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Look down with your smart eye - and you will see under you a deep ditch, a gaping hell, wanting to devour sinners, and would immediately devour them, if God’s mercy, God’s goodness, awaiting the sinner’s repentance, did not hold him back. This abyss is terrible for holy men too. Saint Cyril of Alexandria says: “I am afraid of Gehenna, for it is endless. I'm afraid of tartar, because it has no warmth. I’m afraid of the darkness, because it doesn’t belong to the light.” And other saints had the same fear. For the saints of God, who spent their entire lives in such repentance, served God so much that they were afraid to transgress His slightest commandment, trembling, they feared that abyss. Should we, sinners, be fearless? The natural man, that is, the one who walks along the broad path, will have to go to hell. Eternal torment awaits careless and unrepentant sinners! What can you expect if you don’t get up and repent with contrition of heart? Nowadays, God’s mercy is promised and given to everyone who repents. Then all mercy will cease to be given. Then the spoken word will be heard: child! remember that you have already received your good things in your life (Luke 16:25). You will hear this word too. You will suffer endlessly. You will always die and never die. You will live and die. You will burn and never burn out. You will taste the sorrows of eternal death. The fire that torments you will not go out, the worm that eats you will not die, unless you repent. For sin, Gehenna, hell and eternal torment are prepared. How great and terrible is the misfortune, firstly, to be deprived forever of God’s mercy and His sweetest sight, with which all the holy Angels and holy people will forever be satisfied without satiety; to be alienated and rejected from this blessed cathedral and to fall into the most painful eternal state, with the devil and his evil angels, drinking the cup of God's wrath without end, suffering in that consuming, but unkilling flame (see Matt. 13:42; 25, 41; Mark 9:43-45, etc.), where one drop of water is desired, but never It will work out, and the answer will be heard: child! remember that you have already received your good things in your life (Luke 16:25). How hard, I say, in such a calamity it is to sigh, groan, weep, weep, be consumed, and grind your teeth endlessly, incessantly and uselessly (see Rev. 21:8)! Sin leads to such terrible evil. Here people are running away from death, but there they will wish for it - and they will run away from them; they will wish to turn into nothing, but will not be able to; and so they will always die, but they will never die. And this is the second death (Rev. 9:6; 21:8). Great suffering is multiplied by the fact that the sufferer has no hope of returning the good that he lost through negligence, and of freeing himself from the terrible evil into which he arbitrarily fell. This will result in great melancholy, great fear and horror. The conscience will arise, which will denounce and gnaw at the sinner all eternity for having rejected such a high grace of God, and so willfully deprived himself of God’s highest mercy forever, and has come to such a painful state. Not only the air, but also the earth cannot bear the heavy burden of sin, but plunges it to the bottom of hell. Descend now with your mind to hell, so that you do not descend later with soul and body. The memory of Gehenna will not allow one to fall into Gehenna.