Июнь

Tuesday. Prayer service on the ship "Standart". The enemy, my adversary, ate me up, so he ate me up: Our Father could not finish twice; do not lead us into temptation and could not speak further out of demonic fear and man-pleasing. Out of humanity, I did not read the final prayer at the prayer service for those who want to sail on the waters, fearing to delay the crew by the duration of the prayer and fearing to stumble from the temptation of demons, although in my hope in the Lord I should not have been afraid of anything; and so the enemy, seeing my cowardice, attacked me while reading the greatest prayer: Our Father. I repent before the Lord that, due to my cowardice, I did not rise up against the enemy with all boldness and strength and heeded his dream. God! Save the Standard! I thank You, Lord my God, my Life-Giver, for during the early liturgy I served, you took away the great corruption of my soul, the great confusion and oppression that came from not communion of the Holy Mysteries for three days, and from gluttony with satiety, and from long walks (the soul does not tolerate remaining empty); I thank You, for You have granted me heavenly peace after defeating the temptations of lack of faith and dullness of heart, inflicted on me by the enemy. Oh, we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good [Ps. 33, 9 ]! The sexton of Kamenograd (served for Father Matthew) caused me many temptations and spiritual misfortunes today during the liturgy with his extremely careless singing, his cunning, his reluctance to sing and his obvious intention to irritate the serving priest with his extremely dissonant, disharmonious singing. The Lord God judge him: not my liturgy, but God’s. May the Lord reward him according to his deeds and his wickedness. And the requiem service, before which his assistant left the choir (the tradesman), sang well, harmoniously, humbly, and thereby showed that he could sing well, but did not want to. It’s hard to be without the Eucharist for even a few days: powerlessness of the heart, coldness, lethargy in prayer. Through temptation and punishment, the Lord cleanses the soil of the heart so that God’s grace can be planted in the soul. It is good to strengthen hearts with grace, and not with foods from which those who engage in them do not benefit [Heb. 13, 9]. Excessive nutrition in the belly is an extreme weakness of my soul, an extreme weakness of my heart, a reason for strong temptations of the enemy. It is better to endure hunger than to please the belly and be satiated. Anyone who wants to lead a spiritual and godly life should understand this. O heart passionate for substance! How much evil for the soul because of your addiction! How much confusion, tightness, anger, envy, suspicion, anxiety! Is it not because of addiction that friendships and kinships are dissolved? Doesn't addiction give rise to theft, murder, debauchery, drunkenness, fornication? Doesn’t peace and contentment reign where there is no partiality, where love for God and neighbor dominates all affections of the heart, where the salvation of souls and Christian virtues are the first and most important concern of every day? Regarding the things of the world, one must be simple and impartial, like children whose hearts are unfamiliar with covetousness, luxury, and various artificial needs, who live in the present and do not care about the future, relying in simplicity of heart on their parents. Does Christ, my eternal life, abide in me if I, having accepted His Most Pure Mysteries, feel sorry for the earthly blessings of my needy brethren or my family, if I remain stingy, envious, angry, irritable? - No. If these passions oppress you, then Christ is not in you. The presence of Christ in my heart turns out to be dispassion and tranquility in me. Holy ecu, our God, and you rest in the saints. Rest 70 - and God will be in you. Where there is confusion, there is no God. Every day during meals a glutton is tormented by the vain fear of not eating or drinking too much, although a person will not eat or drink more than his stomach. He who loves his brother wants everyone to be happy, and will willingly take from himself for them; but a greedy, self-loving person only wants the best for himself, but feels sorry for his brother. You are from above - there is nothing of yours on earth. We, who are on high, are one body, the body of Christ. Our Father, Who is in heaven. Food, or intemperance in it, was the reason for our expulsion from paradise! Abstinence and fasting instill heaven. (My eye saw the spilling of milk in Rambov, in Elena Pavlovna’s barn; I pitied the gift of God, envied the bounties of God.) Lord! give me a truly enlightened heart, that is, humble, kind, quiet, not envious, not wayward, not selfish, not greedy, not prodigal, not lazy, believing, trusting, loving, patient, grateful, benevolent, wise. For not only must we have an educated mind, skilled in various sciences, but most of all an educated heart, an educated will, that is, an inner man. For to have a heart that is self-loving, envious, evil, wayward, covetous, prodigal, greedy for honor, for food, fine clothing and carnal pleasures is extreme ignorance, lack of education, savagery and extreme misfortune - a misfortune worse than all misfortunes, so it is better to be poor, naked, hungry, to be ignorant in mind and word, to endure persecution and various misfortunes, rather than having such a heart and such a will. And I, a sinner, have such a heart and such a will, although I received a higher academic education. In every person, in one’s own household or subordinate, not to mention others, one must respect the dignity of man, the image of God, the laws of common sense in his speeches, the movements of a good heart and free will, and in oneself be aware of the shortcomings of a nature damaged (corrupted) by sin, the insane movements of sin and passions in a corrupted heart and corrupted will and with humility, willingly and complacently submit to the words and actions of those inferior in education or age, subordinate to us or dependent on us according to the everyday needs of related or distant persons, whose word, the rightness of the deed, we sometimes stubbornly reject, often due to our gross selfishness, our pride, malice, and depravity of heart. I repent before the Lord and ask for mercy for the fall of my heart and will. (On June 4, at the Terrible Sacrifice, when I was celebrating the liturgy, I said that the sexton of Kamenograd was the most evil and crafty of all and, perhaps, slandered him, but God showed me that he himself was angry and crafty.) Through true works of mercy, our love for our neighbors grows, develops and strengthens. And love is the whole law, the whole purpose of life. Therefore, do deeds of mercy with joy. Through earthly, vain affairs (gluttony, covetousness, amusements, drunkenness), addiction to the earth grows and strengthens, and love for God and neighbor cools and dries up. Therefore, money lovers, drunkards, devoted to luxury are unhappy. Now many of them do not see their misfortune, but they will see it at the end of life and after death, when the mask falls from all things, when their deeds appear before them in all their nakedness and reality. If they take what’s yours, don’t do it for the sake of it and don’t regret it, trample on earthly things and grow in love for God and your neighbor; If you give yourself, give willingly, not sparing the substance, but spare your neighbor, for whom God will reward. On the occasion of prayer for the living and the dead, offered every morning and evening, the answer to thoughts: I am not good, so the Lord is good - He gives me and those for whom I pray the blessings I ask for, according to the word of the Lord: So if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7, 11]. Self-love (nothing else) stands up for ourselves when we have unnecessary expenses, when we need to give to the poor, in general, when we need to share our property with our neighbors, and not sympathy for the illness, misfortune, poverty of our neighbors. Evil flesh! Because of a thoughtless belly, because of food, drink, money, clothing, because of this litter, you are causing a mental quarrel, breaking the union of love with immortal souls and with God Himself? Come to your senses. Food is for the belly, and the belly is for food; but God will destroy both [1 Cor. 6, 13]. Bridle your heart and take every possible care so that it does not at all, for a moment, become upset with anyone because of anything. Tolerate everyone and everything with love, do not look for your own 71. Joyfully deny yourself for the sake of your neighbor. It is better to be offended a hundred times in one day than to offend someone once with a word, or deed, or a look, or bitterness of heart. A well-fed belly is Satan’s strong lever, with which he moves our heart wherever he wants, arousing all the passions in it. I need this supply of food and drink, money, clothing and other things for a short time, but I need love for God and neighbor forever and ever. I need a womb and an elemental body for a short time, but meekness, humility, gentleness - forever. Despise the flesh and strive for the souls of things more immortal. Enslave the womb, otherwise it will enslave you. When I serve the Lord in the presence of noble, learned, rich people of this world, the enemy brings me confusion, cowardice, fear, darkness, spiritual powerlessness, humiliating me and exalting those present without measure, or whispers that they are all alien to God, atheists and laugh at the work of God, at prayers, at rituals (of which there is nothing holier and more majestic), that they they despise the clergyman himself. But these are all mirages, dreams of the devil, who is trying to destroy the work of God, the work of prayer, for prayer destroys his machinations. For God is gracious to those who call on Him in truth. Whatever you ask in prayer with faith, you will receive...you will cry out, and He will say: “Here I am!” [Matt. 21, 22; Is. 58, 9]. Every day Satan opens in me the hellish fire of passions, malice, envy, enmity, strife, covetousness, fornication, waywardness and stubbornness. Every hour you need to be ready, clothed in the whole armor of God, in order to resist the wiles of the devil [Eph. 6, 11]. Delight, and do not grieve, the life of your neighbor - and God will delight yours. Be simple and generous - and you will see how God will reward you. Grigory Ivanovich and Anna Konstantinovna are in need - but I didn’t know this, and I was senselessly stingy for them, and I was upset with them. I repent. God! I thank Thee, for through bodily illness and spiritual sorrow, inseparable from illness, Thou hast tamed my flesh, which was possessed by fierce passions. June 8, 1870. Monday. Grant me to always thank You for sorrows as well as for joys, for sorrows are good and lead to good, and illnesses are medicine for the soul. Mother of God, who knows the secrets of the heart, and She who knows the secrets of the hearts of all, ask me from Thy Son and our God for a pure heart. I thank the Lord, who, by His infinite mercy, has given me the grace to perform the Liturgy on both days without stumbling and to partake of the Divine Mysteries for the cleansing of sins and sanctification, into the peace of my spiritual powers that were not in the world. I thank You, Lord, for even now You have not abandoned me, a great sinner, with Your mercy. I thank the Lord, who granted me, after a struggle with opposing forces, to partake of His Divine Mysteries without condemnation. But have mercy on me, O God, the fallen one, for I envied my brother in my house and thought, through the action of the evil one, that he consumes a lot of sugar, and took pity on this sweetness for Your verbal creation, in Your image and likeness - this corruptible sweetness, while You have vouchsafed me today and vouchsafe me daily the incorruptible and Divine sweetness of the most pure, immortal and Your life-giving Mysteries - Your Body and Blood. Those who have sinned, have mercy and save them! He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood... will never thirst [Jn. 6, 54, 35]. Why do I, eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Lord, hunger and thirst for earthly blessings, and not hunger for God and the salvation of my neighbor? Therefore, it is clear that I do not partake of the Divine Mysteries with the proper faith and love and have not yet learned how to perform the Divine Liturgy as it should be, with angelic love, with a heavenly mind and heart. I am still carnal, the old man in me still reigns with deceitful lusts, I have not yet been transformed, I have not been renewed, to my shame, despite all the means to transformation and renewal, I have not yet acquired a heavenly mind and heart, my whole mind and heart are dust 72, through my fault. My conversation with Beklemisheva (Maria Pavlovna). Disorder in family life due to husband's drunkenness; a husband without faith, never prays, says that there is no God and all religious rituals are nonsense, and instills the same in his children. What a disorderly life can lead to, spent playing cards, drinking, and having malicious conversations with bad friends! The wife hated her husband - and rightly so. From one I conclude to almost all officers. Family life declines. Even, a frequent communicant of the Divine Mysteries, the devil’s sting of sweets, money, distinctions, luxury stings me so much every day; What can we say about those who either fast once a year and begin the Holy Mysteries, and then somehow, or for several years in a row do not fulfill this sacred, necessary and multi-useful duty? They must be filled with all kinds of evil. And let me especially be careful of intemperance, lest I anger my Lord. It’s a wonderful thing that, despite all the gracious, powerful means for my cleansing and sanctification, sin still does not die in me, but continues to rage, and this worm of mine does not die, and the fire of sin in me does not go out. Woe to unrepentant sinners after death! for their bitter worm does not die and their burning fire is not quenched 73 . From the Lord man’s feet are straightened [Ps. 36, 23]: you will go for a walk and give alms, often to the most pitiful poor! Glory to the Lord, who straightens our steps! Correct my heart's feet! Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Soul, help me always and everywhere against the adversary, who always and everywhere kicks me, and let me hate him with all his dirty tricks with complete hatred. He stunned me with false fear on the ship "Standard" while reading the Lord's Prayer; yesterday in the apartment of Deacon Al. Ivanovich Taratin while reading the same prayer; today, during the liturgy at the great entrance, the words of you and all Orthodox Christians, etc., gave me other thoughts; and everywhere it tempts me, even now, in these moments, it tempts and oppresses my heart with its abomination. I sinned before God by, out of pride, pride and zeal, supporting a dispute about the dangers of tobacco against my sister Anna, who asserted the benefits of tobacco, when it came to the causes of toothache in my brother Alexei Konstantinovich, who smokes heavily, and saying that because of you I will not block myself in the room, and if you are not feeling well, then go to your school. Therefore, I must consider myself guilty of all the troubles that said sister told me, that she would not have come to me if not for Sister Lisa, and so on. Anna Konstantinovna is also wrong: out of pride and ignorance, she considers her thoughts to be correct and mine to be false (about a well-known subject), she is unyielding and disrespectful to her benefactors and elders. Correct us, Lord Lord, both of us, and have mercy on us who have fallen into unpeace and malice. I thank You, Lord, for You took away the anger of the enemy from me, drove him away and gave me peace within me. Let me not be irritated in future. I renew the memory of Your inner blessings to me, Lord: I thank You, for this evening You soon saved me by looking at You, when in repentance I cried out to You for my salvation from the closeness of my heart as a result of a single glance with delight at the beauty of a girl in the Engineering Garden. I thank You, Mother of God, for You quickly saved me from the oppression of sin by calling out to You from the heart. Priest, have pity on sinners as the Lord pityed and pitied you when you were perishing and He sought you out and raised you to the great heights of the priesthood, as one who had experienced the mercy and long-suffering of His Master. Don’t talk about your neighbor in whom you notice his old sins: “but he’s still the same”; do not condemn him, because you yourself are still the same sinner - evil, stubborn, envious, greedy, prodigal, covetous, cowardly, impatient, murmuring, crafty, hypocritical, partial, fearful, falsely bashful! Be condescending with love towards the shortcomings of your neighbor, and God will be a lenient Judge towards you too. With what jealousy, rage, and stability Satan seeks to reign in us every day - through enmity against our neighbors, envy, pride, contention, carnal lust, covetousness, despondency, murmuring, intemperance and greed and other passions! Watch out, man! Your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour [1 Pet. 5, 8]. I thank You, Lord, for You have vouchsafed me, unworthy, to partake without condemnation of Your Divine Mysteries into the world of spiritual strength and into the bliss of my spirit. I thank You, because through my prayer you diminished the great storm of my anger against my brother Alexei and sister Anna, and took away sin, and you graciously granted me peace and silence to my soul. I thank You, Lady, Queen of the world, for through Your intercession I have gained this world from the Lord. My incorruptible food and my inexhaustible drink is the Lord Jesus Christ - infinitely better food and infinitely better drink than earthly food and drink; Why am I jealous about perishable food, perishable drink, why do I have greed for them? Why do I feel sorry for them? Why do I have pity on my flesh? My incorruptible and inexhaustible wealth is Christ: why am I jealous of perishable wealth, why do I regret it, why do I envy it? You do not tolerate contradictions from your subordinates and parasites - this is a sign of self-love and pride. Respect the moral dignity of every person and do not treat anyone despotically, arrogantly, or irritably. Let everything you do be done with love [1 Cor. 16, 14]: know how to both submit and yield with meekness in time, especially when you see that contradiction leads to dislike and enmity; sometimes it is better to remain apparently defeated than to remain victorious, out of humility. To always want to remain a winner is a sign of vanity, pride and contempt: in order to be truly wise, one must sometimes consider oneself ignorant, so as not to irritate the ignorance that ascribes to itself much knowledge. In the small family of Adam and Eve there was already a hated murderer - Cain; so always, as now, the enemy in every family tries to instill hatred in one of the family members towards another member; and now it produces haters and murderers. All haters and murderers are tools of the devil. If you pray for Father Matthew, pray for yourself: you see what a storm of passions is in you. When raising or forming a person - a child, a youth, a youth, we must take care to educate not only his mind, but develop his feeling and direct the will to virtue, to prayer, goodness, mercy, to respect for mental and physical purity, to humility and obedience, to work and patience, to deference and politeness, to gratitude for all services or benefits received, to respect for oaths and oaths, to respect for property rights, respect for human dignity. If I so often revive others in the Mystery of Baptism and sanctify them in the Mystery of Confirmation, but I myself remain unregenerate, unrenewed, sinful, despite all the means for rebirth, and renewal, and enlightenment, and confirmation in virtue and holiness, then I cannot escape Gehenna. And you, Capernaum, who ascended to heaven, will be cast down to hell [Matt. 11, 23]: by receiving the Holy Mysteries I am lifted up to heaven, but through satiation I myself madly and impudently descend to hell. My house - my household - is the small Church of God, whose Head is Christ, and I must treat my household as members of Christ: with meekness, humility, purity, selflessness, with love that endures everything and covers everything, never falling away, and not be an autocratic despot, wanting everyone to submit to me in everything, as if with the destruction of their personality. God! let me lay down my soul for my relatives Gregory and Anna - willingly, with love that never fails. God! teach me to create, not just teach. All the troubles with my relatives and my wife happen because of money, because of food and drink, because of the stomach, because of clothes, plants, dishes, and in general because of things. Despise things and hold on to love. The holy martyrs' bodily members were cut off for Christ's sake - and they did not abhor, they were patient and gentle, like lambs, praying for their enemies; But they don’t cut off our bodily members, but take our food, our surpluses, which can and do harm us in a brotherly way, and we get angry, we are stingy, we are at enmity. Oh, carnal, passionate people! Oh, the morals of pagans, not Christians! Do we think that Christianity consists of food and drink and money, silk clothes, rich furniture, rich houses, rich tableware, silver vestments, and not truth, peace and joy about the Holy Spirit? How do you, knowing your corruption well, still fulfill the will of your corrupted old man, to your obvious destruction? Why don’t you reject yourself, don’t hate yourself, don’t hate yourself? Why do you feel sorry for yourself when you shouldn’t feel sorry - do you feel sorry for yourself so as not to feel sorry for your neighbor, do you hate and despise him? Despise yourself, hate yourself in order to love your neighbor. A wife is partly fair to her sister, just as I consider myself fair to my sisters. While you await the sweetness of seeing and communicating with God, do not be seduced by the sweets of this world. Consider the blessings of this world: money, food, clothing, etc., as rubbish, and do not be seduced by them, and do not value them: if you accept them, give them away. If they take them, don’t be sorry and don’t be embittered, but preserve in every possible way love for your family and for everyone who uses your goods, sometimes against your wishes. People sometimes suddenly lose everything through a fire or other disaster. God will reward you for everything: after all, your household or the poor are members of Christ. Oh, how we should rejoice when others use ours. But the devil brings sorrow, and melancholy, and oppression, and anger, although he may deprive us of our reward. Be gone, you damned one! The Lord is my Provider and Trustee: hitherto He has not deprived me of anything for forty-one years, especially during the days of my priesthood, at the age of fifteen, but He has shown His rich providence over us and will not leave us in the future: He is the same yesterday and today and forever [Heb. 13, 8]. Week 2, All Saints. The Gospel about the calling of the apostles Peter and Andrew, James and John: the greatness of the souls of the apostles is shown, their impartiality to earthly goods, their abandonment out of obedience and love for Christ, their complete cleaving to God and heavenly goods; they are the eagles on high, they are the heavenly citizens, the verbal 74 heavens, the faithful friends of Christ, the true fishers of men, the workers of the work of Christ. (Into the sermon.) Indifferently abandoning earthly blessings, the apostles cut off a thousand evils from their souls and acquired countless blessings. For there is no other way that the enemy sows evil in our hearts than through addiction to earthly things, and no other way does he snare us into destruction than through addiction. A person who is partial to earthly goods is subject to pride, and malice, and envy, luxury and intemperance, and fornication temptations, and murmuring with impatience, and blasphemy, and hardness of heart, which is so fatal, especially in a Christian, and unbelief, and despair, and other countless sins. And he who despises earthly goods has all the opposite virtues. Addiction to earthly things serves as the ultimate obstacle for a Christian to achieve Christian perfection. He who does not renounce everything he has cannot be My disciple [Lk. 14, 33]. Remember the simplicity of your heart - and just cling to God completely [...]. Why does the flesh become enraged with anger? Sometimes a person comes up to me, completely well-disposed towards me, helpful, affectionate, my parasite, or a neighbor, a comrade, and I feel hatred for him. Because of what? Because of the belly, because of greed, envy: I, the stupidest one, have long been sorry that he eats and drinks my sweets and, perhaps, immoderately; but in someone else’s hands the piece always seems bigger and sweeter; and I would like to kill him, but I can’t; and here he is like a thorn in my side, due to the darkness of the devil. That's the secret! The demon of greed disguised me, my brother, and the food, presenting everyone and everything inside out. Oh, vanity! Oh, flattery! Oh, lovely! God! Shine in our hearts the true sun of Thy truth and deliver our souls from the deception of the enemy and from excess and delicacy in food and drink, for from it comes trouble. I thank You, Lord, for the grave temptations of the enemy, which You allowed to befall me because of my sins, and for the overcoming of great evil by the Divine Mysteries, and for pronouncing with all possible boldness the word about the fifth commandment. I thank you for the consolation during the prayer service in the apartment of Kryukov, an artillery officer, and for their pleasant and healthy meal. I thank You, Lord, for Your power to overcome the satanic feelings of pity, stinginess, envy, enmity because of the word about buying meat during a walk, when we were approaching the Gostiny Dvor stock exchange. I called to You by faith - and I was saved, and by Your goodness I conquered my troublemaker. It’s unpleasant that any adult looks at me during the liturgy. Absurdity. Does the beholder hit you, or scold you, or laugh? Isn't it calm? And if you are clean and do your job properly, what should you be afraid of? The enemy frightens you with his dreams, your bad conscience is afraid of you. Oh, if only one of us, wounded by the sting of sin, could justly be said: he treated every sin of thought, word and deed with sincere hatred and with infinite love for every virtue. With all my heart I thank the Most Merciful Lord, who gave me the grace of victory over my bodiless enemies during the liturgy, who covered many of my sins, who healed my great infirmities, and who gave me great, heavenly peace, and who laid His good yoke and His light burden on me after communion of the Divine Mysteries. It is a great thing to partake of these Terrible Mysteries with unashamed faith. Glory and thanksgiving to You, my Lord God, who made me glad with angelic joy! What tightness and weakness You have removed from my insides, O Lord! How life-giving are Your Mysteries! I thank Thee, Lord, for Thou hast taken away my grief against the reader (May 31) and against my brother Constantine (May 30). Again the word came true for me that everything seems to me, it seems to me, demonic ghosts confuse me at the table and on other occasions. Lies, every person truly 75 constantly learns from the lies of the devil. When we abandon true life in spirit, then the ghosts of the devil constantly trouble us. You pray to the Lord or the Lady, the Angel or the saint - and the Lord or the Lady, the Angel or the saint looks at your heart, whether you pray sincerely, with faith and hope, for only the believer receives what he asks, but the unbeliever, the hesitant, does not: let him not think that he will receive anything from God. When the Creator speaks, then there is no room for doubt; for example, the Lord says: this is My Body... this is My Blood [Matt. 26, 26, 28], because He speaks 76, Who created everything from non-existence into being by the word and by the omnipotent word preserves. The command: take, eat must be fulfilled by all the faithful several times a year; Those who do not fulfill this life do not have in themselves, but only the ghost of life. The power of God is made perfect in weakness [2 Cor. 12:9], that is, in me; where sin has multiplied (that is, in me), there is grace abounding [Russian: when sin multiplied, grace began to abound] [Rom. 5, 20]. It just seems to you that there are a lot of food changes on the table, but in reality there are not many. Saint John the Faster, merciful Patriarch of Constantinople, did not eat anything on six days of the week, and on Sunday he ate several vegetables; performed great miracles. Amphilochius, the Reconian ascetic 77, was perspicacious. A story about the experience of his insight Evdokia Mikhailovna, wife of Borovich [sky] tradesman Alexander Vasilyevich Salamanov. Three women; one, at all costs, decided to go to him through a deserted place and swamps, when others, frightened by the difficulty, said that even though the elder was not God, one could go to the nearest church for prayer and salvation of the soul, but there was no need to go to the elder. How did they decide, however, to go, and how the elder told them when they came to his cell: I’m not God, why did you come to me, you could go to church to save your soul, but why come to me, a wretched one? How they were amazed at his gift of insight and asked him for forgiveness in their disrespect for his great exploits for the sake of God. I am willful, stubborn, unyielding, irritable, vindictive. Love God and your neighbor. What hinders love? Our passions. This means that in order to love God and our neighbor, we must crucify passions in every possible way: pride, self-will and stubbornness, malice, envy, fornication, covetousness, gluttony, impatience and others, or we must arm ourselves in every possible way against our many types of pride and reject ourselves daily. I praise and exalt the most merciful Lord for the powers revealed to me upon communion of the Most Pure and Life-Giving Mysteries and during the holy prayer service before the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God; after being embarrassed due to my cowardice from a lot of incense smoking (oh, effeminacy!) and due to embarrassment about this from the enemy, I prayed to the Lord not to give me over to temptation completely, but to deliver me from the evil one - and I was saved, for I felt 78 the power that came from the Lord. Don't be afraid of incense: it goes away soon. I thank and extol the Lord, for he most mercifully and obediently listened to me on the way from home for the wake to the house of Captain Petrov (near Korolev’s house, on Ekaterininskaya Street), when I inwardly, with all my heart, prayed to Him to take away from my heart the embarrassment of anger and the very anger towards sister Anna for her whims. When I condemned myself sincerely and realized that a person who is upset with us for something and is despondent, crying at us, should be pitied as weak in spirit and body, and not be angry, not irritated with him, that we need to give in to him in other ways, and not speak sharply against him and not in a tone of arrogance and pride, which hurts him even more. Seeing my sincere repentance, the Lord immediately had mercy on me, and pacified me, and expanded my heart, which was previously struck by confusion and tightness. Incense smoke is an antiscrofulous remedy, very useful; do not shun this sacred and beneficial smoke. Tolerate tobacco smoking out of love, if those who smoke do not listen to you and do not stop smoking in your home, the Lord will be patient with you too. I sinned before the Lord - during Lent I ate fish with quick butter, and by this disobedience to the Church I paved a convenient path into my heart for the evil of the devil. I sinned - I spared Lenten sweets for my family, saying that they had some Lenten sweets. I shouldn’t worry about sweets and rejoice kindly even if they ate everything, leaving me nothing. Not eating sweets is a gain for the soul; eating is a loss. I thank the Lord, who saved me from distress through my prayer and from my sins that gave rise to it. Be kind to me continually. How I must love You, cleave to You, despise earthly sweets, money, facial beauty, anger, envy and other passions! How good is with You, how bad, how cramped without You! Fasting is the beginning of Christianity: without fasting there is no Christianity. Christ made such a beginning by fasting for forty days and forty nights. So, if you want to be a true Christian, fast, fast during all fasts and on all Wednesdays and Fridays and other fast days. By fasting the flesh with passions and lusts is mortified, but by intemperance it revives and strengthens and often destroys Christianity in a person: the womb becomes God. The wonderful and amazing, immeasurably great structure of God is Christianity and the Christian Church with all its structure. Blessed are those who sincerely belong to it and fulfill its rules; Unlucky are those who fall away from it and do not fulfill its instructions. Listen to what is being said. The Holy Apostle Paul found in Athens many idols, a complete city, and here we have a complete city of dishonest houses, or brothels, public fornications, a complete city of drinking houses, hotels! O lawless city! A city full of abomination! New Sodom and Gomorrah! Why do we, shepherds, allow here those who have the Nicolaitan teaching, 79 which the Lord righteously hates? Why don’t we proclaim the true judgment of God, which is to befall all fornicators and harlots and those who share with adulterers - the owners of these houses and householders who give their apartments to them for lodging? Why do we admit that fornications have become, as it were, necessary social institutions in our country, to which the depraved go without shame or fear, with impudence, as if they were permitted by law? Will we receive any benefit from God for this? Never, never. These public places of debauchery bring enormous harm to the Christian Church, to Christian souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ: here innocent children and youths are corrupted and taught abominations; these depraved houses, like a plague, infect many. I thank You, Lord, for in the morning of this day You surprised me with the miracles of Your mercy, Your power, Your goodness, and You delivered me from the slander of evil demons that troubled me during Matins, and You gave me the strength with the grace of peace to complete the entire Matins without stumbling and loudly. Are people your enemies? Dream; Behold, your enemies are in your heart - your passions, and demons, these evil, incorporeal spirits, confusing you and inciting you to every sin. And people are your benefactors, every one of them: even if they do evil to you, then they do you good. Commit all of yourself, and each other, and your whole life to Christ God, and do not listen to evil spirits: they want to destroy you and your neighbors, because of empty things, arousing in us anger, envy, hatred, despondency, fear, or inciting us to fornication, gluttony, satiety, drunkenness, covetousness, stinginess and neglect of souls, of pleasing God, oh every virtue, relaxing the soul and body with laziness. Remember the sting of the demons, remember the simplicity of the human soul, created in the image of God, and have pity on people. Thy will be done. The devil insists every minute that his will be unceasingly fulfilled, and you insist on constantly fulfilling the will of God - learning meekness, gentleness, humility, patience, spiritual peace, purity and chastity, abstinence, non-covetousness, spiritual patience. Manage how to save your soul and the souls of your neighbors, delve into why the schism is growing, why there is immorality among the people (drunkenness, fornication, murder), coldness towards the Church (write explanations of the divine service) - and write explanatory and accusatory sermons, and spread them carefully, do not hide them under a bushel. God! I thank You, I extol You for Your ineffable mercy and power, for You have surprised me this day in the communion of Your most pure and life-giving Mysteries, ceasing the warfare of my enemies, taking away my sins, giving me a good yoke and a light burden. Oh, what an infinite difference there is between this incorruptible Brush and between this perishable food! And how hitherto I hungered for perishable food, having this incorruptible! How did some people feel sorry for her rather than despise her? In You alone is my life, in You is my peace! Why else am I bothering myself with 80 everyday worries! God! forgive me the deceit of my heart and do not allow me to worry about temporary blessings, for You Yourself graciously, wisely, and unceasingly care for us; grant me to bear with joy the burdens of my relatives, Gregory and Anna, and other people, and the burdens I have imagined, imposed by my passions, to cast aside and not know them, for they are the dream of Satan. Let me always rest in You, my God, for I am Your servant. Amen. I thank You, Lord, for Your providence for the poor: here again You sent five rubles through one artisan. And yesterday I sent five rubles. I thank You, Lord my God, who gave me, sad and weak after sleep, cheerfulness and strength by serving Your life-giving throne! The devil frightens me during worship with ghosts (for example, imagining the face of the archpriest as an evil one, lying in wait for me in order to catch me in word or deed, or noble and rich persons in some kind of fantastic form, or women in a charming form), and I, cowardly, am embarrassed, stumble, do not utter other words from embarrassment, because the devil, like paralysis, strikes me embarrassment. Sometimes the enemy will present the face of a brother in a form worthy of contempt and hatred, for example, as a miser, evil, grumpy (Father Matthew), and arouses anger towards him, although I myself am the receptacle of all sin, and the most just thing is to hate myself; sometimes the enemy imagines my brother as encroaching on my property, wanting to eat and drink me (although this would not be superfluous, because I often eat and drink excessively), when, for example, relatives stay with me for a long time - and again arouses hatred towards them in my heart. The enemy’s machinations are manifold, and all because of our addiction to earthly things. The source of all sinful abomination, my enemy, away from me, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! After the liturgy. Do not be disdained by my gratitude, Lord, for Your great mercy shown to me in the communion of Your Divine Mysteries, and for Your heavenly peace, which You have given to my soul. Consumer of sin, Lord, glory to You! God! According to Your great compassion, not overcome by our sins, take me from this life after the unfaltering performance of the Divine Liturgy and the uncondemned communion of Your Holy Mysteries and the complete cleansing of my sins. Wake up, wake up! God! Destroy the work of the devil in me! May all his efforts in me be in vain, may he weep with great tears for the futility of all his intrigues and slander against me, committed daily from the earliest days of my youth. Amen. Lord, have mercy - prayer of the blind men of Jericho. But we too are spiritually blind: the darkness of sins and passions has blinded our eyes. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes [1 Jn. 2, 11]. If you spare anything edible for your brother, without sparing it for yourself, then you are a slave of the womb, an apostate from God, an idolater, although you bear the name of a Christian, and you worthily endure internal scourging. What is yours in the world? Isn't everything God's? Did you create food? Addiction to food shows a soul that is proud, low, partial to the world, and has no love for God and neighbor. What was the glory of the Forerunner of Christ? Complete disregard for food, drink, clothing, everything earthly and ardent love for God. By the degree of a person’s passion for earthly things, one can judge the degree of his love or dislike for God and neighbor. Addiction to the world is a spiritual paralysis or paroxysm of the soul. Therefore, the apostles, martyrs, hierarchs, saints, and unmercenaries despised everything, their very souls and bodies. Being in the church and looking at everything in it with an attentive eye, you notice that you are in the house of God, in the Kingdom of God’s infinite goodness: one view of the Cross and the Crucified One on it tells us clearly about this infinite mercy of God for His fallen creation; then all the Sacraments, the entire composition of the service, all the rituals. But if God loved and had mercy on you so much, then you also love everyone, be lenient and long-suffering towards everyone, and run away from the devil’s malice like fire - and this malice is looking for every slightest reason to manifest itself in people’s hearts, even because of a sweet piece or because of [an] elegant piece of dress and other things. By frequently partaking of the Life-Giving Wine flowing from the True Vine - Christ, may I have in myself the properties of this Vine. I thank You, Lord, for Your salvation of my unworthiness from the devil’s malice against the reader who walks ahead. What a ridiculous whim! How many dangers there are from perishable food! How many nets the enemy has placed around food and drink, like a catcher for birds, fish or animals. And how often do I fall into these networks due to my greed and foolishness! How the evil fisher successfully catches me in his hellish net! Oh, I understand that I was caught from him in the beginning! Yes, although now I understand the necessity of fasting and may I adhere to unceasing fasting and prayer. (Over tea, I wished my brother Alexei some quick butter for Lent. I think: there is herring, there is tea, and he also takes butter.) The sting of anger towards the reader for haste while reading. I have sinned more than a sexton; or maybe he didn't even sin. Why my anger? From yesterday's satiety and a glass of vodka and smoking tobacco. I haven’t smoked for a long time, but yesterday I smoked as a joke, first offering it to Anastasia Vasilievna Zhukovskaya as a guest. The true sting of the demons is this greed for food and smoking. You are fed up because the devil has thrust the sting of greed into you! You smoked incessantly because the same devil pierces you with his sting, caught you, entangled you in his net; you find fault with your brother with anger and embarrassment for some real or imaginary fault because the devil has pierced you with his sting, overcome you, carried you away. Try to excuse some seemingly disapproving actions of the reader either by his lack of education, or physical weakness, or sinful skill (and some without skill) - that is, habit, or the influence of the enemy, or the circumstances of place and time, and so on. In a word, judge by yourself, by your weaknesses. If you see any evil in your brother, say: this is not a problem, thank God that there is no more, God has delivered more. I thank Thee, Lord my God, for the successful and good-willed, even and harmonious service, with the help of Thy grace, the liturgy and for the uncondemned communion of Thy most pure and life-giving Mysteries into the world of my spiritual powers. Colonel Goremykin had a conversation about brothels and taverns in Kronstadt, about the morals of St. Petersburg, which are not inferior to those of Paris and London; a conversation about how the Lord elevated our nature by His incarnation and how Christians in name, and not in deeds, degrade their nature to a bestial - even worse - state. After Vespers, Grechukhina’s prayer service was served successfully, with zeal and Divine grace; but in the end, when he said to let me go, evil thoughts beguiled me: my heart deceived me, confused me at the sight of those approaching, and I did not calmly pronounce all the saints to whom I prayed, but I stumbled, and I felt unpleasant, ashamed of my involuntary wickedness, the inconstancy of my heart, and the enemy shakes me incessantly. We must serve with fear and say absolution before the face of God and as a mediator between God and people. Goremykin has a story about a guard captain in Vilna or Warsaw, who had a love affair with a Jewish woman and, when he found her kissing an orderly, killed both her and him with a saber. Accept exactly 82, Offering to the Lady, this gift - oil, kindled to You, and extinguish the flame of my passions, and just as you have not deprived us of earthly blessings, so do not deprive us in the future 83, and the imams will always bring you what to bring, even if you do not need our offerings. Take away from us the lack of faith and grumbling. I often name various saints through my lips, but do I imitate them in virtue? They all renounced everything in the world so that they might gain Christ 84 - am I not partial to the world? They have all crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts—am I not cherishing it? About mother. Depending on how she fulfills this holy purpose, a woman serves either as a support or as an instrument for the fall of entire nations and all of humanity, the prosperity of which depends on maternal upbringing and on family happiness based on the marriage union. "Son of the Fatherland". 1870. No. 133. June 18. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also [Matt. 6, 21]. I found this out for myself today at mass and find out often; I felt a strong attraction of my heart to sweets and could not tear it away from them in order to elevate it to God: it was bound by them, killed. Shouldn't we hate sweets after this? And they are not needed for nothing. How many times has the Lord admonished us about the harm to the soul of sweets - but everything is numb. Pray to the Most Pure Mother of God and the saints that the Lord will take away demonic fear from you during public deliberate prayers, in the presence of a multitude of people and the mighty of this world; to always pray with sincerity and firmness for everyone, as for yourself in grief; to enjoy earthly goods impartially, willingly giving to those in need; to be meek and condescending towards household and subordinates; to be a simple, strong and wise teacher of the law, kind to everyone. On June 20 at four o'clock in the morning he administered unction to the old woman Stepanida Romasheva; the devil's anger against the reader Vasily came heavily upon me, inciting me with cruelty throughout the entire time of the unction; According to the action and evil instigation of the devil, every movement of the reader: moving the leg forward, turning the pages of a book - aroused a paroxysm of anger in the heart, but with God's help, unceasing prayer and preventing oneself from becoming despondent, he became above this anger and only once stumbled from cowardice and spiritual impotence at the words of the Gospel: His disciples were discouraged [Matt. 10, 1]. Whatever you say, sweets greatly contribute to the devil’s malice: yesterday I drank very sweet tea with cognac at Goremykin’s and didn’t have anything to eat at home; the tea was very strong: unhealthy. During the unction there was heavy rain: this especially contributed to the painful irritation of the nerves. Well, the violence of the enemy, and the effort! How he achieves malice! How he seeks to reign in our hearts through malice, envy, fornication, gluttony and other passions! Give in to him after that! Soon you will go to hell. Oh, yes, I hold on to love with all my heart, and love with everyone! And at home, because of sweets, how many times has the devil aroused anger and envy in the hearts of consumers of sweets, food and drink! Ghosts about the altar watchman, about the family, about the guests. Yes, the enemy will not give life to anyone in this way, if you pay attention to his dreams and fears, incitements and listen to him. (Before heavy, continuous rain there is an extreme loss of nerves and spirit.) Braiding your hair is harmful. So that the prayer is not only church, but also yours, bring into it on your part concentration, faith, reflection and spiritual feeling with tenderness. Otherwise, it will only be church-related and will not be imputed to you and will not bring any benefit. Late liturgy. Today I was subjected to terrible embarrassment from the evil one during the liturgy and at the most important moments from my stupid suspiciousness. Father Archpriest came to Cherubimskaya and stood near the throne, and I thought that either the altar watchman Nikolai, or my sexton Kutuzov, who did not come to mass this time and sent sexton Adrian in his place, told the archpriest about my temptations that occur during the service, and he came to look at me. This thought killed me: I was completely confused and lost. The archpriest went to the side altar. Meanwhile, Nikolai did not say anything to the archpriest. This, it turns out, is just a duck of the devil. Another reason is the breakdown of nerves from strong tea at Goremykin’s and from excessive sweets, from stinging sweets at home before mass. Do you spare tea for your neighbors in the mornings of the next week, going to eat the immortal Table and drink the priceless Blood of the Lord? Oh, blind, insane stinginess! Are 86 cows fat - butter and cream? May you have a heart overflowing with love; clothe yourself with the wombs of bounty 87 ; desire to give more than what is consumed; say: would you like more?., are you full?., are you satisfied?.. As you wish this from others for yourself, so wish it for others. (Lift up, gates of the heart, your princes - the passions that rule the heart [Russian: Lift up, gates, your heights] [Ps. 23:7].) He served the All-Night Vigil in the Duma with God's help without stumbling. The devil scolded me quite a lot during mass with the arrival of the archpriest. And nothing came of it... Turn your eyes and heart away from all earthly beauties and turn your spiritual eye to heavenly, imperishable beauties; try to renounce your heart from all earthly sweets and cling to the sweetness of heaven. Those are temporary and gross, but these are eternal and spiritual. I thank You, Most Holy Lady Theotokos, for throughout the entire week You helped me, with Your help, to serve without stumbling in the church, as You called upon me, and You were kind to me, unworthy. Amen. I thank Thee, Lord, for Thou didst descend into the fiery furnace of fire, which was wicked within me and kindled by the mental Nebuchadnezzar 88, in Thy Most Pure Mysteries, and Thou didst turn the flames of hell into the dew of grace, and pacified and strengthened my shaken heart. Spend your life in labor, so that you will achieve a labor-free life - there, in heaven. Divine Gifts to me are the Body and Blood of the Lord. What do my giving or gifts to people mean before them - guests, friends or the poor, even if I gave all my property and my body? – Nothing, for everything is God’s and everything is perishable. Give tuna, so that the Lord will not exact from you for His unworthily acceptable Gifts: both those supernatural and natural. The holy people have already achieved eternal life, and by praying to them and their icons, we support and revive our faith in the future life, for the sake of which the saints have undertaken many labors and endured various torments and endured great struggles with the multi-passionate flesh and with the devil, the destroyer of the human race. Resurrection. Late liturgy in the Duma church. I thank with all my heart my Lord, who has worthy me, a sinner, of His grace - to perform the Divine Liturgy without stumbling, with my heart and lips, complacently, with much strength, and to partake without condemnation of His Divine and most pure Mysteries into the peace of all my spiritual strength and into the health and strength of my soul and body. He consecrated the foundation of the bell tower above the Duma church. Everything is fine. He served in a blue silk cassock and did not sweat at all. Drinking cold water in summer is very beneficial. Yesterday I drank a glass of summer water; and strong tea, especially yellow, strong tea, is poison: the nerves suffer terribly, and with them the soul. Tea at the Goremykins'. God! Give me the grace not to be jealous of the passing of perishable goods, not to be angry at the destroyers of these blessings, but to be jealous that love for one’s neighbor may not pass away because of transitory goods, for for love You promised imperishable blessings, and love itself is the imperishable food of Angels and all saints. I am jealous about the loss of earthly goods, for example, food, but about the loss of peace and love with my neighbors, with God Himself, with myself, why am I not jealous with divine jealousy? I am a stupid person: I want my family to eat and not lose it, to eat and not be eaten. But where then would there be a place for God’s incessant creativity, God’s goodness, and God’s bounty? Oh, may they eat, and may the blessings of God ceaselessly diminish, and may new and new, greater and greater, be bestowed. It is a grave sin for a priest, who partakes of the heavenly, incorruptible, immortal food of the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, to be zealous for perishable food and perishable drink, to feel sorry for his neighbors, for they should not be worthy of his attention, he should be above them, like Elijah, like the Forerunner, like the apostles and other saints; they should be considered by him on a par with dust, like fine clothes, like gold and silver. The food of the priest is to do the will of the One who sent him: to save human souls, to study in the word of God day and night, to pray unceasingly, to mortify his flesh, to adhere to holiness, peace and love with everyone for the sake of God. God! From now on, let me never care about perishable goods, for I see the wickedness of the devil in me, in my many-passionate flesh, working towards my destruction, towards the removal of Thy grace, towards the loss of peace, holiness, truth and salvation. May these blessings be alien to me. Amen. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God [Matt. 19, 24; Mk. 10, 25; OK. 18, 25]. The Kingdom of God is like a sting from the thinnest tip of a needle, the sting of the Holy Spirit, wounding hearts with love for God and neighbor, but a rich man’s heart is like a stone and cannot be wounded by this thin sting of the Spirit of God: it is pierced by countless earthly stings, corroding his soul and killing it. I noticed to my brother Alexei with disappointment that he was walking heavily and knocking on the floor, and I myself put on my boots and began to knock in the same way. This is what it means to see a speck in your brother's eye! It’s like being carried away by ghosts at the table, as if my brother eats and drinks a lot, while I myself always eat and drink greedily, although often beyond the need; and if I do not eat or drink because I am full, or because I am weak, or because I am on duty, then I envy those who go and drink. This means that the sin is in me, and not in my brother. My brother usually eats and drinks every day, like me, and he won’t eat more than he needs, like me, because nature either won’t accept it, or the body will become burdened, and it itself will punish us for excess. I sin before God with secret wickedness, ill-will, malevolence and ill-will towards my neighbors and co-workers. You have seen, Lord: have mercy and cleanse me! Until now I had not loved my neighbor as myself, being kind to everyone in every possible way, rejoicing in everyone’s happiness as if it were my own, sympathizing and condoling the grief of others as if it were my own, but internally I was a murderer of my neighbor, an enemy and a hater of him. How worthily I will pay for my sins, internally, in my heart, thought and felt, although not put into action! Cleanse me from my secrets [Ps. 18, 13 ], Knower of the human heart! Turn yourself away [Matt. 16, 24; Mk. 8, 34; OK. 9, 23]. How to deny yourself? Let us suppose that you are a glutton, greedy, stingy, and you feel sorry for your neighbor at a meal of a sweet piece, which, however, you do not feel sorry for yourself, but eat greedily. If you want to make a good and saving beginning of self-sacrifice, then from now on do not spare your brother a sweet piece, but joyfully offer it to him, or be very pleased and joyful in your soul that your neighbor took a good and pleasant piece, and wish with all your heart that it will serve him not only for sweetness, but also for health, as is the good Russian custom of saying: for health, for health; as for yourself, willingly deny yourself, willingly deprive yourself, if necessary, for the sake of the benefit and love of your neighbor. Here is the beginning and an example of selflessness! Having started with a little, with the help of God’s grace you will reach even more. The Kingdom of Heaven at the beginning is like a mustard seed, and then it grows, becomes a tree and is greater than all the grains, so that the birds of the air can take refuge in its branches 89 . What is said about food, the same must be said about money, clothing and other necessary things of life. Suppose you are a lover of money and love to collect only for yourself, although you already have a lot of wealth, and, like Cain, you tremble over money, wanting to turn everything in the world into money, like Judas the precious ointment with which the head of the Lord was anointed, and sparing the poor and needy not only rubles, but also kopecks. If you want to be a disciple of Christ and have a share in His Kingdom, then from now on, begin as diligently and willingly to distribute your wealth to the poor as you diligently and willingly collected it; do not grieve over what is given away, but rejoice that your treasures are of benefit to your neighbors and to you, as before they lay useless; take comfort in the hope that instead of perishable goods the Lord will reward you with incorruptible ones, and instead of temporary ones with eternal ones. You have desired, thirsted, and greedily collected earthly blessings until now; now, through spiritual reflection and prayer, arouse in yourself contempt for them and a thirst for spiritual, incorruptible, heavenly, eternal blessings. Almost all of us suffer spiritually precisely because we hunger for temporal blessings and collect them, but we do not believe in the imperishable wealth of blessings prepared for us here, but especially in heaven, or have grown cold towards them completely because of an addiction to temporary blessings: for addiction to some excludes love for others. You cannot work for God and wealth. If we think that by being attached to wealth we love God and our neighbor, then we are cruelly deceiving ourselves. The experience of life every day, at every step exposes our falsity. The lover of money is the daily and most flattering enemy of God and his neighbors, although hiding behind a mask of meekness and love of mankind and, perhaps, loudly preaching about love of mankind; Every day he is the cause of misfortune and the very death of many poor people, whom he should have supported with his rich means and whom, however, he does not want to know and to whom he would not do anything good if he knew about them. The lover of money is a hellish monster, and his silver will go with him to destruction, because because of him many have perished and are perishing. The lover of money is a submissive tool of Satan, just like Judas is a traitor. Therefore, I beg you, Christian people, to despise with all your soul the love of money and to pray for the lovers of money, so that the Lord Himself will soften their hardened hearts and open up their treasures for the benefit of their neighbors and their own, so that their souls do not perish forever along with Judas the traitor, for the lover of money daily becomes a traitor to the Lord in the person of His members - the poor brethren, if he passes by them with contempt. The Lord will fill my barns if I seek and adhere to peace and love and generous alms, according to His word: Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. And stinginess and greed are new fornication, new malice, greed. Provide earthly blessings to those who wish, and seek heavenly ones. Laugh at the enemy, as he constantly laughs at you. To do this, you just need to give up everyday care, which has killed you so many times. Should I cherish my flesh, which has caused and is causing me so much harm? And in clinging to the one God, what bliss! My soul knows this. It is good for me to cleave to God... My soul cleaves to You... since my flesh is multiplied by You [Russian: And it is good for me to draw closer to God!., my soul cleaves to You... my flesh yearns for You] [Ps. 72, 28; 62, 9, 2]... What confusion, darkness, and crampedness worldly addictions bring into our souls! It’s as if a fierce war is going on within us. All children of the Church listening to the divine service need to know the need 90 of all the petitions offered by the priest and deacon, as well as the prayers and hymns pronounced by the reader, and stand with extreme attention and meditation! Summer. Looking at grasses of different species, flowers, shrubs, fruit and sterile trees, we notice that during the summer they reach their development and maturity corresponding to each plant and do not stop in their development. We need to learn a lesson from this. We must also develop, grow and reach spiritual maturity. But our spiritual development is stopped, our maturity is hampered by our sins and passions, which are like painful wild growths on our soul. Therefore, it is necessary to cut them off with heartfelt repentance, prayer and fasting. If the eye of your right hand, or your hand, or your foot offend you, pluck them out and cut them off: if only one of you should perish by your blows, and not your whole body should be cast into Gehenna (fire) [Russian: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not your whole body should be cast into Gehenna] [Matt. 5, 29]... A person subject to any passion will offend himself and others every day; he flagellates himself, torments, disfigures himself, distorting the image of God in himself and taking on the image of the devil, making his heart a dwelling place for mental pigs. At the opening of the royal gates at the small entrance: We thank You, Lord, for you have opened for us the doors of Paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven, imprisoned by our sins. Grant us not earthly wisdom, but heavenly wisdom, so that, not clinging to the earth, we will fall away from our mountainous fatherland. Doesn’t the Lord return ten times more every day to me for my brother, for the extra tasty morsel he ate? Why is there confusion, war, darkness? Oh, Judas's curse! Oh, lack of Christian love! Oh, the successful operation of Satan in me! God! Thy kingdom come [Matt. 6, 10]. Sinful pride grows in me and destroys the work of God in me! Self-love kills love for God and neighbor. If my relatives are disposed towards me because of the gifts they receive from me, thanks be to God: these are not mine, but God’s gifts; but may they love me because I am a man and in the image of God. When the body is flourishing, and the means of living are large, and has distinctions in the service, and everything is going well, then very often a person does not have inner contentment, well-being and tranquility, but daily experiences a storm and agitation of passions within himself; the inner worm of pride sucks his heart and does not give him peace, and when there are no real misfortunes, the demon of envy and malice creates imaginary, dreamy misfortunes for him, and the apparently happy person is tormented daily by his own ghosts of passions. It is good for him who cleaves with all his heart to the one true and eternal good - God: in Him he always rests his soul, and no ghosts frighten him. The Lord is my enlightenment and my Savior, whom I will fear; The Lord is the protector of my life, from whom I will fear [Russian: The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom should I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life: whom shall I fear?] [Ps. 26, 1]. How to love your neighbor as yourself? - To desire for your neighbor what you want for yourself, to care about your neighbor’s good as if it were your own, to observe, if possible, the benefit of your neighbor as if it were your own, in food, in clothing, in housing, in household utensils, in all things. He who loves his neighbor as himself does not tolerate luxury in the table, but observes possible simplicity in food, avoiding expensive dishes: I, he says, will make a few dishes and cheaper, so that I can give bread to the completely poor; does not tolerate luxury in clothing, but buys simple and inexpensive materials for clothes, although decent and durable, avoiding silk and velvet, because, he says, by buying simple and inexpensive materials for clothes, I will thereby save a significant amount of money, which I can give to the poor, and they will buy rags and a shirt with it; he who loves his neighbor is refrained from buying expensive or unnecessary, superfluous things, which can easily be dispensed with, is held in the thought that he should give the excess to the needy, for whom the All-Good Provider supplies him with the excess, and not at all for luxury and extravagance, for from each of us on the Day of Judgment the Lord will require deeds of mercy, no matter who he is: a king, a warrior, a nobleman, an official, etc. nobleman, merchant or villager, spiritual or secular. He who loves his neighbor as himself, cares ardently for the salvation of his neighbor as for his own, instructs him in the truths of faith, warns him against sins, zealously reproaches him, corrects him as much as he has the strength and opportunity, because he fears his destruction as his own; he who loves his neighbor as himself, sympathizes with him in grief, sadness and illness, consoles him, helps him, if he can, or disposes others to help, rejoices with him in joy. We pray to God for the Holy Synod, may the word of truth rule, may it lead all Christians through God-given means to a holy life, leading them away from the paths of vice and destruction, may it lead everyone to heavenly residence and the Kingdom. He has a great and difficult duty, and he needs a lot of light, spiritual wisdom, strength, vigilance, insight, spiritual fire in order to do his apostolic work with the spirit, wisdom, constancy, strength and selflessness of the apostles. I thank Thee, O most merciful Lord, for on this day, when I was in spiritual trouble, which began at home during midday tea at four and a half o'clock through the action of the spirits of malice and continued during my procession for christening in the house of Usova, in the lower wide street, to the officer Lieutenant Silversvan, he heard me when I cried out with all my heart, walking along the road, both from my passions and from invisible villains You have solemnly snatched away, taking away confusion, cramped conditions, scorching fire and giving me peace and boldness. Do you, man, believe in your high heavenly calling of the Christian faith? No: you still see it as if in a dream; You don’t believe that the Lord God loved you so much that He wants to give you eternal life and unspeakable blessings - otherwise you would live as your faith requires, you would live in the likeness of the apostles, martyrs, reverend fathers and all the saints, in the likeness of the first Christians, holy, abstinent, thinking about heavenly blessings, not clinging to earthly ones, having mercy on the poor, and so on. But you don't have that. I don't see the fruits of faith in you. I notice the degree of my addiction to earthly sweets from the frenzy into which I fly when I see parasites drinking tea without me. I see the misfortune hanging on my nose because of gluttony, especially during the liturgy, and yet I do not stop, recklessly, indulging in gluttony and satiety. Late mass in the Duma church. I thank You, Lord, for Your great mercy and for your good obedience to me, unworthy, and for the saving powers that were revealed to me during the celebration of the Liturgy and the communion of the Divine Mysteries, when invisible enemies hesitated and confused me. Accept my gratitude and do not forsake me of Your grace until my last breath. (Alexey tempted like Satan, deliberately eating the quick oil provided for the child.) What made you angry with your brother Alexei at evening tea? Carnal greed and envy. Your brother, against your wishes, ate quick butter during Lent and teased you, praising it, and your greedy flesh, deprived of this food, became jealous of your brother [or] became angry with him, like a bear deprived of her cubs. Don't trust your flesh. The seduced flesh is always infuriated by malice, envy, pride, stinginess, self-will, and fornication. Therefore, abstinence and fasting are necessary. Flesh tamed by fasting is quiet, modest, pure, benevolent, and generous. Again you have forgotten that you are dealing with the members of Christ, for the poor are members of Christ. Are you serving meagerly again? Are you treating them rudely and unlovingly again? Are you freaking out again? Truly, the more you feed the flesh, the more it goes berserk: after all, it is completely full, but it is greedy and spares the coveted food and drink of those who eat and drink; a person goes to eat the incorruptible meat - the Body and Blood of the Lord, but is greedy of the corruptible food. Oh, the most deceitful, most absurd flesh, prodigal, greedy, envious, evil! When will I crucify you, charmer, slanderer, destroyer? When will I kill you? Because of what my flesh rages the most, that means I have a special predilection; what is most regrettable when deprived, it means that there is my idol. I must sincerely consider myself worse than everyone, more disgusting than everyone, in order to truly respect every person, especially those with a high rank, even if he were a comrade in the service and was known for his shortcomings: respect in this case refers to the image of God in which man was created, and to the rank that he bears. I am not sure, apparently, of my sins, although they have surpassed the hair of my head. Otherwise, why do I not firmly pronounce or hold back the forgiveness of the Church after the Midnight Office and All-Night Vigil and before the Liturgy? And services, and litanies, and icons, and the throne - everything expresses the idea that the Church is the Body of Christ and the house of God and all its members are one. When a person, being partial to some thing that he sees in the hands of his brother, envies him in it and desires it for himself, then suddenly love for one’s neighbor dries up in the heart and hostility and coldness reign in its place; the soul of that person is darkened and faint. When, in the depths of his soul, he feels the absurdity of his desire and is satisfied with the blessings that he has, although [they] are small, and considers what belongs to his brother to be his sacred property, then the blindness passes, and hostility towards his brother is again replaced by love for him, and his heart spreads, calms down, and quickens, for his whole life is in love for God and his neighbor. Stuffy and shy atmosphere - greed, voluptuousness, gluttony, love of glory. The small number of the chosen ones frightens me. Do you want treasures, do you want to have thousands? You want little, and I will say more - insignificant. God wants to reward you with countless blessings in eternal life. Do you want earthly ranks and distinctions? – You want little, unworthy of your deified, heavenly nature. God wants to make you His heir, to honor you (as He has already honored you) with the title of His son and daughter. Does physical beauty seduce you in others, or would you like to have a more beautiful face? What you want is insignificant: God has given you the incorruptible beauty of the soul, created in the image of God, which you value so little in yourself and in people and which consists of meekness, humility, kindness, purity and chastity, patience, obedience, devotion to the will of God, peace; Moreover, having been baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ, and who is more beautiful than Christ, the Son of God, about whom it is said: Handsome in kindness than the sons of men [Russian: You are more beautiful than the sons of men] [Ps. 44, 3 ]? And in the next century, God will transform your humble body so that it will be consistent with the glorious body of Christ. From drinking wine—sherry—I developed an inflammatory abscess in my nose of a scrofulous nature. August 10, 1870. With any sin, we must remember the incitement to it on the part of the culprit of every sin - the devil; one must resist this incitement with sincere inner prayer to the Lord; With any sin, one must remember the remorse of the enemy, with which the poison of sin is poured into the soul - sweet or bitter, fiery, scorching the soul and body, and endure this remorse, praying to the Doctor of souls and bodies to heal this remorse, to purge this poison, but not at all to indulge in cowardice and impatience, despondency, despair, suicide, as often happens with sinners. We must remember that Christ came into the world to save sinners [1 Tim. 1, 15]. And this is the cunning of the devil, that when peace-loving people, his children, want to read the Gospel or some other holy book, or go to church for divine services, or fulfill the Christian duty of confession and communion, he begins to confuse them with nasty and blasphemous thoughts and present the holy cause in an extremely unfavorable form; and those, in order to avoid this devilish confusion and again indulge in the sweet peace of the flesh and sinful sleep, stop reading such books and going to church. This is why there are few people who read the word of God among educated, so-called people. Carnal life does not allow them to reach the most spiritual book - the Gospel and the church, and they remain slaves to their flesh and their lusts. He who is faithful in a little is also faithful in much, and he who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much [Lk. 16, 10]. So, for example, one who is faithful in the use of earthly wealth, who distributes it to the poor, is also faithful in shepherding human souls (feed my sheep [John 21:16]), in sincere goodwill to them; and the money-loving shepherd, who is unfaithful in the use of wealth, shepherds only himself, and not the sheep, and cannot be faithful to God in this great matter - the construction of the salvation of human souls, just like the sensualist and the ambitious, for they shepherd themselves, and not the sheep of the Lord. But food 91 shepherds feed themselves [Russian: shepherds who feed themselves] [Ezek. 34, 3 (2)]? If you were not faithful in someone else's, who will give you yours? [ OK. 16, 12 ] Earthly wealth is called foreign because it is God’s, not ours, and is given for distribution to the poor; It is also called alien because it is alien to our soul, as immaterial and incorruptible, which has its own spiritual wealth. Wealth is called unjust because it is collected for the most part by unrighteousness or, in any case, through the deprivation of the poor. To the schismatics. How can God save you? God sent His only begotten Son to save the world; This Only Begotten Son lived in the world for saving instruction, founded the Church for the salvation of those who wish to be saved, established the order of the priesthood, and you - away from the Church, from the priests too. What will happen to you? Imminent death. If he does not listen to the church, then let him be to you as a pagan and a tax collector [Matt. 18, 17]. Those who are intemperate in food and drink or who smoke tobacco lose their taste for the Holy and Divine and for the Divine Eucharist itself, or Communion, and even, like the sick for medicine, have an aversion to everything holy and to the Divine Brush. Therefore, a Christian needs abstinence and aversion to smoking tobacco as an excess, as a bad habit that has no basis in human nature. Oh, malice! Oh, whim! I sinned against the Lord by becoming embittered internally at my wife because she poured tea not according to my (that she did not listen to me) desire (and the tea was good). God! I thank You for the spiritual pleasure I received from You and from Your Most Pure Mother during the service of the all-night vigil in the house of the merchant Nikitina and Neustroyeva, for this tenderness, for this heavenly peace, for this prayerful success. Twelve o'clock at night. Sovereign! The Heavenly King has no vision: before Him all are equal - for all are His children, and all are insignificant, for all are called into existence from insignificance. With Him, the greatest of all must be the servant of all. You are greater than all, you are the servant of all; I am a priest, and in some cases also a greater one: I am a servant to everyone. But the kingdom and the priesthood are united in the person of Jesus Christ: the kingdom is venerable, the priesthood is venerable, and sometimes the priesthood is more venerable than the royal dignity. You understand what I'm saying. So, king, build up the common blessing with the wisdom and strength given to you, be impartial to everyone, give everyone their due - and your throne will be corrected 92 for ever, and future generations will praise your righteousness. The mercy of the Lady is inseparable from the mercy of Her Son and God, and therefore others think that they receive mercy from the Lord, and not from the Lady. This is a great misconception, serving to diminish zeal in prayers to the Queen of Heaven and due love and gratitude and filial fear for Her, the Most Good. Have you not noticed, man, during your fervent prayer to the Queen of Angels and men, the feelings of repentance and tenderness with tears, heavenly peace, lightness and sweetness in your soul? And this is the greatest mercy of the Mother of God, who invisibly visits your soul with Her heavenly overshadowing. (All-night vigil to the Tikhvin Mother of God, daily home prayers to Her.) Lord Lover of Mankind! I sinned before You and before the little beggars: I was upset with them when they asked me for money, and again I gave place in my heart to vile pride, love of money, lust, stinginess, envy, pride. For this reason great sorrow, distress, and hell befell me; Several times I came to You with a prayer for mercy, and the fourth time You had mercy on me, giving me peace. I thank You for the mercy of Your compassion! In a spiritual sense, the benefit is the opposite compared to a carnal one; for example, carnal people consider it advantageous to get drunk and eat early in the morning; people who live spiritually, on the contrary, consider this a loss for themselves, and consider abstinence as a benefit for the soul and body; or again, carnal people consider it a loss to give alms to the poor and therefore either do not give at all, or give very little and with grief, but consider it a benefit to buy themselves some new clothes or other things, most of them unnecessary and empty, or some tasty fruit, or something else edible (and I, the accursed one, have such ungodly and false thoughts, and I condemn myself); people who live spiritually, according to the Gospel, consider the daily giving of alms to the poor as a great benefit and therefore give daily, willingly, without the slightest grief, in the confidence that alms are a seed and, if done from the heart, will bring a hundredfold fruit to the sower. There are people who consider it a profitable business if they deceive someone, sell a thing for more than its value, even if they steal it, if they get drunk, if they gorge themselves on delicious dishes, if they seduce a person, for example, they drive them out of patience, abuse them, or if they seduce innocence, if they lead a riotous life; Those who live spiritually consider this to be the greatest loss and, doing the opposite [to them], are extremely careful from all such deeds. The first kind of wisdom is called carnal, sinful, counterfeit, devilish wisdom; the second – spiritual, holy, saving, evangelical. Through cases of grief, the heart becomes coarser and love for neighbors dries up. Beware of any grief, any manifestation of anger. Keep love and kindness. Give, Lord! How does the enemy reward me for my addiction to the blessings of this world - food, money and other things that he teaches? Hellfire in the insides and tightness. I forget, due to the evil suggestion of the enemy, that there is another sphere besides the earthly one, another life besides the earthly one, other needs besides the earthly ones. And yet, just as everything earthly is insignificant, everything heavenly is important. With what zeal, effort and violence the enemy, the spirit of lies and malice, chains my heart to the ground! It is clear that everything earthly is a terrible, endless vanity and destruction of the spirit. July 29, 1870. God has long been complaining about us that we approach Him only with our lips and honor Him with our lips, but our heart is far away from Him [Matt. 15, 8 ]; We often hear a psalm of repentance from us: Have mercy on me, O God [Ps. 50], but true repentance is not visible in us; Create a pure heart in me, O God, we say, and renew a right spirit in my womb, but, as can be seen from our deeds, we don’t even think about cleansing the heart and renewal. We pronounce all the petitions contained in the prayers compiled by the holy fathers, strong in word and deed, out of habit, like memorized words, without justifying them with deeds, without striving for holiness, for the fulfillment of the Gospel, without carefully raking ourselves from all the lusts that war on the soul, without restraining the impulses of wild passions. How long will this hypocrisy and double-mindedness last? How long will there be malice, envy, pride, intemperance, fornication, wickedness, love of money, hardness of heart, stinginess or absent-mindedness, laziness, drunkenness and the like? God! Convert us and we will be converted. The Holy Church, our all-wise, God-enlightened and most tender mother, complains to the Lord, her Bridegroom, about her children that they have completely taken over their carnal will and have despised its saving statutes: they do not observe fasts, they do not fulfill prayers, they do not clear their consciences annually, they do not attend church, they do not read the words of God; but they set the goal of their life: gluttony, intemperance of all kinds, absent-mindedness, self-will, life at random - in a word, life according to the will of the devil. How dark is the gold, the good silver is changed: the shrine of the Kamyts crumbled at the beginning of all outcomes. The sons of Zion are honorable, clothed in pure gold (the justification of the Holy Spirit), as imputed into clay vessels, the work of the hands of the meager (all became flesh, without spirit) [Russian: How the gold has become tarnished, the best gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary are scattered at all crossroads. The sons of Zion are precious, equal to the purest gold, how are they compared to pottery, the work of a potter's hands!] ? Jeremiah's cry. Ch. 4, art. 1, 2. It is necessary to explain the mystery of Baptism, the baptismal vows, the Apostle and the Gospel of the day and of the whole year. Why should we work in this life and what should our work be? Our work is doing the commandments of God, and the goal of the works of this life is the acquisition of eternal life. If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments [Matt. 19, 17]. But we have deviated from both the subject and the purpose of doing. Both are only temporary, earthly. Notice in all thoughts and movements of the heart, in the movements of passions, in words and deeds - the intentions and goal of the ethereal villain. Remember the simplicity of your soul, created in the image and likeness of the Most Simple Being of God, and the disgusting, evil simplicity of the spirit of malice. God! give me the grace to serve You with the power that attracts everyone to You, especially the Divine Liturgy, according to Your word: when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Me [John. 12:32], for I do Your work, serving and standing before Your throne. (I heard from a simple woman that when I serve, she feels great grace in her heart, but when other fathers, she does not feel it, but stands empty. Glory not to me, but to the grace of God.) I thank You, O Most Merciful Master, for you saved me, a sinner, from great temptations and demonic embarrassment during the performance of proskomedia, when I gave the sexton money for the services; I thank You, for with strength and dignity You have granted me to perform the entire liturgy and partake without condemnation of the Divine Mysteries and perform a prayer service before the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God; Only when reading the prayer to the Lady did I stumble several times from insincerity, heart deceit and doubt! This sin covered with a loud recitation of the prayer: Highest of heaven. Oh, how sincerity and humility are needed every second! I thank the Benevolent Lord, who soon heard my heartfelt cry to Him for my salvation from embarrassment, oppression and shame of anger, when I was angry with my wife because she went to seal the prosphora for the sick servant of God Olga, saying: “Will this procedure end soon?” You covered my sins with Your mercy and soon pacified me, saying: your sins are forgiven, go in peace, - and I went with heavenly peace, walking around the room with my guest Nikolai Ivanovich Ivanovsky. Such is Your mercy, Lord! Such is Your hasty obedience! But listen to me quickly in this: surprise Your great and swift mercy on Your servant, sick Olga. The four wine berries I ate terribly spoiled my state of mind: they spoiled my state of mind and were the reason that I could not read the Lord’s Prayer before dinner and bless the meal as it should, and serve a calm prayer service at the tradesman Nabatov’s. Do not arm yourself against anyone with a single thought or movement of your heart, but leave all judgment to God - and be strong in the one God, holding on to Him with all your heart. All-night vigil for the day of the holy supreme apostles Peter and Paul. I thank the Lord, who did not abandon me with His mercy and help during the ministry and gave me a prayer of tenderness with tears, although I was not worthy of this heavenly gift, having drunk two glasses of vodka at dinner, out of habit, and drinking a lot of tea and coffee after dinner. But, having dressed in a silk cassock and cassock, I was somewhat tempted by them: when I was burning incense, I was afraid that I might get a lot of smoke from the incense of my cassock. Alas! I showed a passion for corruption in the church of the incorruptible God, who gave me an incorruptible soul and from an addiction to corruption drawing me to incorruptible life, and, moreover, on the day of the supreme apostles, who considered all earthly jewels, sweets, soft clothes to be rubbish and dung. Therefore, when I read the Gospel about the appearance of the risen Lord to His disciples and about His threefold questioning of the Apostle Peter: do you love Me [Jn. 21, 15 – 17 ], I felt the conviction of my conscience that I do not love the Lord with all my heart, because I still have love for earthly things, I still worship idols in my heart, I still love the world and its corruptible goods. Oh, if the Lord would grant me a heavenly mind, a heavenly heart, a heavenly will, heavenly feet, like those of the apostles, who despised everything worldly and loved one God! When performing public worship, for example, liturgy, prayer, memorial service, etc., remember that all those present, even highly educated ones, even writers, or newspaper publicists, or military officials, or officials, or eminent merchants, or speaking many languages - all before the Church, like the moon before the sun, like valleys before a high mountain, stand incomparably lower than it, and all prayers, pronounce exclamations and rituals, perform them with decent sedateness, humility and at the same time the importance befitting a servant of Christ; Do not be ashamed for a moment of the words or rituals of prayer and do not be afraid of the mighty of this world, who are insignificant before God, like insects. And so I became gluttonous and satiated even during the present, Peter’s fast! The Church gave a wonderful opportunity and commandment - to crucify the flesh with passions and lusts, and I omitted this opportunity, did not crucify the multi-passionate flesh. Whether I will be given another post for this saving purpose is unknown. How unreasonably and wordlessly we live, carried away by the carnal present, without seeing into the future! He who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much [Lk. 16:10]: he who does not keep the commandment of fasting - the lesser commandment - will not keep the other, greater commandments, and, having sinned in one, has become guilty against the whole law. In person and in appearance I am what I am - excuse me, I’m not fancy; but we must think about what we are like in the eyes of God. On the outside you appear red... on the inside you are naturally full of hypocrisy and lawlessness [Russian: on the outside you seem beautiful... but on the inside you are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness] [Matt. 23, 27–28]. Velikanov about Crabbe: that this magnate became completely proud, became fat, became insensitive, that he, Velikanov, wished him even more earthly blessings, so that he would become bogged down in his affairs, drown in them with his soul, to which he surrendered entirely to sensuality. (On the occasion of his speech, Velikanov, at Efremov’s meeting, which was distinguished by its truthfulness and harshness, Crabbe refused Velikanov a fair salary.) The extremely and terribly fallen human race is being given extraordinary, supernatural means of salvation - the Terrible Secrets: the Body and Blood of the Lord of Glory Himself, the Giver of Life! Who will reject them if he sincerely desires salvation, if he is aware of his disastrous, sinful state? I thank You, Lord, who so truly Divinely took pity on us who were perishing, and Divinely saved us. The story of sexton Adrian about his comrade, a strong man, full of blooming health, how he ruined his health and his life, how he boasted of his health and strength, how he allowed his chest to be beaten with logs to test its strength, how he got drunk, rioted, and how he was swollen - until he died. Late mass, with organic weakness and a strong inclination to sleep, he performed with God's help cheerfully and in a firm voice and received the Holy Mysteries into the heavenly world of spiritual strength, with joy and delight, having overcome the cunning of demons by the grace of God and being able to do so through faith in Christ Jesus. The case of the schismatic in the baths of Sinebryukhov. I shook off the dust from my feet. I thank the Lord, who soon heard my heartfelt prayer: take away, O Lord, from my heart the sting of enmity against my sister and give me the sting of Thy love for her; he immediately took away the sting of enmity and gave the sting of love; the languor and tightness passed away and peace and space of the heart followed. Go in peace [Mk. 5, 34]. Do not gather all the ears of corn from the field, but leave them to the poor - the commandment of God in the Old Testament [Lev. 19, 9–10]. In the New Testament, this rule must be observed all the more, according to the word of the Lord: I want mercy, not sacrifice [Matt. 9, 13; 12, 7]. So, from the glorious fraternal income it is right to give to the poor, for this is our harvest, given by the Lord, and cannot be called our property, like the property of parishioners, and even more so God’s property. I thank my Lord, who has given me the gift of pure prayer and tenderness and peace while I was reading the rules for Matins and while singing the stichera on Praise to the Apostles. He celebrated mass in the cemetery in the old church alone, in a painful state of spirit and body, vaguely, under the incessant action of the dirty trick of the flesh, the angel Satan. I thank the Lord, who had mercy on me with unspeakable mercy - who delivered me from the legion of spirits of evil when I left the house and went to the ship and on the ship itself; I thank the Lord, for I heard the strong and long cry of my heart and, after righteous admonition and punishment, sovereignly delivered me from their villainy and oppression. Pochiti (Church Glav.) - calm down, relax. Si (church glory) - for yourself; in the form of an adverb is attached at the end of other words instead of “your”; their si - their benefits. Wed: No one is looking for his own (Russian: No one is looking for his own) (1 Cor. 10:24). Finger (Church Glav.) – dirt, dust, ashes of the earth. Wed: where their worm does not die and the fire does not go out (Mark 9:44). Wed: every person is a lie (Ps. 115:2). Sy (Church Glav.) – Existing, Eternal (one of the names of God). Amphilochius of Rekonsky, schemamonk († 1865). Finnish by birth; born in Riga into the family of a Lutheran pastor. In his young years, he voluntarily converted to Orthodoxy and at Confirmation he was named Andrei. While attending the veneration of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God, he met Blessed Boris, who persuaded him to settle on Rekoni. Andrei came to the Rekonskaya hermitage in 1813, already a seventy-year-old old man, but vigorous and strong; all that remained of the monastery here was a small wooden church in honor of the Life-Giving Trinity, surrounded by dense forests. Here Andrei led an ascetic life. In 1822 he was tonsured a monk with the name Adrian, and in 1832 - into the schema with the name Amphilochius. After a miraculous vision of the Venerable Alexander of Svirsky, the elder began to work for the revival of the hermitage, and in 1860, by imperial command, the hermitage was erected into an independent monastery with the name of a secondary cenobitic monastery. Elder Amphilochius died his fasting and difficult life on August 9/22, 1865 at the age of one hundred and twenty-five years. For more information about Elder Amphilochia, see “Biographies of Russian Ascetics of Piety of the 18th and 19th Centuries. August”, edition of Vvedenskaya Optina Hermitage, 1994, p. 203 – 210. Chul (Church Glav.) – smelled, felt. The Nikolaitan teaching is a heresy that arose at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries. The Nicolaitans considered themselves followers of Nicholas, one of the seven deacons mentioned in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6:5). A feature of the teaching of the Nicolaitans was the denial of the restrictive decrees of the Apostolic Council regarding food, the intercourse of wives and adultery; They considered the body to be the product of an evil principle and preached debauchery as a means of mortification. Their teaching is exposed in the Epistles of the Apostles Peter (2 Pet. 2) and Jude (1:4–8) and in the Revelation of St. John the Theologian (2:14–16). Vlayatisya (Church Glav.) – to be worried; hesitate; rush through the waves. Paroxysm (Greek) – a strong, sudden attack, attack of illness, feeling, mental excitement. Tochiyu (Church Glorious) - only. Compare: Yes, and I count all things but loss for the sake of the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Him I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, that I might gain Christ (Phil. 3:8). Nalezhati (Church Glav.) – to oppress, force. Wombs of generosity (church glory) - compassion, mercy. Wed: Put on... in the womb of generosity (Russian: put on... in mercy) (Col. 3, 12). Nebuchadnezzar is the king of Babylon who destroyed Jerusalem, captured its inhabitants and plundered the Jerusalem Temple. From all the Jews who were in Babylonian captivity, Nebuchadnezzar demanded to worship the golden image as God, and ordered those who disobeyed to be burned in the oven, but he was put to shame by God’s miracle over three youths - Ananias, Misail and Azariah. For his pride, God struck King Nebuchadnezzar with madness (see Dan. 1). Compare: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which, although smaller than all the seeds, when it grows, it is larger than all the grains and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air fly and take refuge in its branches (Matthew 13:31-32). Need (Church Slav.) – here: necessity, necessity. Food (church glory) - is it really, really, isn't it... (do the shepherds graze themselves). Correct (Church Glav.) – prepare; make it solid, strong, successful, comfortable; make it look better. You might be interested in: