Август

How good it would be for me if in the evening I didn’t have a snack, dinner or eat black bread with white! But I ate enough, and in the morning my back hurts. The devil paralyzes our aspirations for heavenly things with addiction to earthly things and with pride and malice, also more because of earthly things. Addiction to earthly sweets and things and other passions are the sting of the devil. To despise earthly things (everything from one earth and everything into the earth, and our very bodies) as insignificant, gross, temporary, transitory and to love with all our hearts the spiritual, heavenly as eternal, essential, important and necessary; deeply respect the image of God in every person, endure long, be forgiving, forgive, be merciful, pray for enemies. About the faulty, about the weak. Take away from your heart all earthly love - love for sweets, clothes, beautiful and precious things, money, temporary housing, so that you may love the Lord with all your heart, undividedly, not flatteringly, ardently, firmly, constantly. O weak and evil elements, how long will my heart rely on you, how long will you urge my spirit in its striving for things above, for God, for eternity? O weak elements - sweets, money, clothes, into what weakness you plunge my heart! What is your end? Decay, rottenness, destruction, turning to dust. If you have an educated mind, but an uneducated heart, that is, proud, evil, contemptuous, envious, voluptuous, lusty, covetous, money-loving, stingy, rebellious, capricious, etc., then you stand infinitely lower than any uneducated commoner, who, with an outwardly uneducated mind, has a kind, simple, meek and humble mind. a heart that is benevolent, respectful, submissive, pure, uncovetous and content with little. You are educated, enlightened - be the light that exists in the darkness, be an example of meekness, humility, kindness, love, patience, obedience, words. For the light of reason was given to you not so much for yourself as for others. One must not despise or be angry with the uneducated, dark and simple, but respect them as simple and unspoiled, and pity them as being in the prison of ignorance, and the more uneducated they are. We don’t want to honor a proud boss, and we don’t want to honor a very humble one either: the former because he is proud, the latter because he is very simple and humble. This is how crafty our old man is, how angry, proud, stubborn, and self-willed! It should be considered a pleasure to reject yourself every day! The beauty of food and drink, clothing, money, housing, things, the beauty of faces, subtle or rough, beautiful and ugly, education and ignorance, eloquence and dumbness - beauty is everywhere! And we must fight and overcome this delusion in ourselves and walk in the truth of God, not being deceived by anything and valuing above all else the inner man, regardless of his education or lack of education, for all the same, both the educated and the uneducated are in blindness and slavery to the passions, and the educated are more than the uneducated, and education is more of an external polish (the polish of words, manners (techniques) of address) than the education and correction of the heart. We, the educated, are far from achieving our education; we are still, dare we say, rude savages. Because the wildness of passions, stupidity, and madness have not left them. This is education: enlightened search of the heart [Eph. 1, 18]. And whoever does not have them is an enlightened ignoramus. Pride in home life is revealed in disobedience to family members at their fair and conveniently fulfilled requests, in the arrogant tone with which we speak, in the proud desire for praise from them and pouting for non-praise, etc., and humility, on the contrary, is revealed in obedience, readiness for services, an affectionate tone, indifference to praise and blame, in gentleness when encountering troubles, insults, injustice. Every sin comes from the spirit of malice, as you yourself experience, and he who is in sin is a slave of sin, tormented by sin, therefore, do not treat the sinner too harshly and without malice, knowing the common weakness. Pity the one who sins as someone who is sick, or as someone who is lost, walking in darkness, or as someone bound with iron shackles, or as someone who is mentally damaged, for all these attributes can be attributed to someone who sins or is under the influence of passion. We must protect a person in every possible way so that the fire of sin does not burn him, darken him, bind him, or plunge him into illness. To offend others is to offend yourself even more: the arrows fired at our neighbors pierce our hearts. The Lord did not spare Himself for our salvation, but humbled Himself and died for us on the cross, shedding His blood; the martyrs for the sake of the Lord and for the sake of their neighbors did not spare either property or their lives and joyfully sacrificed them, surrendering to the persecutors; The reverend men and wives crucified and mortified their flesh, enduring all sorts of hardships and labors for the Lord. What are we doing for the sake of the Lord, who laid down His life for us and bought us eternal life with His blood? It is as if we are deliberately clinging to earthly blessings and pleasures, which must be trampled upon and despised, for we are heavenly citizens on earth and the earth is not a fatherland, but a place of wandering and exile; We, as if out of spite, do not fulfill the commandments of our Savior about mutual love: let us love each other, let us bear each other’s burdens, let us remember the poor and others [John. 13, 34; Gal. 6, 2; 2, 10]. Oh, how much ingratitude there is before the Savior, how much malice, how much unwillingness to understand one’s Christian duties! Don’t look at yourself: Dennitsa looked at himself and fell terribly. Consider your sins and humble yourself, and repent, and cry about them. After the fall, man became rich in pride, malice, envy, love of money, stinginess, lust, impurity, intemperance, and poor in every virtue. God! Change my inner – my heart – for good. The whole history of the Old Testament and the New Testament is in us, justified and confirmed on us: the blessed state, and the fall, and all the subsequent falls, and redemption, and the resurrection of the dead, and judgment, and Gehenna. The poor, with their importunity, extort generosity from you. Be generous to them, since 73 the Lord is immensely generous to you, feeding you with His Flesh and Blood with love and great desire. I desire to eat this Passover with you; first I will not even accept torment [Lk. 22, 15]. Let the devil have no place in you - do not spare anything for the poor. The Lord will find a way to encourage you. Everything that is from the earth is the dust of the earth: bodies, gold, silver, dresses, clothing, etc. Lord! Have mercy on your servants Archpriest Constantine and my mother Theodora! Have mercy on Your servant Ioann Vasilievich Avvakumov, a merchant from Novgorod. Therefore, one must feel sorry for the poor because they must worry every day about obtaining their daily bread and even clothing and housing, while you are daily provided with all this from the Lord. In humility and kindness of heart we must especially walk in the midst of our home, our dwelling, in the midst of our household. Oh, the enemy does not sleep! Sin does not sleep, it constantly fights against us! Every minute love your neighbor as yourself, and never take revenge on him, don’t be angry with him, be meek like a lamb. The devil drives sin with sin, sin inflates sin with sin: lust for prodigal impurity, malice, pride, contempt, impatience, irritability, covetousness, envy, etc. Sins have a close connection: one must be afraid of every sin, love fasting, abstinence, flee from satiety - the well-fed is contemptuous, not a lover of souls, but a lover of sensibility and a lover of money. Greed, pride and anger act very strongly in me. We must fight constantly. In God I will never lack anything, for He is my Provider, my Nourisher, my Shepherd. Does money feed you, water you, clothe you, give you everything you need, and not I, who gives everything abundantly? Are people the culprits of your well-being, and not I, who disposes their hearts towards you? Communicating the Divine Mysteries so often, you must be completely heavenly, spiritual, you must leave earthly and worldly attachments and be entirely in God, and you must completely hate pride, anger, irritability - these creatures of the devil, so absurd, harmful, destructive. I thank You, Lord my God, for you heard my prayer, and you turned the machinations of the enemy into nothing during the liturgy, and you granted the royal persons at the conciliar service to speak calmly and without stumbling, and to receive communion without condemnation, and the word for the day of the royal name day, compiled by me with the help of Your grace, to speak with boldness, in You bestowed peace of mind and strength. I thank You, Lady Theotokos, as I, who bowed my knee before You and humbly asked for Your help and intercession, You quickly heard and gave peace and holiness to my soul. The whole law is contained in one word: love your neighbor as yourself [Gal. 5, 14 ]; love is the fulfillment of the law [Rom. 13, 10]. So, do not be burdened by alms, labors, worries, worries for the benefit of your neighbors: you fulfill the law of God through this. May this thought comfort and strengthen you. An embittered person is a sick person: you need to take pity on him, caress him, give him a gift. Regarding brother Konstantin and sister Anna, the charm is old: I myself am the first to blame against them, I became proud before them, I despise them - for what? For the gifts of God that I have in common with them, for the gifts that are rubbish and that were created for man, which are not mine. A rude, unkind, gloomy person is a sick person: he must be treated with affection, obligatory love. In this sense, the Lord said: if you love those who love you, what gratitude do you have for that? for sinners also love those who love them [Lk. 6, 32 ]; and if you greet only your brothers, what special thing are you doing? [Matt. 5, 47] - for sinners do the same... But to you who listen, I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you [Lk. 6:33, 27]. Expect rewards from the Lord, not from people. Remember that rudeness of character often depends on the character and on the known circumstances in which the person was placed. But what is strengthened by circumstances, time and skill is difficult and difficult to overcome. To constantly condemn oneself sincerely for one's sins, and not to others - to be condescending towards others out of Christian love; consider your own sins and correct yourself from them, and not those of others. Each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5]. Loving each other deeply. Holy, Holy, Holy. These words mean the surprise of the Angels at the greatness, purity, holiness of God’s being and the fact that He is extremely disgusted by sin, hates sin, and that the Angels constantly, as it were, drink the holiness of God’s being and therefore become more and more strengthened in holiness and in hatred of sin. Moral teaching: we too must love holiness with all our hearts and hate sin with all our souls. Addiction to earthly sweets, to food and drink, to beautiful clothes, to the splendor and grace of earthly things, to money, to beautiful faces, or an aversion to rough, simple faces, a spirit of coldness and hatred of neighbors because of sweets and in general - from the devil. A Christian should despise all this and rightly consider it as dust and not spare anything for his neighbor, for: 1) excesses are given to us from God to serve our neighbors, 2) for man - all the blessings of the earth and 3) man is infinitely more valuable than the whole earth with all its treasures as the image of God, as the owner and king of the earth, and he must always be greatly respected, no matter how short he has been with us, joyfully accept him as the Lord Himself, and please him as the Lord. Have no attachment to anything on earth, for everything is dust, everything is temporary and fleeting. Love for heavenly blessings is from the Lord, and one must cleave to them with all one’s heart, think about them, strive for them in every possible way: The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force [Matt. 11, 12]. Christians, as Christ’s disciples and children, heavenly and unearthly, should philosophize on things above, and not on earth, where Christ sits at the right hand of God [Col. 3, 1 ], should not cling to anything on earth. Otherwise, they are not Christians, but pagans: because the pagans are looking for all this, that is, sweets, wealth, clothes, etc. [Matt. 6, 32]. God gives you tuna, as an indecent 74, great gifts of His goodness, spiritual and material: you should be grateful to Him - but He Himself does not accept pleasure from the hands of men, but deigns to accept in the person of our poor, who, like us, are in His image, and this is whom He sends to us to accept our sacrifice from us, to whom we must joyfully give, even if this person was, in our opinion, unworthy, for example, often he would have come into our midst and would have had a good livelihood himself (for we ourselves are unworthy and daily we eat the Lord’s bread as a gift and everything that is ours is God’s). So, from the tuna received from God, let us offer Him a daily sacrifice of thanksgiving, and do not be greedy for earthly blessings, for heavenly blessings are prepared for you - have a holy greed for them, especially for the Divine meat - the Body and Blood of Christ. Fast: Fasting is necessary to tame passions. The devil hides from us the future blessings prepared for us, and the fact that the Lord is the greatest good for us (and the Lord is love), and binds our hearts to earthly blessings, and through this attachment often produces hatred of our neighbor who uses our material goods. What deceit! What a dissolution of the enemy with man! Therefore, any sin must be feared as the demon itself. How addiction to earthly goods lulls the spirit and its heavenly aspirations! If you want to be a partaker of the incorruptible and eternal blessings prepared by God for those who love Him, have here fellowship in perishable blessings, share them with your neighbors, and look at them as God’s, as if the body of Christ, which never fails. If our love does not become scarce, then God’s gifts to us will not become scarce. Our neighbor is a member of that Divine body of Christ, which reigns in glory in heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. God! Let me constantly remember my high nobility and the fact that I am Your pet, nourished by Your word and Your life-giving Mysteries - Your Flesh and Blood. God! Give me the grace to be meek, humble, kind, generous, uncovetous, and benevolent. My mother is a whole vessel, but I am broken and full of holes. What kind of zeal others show to you when they treat you, try to show the same to those who come to you: respect every person, because you want them to please you. How strongly the enemy tempted me today in a dream with the scene with the archpriest before the service of the liturgy! It was a royal day, we gathered in the cathedral to serve the cathedral liturgy. The archpriest, it seems, was performing a proskomedia, I was getting dressed; the vestments assigned were bad - those in which I serve prayer services; I didn’t like it - and I was indignant in spirit and very upset at the archpriest and told him: if you don’t give me other vestments, I will not serve, and as he did not give, I took off the vestments and left the church with grief. Afterwards I wanted to return for the cathedral service, but it was impossible. This is how the enemy and the accuser tempt us with clothes! Either with sweets, or clothes, or money, or pride, he usually tempts us every day! Beware, sons of the old Adam! Don’t chase after sweets, don’t spare sweets for another, even if someone uses them immoderately, and don’t desire sweets, use them as moderately as possible, don’t chase smart clothes, but be content with simple things - in general, think about yourself modestly, not highly, don’t shine with your outer appearance at the expense of the inner, while the inner is gloomy, and wild, and ugly, and empty - decorate the inner a person by meekness, humility, abstinence, chastity and other Christian virtues. Drive away from you the indignation of the spirit, this indignation of the passions, which is from the devil, and keep a calm spirit: there is a place for God in the world, and there is no God where the indignation of the passions is. Be jealous of abstinence immediately. Do not be irritated when they take what is yours, be like a sheep before the shearer: it is as if they are shearing you, they take what is yours, but you remain silent and be calm. God will reward, and the fur will grow again, and even if it didn’t grow, it won’t matter, you can do without it, if only the soul and body were preserved, and most importantly, the soul was preserved. Yes, remember: you yourself love to feast at the expense of others and melt with pleasure when they treat you with respect and love and you yourself are equally showered in affection - do not be surprised that others love to feast at your expense, that they are pleased to eat and drink from you - treat every person with respect, love, edification, putting into nothing all the delicacies, money, etc., that is given to him, for everything this was subjugated by God under his feet and all this belongs to humanity, and not to any individual individual. Recognize the machinations of the enemy in yourself and despise them, do not follow them. We are partial to our own will, to our desires, whims, so that it is our way, as we want, while our will is sinful - we must, on the contrary, recognize and zealously insist on fulfilling the will of God, good and perfect. We alone would move into the lands, some would use everything, and the rest would be taken away from everyone - this is what our old man and the devil in him are striving for. You must be sociable, love people, share everything with them. There is madness in you - it is a sin, do not give it free rein; There is a lie nesting in you, the dream of the enemy is a sin, do not give him free rein. Pride, malice, envy, covetousness nests in you, and not covetousness, voluptuousness, delicacy, resistance and disobedience - all this is sin, do not give it free rein over you. There is a passion in you for external decoration in addition to the internal - this is a sin, do not give it free rein over yourself, but also do not be careless about the appearance: it is a sign of the internal; May everything on you and around you be clean, in order, graceful, and simple. What tempting dreams we sometimes have, what sins we fall into in our sleep and upon awakening, bringing them to mind; We realize that under similar circumstances that happened in a dream, we would commit a sin in reality, and we rejoice that the sin happened in a dream and not in reality. We also know that the seeds of this sin or these sins that we committed in a dream nest in our hearts, for example, passion for clothes, rudeness, disobedience, insolence, and therefore we need to carefully purge out the very seeds of sins, for example, pride, vanity, lust, greed. The spirit of earthly love, a false, dreamy, hostile spirit, has overcome us: we love earthly things, we hope for earthly things, we have inclined all our strength and all our zeal to earthly things, and we have despised, forgotten, and considered God and the future life, eternally blessed, falsely promised by Him. Look at all the aspirations, at all the deeds of men, at their books, at their activities - and you will be convinced. I expressed displeasure at my sexton in church because he goes to church in unclean, rotten underwear, and yet his apartment is very cramped, and unclean air easily accumulates in it. I'm wrong. The Church represents the earthly heaven: here is the throne of the King of Glory, here are the Archangels, Angels, the holy inhabitants of heaven. The arrangement of the holy icons in the church is remarkable. Theater is everything earthly, from the devil. God! I earnestly thank you for your wonderful, gracious, quick help in church and at school, and from spiritual illnesses, I pray to you, free me, heal me, and before I even completely perish, save me. I thank You, Lord, for You heard my prayer and drove away the demon of coldness and relaxation that nested in me with Your power. I thank You, for through his exile you healed me, pacified me, eased me, sweetened me, as you enlightened my face with the light of Your grace. Oh, how much prayer to God can do! Why do you want to drink tea? Two glasses are enough. Feeding pigeons: we willingly feed pigeons - why are people reluctant? How many people are better than a pigeon? There are many drawers and many smells according to the differences in the things they contain: one thing has one, another has a different smell, another is light, another is heavy. Likewise, human souls have a different stench 75: some are like this, others are different, and one person at different times has a different stench, depending on who is in him, in his heart, God or the devil, virtue or sin, abstinence or satiety, this or that food. God! I thank You, because through my prayer you took away such a storm of passions from my soul and protected me with peace. I praise Your power, Your goodness, Your goodness and prompt obedience. God! I thank You for placing me in such and not other family circumstances, for otherwise I would have been worse. God! I thank You, for You have made me, in my extreme unworthiness, worthy by Your grace to perform the Divine Liturgy and to partake of Your Divine Mysteries with boldness and to perform prayers without stumbling. September 11th, 1866. Until now, the enemy had deceived me and, because of substances - money, sweets, clothes, aroused in me anger towards my neighbors, especially towards the beggars, my own and visiting guests. From now on, may I be reasonable and not even one iota obey him, a nasty and disgusting, alien spirit, may I remember that man is the image of God and a member of Christ, and may I caress man as I wish to see others affectionate towards me. Pokoliku (Church Glav.) - because (colic - how many, since many). Indecent (church-glorified) - meaning unworthy, useless, worthless. Stink (Church Glav.) – smell, aroma; incense. Tolikiy (church glory) – so many, so great. You might be interested in: