather (slush). Yesterday, March 30, there was severe irritation of the nerves and severe pain in the left leg, at the extremity, before heavy snow (in the morning of March 31) - a quarter of the ground was covered. And sick Ivan Alex. Dmitriev ended his suffering life. God! I thank You that You accepted my desire and offer to perform the Liturgy for the repose of the soul of the deceased John and for the repose of my soul, for Your Holy Mysteries are the peace of my soul, and health, and salvation, and strength, and light, and peace, and joy, and ease. The Resurrection of Lazarus is today - and I have not risen from the dead: I still please my belly, I still work for various deadly passions! Oh, my misfortune! Oh, insensibility! I thank the Lord, who accepted my tears of repentance after I, still at home, was upset at my self-inflicted sister-in-law Anna K. for eating meat during Lent, went out for a walk on the street and there again got angry and shouted at the beggar boy and sent him away in need with nothing; then he shouted at another beggar boy and in anger ruffled his hair a little, giving him fifteen kopecks. For a long time, as I walked, I repented, then on the wall, leaning on the railing, I shed tears about my sins - and oh, mercy! I was pardoned by the Lord and felt peace and freedom in my soul and boldness! Glory to the mercy of the Lord! At home, an unpleasant story broke out again because of Fevronia’s embassy of servants: I’m sending, my wife and sister-in-law say - don’t send, she’s tired, send Anyutka; I could not stand it and reprimanded them with anger, and I retired from them to my room. They brought a toy house, they gave it to Rufina to play with, and she would have broken it in a minute, but the beggar worked on it for a long time; I took it, the child cried, and again there was trouble! But pacify our life, Lord: I want and pray for this! Avoid the slightest grief towards your family, for it comes from the devil and creeps into the heart unnoticed and grows quickly, leading to enmity and quarrel; be lenient and patient with the faults and mistakes of your family, because due to the impatience of the words and actions of your family that are unpleasant to you, you fall into grief and hostility, as happened today. I also thank Thee, for Thou didst work with me the miracle of Thy mercy, accepting [long-lasting] repentance for my malice, taking away sorrow and oppression from my heart and inclining both me and my sister-in-law to love after enmity, whom I found upon arriving home disposed towards peace and love, which was not the case before. Enmity fatally shakes the entire soul and the entire physical organism, depriving the soul of its true life, which consists of mutual love and love of God. (At Dmitriev’s funeral service, I was embarrassed and did not utter the entire exclamation: my soul was still shaken by hostility and, perhaps, by indulgence (marmalade with cold water); I was embarrassed and did not speak.) I thank the Lord for giving me what I desired, that is, peace with my family. And my wife was very friendly to me. Everything from the Lord is a great gift. Oh, how murderous is hatred! I promised the Lord never to return to anger again, but to be unforgettable, forgiving, and patient. Grant, Lord! March 31, 1873. Saturday. Lazarus resurrection. Vai week. Glory to faith in Christ, saving, wonderful! I owe my life to her until now, and without her I would have died long ago! May everyone know such a saving faith! Lord Lover of Mankind! I thank You for the constant renewal of my soul and my body in the communion of the Holy Body and Thy most pure Blood; I thank You for your constant cleansing, mercy, sanctification, strengthening, enlightenment, boldness and for everything, for all Your countless benefits to me, a sinner. April 1st. Vai week. I must reject myself in the depths of my soul as ungodly, dead, insane, nasty, dark, and place my heart in accordance with the Gospel commandments. Oh my God! By the end of 94 I'm dead! I'm dead! With Your blood shed for the world and for me, save me, O Lord, as you have saved me without number! Glory to Your mercy! The enemy of men, the devil, in spite of the divine union of men, what nasty and absurd, wild, aimless unions he has not made between people: one with another, women with men, men with men, both with different animals, what masturbation he has not taught! O pervert! O enemy! Elika (Church Glav.) – how much. General troparion for the monks. 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