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I have the honor to congratulate you on your entry into the field of holy Great Lent - the queen of virtue and the doctor of souls and bodies; how much praise and exaltation the holy fathers attributed to him cannot even be described; They rejoiced at the approach of fasting, that they had the opportunity to acquire virtues, although their whole life was an action of it, but at this time they were even more enriched with spiritual gifts, and all their actions were decorated and approved by humility. We, sinners and dull ones, although we have greatly departed from imitating them, may we still come to a sense of our poverty and humble ourselves before God and before our neighbors; Let us bear the infirmities of the weak, so that the Lord may also bear our infirmities; Let us forgive those who have offended us, so that we ourselves may be forgiven by the Lord for our sins; and so let us begin to partake of the holy, immortal and life-giving Mysteries of Christ, which burn away all our sinful filth, and cleanse our souls and hearts, and let us be filled with hope not for our deeds, but for God’s ineffable mercy, which does not want the sinner to die, but to turn and live for him. It is not surprising that you cannot calm down the seditious sisters: - without humility, no one will calm them down; the holy fathers experienced this in practice and wrote: “If a monk humbles himself, he will find peace in every place, otherwise even though he builds a new heaven and a new earth, he will not find peace”; The Lord taught us this truth, so that from Him we could learn meekness and humility, then we would find peace for our souls (Matthew 11:29); If we delve into our actions, we will see the reason for our anxiety: and cases and faults for this are tolerated by God’s vision for our benefit. Mnogohreshny I. M. February 12, 1844. You might be interested in: