The name of Hermogenes Ivanovich Shimansky (1915-1970) is well known to Orthodox readers from his book “Liturgics: Sacraments and Rites,” published in the Sretensky Monastery. In the preface to this work, Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk and Yuryev noted that Shimansky “stood out among everyone for his special composure, methodology, always friendly manner and unshakable firmness in his views.” He chose the doctrine of salvation from liturgical books as the topic of his candidate's research.
A continuation of this work was the now first published manuscript of G.I. Shimansky, sent to the publishing house Sretensky Monastery from Kyiv.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
PREFACE
The goal of Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit and to communicate with God. Communion with God is the essence of our salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The path to salvation is fulfilling the commandments of God, life in Christ, or, what is the same, a Christian pious, virtuous life.
The Christian virtuous life of every Christian has two essential aspects: the fight against tempting evil (the fight against sinful passions and vices) and the acquisition of Christian virtues.
This book is dedicated to these vital issues - the fight against the main sinful passions (vices) and the acquisition of basic Christian virtues.
This far from finished work arose on the basis of conversations that the author, as a mentor, conducted with students of the seminary. These conversations have been completed and expanded, brought into the system.
Many books have been written about the fight against passions and about Christian virtues by people experienced in spiritual life, under the guidance of St. fathers. There are also extensive scientific works in the field of asceticism.
This book is not a scientific treatise or study; it is, rather, a systematized collection of patristic thoughts on individual, most important, issues of active Christian life, having mainly a moral and edifying purpose. The author in his work sought to present the patristic teaching and experience in a form that is understandable and intelligible to the modern reader and to show their necessary applicability in the life of every Christian, for the commandments of God and the laws of spiritual life are common to all Christians, no matter what kind of life and deed they lead.
In particular, the author had in mind that the book would serve as a guide for seminary students and candidates for the priesthood, so that they could familiarize themselves with the patristic teaching on this issue in a collected form. Familiarization of the candidate for the priesthood with issues of Christian asceticism according to the teaching and experience of Sts. fathers and ascetics has quite great importance for their future pastoral activities.
The second and immediate purpose of writing this work was also for one’s own benefit: “to motivate oneself to correct, to expose one’s poor soul, so that, although ashamed of words,” as St. John Climacus says, “one who has not yet acquired any good deed, begins to do the work, but only words." And Rev. Neil of Sinai points out that “one who does not do good should speak about good things, so that, being ashamed of words, he can begin deeds.”
The book is divided into two parts. The first part gives general concepts about sin, sinful passions and self-love as the source of all sin and vice. Then a strategic teaching is presented about each of the main passions separately: about pride and vanity, about gluttony and fornication and the fight against them, about greed and anger, about envy, slander and condemnation, and, finally, about sinful sadness and despondency.
The second part is devoted to the study of the most important Christian virtues: love, humility, meekness, abstinence and chastity - those virtues that a Christian must acquire in the active eradication of the most important passions listed above.
Therefore, when studying the chapters, for example, on carnal passions (gluttony and fornication), it is useful to follow this (from the 2nd part) to learn the patristic teaching about the main eradicators of these passions - the virtues of abstinence and chastity. When studying the issue of combating self-love, pride, selfishness and envy, one should then study the patristic teaching on love and humility. Anger has its opposite in meekness, etc.
GENERAL CONCEPTS ABOUT SIN AND SINFUL PASSIONS
Chapter 1
SIN
WITH ancient times and to this day people think about life important issue and tries to solve it: where does evil come from in the world? Where does anger, enmity, hatred, insults, theft, robbery, murder, various disasters, social unrest, etc. come from? Where do grief, illness, suffering, old age, death come from?
Many different guesses and solutions were proposed by people: philosophers, founders of natural (pagan) religions, legislators, political leaders... But their answers to these questions did not find general acceptance and did not stand the test of time, were not confirmed by experience and life. We find the only true answer about the cause of evil in the world and about the ways and means of combating it in the word of God.
Our Creator and God revealed to people in His Divine Revelation, recorded in the Holy Scriptures (Bible), that immediate cause all human misfortunes and all evil is sin. Apart from him there is no evil. Only sin, of all human evils, is truly evil. He alone is “the source and root and mother of all evil.” He gave birth to two fruits: sorrow and death. Sin in ancient times gave rise to murder and slavery and made power necessary to protect evil
§ 1. WHAT IS SIN?
Sin is a transgression (violation) of God’s commandments or, as the Apostle puts it, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Saint John Chrysostom says that “sin is nothing more than an action against the will of God.” Sin entered the world through the first people who sinned in paradise (Rom. 5, 12; Gen. 2–3). God, writes Rev. Abba Dorotheos, created man (Adam and Eve) in His own image and likeness, that is, immortal, autocratic and adorned with all virtue. But when, through temptation from the devil, he violated the commandment by eating the fruit of the tree, from which God commanded him not to eat, then he was expelled from paradise. For God saw that if a person does not experience misadventures and does not learn what grief is, then he will become even more confirmed in sinful self-love and pride and will completely perish. Therefore, God gave him what he deserved and expelled him from paradise (Gen. 3). Through sin, man fell from his natural state and fell into the unnatural, sinful and was already in sin: in self-love, in love of glory, in love for the pleasures of this age and in other sinful habits, and was possessed of them, for he himself became a slave of sin through crime .
So little by little evil began to increase and death reigned. Nowhere among people was there true worship of God, and everywhere there was ignorance of God. Only a few, prompted by natural law, knew God, who they were: Noah, Abraham, Isaac and other patriarchs. In short, very few and very rare people knew God. For the enemy (Satan) has poured out all his malice on people; and since sin reigned, idolatry, polytheism, witchcraft, murder and other devilish evil began.
And then the good God, having mercy on His creation, gave through Moses to the chosen Jewish people a written law, in which he forbade one thing and commanded another, as if saying: do this, and do not do that. He gave the commandment and first of all said: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 4), in order to thereby distract their minds from polytheism. And again he says: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5) And he forbade his neighbors to do evil, commanding him to love them as himself (Lev. 19:18 ).
So, the good God gave people law and help to turn from sin, to correct evil. However, the evil was not corrected. Sin embraced all the powers of the soul and body of man, everything became subject to sin, it began to possess everything. Through sin, people began to be slaves to the enemy - the devil. And man could not get rid of the “work of the enemy” on his own.
Then, finally, the most kind and loving God sent His Only Begotten Son to earth, for only God could heal such a disease. And when the times were fulfilled, our Lord came, becoming Man for our sake, so that, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, he could heal like like, soul soul, flesh flesh; for He became Man in everything except sin. The Lord Jesus Christ - the incarnate Son of God - took on our very nature, the firstfruits of our composition and became the new Adam, in the image of God, who created the first Adam; He renewed the natural state and made the feelings healthy again, as they were in the beginning. Having become Man, He restored fallen man, freed him, enslaved by sin and forcibly possessed by it. For the enemy controlled man with violence and torment, so that even those who did not want to sin sinned unwittingly (cf. Rom. 7:19).
So, God, having become Man for our sake, freed man from the torment of the enemy. For God has overthrown all the power of the enemy, crushed his very fortress and delivered us from his dominion, freed us from obedience and slavery to him, unless we ourselves want to sin arbitrarily. Because He gave us power, as He Himself said, to tread on snakes and scorpions and all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19), having cleansed us from all sin with holy baptism, holy baptism takes away and destroys all sin. Moreover, the all-good God, knowing weakness and foreseeing that we would sin even after holy baptism, gave us, in His goodness, the holy commandments written in the Holy Gospel, cleansing us, so that we, if we wish, could again, by observing the commandments, be cleansed not only from our sinful ones deeds, but also from the passions themselves, from sinful habits, through which they would ascend to perfection and communion with God.
Every sin has two characteristics: abuse of freedom and contempt for the law of God, resistance to God. The Word of God reveals to us that sin arose as a result of the abuse by the first people of the freedom given to them, that it was not necessary, that the first people could not have sinned. So in all the descendants of Adam, “the beginning of sin,” says St. John Chrysostom, “is not in human nature, but in the spiritual disposition and in free will,” in conscious resistance to the will of God. It follows that there can be no excuses as if sin is a consequence of our shortcomings, imperfections, imprudence, etc. Sin is characterized by uncontrollability and corruption of the will and contempt for the law. Sin is always an unauthorized deviation from God and His holy law to please oneself. A Christian, although he carries within himself a tendency toward sin, inherited from his forefathers, is given through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ all the grace-filled powers to fight sin and overcome sin.
A person is usually tempted to sin by the flesh, the world and the devil, but it is his freedom to resist sinful temptation.
Each of us, descendants of Adam, by nature carries within us an inclination towards sin in the form of a sinful desire or “lust” - in the words of the Apostle Paul. This innate “lust” in man is the deepest and first source of temptation, from which all sin begins. “Everyone is tempted, being drawn away and enticed by his own lust,” says the Apostle James (James 1:14).
The second temptation to sin comes from the sinful world, from communication with sinful and corrupt people.
The third source of the Fall is the devil. He brings darkness to the soul and, keeping it, as it were, in some kind of intoxication, brings it to the point where it falls into sin, first within itself, and then outside. Therefore, the apostles exhort Christians to be vigilant and guarded from the temptations of the enemy: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour; resist him with firm faith” (1 Pet. 5:8-9); “Be strong in the Lord and in the might of His might; put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:10-12).
Sin is also caused by unkind upbringing of children. Such children, when they reach age, strive for all kinds of evil. All this comes from parental neglect.
Also, a person’s habit strongly leads to sin: for example, drunkards always strive for drunkenness, predators - for theft, fornicators and adulterers - for uncleanness, slanderers - for slander, etc. For habit pulls them like a rope towards sin, and they strive for it like a hungry person for bread and a thirsty person for water.
A Christian who wants to be saved must fight firmly and courageously against all these causes of sin. The feat against these opponents is difficult, but necessary and highly commendable. “Many strive and conquer people,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “but they become captives and slaves of their passions. There is no more glorious victory than defeating oneself and the sin. There is no crown and triumph without victory, and victory does not happen without feat against enemies ".
Sin, which seems so attractive and sweet to man, the rational creation of God, is great evil. And there is no evil, no misfortune, no disaster that would be more destructive than sin.
And what could be more disastrous than sin, from which all other disasters arise?
1. Every sin offends the majesty of God. When a person sins, he honors passion and his own lust more than the law of God, and therefore angers the infinite, most good, righteous and eternal God Himself. Sin, writes St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, there is a departure from the living and life-giving God; it is a betrayal of the vow made to God at baptism; he is the destruction of the holy, righteous and eternal law of God; it is resistance to the holy and good will of God; he is the grief of the eternal and infinite truth of God; an insult to the great, infinite, indescribable, terrible, holy, good and eternal God of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, before whom the blessed spirits, the holy angels, are in great reverence; he is spiritual leprosy, which emits its stench and infects others, and cannot be cleansed from anyone except Jesus Christ, the souls and bodies of the doctor; sin is “worse than the demon itself,” according to St. John Chrysostom, since sin made the Angel, created good by the Creator, a demon.
2. For the sake of the destruction of sin and “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), the Son of God came into the world, became incarnate and endured terrible suffering on the cross and death.
3. Sin separates a person from God, deprives him of God’s grace. To such a person God says that your house will be left empty (Matthew 23:38).
4. A soul that has lost God and His grace dies. For just as the body dies when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies spiritually when God leaves it. Woe to the soul that has lost God, for it is then possessed by the devil and therefore subject to all kinds of misfortune. From this we see how great evil sin is.
5. After committing a sin, the sinner is constantly tormented by his conscience, which is worse than any grave disaster. Inside, darkness, restlessness and a certain inner fear descend upon the soul, as happened with the first murderer and fratricide, Cain. Sin and sorrow are linked together in an unbreakable chain. “Tribulation and distress to every soul of a man who does evil” (Rom. 2:9).
6. Sin befalls people, as well as temporary punishments, and all kinds of disasters, such as: famine, fires, wars, illnesses, infirmities, sorrows, sorrows, natural disasters (floods, earthquakes), etc. (cf.: Sir. 40, 9).
7. Sin attracts with its temporary sweetness. Sin is sweet to man, but its fruits are bitter and heavy. Sin is the bitterest grape, the consumption of which can set your teeth on edge. And? Sin is sweet only when a short time, and hunger lasts for a long time. The pleasure of sin is temporary, but the torment for it is eternal. “Brief sin is sweetness,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “but eternal death will follow.”
8. The more a person sins and lives unrepentantly, the more he accumulates the wrath of God, just as the apostle says: “By your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and the revelation of righteous judgment from God, who will reward everyone according to their deeds. him" (Rom. 2:5-6).
9. For unrepentant sinners, eternal torment is prepared for sin. “How great is the grief (sorrow) of sin, the dying will know when they must struggle against despair and the fear of God’s judgment, when they are sick, sad and tormented, consumed by their conscience, and even more (most of all they will know the grief of sin) by those dying an eternal death, when the great hope is cut short to deliverance from that disaster. Nowadays people are running away from death, but then they would want to die, but they will not be able: and behold, there is eternal death, that sinners will wish to die or turn into nothing from the unbearable torment of Gehenna, but they will not be able."
From all that has been said, we see that there is nothing worse than sin, that there is no greater evil than sin.
“Beloved Christians!” exhorts St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. “Let us recognize the destructiveness of sin, and let us turn away from sin; for everyone turns away from known evil. People know that poison harms, and they shy away from him; they know that the serpent kills with its sting, and they are careful of it ; they know that robbers expose and kill, and they avoid them. We, beloved, also recognize sin and the evil that comes from sin, and we will certainly avoid it. For sin harms more (more powerfully) than any poison, the most poisonous sin is more (more) than any serpent ", sin exposes us more than any thief and deprives us of temporary and eternal blessings, and kills body and soul. These are the fruits of the bitter seed of sin. Sin is anger, rage and malice; sin is pride, arrogance, arrogance, arrogance (exaltation, pompousness) and contempt of one's neighbor; sin is slander and condemnation; sin is obscene language and foul language, bullshit (reckless, stupid speech), blasphemy and every rotten word; sin is lies, cunning, deceit and hypocrisy; sin is drunkenness, gluttony and all intemperance; sin is theft, embezzlement, robbery, violence and any unrighteous appropriation of someone else's property; sin is adultery, fornication and all uncleanness; in a word, every crime is a sin and is an evil more harmful than any evil that somehow harms our body. For it is only our body that damages, but sin harms and kills both body and soul. Whoever does not recognize sin, as a great evil, and does not take care of it, will in the next century, through experience and practice, know and know, since evil is evil - sin, but it is already late and useless. For this reason, in the present age we must recognize that evil (sin) and be kept from it.”
The holy fathers and ascetics also indicate means to avoid sin. Here are some instructions from St. Tikhon of Zadonsky.
1. Great help in his struggle against sin he brings listening and attention to the word of God. It indicates what sin is and what virtue is, leads away from sin and encourages to virtue. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that it may be perfect. man of God equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). For God’s word is a spiritual sword with which the enemy of the soul is cut off.
Everything is sin that is done in word or deed or thought against the holy and eternal law of God and His holy will. Read the following about sin Holy Scripture: Mk. 7, 21 et seq.; Rome. 1, 29, etc.; 1 Cor. 6, 9 et seq.; Gal.8, 19–21; Eph. 6, 3 et seq.; Col. 4, 5 et seq.; 1 Tim. 1, 9 et seq.; 2 Tim. 4, 2, etc.; Open 21, 8; Ps. 49, 15 and other places of Holy Scripture.
The Apostle Paul in his letters to the Corinthians writes that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God: neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor those who fall into uncleanness and lasciviousness, nor idolaters, nor wickedness, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous people, nor extortioners, nor envious people, neither murderers, nor heretics, nor drunkards, nor slanderers and haters will inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10; see also: Gal. 5:19-21).
The sweet fruits of a virtuous life, given by the Holy Spirit, are the following: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control (cf. Gal. 5, 22-23; see also: 1 Cor. 13 ; Matthew 5–10). We must care and pray to God to give us these fruits to create through the grace of His Holy Spirit.
2. It is very useful to read the lives of the saints who labored against sin and imitate them.
3. We must remember that God is present in every place, and is persistently with us everywhere, and what we do and think - he sees everything clearly, and everything that we say - he hears, and is angry with every sin, and rewards everyone according to his deeds. Beware, Christian, of sinning before the face of God! It's scary to anger God. In sin itself, God can strike the sinner and send him to Gehenna.
When we bring to mind the punishments for sins, we will be convinced that God is a righteous rewarder: for sins he was brought to ancient humanity global flood, the completely corrupted inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were burned with fire, the rebellious and murmuring Israelites were struck by death under Moses in the desert, and so on. Let us remember in our lifetime the punishments for sins that happen to people.
4. Thinking about the fact that for our sins Christ the Son of God was tortured and died prevents us from sin. Christ suffered for our sins: how can we dare to commit those sins for which Christ the Son of God drank such a bitter cup of suffering? Should we do again what Christ endured such severe suffering for, should we crucify the Son of God a second time through the sins? This is scary and very unfortunate. And woe to Christians who sin and do not honor the suffering of Christ and Christ Himself!
5. We must remember the last four: death, the judgment of Christ, hell and the Kingdom of Heaven. The memory of them also greatly preserves from sin. “In all your deeds,” says the wise Sirach, “remember your end, and you will never sin” (Sir. 7:39).
6. The memory of the uncertainty of the hour of death can also keep you from sin. It is known that we will all die, but when and how we will die is unknown. Woe to those who are caught in sin by death! For whatever death finds us in, God will judge us in.
7. May the inevitable hour of Christ’s judgment keep us from sin. For the same Christ the Lord, Who suffered and was tormented for our sins, He will judge for every word, deed and Thinking about eternity makes earthly sorrows easier for a Christian, and great work, and temporary punishments, such as: sorrow, bonds, prisons, exile, insults, wounds, dishonor, reproach, need and poverty, and death itself helps to accept with love and gratitude. Thinking about eternity (that awaits us) will not allow us to fall into the lawless nets of sin, will not allow us to wallow in fornication and carnal uncleanness, lie, steal, rob, deceive, be proud, be arrogant, condemn our neighbors, slander. Whoever thinks diligently about eternity will seek to hear more God's words and instructions for salvation, the sweetness of sin will disgust him and temporary sinful pleasures will lose their apparent charm and attractiveness.
10. It is necessary to keep in mind and in memory that even during the commission of the sin itself a person can die and perish, passing in this state into eternity. Thus, once in ancient times, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, chased after the Israelites, wanting to do them harm, but in that very lawless act he died (Ex. 14:27-28). So Absalom, the son of David, rebelled against his holy father and sought to kill him, and at that time he died ingloriously (2 Sam. 18:14). We see the same thing today: we see that the fornicator and adulterer are sometimes struck down in the worst of deeds; blasphemers - in blasphemy, thieves and predators - in theft, and other lawless people receive according to their deeds. Thus, the righteous judgment of God strikes the wicked, so that we too will be afraid to sin and commit lawlessness.
11. One should avoid occasions and occasions that lead to sin: all kinds of feasts and drinks, friendships and corrupting conversations with people who are corrupt and have no fear of God, for “bad associations corrupt good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33); You need to protect your sight, hearing and be kept from temptations.
12. You should also be careful from the smallest sins, since it is easy to move from small sins to large ones.
13. One should never imitate and follow a bad example and not look at what people do, but pay attention to what the law of God teaches and is preached in the temple. If we love the law of God, then no temptations in the world will harm us (Ps. 119:165).
14. With every sin, the Trinitarian God, the great, holy, good, righteous, infinite and terrible God, the merciful and all-good Father, is offended and angry. It is pitiful and grievous to offend a father born in the flesh, all the more grievous to offend God, the Heavenly Father, Who created your father, feeds, clothes, preserves and provides other benefits and calls everyone to eternal bliss. It would be better to die a hundred times than to offend God, our most good Father and Creator. Keep yourself, Christian, from sin, as from great evil.
15. A sin committed torments the conscience until it is cleansed by repentance. Beware of sin, like the poison of snakes, if only to avoid remorse.
16. If you want your prayer to be heard, then avoid sin. For whoever sins and does not give up on sin, his prayer is not acceptable.
17. We must approach the communion of the holy, terrible and life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ with fear and trembling, fearing that communion will not lead to judgment and condemnation. Therefore, we must beware of sin, both before and after communion, like a serpent that devours the soul.
18. Our care and feat in the fight against sin are not strong without the help of God. Therefore, we must always take care and pray that the Lord will help us in this feat.
19. Prayer to God frequently, humbly, diligently, with contrition of heart is a very powerful aid in the fight against sin. “Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation,” said Christ (Matthew 26:41).
20. To the pious Christ will say at His Second Coming: “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). About the blessings prepared for the righteous, the prophet says: “For since the ages no one has heard, no ear has listened, and no eye has seen another god besides You, who would do so much for those who hope in him” (Is. 64:4).
The Lord will say to unrepentant sinners: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). And these will go into everlasting punishment; the righteous into eternal life. And everywhere in the word of God disaster is proclaimed to unrepentant sinners, and bliss to the pious. The Word of God is not false, it is true, what it says will be unchangeable. God cannot lie. Heed this, Christian, so that for the temporary sweetness of sin you do not lose eternal bliss and fall into eternal damnation which will never end.
St. John Chrysostom. Creations. St. Petersburg, 1898. T. II. pp. 45, 70.
It's him. Creations. Ed. 5th. M., 1889. T. I. P. 242. Further, all footnotes, except for specially stated cases, are given according to this edition. See 1994 reprint.
Congratulations to everyone on Great Lent. We can say this: what is sin? Is smoking harmful? - So it’s a sin. Is taking drugs harmful? - Sin. Is it harmful to get drunk on wine? - Also a sin. Is it harmful to overeat? - It’s a sin. That is, we break the norms human behavior . In Greek, sin is failure. What does a miss mean? We are going down the stairs, instead of one step we stood on another - we missed, fell and flew down - this is a miss. Or a soldier shot, he wanted to hit the top ten, but the bullet flew past - this is also a miss. We can say: sin is when a person stumbles. When we go to the zone, we often hear that a person stumbled, stole, got into a fight, or killed someone. And there are so many mistakes in life! We suffer and are tormented by our sins, but we always try to blame someone for it. And if we blame, then we make another mistake, because we ourselves are to blame, our sinful life. If the Lord gave us commandments, or rather, a mandate: so that we do not kill, do not rob, do not steal, do not commit adultery, and we do not fulfill this order of the Lord - is the Lord punishing us? - No, ourselves. We begin to grumble: the Lord punished us. No, God is love, and love never punishes anyone. It’s just that when we sin, we punish ourselves. Here is an example, the Venerable Optina Elder Barsanuphius says: look at the blooming sunflowers. Why is a sunflower called a sunflower? Because he is under the sun and the sun follows him all day. But there are cases when the sunflower no longer reaches for the sun, but stands still. It turns out that a worm got into this sunflower, damaged the stem, and it is cut off. So, when our soul reaches out for the Lord - we go to church, read spiritual books, morning and evening prayers, try to do good to people, keep fasts - and our soul reaches out for the Lord. But it happens that a person is not raised in the Orthodox spirit, does not go to church, does not keep fasts, does not pray to God, does not read spiritual books. Sin has entered into him, and it does not give him life. A person must repent of this sin, and then another life will begin, the Lord will give him grace. If a person has never repented in his life and suddenly turns to God, then all heaven rejoices over the one repentant sinner, because the Lord suffered, was crucified on the cross, and rose again in order to resurrect every person so that his soul could be saved. But sin paralyzes a person, it deprives him of grace. For example, a person has committed a carnal sin, a husband or wife has cheated on each other. What is a mortal sin? This means that the soul lost grace and became dead, became insensitive. Now, if a person sees that a spark of fire has fallen on his clothes, he tries to quickly throw away this spark. If he slowed down, that spark could burn through his dress. If a snake bites a person, he must quickly get rid of the poison, otherwise this poison will pass into the heart and it will stop, the person will die. So Dennitsa sinned in heaven - he became proud, wanted to be above everyone else, on an equal footing with God, and he instilled this in Adam and Eve, and they also committed sin, and this sin entered into all people, and with sin there is death, therefore our sins dragging us to hell. Therefore, we need to pay special attention to this. A person can quickly get rid of sinful thoughts, especially in Lent when he will abstain in food, in sights, in all looks and conversations, and fight with thoughts. As soon as an objectionable thought comes, we must immediately reject it, and we will get rid of thoughts and passions through prayer and fasting. And the person will come to such a state that he will no longer have these sins, although he will consider himself to be completely saturated with sin to the last cell. It's normal for him to feel this way. And when he feels that he has become kind, pure, holy - this is a mistake, a sin, which is in delusion, and therefore will suffer and torment. One day a young woman came to me, she was 23 years old, a healthy athlete.
I say: do you have faith?
Answer: no.
-Do you believe that you have a body?
- Of course, I see my body.
- Does your body hurt?
- No
- What hurts?
-Soul.
- So you have a soul.
-Yes, it turns out that there is.
I began to explain to her what the soul is. It manifests itself through the mind, will, through the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Through conscience, love and through a number of other spiritual sensations - this is “I”. And this “I” suffers and suffers. She works as an accountant and says: I am depressed, hysterical, on the verge of suicide. And when we talked with her, I asked her: have you never repented?
-No
-That’s why these sins do not give you spiritual life. We need to repent. So she repented and felt great relief and joy in her soul. Therefore, the Lord left faith and repentance in the church for our salvation. We must believe in the Lord, repent and reform. And the one who repents sincerely, who makes a promise to God to correct himself, God accepts his repentance.
And now the questions.
-Father, before confession in church they read a prayer, and in it there are the words “under the anathema of the fallen.” How to explain this?
-Well, they read, for example, such words as “fell under a curse”, “parental or priestly oath.” This refers to when a person curses himself. The gypsies from Lipetsk especially often do this; they feel free to curse anyone. But as soon as they all come to faith, they no longer deceive anyone and try to keep fasts and go to church. Of course, many of them are illiterate and cannot read prayers, but we allow them to receive communion. They pray and repent sincerely. You should never curse anyone. For example, a mother will say to her daughter or son “damn you,” and at that moment the son or daughter may die.
-Father, how should you treat the holiday of February 23, especially during Lent?
- You can congratulate your friends, but fasting is fasting for everyone. After all, many don’t even know what to cook for Lent. It’s very simple - pasta, porridge, borscht, soup can be prepared, if possible, plant foods. On such a day, you need to congratulate them on the holiday, pray, and order a prayer service for health in the temple. To thank God that He gives us the strength and strength to maintain the faith, to take care of our homeland and to pray for the rulers, so that the Lord will give them wisdom and the Orthodox faith will be strengthened. So that churches and monasteries in Russia and all over the world open, so that there is service to the Lord, lamps are lit, because common prayer has great power in the church.
- What answer does the regent bear before God for the behavior of the singers?
-Well, so that in the choir they don’t talk, don’t laugh, don’t joke. It’s difficult to talk every time, but write it down so that everyone can see it and talk about it often, so that they know that the temple is the house of God, because where the service is performed, it is a piece of heaven on earth. Well, try to have Orthodox people in the choir, believers who had the fear of God.
-Is it possible to administer unction to an unconscious Orthodox person in intensive care?
-If he was an Orthodox church person, he had already confessed, received communion, and if he had already repented and ended up in intensive care. Sometimes such people seem unconscious, they cannot speak, they do not make any movements, but they feel that the priest has come. They can give a sign by moving their eyelids or touching their fingers - if he does this, then unction can be performed. But if a person never repented or did not repent for a very long time, rejected repentance, and when it started, he was already unconscious, then it is useless to confess and receive unction.
- Father, who and how should we pray for the Lord to send a husband?
-This is a very serious question. Pray to the Lord, the Mother of God, your heavenly patron, Saint Nicholas, St. Sergius, Seraphim of Sarov, Peter and Fevronia, many saints. The wife is the other half, the husband is the other half. These are two halves, and they must find themselves in life. Therefore, the ring is put on the finger, but in the ring there is no way out - both joy and sorrow. And they are married forever, and divorce is not allowed. Only as a last resort can you get a divorce when it comes to murder. And the Apostle Paul writes, 1 Corinthians chapter 7: “If divorced, he must remain alone or be reconciled with his wife.”...And at the end it is written: “A wife is bound by the law as long as her husband lives; if her husband dies, she is free to marry only a believer. "
-Is it allowed to eat seafood such as squid and shrimp during Lent? I have personally encountered two points of view. One is strict, which says: no, this is not plant food, and the other - that it is allowed that in Greece they eat seafood during fasting.
-As many people joke, lard also grows on pigs, but it cannot be counted plant foods. If a person lives a strict fasting life, then, of course, he will not eat. But people like John’s mother are sick, infirm, weak, and can barely carry her body - she will not be forbidden to do this, not a sin.
-This is a painful question for me. The daughter met a young man and went to live with him. Although everyone in the family is against it. Is it possible for her to approach the Chalice? Some say it is possible, others say it is not possible.
-This is called a mortal sin, if she cohabits with him, it is fornication, and you cannot approach the Chalice. Only an Orthodox person is allowed to take the Chalice. Someone who goes to church every Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Observes strictly 4 fasts, as well as on Wednesday and Friday. He reads morning and evening prayers and tries to repent of his sins and live in peace with everyone. These are allowed to receive communion. And if he cohabits with someone without God's blessing, then it cannot be allowed. And then this is a very difficult question, it is at the discretion of the confessor to whom she will approach. Because before, in Tsarist Russia, if a girl met a guy, they could say hello and sit in front of each other and talk. How is it usually done now? They immediately hang themselves on each other, hug, kiss, get excited and commit sins. They no longer live in purity, although they may not have contact - but this is a sin, a person must be pure in soul and body. We need to pay attention to this.
-Father, can a person not see his sins at all?
-Maybe. So, when people come to confession for the first time, they say: “I am kind, good.”
I say, “Don’t you have any sins?”
- “I didn’t kill, I didn’t steal, I’m not like everyone else.” Apparently, the man came with raw, unprocessed material, as I jokingly call it. I joke about some people like this: look, are there a lot of people in the church?
-The temple is so full.
-I cover my eyes with my hand and say, “Do you see people now?”
-No.
-And why?
-And you covered my eyes with your hand.
-So we have an abundance of sins, but our spiritual eyes are closed, and we do not feel or see our sins. There are people who are blind in body and deaf in body, which is why the Lord says: “You see and do not see, you hear and do not hear, because your heart is hardened.” And these people, to whom you remind them what sins are, that they didn’t go to church every Saturday and Sunday, didn’t pray to God, never repented of their sins. And imagine, you don’t do any general cleaning in your apartment for 50 years - what will happen there? I say, you’ll have to go into this apartment and hold your nose, because there’s tons of dirt there. And when the windows are closed and there is no light, we don’t see this dirt. And when a person throws this dirt out of the apartment, opens the windows, ventilates, then everything turns out to be so good, it’s easy to breathe and the person gets used to living in such a state, when a person does not see or feel what kind of dirt he lives in.
- I have a two-part question. The first one is like this. When you bow to the ground in front of the Chalice, people say, don’t do it, you can’t. And the second is how to learn the Jesus Prayer?
-First, bows. There is a rule that bows are canceled on Saturday and Sunday, and on great holidays. Let’s say that during Lent, bowing in church is allowed, but on Saturday and Sunday it is canceled; you can bow in private. When they come out with the Chalice, then Christ has come out in the Holy Mysteries, and one must bow to him, but many do not know this rule and may be embarrassed, well, go forward so as not to disturb anyone. Bowing is canceled after Easter until Trinity, this is for those who bowed throughout Lent. And especially on weekdays, when it happens Divine Liturgy, during the “Cherubic” - the sacrament has not yet been completed, it will be completed when the Creed is chanted and the priest says “Let us become good, let us become fearful” and the most important moment when the priest says: “Your offering from Yours to You for all and for all” and the choir sings “We sing to you, we bless you.” On weekdays you can kneel, and especially when “It is worthy to eat,” you can bow to the ground, because from the bread and wine the transformation into the Body and Blood of the Lord took place. And when a person approaches the Chalice, he does not accept part of the body of Christ, but the living Christ enters into every person - this is why the church is strong. Now about the Jesus Prayer. When a person reads the prayer of Jesus with attention: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, he must put his whole mind into the words of the prayer so that there is a feeling of repentance. When a beggar and a hungry person asks: give me bread, I haven’t eaten for several days, and a person should ask for forgiveness with tears. While a person is reading this a short prayer, the soul is sanctified, the body, clothes, air and evil spirits are afraid to approach this place. This prayer must be read with a feeling of repentance, without haste, prolong the words, stretch out, and so that last words“Have mercy on me, a sinner,” they entered the soul. And one man, he said this: whoever reads this Jesus Prayer with attention, with a repentant feeling, then the Lord in the secret place of his heart says to him: my child, your sins are forgiven you with each pronunciation of the Jesus Prayer. This is a huge value, this is an abbreviated Gospel in eight words. There are calls from God and a feeling of repentance. If a person reads this prayer continuously from morning to evening, then a miracle occurs. After all, it is said that if a person prays and does not feel the Lord and does not see Him, then when the soul leaves the body, he will not feel or see the Lord in the spiritual world. Here John of Damascus says: how can you see the Lord? But you need to read the Jesus Prayer, and when a person reads this short prayer all day, he will feel the Lord and see Him. Even Macarius the Great says: when you are praying and suddenly you feel that a three-headed serpent is coming out of you, do not be afraid, continue to pray, it will come out of you, and you will receive freedom. Your soul will be joyful, peaceful, quiet, calm - all passions will go away. The Lord, when a person is born, gives him energy so that over several decades of life a person prepares himself for the spiritual world and achieves some great virtues, especially humility. When a person prays, repents, performs deeds, bows, fasts - this is not a goal, these are means, the Lord does not need this - we need this. But the Lord needs a pure heart, God needs humility - this is the most important thing, and He Himself says: “Son, give me your heart.” And the Jesus Prayer will help a person. How to accustom yourself to prayer? In the morning, as soon as you got up in the morning, you immediately began to pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” you need to get up, make three bows, Lord, thank you for last night, bless me for today, save me from all visible enemies and invisible and also the Mother of God, Guardian Angel, got dressed, put yourself in order and with prayer you need to wash your face and you need to read the prayer after morning prayers, after the Gospel 500 times with attention. But at first you can do 50, if you have never prayed, then 100, then even more. This prayer will become attached to the heart, and then you cannot tear the person away from this prayer. And wherever he is, and no matter what he does, this prayer will always be with him. And it is said that a humble person completely surrenders into the hands of God by reading this short Jesus Prayer. And no matter what happened to him - he got into a catastrophe, his house burned down, all his wealth was lost, his money was gone, he ended up in prison, or on the operating table - he is completely devoted to God, he has joy, peace and tranquility in his soul, because that he is with God. Because this life is temporary, here we are only preparing for eternity. No matter how long we live, we still have to die. The child was born, and every day he was getting closer and closer to death. After all, look how many people are lying in bed, listening to the radio, but not today - tomorrow Mother Death will come, and of course it is very valuable to thank the Lord for the life you have lived and say, Lord! I had a lot of sins, you, as God, forgive me. When Christ was crucified between two thieves, the robber on the left thought that Christ was a simple man and if He were God, He would come down from the cross and save us. And he even began to say this: come down from the cross and save us. And on the right side, the robber showed humility, considered himself unworthy to enter the abode of paradise, but only said, “Lord!” When you come to the Kingdom of God, remember me there - look, what great humility, he did not think that he could get there, but the Lord said: today you will be with me in paradise. This is the value of humility. But the Jesus Prayer will teach us humility; it will help us see our sins. Especially many women, when they come to confession, suffer from the serious sin of idle talk. So much chatter, you have to say some sin, you can’t wait for her to say it. So many words set.
I say: no need to say anything, just say it in one word - you fell into sin, that’s all. And then she went, left and met there - in a word, everything is clear. So the Jesus Prayer, if someone reads it constantly from morning to evening, if a person sincerely repents, prays, considers himself a great sinner, then when the soul leaves the body, the angels will take this soul into their arms, and when it goes through ordeals, evil spirits only from afar they will shout, O man, what honor you have received from God and how you were saved from our tormenting hands because the Jesus Prayer burns them like fire and surrounds a person like fire. We say that evil spirits cannot approach a person because the word of God burns everything, the name of God burns everything. evil spirits and of course there can be no higher prayer than this. Those people who are subjected to mental stress, or those who are in great carnal passion, this prayer cannot be read to them, but best of all is the prayer of repentance - God be merciful to me, a sinner. Repentance prayers read and ask the Lord and, of course, humble yourself, don’t judge anyone, don’t say bad things about anyone, but say only good things.
- Father, I wanted to ask, can I read the Jesus Prayer for my son and grandson?
-Well, when your son is hungry, you can eat for him in the refectory and drink tea. Well, of course, you need to pray like this: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners, and pray for your son, Lord! Lead him to faith, to salvation, so that his soul does not perish - in your own words. These words immediately go to heaven, from earth to heaven.
- Is it possible to go to confession without a serious feeling of repentance?
-When a person feels bad in his soul, he goes to repent. For example, a girl in a white dress was walking and a car came and sprayed dirty water her dress from the puddle. It is clear that she should not wear this dress for a week, two, three. She must quickly take it off, wash it, iron it and put it on. In the same way, when sin appears on the soul, it is very difficult to walk with it, because the soul can become insensitive. Let's say a person committed a sin. If he doesn’t repent, what happens?! When a person from Moscow arrives, he can see Moscow. Further he passes - Moscow becomes smaller and smaller, and disappears. Likewise, if he has committed a sin and does not repent, then he remains somewhere in the distance, and he accumulates a lot of these sins and he does not see or feel them.
- How do you feel about the sentencing of the Russian patriot, editor of the newspaper “Rus Pravoslavnaya” Konstantin Dushenov. He was given three years of settlement under Article 282 of the anti-Russian law.
-To be honest, we are not very aware, since the monasteries do not really monitor this kind of events, and therefore it is very difficult for us to comment.
Look after yourself,
so that your hearts are not burdened
overeating and drunkenness and the cares of this life,
and lest that day come upon you suddenly (Luke 21:34).
With satiety and drunkenness, the incorporeal enemy enters the heart of a person - everyone attentive can feel this... - these unfortunates have an enemy in the heart. How to cast out the demon of drunkenness? Prayer and fasting (Moscow, 1894, Volume 1, p. 176).
In another book, “The Path to God,” the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt writes:
Why did the antediluvian people and the inhabitants of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah become extremely corrupted and savage and forget God? From excess in food and drink. From what current people become corrupted, become morally wild and fall away from God and the Church? From excess in food and drink, from abdominal and pancreatic rage. “Do not get drunk with wine, for there is fornication in it (Ephesians 5:18 cs) (St. Petersburg, 1905, p. 38).
Any excess in food and drink is accompanied by a weakening of the soul and a moral decline in its strength, cooling towards God, towards prayer, towards every good deed, a decline in love for one’s neighbor, deprivation of meekness, humility, sympathy for people, a hard heart, a rude attitude towards the poor, inclination to sleep, to fornication, etc. A lot of prayer work, sighs, tears are needed in order to restore good relations with God and neighbors and make the soul again tender, sensitive to God and neighbors. This is how the soul falls from intemperance. Oh, how necessary is abstinence for a Christian at all times! How harmful is intemperance!.. (St. Petersburg, 1905, p. 38).
Wine consumed immoderately and at the wrong time makes the soul powerless in the fight against internal temptations; the soul is easily susceptible to indignation and demonic fear - where there is no fear; is ashamed where there is no shame (St. Petersburg, 1905, p. 68).
The sin of excess in food and drink is very close to the sin of gluttony (30). Gluttony is always a passion and a more refined zeal for food and food. The sin of excess in food and drink may be a passion, but it does not have to be, but it can easily turn into passion.
Excess in food and drink undermines human health and his entire spiritual and moral foundation. Excessive drinking leads to a passion for alcohol, which undermines not only the person himself but also his entire family and the entire family structure.
The most big gun against the sin of excess in food and drink there is fasting. For a further description of the struggle against this sin, see the description of the struggle against the sin of gluttony (30).
32. VANITY
Vain - Who greedily seeks worldly or vain glory, strives for honor, for praise, demands recognition of his imaginary merits, does good not for the sake of good, but for the sake of praise, esteem and external signs of honor (Dahl).In the Holy Scriptures, in the New Testament, in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, there are these words about vanity:
Let's not be vain
irritate each other
envy one another (Galatians 5:26).
Also, in the Holy Scriptures, in the New Testament, in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, there are these words:
Don't do anything
out of ambition*) or out of vanity,
but out of humility
esteem one another better than himself (Philippians 2:3).
(* Ambiguity - A tendency to have controversial conversations, to debate words (Dal).
The Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his diary “My Life in Christ” writes the following words about excess in food and drink:
Flatterers - big enemies ours: they blind our eyes, do not allow us to see our great shortcomings and therefore block our path to perfection, especially if we are proud and short-sighted. Therefore, we must always stop the flatterers who speak flattering speeches to us, or avoid them. Woe to him who is surrounded by flatterers; good - who is surrounded by simpletons who do not hide the truth, although unpleasant, for example, exposing our weaknesses, errors, passions, mistakes (Moscow, 1894, Volume 1, p. 326).
So the vain person wants fame, honor, flattery, praise, compliments, attention, to be the center of everything.
The sin of vanity is closely related to the sin of pride (4), self-love (28) and ambition (29).
To get an idea of the struggle against the sin of vanity, see the description of the struggle against the sin of pride (4), pride (28) and ambition (29).
33. LAZINESS
To work and not to be lazy is the main duty of every Christian. Back in the Old Testament, in His example of the creation of the world, then in the 4th and 8th Commandments of the Law of God, as well as in many other places of Holy Scripture, the Lord God gave us the commandment to work and not to be lazy.The Lord God Himself created the earth in six days, and by this act He gave us an example that we need to work. This is described in the Holy Scriptures, in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:4).
The 4th commandment is found among the other 10 Commandments of the Law of God, in the Holy Scriptures, in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus (Exodus 20:2-17). It reads like this:
Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy:
You shall do six days, and in them you shall do all your work,
on the seventh day, a Sabbath, unto the Lord thy God (Exodus 20:4 tss).
Thus, the 4th commandment also teaches us to work six days, and devote the seventh day to the Lord God.
Further, in the 10 commandments, there is a brief 8th commandment about theft, which reads like this:
Thou shalt not steal (Exodus 20:4 cs).
This commandment not only prohibits theft, but also any appropriation in any way that belongs to others. Therefore, not only theft, but laziness and not fulfilling one’s duties at work or at school is also a sin. Because a person receives payment, but does not do his work diligently.
In the Holy Scriptures, in the New Testament, in the Second Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, there are these words about labor:
He who does not want to work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 2:10).
Here the Holy Apostle Paul teaches Christians to work and even emphasizes that those who do not want to work should not eat. (By the way, the communists present these words of the apostle as their creativity).
The Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his diary “My Life in Christ” writes about work like this:
To him who performs obedience without complaint, there is great fruit for the soul: which we see, both from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who for obedience is exalted among humanity, above all principality and power and dominion... Moreover, to him who performs obedience there is rich fruit for the body: for What the lazy lose, the industrious and diligent and obedient gain. Therefore, obedience is fruitful for the soul and for the body, and if it is not fruitful for the body, it is certainly for the soul. So everyone be obedient for good, but not for evil (Moscow, 1894, Volume 2, p. 27).
Labor strengthens a person’s will and ennobles him. Work must be approached honestly and conscientiously. Christianity does not divide work into “black” and “white”. It only requires that the work be honest and beneficial.
But on the other hand, we are also told to develop God-given talents and abilities, to improve ourselves, not to be lazy, to study the world - the creativity of the Lord God, and to acquire prudence.
The sin of laziness is the source of many other sins: idle talk (1), condemnation (2), disobedience (3), envy (6), slander (8), inattention (9), carelessness about one’s salvation (10), negligence (11) , carelessness (12), despondency (15), disobedience (18), grumbling (19), self-justification (20), contradiction (21), self-will (22), reproach (23), slander (24), lies (25) , laughter (26), temptation (27), gluttony (30), excess in food and drink (31), vanity (32), acceptance of unclean thoughts (34), unclean views (36), omission of the service of God due to laziness and negligence (37), absent-mindedness in church and home prayer (38).
To fight the sin of laziness, you need to remember all those people who live in difficult circumstances, who are overloaded with various responsibilities, who are sick, or who are otherwise unhappy. After this, you need to pray to our Father God and take up some godly deed; bring benefit to people and the Lord God.
34. ACCEPTING UNPURE THOUGHTS
Unclean - Prodigal.
The sin of accepting unclean thoughts is the same as sinning with thoughts (41), only that it is not just a sin, but the sin of accepting unclean thoughts; that is, the sin of accepting prodigal thoughts.
You need to know that “preposition” is not a sin, since the thought came to us without the participation of our will. But “combination”, “addition”, etc. are sins, since we already think with the participation of our will. (See below thought (41), about reasoning about the degrees of sinfulness).
The sin of receiving unclean thoughts is associated with the sin of unclean sight (36), sight (42), hearing (43), smell (44), taste (45) and touch (46).
The sin of accepting unclean thoughts is greatly facilitated by the world around us and our past sins. From all sides - if not the means mass media, then people and even our colleagues, acquaintances or relatives - they constantly tell and hint to us. We are constantly seduced by double-meaning words, hints and anecdotes, or provocative and teasing fashion. Our life and our past sins gradually create in us skills and memories, which can also tempt us later and give us no peace. All this can influence a person and he will begin to sin in his thoughts.
To avoid the sin of accepting unclean thoughts, you need to avoid looking and listening to everything that can tempt you: pictures, conversations, people. We need to drive away sinful thoughts from ourselves and do something that will make us think about something else.
35. MUCH ACHIEVEMENT
Acquisition is accumulation, material goods; this is materialism.Multiple acquisitions are already acquisitions that have turned into passion. Christianity calls for the accumulation not of material, but of heavenly treasures; to virtue and cleansing the soul from sin.
The Holy Scriptures, the Gospel of the Apostle Matthew, say the following:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy
and where thieves break in and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in or steal (Matthew 6:19-20).
It says here that all earthly, material treasures have no value. Firstly, they can easily be lost, and secondly, they have no value with the Lord God; and this is the most important thing. We need to collect spiritual treasures. We must not sin and correct our sinful habits and thus deserve to live eternally.
The current world largely contributes to the sin of excessive acquisition. From all sides, the media constantly tells us that we need to buy either this or something else. This makes it very difficult to resist this sin.
To fight the sin of excessive acquisition, you need to remember those people who live in difficult circumstances, in poverty and need. We must remember that in the end death will also come for us, and then the Lord God will not ask us about our earthly riches, but about spiritual ones. He will ask us what kind of person we were and how we lived? Therefore, you need to firmly decide to buy only what you really need, be content with little and lead a modest lifestyle. Then you need to try in every possible way to help those in need and generally pay more attention to spiritual life.
36. IMPURITY VIEW
View, look - look, look, fix your gaze (Dal).Unclean is prodigal.
The sin of an impure view is the same as sinning with sight (42), only that it is not just a sin of view, but a sin of impure view; that is, a prodigal view.
The sin of unclean views is closely related to the sin of accepting unclean thoughts (34). From prodigal pictures a person easily moves to prodigal thoughts.
An unclean look is when a person looks at his neighbor uncleanly; especially on someone close to the opposite sex. She notices his body, wonders what’s under his clothes, thinks, dreams, enjoys.
A Christian must be pure, his thoughts, his heart, his look. This thought, like no other, is perfectly conveyed by our beloved Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his book “The Path to God”:
A true Christian must have everything different in spirit, in body and in life: other thoughts - spiritual, holy; other lusts - heavenly, spiritual; another will is right, holy, meek, good; another imagination is pure, holy; a different memory, a different look - pure, simple, holy, non-evil; another word - purposeful, pure, sedate, meek; in a word, a Christian must be a different person, heavenly, new, holy, divinely living, thinking, feeling, speaking and acting by the Spirit of God. These were the saints. Read their lives, listen, learn, imitate (St. Petersburg, 1905, New York, 1971, p. 8).
The sin of an unclean view is greatly facilitated by the world around us and our past sins. From all sides - if not the media, then people and even our colleagues, acquaintances or relatives - they constantly tell and hint to us. We are constantly seduced by ambiguous words, hints and anecdotes, or by provocative and teasing fashion. Our life and our past sins gradually create in us skills and memories, which can also tempt us later and give us no peace. All this can influence a person and he will begin to look not purely and sin with an impure view.
To avoid the sin of unclean views, you need to avoid looking and listening to everything that can tempt you: pictures, conversations, people. We need to drive away sinful thoughts from ourselves and do something that will make us think about something else.
37. OMISSION OF THE SERVICE OF GOD THROUGH LAZINESS AND NEGLIGENCE
The Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his diary “My Life in Christ” (Paris, 1984) writes the following about the service:With what maternal, or better to say, divine love, the Church daily seems to carry in her arms, offering up unceasing prayers to the Lord for all of us, in the evening, at midnight, in the morning and around the middle of the day: she teaches us, cleanses, sanctifies, heals and strengthens sacraments and in all ways, guides us in the most tender and meek manner to salvation and eternal life(page 89).
The Church, through its temple and worship, affects the whole person, educates him completely: it affects his vision, hearing, smell, touch, taste, imagination, feelings, mind and will with the splendor of icons and the entire temple, ringing, singing, incense, kissing the Gospel, the cross and the saints, prosphora, singing and mellifluous reading of scriptures (p. 90).
What will happen to that person who, having fallen from a ship into the water and seeing a rope or a boat thrown to him to save him, not only does not grab the rope or boat, but also pushes them away? He will die in the abyss. Such are the Christians who, for salvation from eternal destruction, were given from heaven, as it were, a rope - St. Scripture, all the sacraments with the greatest mystery of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The boat of salvation - the Church of Christ. Whoever rejects Her will undoubtedly perish, and in fact, for his pride, for his madness, foolishness, vile addiction and for his caprice (p. 91).
They say: - if you don’t want to, don’t pray; - crafty wisdom, carnal; If you don’t start praying, you will completely fall behind prayer; that's what the flesh wants. “The kingdom of heaven is in need” (Matthew 11:12 cs); without self-compulsion to goodness you will not be saved (p. 75).
Sincere prayer is not an easy matter. It requires attention and concentration. The sin of omitting the divine service through laziness and negligence is closely related to the sin of being absent-minded in church and home prayer (38).
In order not to sin by omitting the divine service through laziness and negligence, we must remember that prayer is a conversation with our loving Father, the Lord God. Therefore she must be sincere. Prayer must be performed freely and joyfully, but on the other hand, sometimes you need to force yourself a little.
You need to be well prepared for prayer. Firstly, all our prayers and services must be well studied and known. When we understand them, then we will penetrate and go deeper into prayer and we will have less reason to be careless.
In order to better participate in church services, it is good - before each service - to read in advance from the Apostle and from the Gospel those passages that will be read in church.
Then, of course, you need to come to the beginning of the service.
Among other things, it would be very good for the soul, and for more conscious participation in divine services and for supporting church life, if we somehow became involved in church and parish life and began to help in the church and in the parish.
38. DISTRACTION IN CHURCH AND HOME PRAYER
The Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his diary “My Life in Christ” (Paris 1984) writes the following about absent-mindedness:There is the sin of absent-mindedness, to which we are all greatly susceptible; You shouldn’t forget it, but repent of it; We indulge in absent-mindedness not only at home but also in church. The culprit of absent-mindedness is the devil and our many different passions for everyday, earthly things; its reasons are lack of faith; the remedy against it is fervent prayer (p. 9).
The enemy, knowing the Goodness of God and the power of prayers, tries in every possible way to turn us away from prayer, or during prayer to scatter our minds, to trip us up with various worldly passions and addictions or haste, confusion, etc. (p. 13).
Our negligence and laziness in prayer are great: we are always inclined to pray and often pray haphazardly, just to finish our work as quickly as possible, we are in a hurry, we jump to the top, but we do not look into the depths of our hearts. That’s why our prayer is like the wind: it makes a noise, it blows by, and that’s it (p. 82).
Whoever hastily, without heartfelt understanding and sympathy, reads prayers, overcome by his lazy and sleepy flesh, serves not God, but his flesh, his self-love, and curses the Lord with his inattention, the indifference of his heart in prayer:
“For God is Spirit:
And those who worship God
We must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24 cs).
- unhypocritical. No matter how lazy and weakened your flesh is, no matter how it makes you sleepy, overcome yourself, do not spare yourself for God, deny yourself, so that your gift for the Lord will be perfect, give God your heart (Shanghai, 1948. , page 138).
When we speak with noble people and people of great position, we are always attentive to them and to the conversation. Moreover, when we speak with our Father and Creator of the world, we need to be sincere, attentive and thoughtful in every word of prayer. He who is careless in prayer, as stated above, really “swears to the Lord with his inattention, the indifference of his heart in prayer.” To avoid negligence and inattention to prayer, we need to avoid praying when we are tired or when we are in a hurry.
On the other hand, all prayer books warn us that sincere and deep prayer is not easy and that the enemy will try in every possible way to hinder us. It requires our composure and our full attention.
The sin of absent-mindedness in church and home prayer is closely related to the sin of omitting the divine service through laziness and negligence (37). A person who carelessly prays at home and in church always finds a reason why he cannot be in church.
In order not to sin by being absent-minded during church and home prayer, we need to remember that prayer is a conversation with our loving Father, the Lord God. Therefore she must be sincere. Prayer must be performed freely and joyfully, but on the other hand, sometimes you need to force yourself a little.
You need to be well prepared for prayer. Firstly, all our prayers and services must be thoroughly studied. When we understand everything, then we will be able to penetrate more deeply and go deeper into prayer.
Then you need to have certain prayer rules, morning and evening.
We must always pray in the same place. At home in the same corner with the icons (in the red corner, that is, in the beautiful corner), and in the church in its favorite place.
Then you should never pray hastily. We must remember that no one needs hasty prayer; neither to us, nor to people, nor to the Lord God. If someone hears a hurried prayer, then it has a depressing effect on him. Hasty, careless and hurried prayer leads others to temptation and temptation (27) and gives bad example. Also, you cannot become a slave to the rules. If there is no time, then it is better to pray with feeling and less than without feeling and a lot.
You should try never to pray when you are tired. For example, the evening prayer rule should not be performed just before bedtime, but a little before bedtime. Thus, the person is not yet sleepy and can concentrate on prayer. If a prayer rule is practiced immediately before going to bed, it can easily become careless. Before going to bed, you can cross yourself and say only one short prayer:
In Your hand, Lord Jesus Christ, my God,
I betray my spirit.
You bless me, You have mercy on me
and grant me eternal life.
Amen.
39. CASE
A person can sin in deed, word or thought. This confession, intended for home and church use, does not list the great and obvious sins that are found in the 10 Commandments of the Law of God. Therefore, in this paragraph, you can place sins guided by the 10 Commandments and the Beatitudes.40. WORD
The Word is the great gift of the Lord God to man. It can be a source of good, but it can also be a source of evil. A word can be a reflection of a person’s soul, but it can also be just a habit. The Holy Scriptures have written a lot about the word.For example, in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel of the Apostle Matthew, it is said about good and evil word following:
...for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
a good man from a good treasure
brings out good;
and an evil man makes treasures of evil
endures evil; (Matthew 12:35 rs).
Our word, our tongue can become the source of many and various sins. All of them bring insult, insult, discord, quarrel and other evil to our neighbors. This category of sins includes: idle talk (1), condemnation (2), slander (8), insolence (13), murmuring (19), self-justification (20), reproach (21), reproach (23), slander (24) , lies (25), as well as foul language, gossip, and hypocrisy.
Foul language is the use of nasty, that is, bad words. Along with slander (24), some people use bad swear words and this can become a habit and passion. Bad words certainly should not be part of a Christian's vocabulary.
Gossip is when someone, accidentally or deliberately, adds something fictitious to what they hear. What comes out is untruths or half-truths; gossip comes out. Gossip appears as a result of empty talk (1), lies (25), ill will or anger towards your loved ones.
Hypocrites are those people who try to seem kinder, better, smarter, more beautiful than they really are. These people play, pretend, which means they base their entire existence on lies. Hypocrites are also those who say and pretend that they are believers, but in reality they are not believers.
In order not to sin with words, we need to watch what we say and we need to bridle our tongue. We must remember that the tongue is the source of many sins, for example: idle talk (1), condemnation (2), slander (8), insolence (13), self-justification (20), reproach (21), reproach (23), slander (24) , lies (25), laughter (26) and temptation (27). We must remember that silence is much better than verbosity and empty talk.
A person who talks all the time is busy with what he wants to say and therefore follows and listens less to others. Being silent and listening can focus on others. He has more opportunity to observe, listen, concentrate, go deeper, understand and weigh. Thus the silent one and the listener are in most cases deeper than the speaker, who is usually more superficial.
41. THINKING
Thought - Thought, reflection (Ozhegov).You can sin in deed, word or thought. Any deed, including a sinful deed, is always preceded by a thought. Therefore, in order to stop a sinful deed or word, you need to stop it at its very beginning, that is, when it is still just a thought. A sinful thought, sinful thinking and sinful daydreaming are also sins.
It must be said that “addiction,” that is, when a person has sinful thoughts or ideas (pictures) without desire and against the will, is not a sin. If he drives away this “pretext,” then he has not yet committed a sin. Only when a person voluntarily thinks about sin, only then does he commit sin.
Here it is appropriate to give the basics of the doctrine of the stages of sinfulness:
The Fall of Man occurs gradually. It is very important to know that a person does not immediately fall into great sin, but gradually. From the first small and seemingly harmless sin, he can fall further and further until the sin becomes a habit. This gradualism applies to all sins, small and large: say laziness, lies, deception, theft or alcoholism and drug addiction. The Holy Fathers, ascetics of Christian asceticism and piety, distinguish five stages (degrees) of sin: preposition, combination, addition, captivity and passion.
Christianity calls us not only to live according to the Commandments of the Law of God, but also to engage in spiritual self-education. Fight our sinful habits and cultivate positive qualities in ourselves. This spiritual growth is achieved gradually.
Prilog is when, without desire and against the will of a person, he has sinful thoughts or even ideas. If we immediately drive away this sinful thought, then we have not yet committed a sin. To this extent, sin is easiest to overcome. When an excuse appears, it must be resolutely rejected.
The combination is a voluntary reflection on sin. A person does not commit a sin, but only thinks about sin, this is already a sin.
Addition is already a desire for sin. A person sometimes sins, but is still aware of his sinfulness.
Captivity is already a frequent fulfillment of sin, but a person is still aware of his sinfulness.
Passion is when sin has already become a habit, it is already slavery to sin. Sin is committed easily and a person does not feel that he is sinning and can even be proud of it. To this extent, sin is most difficult to overcome. Church prayer and intense struggle are needed.
Sin by thought is associated with the sin of receiving unclean thoughts (34), unclean view (36), sight (42), hearing (43), smell (44), taste (45) and touch (46).
Sin by thinking is greatly facilitated by the world around us and our past sins. From all sides - if not the media, then people and even our colleagues, acquaintances or relatives - they constantly tell and hint to us. We are constantly seduced by double-meaning words, hints and anecdotes, or provocative and teasing fashion. Our life and our past sins gradually create in us skills and memories, which can also tempt us later and give us no peace. All this can influence a person and he will begin to sin in his thoughts.
To avoid sinful thoughts, you need to avoid looking and listening to everything that can tempt you: pictures, conversations, people. We need to drive away sinful thoughts from ourselves and do something that will make us think about something else.
42. VISION
Vision is one of the five main external senses (Ozhegov). (Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch).The Holy Righteous Father John of Kronstadt in his book Christian Philosophy writes the following about the sin of vision:
“Keeping your feelings from the sin of sight means: not looking with passion at other people’s beauty, at other people’s outfits, rich incomes, rich decorations of houses, at other people’s treasures and wealth, for all this will go to dust and ruin the purity of the soul; do not give free rein to rancor, an unclean imagination that imagines and depicts sin in lovely, desirable forms: do not look at seductive images or paintings and statues, do not read seductive books; avoid seductive communities, gatherings of cheerful and frivolous people, where sin is imputed to nothing, in general, beware of any reason to sin, for there are many temptations in the world (St. Petersburg, 1902, p. 170).
Vision (how a person looked), like words, also conveys mood. In this way one can sin, offend, offend with a simple glance.
A person sins with his sight when he looks at prodigal pictures, etc. We need to avoid everything that can lead us to sin through our sight.
At first glance, sinning with your eyes may seem like a harmless activity. In fact, it can lead to sin. A person gradually gets used to sin. Sin of sight is associated with sin of thought (41) and the acceptance of unclean thoughts (34).
Sin by sight is greatly contributed to by the world around us and our past sins. From all sides - if not the media, then people and even our colleagues, acquaintances or relatives - they constantly tell and hint to us. We are constantly seduced by double-meaning words, hints and anecdotes, or provocative and teasing fashion. Our life and our past sins gradually create in us skills and memories, which can also tempt us later and give us no peace. All this can influence a person and he will begin to sin with his eyesight.
To avoid sin with your eyesight, you need to avoid looking and listening to everything that can tempt you: pictures, conversations, people. We need to drive away sinful thoughts from ourselves and do something that will make us think about something else.
43. HEARING
Hearing is one of the five main external senses (Ozhegov). (Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch).A person sins by hearing when he listens to evil, listens to gossip, conversations, indecent or blasphemous jokes. (Blasphemous means to speak of a holy thing with ridicule). We need to avoid everything that can lead us to sin through our hearing.
Hearing about sin may, at first glance, seem like a harmless activity. In fact, it can lead to sin. First, the listener gradually gets used to it and begins to repeat what he heard, and then he begins to participate more actively in the conversation. Simply, just listening about evil all the time can also lead to sin. A person loses faith in good and gets used to evil. He gradually falls into despondency or becomes a cynic, and then he also begins to sin.
The sin of hearing is connected with the sin of thought (41) and easily turns into sin of speech (40).
Sin by hearing is greatly facilitated by the world around us and our past sins. From all sides - if not the media, then people and even our colleagues, acquaintances or relatives - they constantly tell and hint to us. We are constantly seduced by double-meaning words, hints and anecdotes, or provocative and teasing fashion. Our life and our past sins gradually create in us skills and memories, which can also tempt us later and give us no peace. All this can influence a person and he will begin to sin with his hearing.
To avoid the sin of hearing, you need to avoid looking and listening to everything that can tempt you: pictures, conversations, people. We need to drive away sinful thoughts from ourselves and do something that will make us think about something else.
44. SMELL
Olfaction - The ability to perceive and distinguish odors (Ozhegov). One of the five basic external senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch).One can sin by taking pleasure in a smell that is associated with sin or resembles sin.
The sin of smell is connected with the sin of thinking (41). From the sense of smell, a person easily moves on to sinful thoughts, and then to the sinful deed itself. This fact is well known and is used by sinful people who want to tempt (27) other people to sin.
To avoid smelling sins, we need to move away from the smell that can lead us to sinful thoughts and do something that will make us think about something else. In addition, we need to avoid everything that can lead us to sin through our sense of smell.
Holy Fathers about illnesses and the sick
The body is the slave of the soul, and the soul is the queen, and therefore it often happens through the mercy of God that the body is exhausted by illness: from this, passions weaken and a person comes to his senses; and physical illness itself is sometimes born from passions.
Take away sin, and there will be no disease; for they are in us from sin, as St. Basil the Great: “Where does the disease come from? Where did the bodily injuries come from? The Lord created the body, not the disease; soul, not sin." What is most useful and necessary? Connection with God and communication with Him through love. By losing this love, we fall away from Him, and by falling away, we are exposed to various and varied ailments.
Whoever endures an illness with patience and gratitude is credited with it instead of a feat, or even more.
One elder, suffering from water sickness, said to the brethren who came to him with a desire to treat him: “Fathers, pray that my inner man will not be subjected to such a disease, and as for the real disease, I ask God that He will not suddenly freed me from her; for as our outer man decays, the inner man is renewed (2 Cor. 4:16).”
From written instructions
Rev. Seraphim of Sarov
During illness, we feel that human life is like a flower that dries up almost as soon as it blooms, and a cloud that dissipates and leaves no trace; that our days disappear like a shadow; that our body dries up like the grass of the field, that the life of the strongest man is only a breath, that with each breath it shortens, and that the beating of his pulse, like the beats of a pendulum, brings him closer to the last hour, which almost always strikes precisely at that moment, when a person thinks that this hour is still a long time away.
Oh, illness, bitter but healthy medicine! Just as salt prevents the rottenness of fish or meat, so any illness preserves our spirit from the rottenness and corruption of sin and does not allow passions, spiritual worms, to arise in us.
To endure or not to endure suffering, however, one cannot avoid it, and impatience cannot avert the suffering that God’s Providence has determined for us. And from impatience nothing other than harm and destruction will follow. Patience eases all suffering. Look at those who are in long-term illness, or who sit in prison for a long time; They became so accustomed to that calamity with patience that they would not have felt it. Tribulation makes patience perfect (Rom. 5:3). On the contrary, the disease multiplies with impatience...
St. Tikhon Zadonsky
The fear for the body is so strong in people that as a result they often remain unable to do anything honorable and honorable. But when fear for the body is penetrated by fear for the soul, then bodily fear faints before spiritual fear, like wax from the power of a burning fire.
And when you are sick, say: “Blessed is he who has been found worthy to be tested by God in that for which we will inherit life.” For God sends illnesses for the health of the soul.
St. Abba Isaac the Syrian
I ask you, my son, to be patient and grateful for the stumbling blocks that occur in illness, according to the words of the One who said: “Everything that is dealt to you, accept it for good” (Sir. 2, 3), so that the intention of Providence is fulfilled on you, my son because it pleases Him. So, be courageous, be strong in the Lord and (trust) in His care for you.
God be with you!
From the messages of St. Abba Dorotheus
Illness is sometimes sent to cleanse sins, and sometimes to humble the ascension.
St. John Climacus
Everything is from God: illness, health, and everything that is from God is given to us for our salvation. So you, too, accept your illness and thank God for the fact that he cares about your salvation. What exactly is sent by God that serves for salvation, you don’t have to look for it, because maybe you won’t know. God sends other things as punishment, like penance, and others as discipline, so that a person will come to his senses; other things, to save you from the trouble that a person would get into if he were healthy; another thing is for a person to show patience and thereby deserve a greater reward; other, in order to cleanse me from all passion, and for other reasons... You, when you remember your sins, say: “Glory to You, Lord, that You imposed penance on me as punishment!” When you remember that before you did not always remember God, say: “Glory to You, Lord, that You have given me the reason and the knowledge to remember You more often!” When the thought comes to you that if you were healthy, you would do something different and not good, say: “Glory to Thee, Lord, that you do not allow me to sin,” and so on... So be complacent!
Give thanks to God for everything; and give thanks for ill health. It’s easy for me to say this from the outside; It may not be easy for you to feel this way. Every time you hear a word about patience, I pray that the Lord will allow you to endure illness graciously and learn something from it. Why did the Lord bind you, who can guess? But there is no doubt that this, too, was allowed to you in order to further the goals of the life that you have chosen, and in which you are trying to at least somehow maintain yourself. From this point of view, you don’t have to torture your illness anymore. In addition to what has been said, seek courage for complacent patience in moments of heaviness of suffering, in remembrance of the patience of all the saints, and especially the martyrs. How long and how did they endure?! And it's hard to imagine. Yes, and for everyone, “through much tribulation it is necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
And what is promised by the Lord is called the crown. For what? Because it is impossible to climb there without suffering. There is only one road there - a cross, voluntary or involuntary.
May the Guardian Angel bring you comfort and complacency! Don’t complain that the noise in your head doesn’t allow you to keep your thoughts. God judges the soul according to what depends on it, and not because of what it has no control over. Keep the intention in your heart not to depart from the Lord, and He will accept this matter.
Now you need to leave your fasting rule. Afterward, fast if it pleases God to raise you up; and now, in illness, in the form of medicine, you can eat everything, on the advice of a doctor.
There are diseases, the healing of which is prohibited by the Lord when He sees that illness is more necessary for salvation than health.
From letters to St. Feofan the Recluse
Illness is God’s admonishment to us, and serves for prosperity if we thank God. Wasn't Job true friend God's? But what did he not endure, thanking and blessing God? And patience finally led him to unparalleled glory. Be patient a little (in illness) and you will see the glory of God (John 11:40). If you cannot fast (in illness), do not grieve. God does not require anyone to work beyond their strength. Moreover, what is fasting if not punishment of the body in order to pacify a healthy body and make it weak for passions, according to the word of the Apostle: when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor. 12:10). But illness is greater than this punishment, and is charged instead of fasting, and is valued even more than it. Whoever endures it with patience, thanking God, through patience receives the fruit of his salvation. Instead of weakening the strength of the body by fasting, it is already weakened by illness. Thank God that you have been freed from the labor of fasting. Even if you eat ten times a day, do not be sad; you will not be condemned for this, since you are not doing this to please yourself.
(To the sick and despondent person). Kiss the suffering of our Savior - as if you, together with Him, endured reproach, wounds of humiliation, insult through spitting, the reproach of the scarlet, the shame of the crown of thorns, the mark of gall, the pain of piercing nails, the piercing of a spear, the outpouring of water and blood - and borrow from this I will give joy to your illnesses. The Lord will not leave your labor in vain. He allowed you to suffer a minor illness so that you would not be alien to the saints when you see them at that hour bearing the fruits of enduring sorrows and glorified, but would be an accomplice of them and Jesus, having boldness before Him with the Saints. Don't be sad; God has not forgotten you, but cares for you as His sincere son, and not as an adulteress.
St. Barsanuphius and John
Everything is from God, both good and sorrowful, but one is by good will, the other by dispensation, the third by permission. By good will, when we live virtuously; for it pleases God that those who live virtuously should be adorned with crowns of patience; according to the economy, when, falling into sins, we are admonished; by allowance, when even those admonished we do not convert. Again, economically, God punishes us who sin, so that we are not condemned with the world, as the Apostle says: we are punished by the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world (1 Cor. 11:32). In this mind, there is no evil in the city that the Lord will not create (Amos 3:6), such as: hunger, plagues, illnesses, defeats, battles; for all this serves to cleanse oneself from sins. God allows and completely forsakes those who either do not want to live without sin, or those who are admonished do not convert, but remain in sin. Then God gives them over to an unskilled mind, that is, He allows them to create inappropriately free ways (Rom. 1:28).
St. Ephraim the Syrian
When, for example, a sick person settles down to bear his illness complacently, and does; the enemy, knowing that in this way he will be confirmed in the virtue of patience, comes to upset his goodwill. For this, he begins to bring to mind many good deeds that he could have done if he had been in a different position, and tries to convince him that if he were healthy, how well he would serve God and how much benefit he would bring to himself and others: would go to church, have conversations, read and write for the edification of others, etc. Noticing that such thoughts are accepted, the enemy more often brings them to the mind, multiplies and colors them, carries them through to feelings, arouses desires and impulses to action thereby imagining how well this or that business would go for him, and arousing regret that he was bound hand and foot by illness.
Little by little, with frequent repetitions of such thoughts and movements in the soul, desire turns into dissatisfaction and annoyance. The former complacent patience is thus upset, and illness is no longer presented as a cure from God and a field for the virtue of patience, but as something hostile to the cause of salvation, and the desire to free oneself from it becomes uncontrollable, still in the form of obtaining through it space for doing good and pleasing God. all sorts of things.
Having brought it to this, the enemy steals from his mind and heart this good goal of the desire for recovery, and leaving only the desire for health, as health, makes him look annoyed at illness, not as an obstacle to good, but as something hostile in itself. As a result, impatience, not healed by good thoughts, takes strength and turns into grumbling, and deprives the patient of his former peace from complacent patience. And the enemy is glad that he managed to upset him.
In exactly the same way the enemy upsets the poor man who patiently endures his fate by depicting to him how good deeds he would have decorated himself if he had a fortune.
One can easily get rid of all such temptations if one, having an experienced leader, adviser and interlocutor, follows their instructions with humble obedience. And whoever is deprived of such a good for some reason, let him pay attention to himself and strictly learn to distinguish between good and bad according to Christian principles, by which the life of all of us should be organized. If the cases that, as it seems to us, prevent us from expanding our good deeds more widely, are not from our will, but are sent by God, then accept them with humility and do not listen to any suggestions that deviate you from this humility. Having sent such an opportunity, God does not expect anything from you, except that you behave and act as the opportunity that has visited you requires and allows.
Whether you are sick or poor, endure. God does not require anything from you except patience. By enduring complacently, you will continuously be in good deeds. Whenever God looks at you, He will see that you are doing good, or that you are in goodness, if you endure it complacently, whereas in a healthy person good deeds come at intervals. Why, when wanting to change your situation, do you want to exchange the best for the worst?
St. Nicodemus the Holy Mountain
Illnesses and unpleasant incidents are sent to us for the benefit of our soul and, above all, for our humility, and so that we lead our lives more prudently and judiciously.”
Is it possible to be treated by doctors and take medications?
“There is no sin in this; because everything comes from the Lord God, both medicinal remedies and the doctors themselves. And the sin does not consist in the fact that a person resorts to medical aids, but in the fact that the patient places all hope for recovery in one doctor and medical remedies, forgetting that everything depends on the All-Good and Almighty God, who is One, who wants them , lives or dies.
Rev. Ambrose Optinsky
From the all-good God only good things come, and not evil, - and your very illness is good, but you grumble, are faint-hearted, and despondent; be patient, give thanks; for free indulgences in youth - involuntary illnesses in old age.
He who suffers in the flesh ceases to sin (1 Pet. 4:1). This is why suffering and the cross are necessary for a Christian: without suffering, without dejection, our flesh fools, rages, sins, angers God, creates misfortune for itself and the soul. O damned flesh, multi-passionate, because of which all the troubles in humanity! O multi-passionate, nasty heart! What comes from a person defiles a person. For from within, from the human heart, come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, covetousness, malice, deceit, lasciviousness, an envious eye, blasphemy, pride, madness. All this evil comes from within and defiles a person (Mark 7:20-23). This is where the source of evil is in a person - in the heart!
St. John of Kronstadt
Abba Pimen the Great said: “The following three are equal: when someone is silent correctly; when he is sick and thanks God; when someone is in unfeigned obedience. These three have one job.”
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From the book Sexual need and lustful passion author compiler NikaMen as Fathers In his book Men as Fathers, Heinz Walter (2002) provides a historical and critical overview of the relevant literature on this topic. He took into account both the data cited by Fhtenakis (1985) and the results of studies of attachment and empirical
From the author's bookVII. Psychoanalytic teaching about illnesses Only illness tests a person’s health. J. W. Goethe.
From the author's bookWhat frightens us about illnesses Nobody likes to be sick... However, it is very difficult to fully describe the whole range of emotions that ill health causes in us with a simple word “does not like.” It would be much more correct to say: “We don’t like to be sick and are afraid.” It is the fear of illness -
Venerable Macarius of Egypt:
If someone says: “I am rich (in spirit), I have had enough and what I have acquired is no longer needed,” then he is not a Christian, but a vessel of the devil’s deception.
With all caution one must observe the intrigues, deceptions and evil actions arranged by the enemy (the devil) from all sides. Just as the Holy Spirit, through Paul, serves everyone for everyone (1 Cor. 9:22), so the evil spirit evilly tries to be everything to everyone in order to bring everyone down to destruction. With those who pray, he pretends to be praying, so as to make him arrogant about prayer; He fasts with those who are fasting in order to seduce them with self-conceit and drive them into a frenzy; with those knowledgeable in the Holy Scriptures, and he rushes into the study of Scripture, apparently seeking knowledge, but in essence trying to lead them to a false understanding of Scripture; with those who have been rewarded with the illumination of light, he also appears to have this gift, as Paul says: Satan is transformed into an angel of light, so that he can be deceived by the apparition of a kind of light, and attracted to himself. It’s easy to say: he takes upon himself all sorts of appearances for everyone, so that by an action similar to the action of good, he can enslave the ascetic for himself, and, covering himself with appearances, overthrow him into destruction.
Woe to the soul that does not feel its ulcers and thinks of itself, because of the great, immeasurable damage by malice, that it is completely alien to damage by malice. Such a soul is no longer visited and healed by the good Physician, as if she arbitrarily left her ulcers without caring for them, and imagines herself to be healthy and blameless. They don’t require, He says, the doctor’s health, but those who are sick.
Venerable John Climacus:
No matter how sublime our exploits may be, if we have not acquired a sick heart, then these exploits are both false and futile.
Venerable Gregory of Sinaite:
For after pride comes delusion (from dreams), after delusion - blasphemy, after blasphemy - insurance, after insurance - trembling, after trembling - madness from the mind.
Inflaming the whole nature and darkening the mind by combination with dreamed idols, she drives him into a frenzy of intoxication from her scorching effect and makes him mad.
It should be known that delusion has three main reasons for which it occurs: pride, envy of demons, and punitive tolerance. These are the same reasons: pride - vain frivolity (or vanity), envy - prosperity, punitive indulgence - sinful life. – The delusion of envy and proud conceit is more likely to be healed, especially if someone humbles himself. But punitive delusion—handing over to Satan for sin—is often tolerated by God through abandonment even to death. It happens that innocent people are given over to torment (by demons) in order to be saved. It should be known that the very spirit of proud conceit sometimes makes predictions in those who do not carefully listen to their hearts.
If anyone, with arrogance based on conceit, dreams of achieving high states of prayer, and has acquired not true, but satanic zeal, the devil conveniently entangles him with his nets, as his servant.
The free will of man conveniently bows to communication with our opponents, especially the will of the inexperienced, new to the feat, as if still possessed by demons. Demons are nearby and surround beginners and self-starters, spreading networks of thoughts and harmful dreams, creating abysses of falls. The city of the novices - the entire being of each of them - is still in the possession of the barbarians... Do not quickly give in to what appears to you with frivolity, but remain hard, holding on to the good with much consideration, and rejecting the evil... Know that the actions of grace are clear; the demon cannot teach them; he cannot teach meekness, quietness, humility, or hatred of the world; it does not tame passions and voluptuousness, as grace does.
Do not accept anything if you see anything, with your sensual eyes or mind, outside or inside you, whether it be the image of Christ, or an Angel, or some Saint, or if the light appears to you... Be attentive and careful! do not allow yourself to trust anything, do not express sympathy and consent, do not hastily trust a phenomenon, even if it is true and good; remain cold and alien to it, constantly keeping your mind formless, not forming any image and not imprinted by any image. He who sees something in thought or sensually, even if it were from God, and accepts it hastily and conveniently falls into delusion, at least revealing his inclination and ability for delusion, as one who accepts phenomena quickly and frivolously. The beginner must pay all attention to one action of the heart, recognize this one action as unattractive, and not accept anything else until the time of entering dispassion. God is not angry with someone who, fearing delusion, watches himself with extreme caution, even if he does not accept something sent from God without examining what was sent with all care; on the contrary, God praises such a person for his prudence.
Saint Simeon the New Theologian on the dreamer’s prayer:
He raises his hands, eyes and mind to heaven, imagines in his mind” - like Klopstock and Milton - “Divine conferences, heavenly blessings, orders of holy Angels, villages of saints, in short, he collects in his imagination everything that he heard in the Divine Scripture, considers during prayer, he looks at the sky, with all this arouses his soul to Divine desire and love, sometimes sheds tears and cries. Thus, little by little his heart becomes proud, without understanding it with his mind; he imagines that what he does is the fruit of Divine grace for his consolation, and prays to God to grant him to always remain in this work. This is a sign of charm. Such a person, even if he remains completely silent, cannot help but be subject to insanity and madness. If this does not happen to him, however, it is impossible for him to ever achieve spiritual intelligence and virtue or dispassion. Thus those who saw the light and radiance with these bodily eyes, those who smelled the incense with their sense of smell, and those who heard voices with their ears were deceived. Some of them became enraged and moved from place to place, mentally damaged; others accepted the demon, transformed into a bright angel, were deceived and remained uncorrected, even to the end, not accepting advice from any of the brethren; some of them, taught by the devil, killed themselves: some fell into the abyss, others hanged themselves. And who can count the various deceptions of the devil with which he deceives, and which are inscrutable? However, from what we have said, every man of sense can learn what harm comes from this way of prayer. If one of those who use it is not subjected to any of the above-mentioned disasters due to cohabitation with the brethren, because most hermits living alone are exposed to such disasters, but such a person spends his entire life unsuccessfully.
Rev. Maxim Kapsokalivit:
He who sees the spirit of delusion - in the phenomena represented by it - is very often exposed to rage and anger; the fragrance of humility or prayer, or true tears has no place in him. On the contrary, he constantly boasts of his virtues, is vain, and always indulges in evil passions fearlessly.
Venerable Nicodemus the Holy Mountain:
True Christian ascetics fast to humble their flesh; They keep vigils in order to sharpen the intelligent eye... they bind their tongues in silence and seclude themselves in order to avoid the slightest reason for offending the All-Holy God. They say prayers, stand church services and perform other acts of piety so that their attention does not depart from heavenly things. They read about the life and sufferings of our Lord in order to better understand their own badness and the gracious goodness of God; to learn and decide to follow the Lord Jesus Christ with selflessness and the cross on your shoulders and to more and more kindle in yourself love for God and kindness. But, on the other hand, these same virtues can cause greater harm to those who place the entire foundation of their life and their hope in them than their obvious shortcomings. The virtues themselves are pious and holy, but some people do not use them as they should. Heeding only these virtues, externally performed, they leave their hearts to follow their own will and the will of the devil, who, seeing that they have left the right path, not only does not prevent them from struggling in these bodily exploits, but also strengthens them in their vain thoughts. Experiencing certain spiritual states and consolations at the same time, these ascetics believe that they have already risen to the state of the ranks of angels, and feel within themselves, as it were, the presence of God Himself. Sometimes, having delved into the contemplation of some abstract, non-earthly things, they imagine that they have completely left the realm of this world and are caught up to the third heaven... They are in great danger. Having their inner eye, that is, their mind, darkened, they look at themselves with it and look incorrectly. Considering their external deeds of piety to be very worthy, they think that they have already achieved perfection and, becoming proud of this, begin to condemn others. After this, it is no longer possible for any of the people to convert them, except for the special influence of God. It is more convenient for an open sinner to turn to goodness than for one who has hidden himself under the cover of visible virtues.
Venerable Macarius of Optina:
You want to see that you live well and are saved, but you don’t understand that charm is born from this, and infirmities humble us.
The main reason for delusion, in any case, is pride and self-rule.
Venerable Leo of Optina:
Do you deign to know what delusion is: delusions are varied and have an effect; as the mind and heart are elevated, one becomes darkened and captivated by opinion and preoccupation with oneself, and thinking itself believes the opinions and dreams presented to it by the universal enemy - the devil, and thereby becomes frantic and utters those absurdities, as he imagines from his opinions and dreams, and this means charm.
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
The source of delusion, like all evil, is the devil, and not any virtue.
The beginning of delusion is pride, and its fruit is abundant pride.
St. Gregory of Sinaite says: “In general, there is only one cause of delusion - pride.” In human pride, which is self-deception, the devil finds a convenient refuge for himself, and adds his deception to human self-deception. Every person is more or less prone to prelest: because the purest human nature has something proud in it.
Saint Simeon the New Theologian, speaking about the failure of prayer asceticism and the tares of delusion that arise from it, attributes the cause of both failure and delusion to the failure to maintain correctness and gradualness in the asceticism.
The warnings of the fathers are sound! You must be very careful, you must protect yourself very much from self-delusion and charm. In our time, with the complete impoverishment of God-inspired mentors, we need special caution, special vigilance over oneself.
Just as pride is generally the cause of delusion, so humility - a virtue directly opposite to pride - serves as a sure warning and protection from delusion. Saint John Climacus called humility the destruction of passions.
Prelest is the damage to human nature by lies. Delusion is the state of all people, without exception, produced by the fall of our forefathers. We are all in delight. Knowing this is the greatest protection against delusion. The greatest charm is to recognize oneself as free from delusion. We are all deceived, we are all deceived, we are all in a false state, we need liberation by the truth. The truth is our Lord Jesus Christ.
The beginning of evil is a false thought! The source of self-delusion and demonic delusion is a false thought! The cause of various harm and destruction is a false thought! Through lies, the devil struck humanity with eternal death at its very roots, in its forefathers. Our forefathers were deceived, that is, they recognized a lie as the truth, and, accepting a lie under the guise of truth, they damaged themselves with incurably deadly sin...
Prelest is the assimilation by a person of a lie that he accepts as the truth. Charm acts initially on the way of thinking; Having been accepted and, having distorted the way of thinking, it is immediately communicated to the heart, distorting the heart’s sensations; Having mastered the essence of a person, it spills over all his activities, poisoning the body itself, as inextricably linked by the Creator with the soul. The state of delusion is a state of destruction or eternal death.
Since the fall of man, the devil has had constant free access to him. The devil has the right to this access: to his power, by obedience to him, man arbitrarily subjected himself, rejecting obedience to God. God redeemed man. The redeemed man is given the freedom to obey either God or the devil, and in order for this freedom to manifest itself spontaneously, the devil is given access to man. It is very natural that the devil uses every effort to keep a person in the same attitude towards himself, or even to bring him into greater enslavement. To do this, he uses his former and ever-present weapon - lies. He tries to seduce and deceive us, relying on our state of self-delusion; our passions - these painful attractions - he sets in motion; their destructive demands are clothed in plausibility, and are strengthened to incline us to the satisfaction of passions. He who is faithful to the Word of God does not allow himself this satisfaction, curbs passions, repels the attacks of the enemy; acting under the guidance of the Gospel against his own self-delusion, taming passions, thereby gradually destroying the influence of fallen spirits on himself, he little by little emerges from the state of delusion into the realm of truth and freedom, the fullness of which is delivered by the overshadowing of Divine grace. He who is unfaithful to the teachings of Christ, following his own will and reason, submits to the enemy and moves from a state of self-delusion to a state of demonic delusion, loses the remainder of his freedom, and enters into complete submission to the devil. The state of people in demonic delusion can be very diverse, corresponding to the passion by which a person is seduced and enslaved, corresponding to the degree to which a person is enslaved by passion. But all those who have fallen into demonic delusion, that is, through the development of their own self-delusion, who have entered into communication with the devil and enslavement to him, are in delusion, they are temples and tools of demons, victims of eternal death, life in the prisons of hell.
All types of demonic delusion to which the ascetic of prayer is subjected arises from the fact that repentance is not placed at the basis of prayer, that repentance has not become the source, the soul, the goal of prayer.
Repentance, contrition of spirit, crying are signs... of the correctness of the prayer feat, their absence is a sign of deviation in the wrong direction, a sign of self-delusion, delusion or infertility.
Delusion or infertility are an inevitable consequence of improper exercise in prayer, and improper exercise in prayer is inseparable from self-delusion. The most dangerous wrong way of prayer is when the person praying by the power of imagination creates his own dreams or pictures, borrowing them, apparently, from the Holy Scriptures, but in essence from his own condition, from his fall, from his sinfulness, from his self-delusion, - with these pictures he flatters his conceit, his vanity, his arrogance, his pride, he deceives himself.
The dreamer, from the first step on the path of prayer, starts from the realm of truth, enters the realm of lies, the realm of Satan, and arbitrarily submits to the influence of Satan.
All the Holy Fathers, who described the feat of mental prayer, forbid not only making up arbitrary dreams, but also bowing with will and sympathy to dreams and ghosts that may present themselves to us unexpectedly, regardless of our will.
Just as wrong action with the mind leads into self-deception and delusion, so exactly does wrong action with the heart lead into them. Filled with reckless pride, the desire and desire to see spiritual visions with a mind that is not cleansed of passions, not renewed and not recreated by the right hand of the Holy Spirit; filled with the same pride and recklessness, the desire and desire of the heart to enjoy holy, spiritual, Divine sensations, when it is still completely incapable of such pleasures. Just as an unclean mind, wanting to see Divine visions and not being able to see them, composes visions for itself, deceives itself and deceives itself with them, so the heart, intensifying to taste Divine sweetness and other Divine sensations, and not finding them in itself, composes them from himself, flatters himself with them, seduces, deceives, destroys himself, entering the realm of lies, into communication with demons, submitting to their influence, enslaving to their power.
One sensation of all the sensations of the heart, in its state of fall, can be used in invisible Divine services: sadness about sins, about sinfulness, about the fall, about one’s destruction, called crying, repentance, contrition of the spirit. ...Let us take care to cleanse ourselves through repentance! ...The Lord, having mercy on the fallen and dead people, granted repentance to everyone as the only means of salvation, because everyone was enveloped in fall and destruction.
...the ascetics of prayer are exposed to disaster, those who have poured out repentance from their feat, who are intensifying to arouse love for God in their hearts, who are intensifying to feel pleasure and delight; they develop their fall, make themselves alien to God, enter into communication with Satan, and become infected with hatred of the Holy Spirit. This kind of charm is terrible; it is equally destructive to the soul as the first, but is less obvious, it rarely ends in madness and suicide, but it decisively corrupts both the mind and the heart. Based on the state of mind it produces, the fathers called it opinion.
He who is obsessed with this delusion thinks of himself, has created an “opinion” about himself, that he has many virtues and virtues, even that he is abounding in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Opinion is made up of false concepts and false sensations: according to this property, it completely belongs to the realm of the father and representative of lies - the devil. The person praying, striving to reveal the sensations of a new person in his heart, and not having any opportunity to do so, replaces them with sensations of his own creation, counterfeit ones, to which the action of fallen spirits is not slow to join. Having recognized the wrong sensations, his own and the demonic, as true and grace-filled, he receives concepts corresponding to the sensations. These sensations, constantly assimilated into the heart and intensified in it, feed and multiply false concepts; Naturally, from such an incorrect feat, self-delusion and demonic delusion are formed - “opinion”.
... “opinion” consists of appropriating for oneself the merits given by God, and in inventing for oneself virtues that do not exist.
There is no longer any ability for spiritual success in those infected with “opinion”; they destroyed this ability, bringing to the altar of lies the very beginnings of human activity and his salvation...
Anyone who does not have a contrite spirit, who recognizes any merits and merits in himself, anyone who does not steadfastly adhere to the teachings Orthodox Church, but he who argues about any dogma or tradition arbitrarily, at his own discretion, or according to heterodox teaching, is in this delusion. The degree of evasion and persistence in evasion determines the degree of prelest.
…“opinion” - acts without creating seductive pictures; she is content with inventing counterfeit, grace-filled sensations and states, from which a false, perverse concept of all spiritual achievement is born. He who is in the delusion of “opinion” acquires a false view of everything around him. He is deceived both within himself and without. Daydreaming... constantly creates pseudo-spiritual states, close friendship with Jesus, internal conversation with Him, mysterious revelations, voices, pleasures, builds on them a false concept of oneself and of the Christian feat, builds a generally false way of thinking and a false mood of the heart, leading to ecstasy himself, then into excitement and enthusiasm. These various sensations arise from the action of refined vanity and voluptuousness... Vanity and voluptuousness are aroused by arrogance, this inseparable companion of “opinion.” Terrible pride, similar to the pride of demons, is the dominant quality of those who have acquired both charms. Pride leads those seduced by the first type of charm into a state of obvious insanity; in those deceived by the second type, it, also producing mental damage, called corruption of the mind in Scripture, is less noticeable, clothed in the guise of humility, piety, wisdom, and is known by its bitter fruits. Those infected with an “opinion” about their own merits, especially about their holiness, are capable and ready for all intrigues, all hypocrisy, deceit and deception, all atrocities.
Those obsessed with “opinion” are for the most part given over to voluptuousness, despite the fact that they attribute to themselves the most sublime spiritual states, unparalleled in correct Orthodox asceticism...
All particular types of self-delusion and seduction by demons... occur either from the wrong action of the mind, or from the wrong action of the heart.
Rejection of the system in the study of science is a source of false concepts... such is also the consequence of disordered exercise in prayer. The inevitable, natural consequence of such an exercise is delight.
IN false thought the entire edifice of beauty already exists in the mind, just as the plant that is to come from it exists in the grain.
Prelest... this is what self-delusion, combined with demonic seduction, is called in monastic language, is an indispensable consequence of premature withdrawal into deep solitude or a special feat in cell solitude.
A type of delusion based on arrogance, called “opinion” by the Holy Fathers, lies in the fact that the ascetic accepts false concepts about spiritual objects and about himself, considering them true.
“If there is an expectation of grace in you, beware: you are in a dangerous position! Such an expectation indicates secret self-esteem, and honor indicates hidden conceit, in which there is pride. Pride conveniently follows, charm conveniently clings to it.”
“Love God as He commanded to love Him, and not as self-deluded dreamers think to love Him.
Do not invent delights for yourself, do not set your nerves in motion, do not inflame yourself with material flames, with the flame of your blood. A sacrifice acceptable to God is humility of heart, contrition of spirit.
Love for God is based on love for neighbor. When the memory of malice is erased from you, then you are close to love. When your heart is overshadowed by holy, gracious peace for all humanity: then you are at the very doors of love.
But these doors are opened only by the Holy Spirit. Love for God is a gift of God in a person who has prepared himself to accept this gift with purity of heart, mind and body.
Natural love, fallen love, warms a person’s blood, sets his nerves in motion, arouses daydreaming; Holy love cools the blood, calms both soul and body, draws the inner man to prayerful silence, immerses him in the rapture of humility and spiritual sweetness.
Many ascetics, mistaking natural love for Divine love, heated up their blood and inflamed their dreaminess. The state of excitement very easily turns into a state of frenzy. Those who were in the heat and frenzy were considered by many to be filled with grace and holiness, and they were the unfortunate victims of self-delusion.
Fathers of the true Church, ascend with humility to the spiritual heights of Divine love through keeping the commandments of Christ.
Know firmly that love for God is the highest gift of the Holy Spirit, and a person can only prepare himself with purity and humility to accept this great gift, by which the mind, heart, and body are changed. Labor is in vain, it is fruitless and harmful when we seek to prematurely reveal high spiritual gifts in ourselves: they are given by the merciful God in due time to constant, patient, humble performers of the Gospel commandments.”
Spiritual flower garden
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