Contents

Life of Archimandrite John

The cornerstone of life is God

We have to live forever

States of the human soul

Angels

Guardian Angel

About talents

The reason for our disorder

Sin

About Satan, Man and God

Fasting and prayer

Post

Forgiveness

Cross of Christ

Resurrection of Christ

Ascension

The beginning of everything is God

Life of Archimandrite John

Archimandrite John (in the world Ivan Mikhailovich Krestyankin) was born on April 11, 1910 in the city of Orel in a large family, he was the eighth and last child. Since childhood, Vanya served in the church, already at the age of six he was a sexton, then served as a subdeacon. At the age of twelve he first expressed his desire to be a monk. In the elder’s biography this story is stated as follows.

Yeletsk Bishop Nikolai said goodbye to pilgrims, leaving for a new place of service. The farewell was drawing to a close, and Subdeacon John Krestyankin also wanted to receive parting words for life from the bishop. He touched his arm to get his attention. The Bishop leaned towards the boy with the question: “What should I bless you for?” And Vanya said in excitement: “I want to be a monk.” Putting his hand on the boy’s head, the bishop paused, peering into his future. And he said seriously: “First you will finish school, work, then you will be ordained and serve, and in due time you will certainly become a monk.” Everything in life turned out that way.

In 1929, Ivan Krestyankin graduated from high school, and then received a professional education in accounting courses. He worked in his specialty in Orel, but frequent overtime work prevented him from going to church, and when he opposed such orders, he was immediately fired. For some time he could not find a job and in 1932 he moved to Moscow, where he became the chief accountant in a small enterprise. Work did not prevent him from attending services. Soon Ivan entered the circle of Orthodox young people, discussed issues of spiritual life with them, and this friendship strengthened him even more in his intention to follow the spiritual path.

In 1944, he became a psalm-reader at the Moscow Church of the Nativity in Izmailovo, and in 1945 he was ordained a deacon at the same parish, and soon a priest.

Father John served with enthusiasm, preached with inspiration, treated parishioners with love and extraordinary attention – and for this reason he aroused suspicion and persecution from the authorities. The “excessive activity” of a priest in those days was a reason for fabricating a criminal case.

Simultaneously with serving in the church, Father John studied in absentia at the Moscow Theological Academy, wrote a candidate’s thesis on the topic “Reverend Seraphim of Sarov, the Wonderworker and his significance for Russian religious and moral life of that time.” However, shortly before his defense, in April 1950, he was arrested and was in pre-trial detention in Lubyanka and Lefortovo prison.

The priest immediately confused the assertive and tough investigator with his goodwill. Without reacting in any way to anger and rudeness, he behaved simply and openly and, moreover, rejected slander and did not take on unnecessary blame. When a priest recruited by the authorities was brought to him for a confrontation, Father John was so sincerely delighted with him and rushed to greet him so heartily that he could not withstand the reproach of his conscience and, losing consciousness, fell…

Since August 1950, Father John was kept in Butyrka prison, in a cell with criminals. Here he became especially immersed in prayer, thanks to which he always maintained a good mood and a cordial attitude towards others. His inner concentration was noticed, but not understood by the guards, so that during walks in the prison yard, one could sometimes hear from the tower: “Prisoner number such and such! Walk without hesitation!”

In October, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for “anti-Soviet agitation” to be served in a maximum security camp. He was sent to the Arkhangelsk region, to Kargopollag. At first, Father John worked in a logging camp. Living and working conditions there were extremely difficult, but this is how Father John himself recalled his internal state at that time:

“Prayer is best taught by harsh life. In conclusion, I had a true prayer, and this is because every day I was on the verge of death. Prayer was that insurmountable barrier through which the abominations of external life did not penetrate. It is impossible to repeat such a prayer now, in days of prosperity. Although the experience of prayer and living faith acquired there remains for life.”

In the camp, Father John was remembered by many for the inner strength emanating from him and the constancy of his goodness. One of the prisoners recalled:

“I remember how he walked with his light, swift gait – he didn’t walk, but flew – along the wooden walkways to our barracks. His pale, thin face was directed somewhere forward and upward. I was especially struck by his sparkling eyes – the eyes of a prophet. But when he spoke to you, his eyes, his whole face radiated love and kindness. And in what he said there was attention and participation; there could also be a fatherly instruction, brightened with gentle humor. He loved a joke…”

His kindness of heart impressed everyone, and even criminals treated him warmly and called him “our dad.” Father John himself saw in them not criminals, but people crippled by their own sin. He felt pity for the unfortunate people, prayed for them, and most of them were friendly towards the young priest, feeling in him the depth of his Christian love for people, unknown to them. Remembering that time many years later, already as an old man, Father John wrote: “I would like to pray and ask you for the gift of love. So that love is the compass that will show the right direction in any situation and turn any person into a friend. This was also verified by me, even in exile.”

When asked if he was offended by rudeness and unfair treatment, which was enough in prison, the priest responded wonderfully: “When can you be offended? I don’t have enough time for love to waste it on grudges.”

Hard work in logging undermined his health, and in the spring of 1953, Father John, without his request, was transferred to a disabled camp unit. In 1955 he was released early.

And then there were years of work in various parishes of the Pskov and Ryazan dioceses, and everywhere the priest carried the light of Christ’s love, which warmed everyone around him. He did not stay anywhere for long: frequent transfers from one parish to another (6 parishes in 10 years) were associated with the attitude of the authorities, who, as before, did not want an active priest.

In 1966, he became a monk with the name John and was soon transferred to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, where he lived the last forty years of his life. In 1970 he was ordained hegumen, and since 1973 he has been an archimandrite.

Almost immediately after Father John settled in Pechory, people began to come to him for advice and spiritual guidance from all over the country and from abroad. And, of course, his numerous former parishioners strove for him.

Every day, immediately after the Liturgy, he began the reception and continued it, with short breaks for meals, until late in the evening, and sometimes even after midnight. He did not walk around the monastery, but almost ran – however, lingering near everyone who sought his attention, and for this they called him with good humor “a fast train with all the stops.” When the priest was in a hurry, not having time to ask questions and talk for a long time, he sometimes immediately began to answer a question that had been prepared but had not yet been asked to him, and thereby involuntarily revealed his amazing insight.

Archimandrite John was revered by all Orthodox Russia as an elder spiritual father. The time of his ascetic life, when he received and consoled dozens of people every day, lasted more than thirty years, almost until he was 90 years old.

There are mentors who are reserved and some who are stern. And Father, as those who saw him at least once remember, was all love and joy…

Since childhood, he was in poor health, often sick, always malnourished, he never felt sorry for himself and even simply did not take care of himself. And he lived for 95 years, and until the age of 90 he was strong and still served. “The power of God is made perfect in weakness” (see 2 Cor. 12:9) and that says it all. Father John himself, shortly before his death, said this: “Divine love, settled in the small, weak human heart, will make it great, and strong, and fearless before all the evil of the world, maddened by apostasy from God. And the power of God in us will overcome everything.”

In recent years, due to illness, Father John almost did not receive visitors, but he received many letters from all over the world and answered many of them – either himself or with the help of his cell attendants.

The elder died on February 5, 2006, and was buried in the caves of the Assumption Pskov-Pechersky Monastery.

They call him “the elder of all Rus’,” remembering the amazing kindness and love that came from him. Thank God, now you can not only get acquainted with the sermons and instructions of Father John from books, but also see him himself in film materials about the Pskov-Pechersk monastery.

Here his high, ringing voice joyfully proclaims: “My friends!” This is how it sounds in the hearts of those who knew the priest and were loved by him.

The cornerstone of life is God

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.”
(Matt. 21:42).

The cornerstone of life is God. Take Him away from the foundation, and the entire edifice of life will collapse. This is from the Lord. This is the law of life. And the history of the peoples of the Old Testament, and the history of the peoples of modern times, and the history of our Motherland testify to this.

The Lord, the Great Vinedresser, planted a wondrous paradise with His single wave and brought man into it to preserve and cultivate the paradise of sweets. And God was in him – everything and in everything. But man fell, and the eternal joy and sweetness of heavenly life in the presence of God was replaced by the labors and sweats of earth, where rare joys are mixed with grief and sin guards the good.

Death entered the world through sin. And the Lord, the Great Vinedresser, gave the vineyard of life – the land – to man. And he protected life from death with a reliable fence – the Law of God and the commandments, so that nothing alien would snatch a person from God. And the Lord erected a watchtower in the vineyard of life – conscience – an incorruptible and indefatigable guardian of the purity and truth of the soul.

The Lord bequeathed to man to possess, cultivate, grow fruits and enjoy life. But again, as once in paradise, the Lord gave a commandment to people – to remember that the life of the soul, the happiness of the soul is only in God. The Lord gave man the vineyard of life, so that its fruits, grown by him, would bring about the salvation of man’s soul. The Lord taught man how to cultivate the soil of a vineyard, so that there would be abundance and abundance of fruit for life, and taught him how to cultivate the soil of his soul, so that a living human vineyard would live in peace, love and contentment.

The Lord arranged everything and gave it into the hands of man, and rested from all His labors, departed as the Creator, handing over what was created into other creative hands, into the hands of man. And now man himself cultivates the vineyard of life on earth, he himself creates the salvation of his soul.

But the Lord did not leave the world. He, having given him the laws of life, watches and observes how the world lives. The Lord is ready at any moment to provide saving help to the man-doer. And He comes to receive the fruits of the worker’s labors when life is ripe.

But what does a person do? Just as once in paradise he wished to be a god, hastily following the whisperings of the enemy, so to this day he strives to build his “Tower of Babel”, plots to plant his own vineyard, not wanting to cultivate the vineyard of God.

And the examples of the generations who lived before him, who were broken by their fight against God against the cornerstone of life – about God, are erased in consciousness and memory, and everything starts all over again. The element of evil, poisoning life, corrupting the soil of the human soul, weakens man’s connection with heaven, and sets as its task to expel from man the very memory of God as the only Source of life, the Lord of the soul. And the evil in the human soul, nurtured by the evil of the world – Satan, expands, grows, and man, like a sold slave of sin, daily driven by evil, ceases to feel and experience daily providential blows from God. He imagines that he alone is the real master of his life.

“The soul is mine… life is mine… the abilities, and the forces of life, and all the gifts are mine… I think… I am convinced… I want… I do… everything is I, I, I. Everything is from me and is mine.” And human life is spinning, and God has no place in it. But the nature of what exists in the world cannot change. By expelling Life from the vineyard of life, man reaps death, desolation and decay. And we hear the words of today’s Gospel: “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do with these winegrowers? These evildoers will be put to an evil death, and the vineyard will be given to other vinedressers, who will give him the fruit in their own time.” (Matthew 21:40–41).

And these gospel words have come true more than once in the history of different nations. And in all their strength they appeared in the history of the Jewish people, who rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God. Having received the promised land as an inheritance from God, they swirled in the joy of life, many providential blows of God’s hand were attributed to random failures, continuing to establish themselves in selfishness and selfish egoism. The messengers of God – divinely inspired prophets, coming in rags, and not in gold, were expelled as the rabble of the world. The Son of God, who came to open the arms of the Heavenly Father to the dying people, to remind them of the meaning of life, dies at their hands. “And they seized him,1 and brought him out of the vineyard and killed him” (Matthew 21:39).

And at that very moment life ended, for God was expelled. God’s mercy retreated, giving way to man’s own evil.

And immediately after Christ’s ascension into heaven, extraordinary natural phenomena and terrible national disasters began to appear in Israel, and a deadly, all-living war devouring all living things put an end to the kingdom of Judah.

And let us remember on this terrible ashes of death the words of God the Son, who came to save the perishing: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! how many times have I wanted to gather your children… and you did not want to! Behold, your house is left to you empty” (Matthew 23:37–38). God left, and death reigned where life bloomed. The Lord of the vineyard – God – came and put the vinedressers to death and gave the vineyard to others. And the Lord called the new workers Christians – the new Israel, and called for them to work in God’s vineyard, bearing fruit to the Lord in their time.

And now, for twenty centuries, a new garden of life has been cultivated, where everything is from God, everything is by Him, and everything is to Him. And the stone of life – Christ God, Whom the previous workers killed, became the cornerstone, and this is the cornerstone in the foundation of the new vineyard given to us – the founder of our Orthodox Church, which no forces of hell can overcome.

And the Law of God – the Holy Gospel – is a new fence. And the new building of the vineyard – the grace-filled Sacraments of Christ’s Church – revive, sanctify and strengthen the strength of workers. And the pillar and affirmation of truth in the center of the vineyard is the Holy Orthodox Church, the temple of God, where daily a bloodless sacrifice is made for the sins of people, and the Holy Mysteries of Christ intercede Eternal Life to the workers of the vineyard of Christ. And as before, the human conscience is a watchtower of all purity.

Let us look back at ourselves, let us look into the vineyard of our soul, because each of us has been entrusted by the Lord with our own garden, our own vineyard, the fruits of which also receive due reward. Is there God in our vineyard, is there work in it for the glory of God? Will we have something to bring to the Lord, saying to Him: “Here is yours from yours, Lord!” Isn’t our soul already working in the same harness with evil workers? And suddenly nothing of God is found in us? Suddenly it turns out that despite the external resemblance of Orthodox life, the internal in us is, at best, our selfhood, or even simply outright the enemy.

But at first we simply brush aside these unpleasant reminders. We have no time to do this business – to think about good things, to comprehend our actions and words in the light of Divine truth, we have our own business, which is more important for us at the present time. Both goodness and the very thought of goodness become alien to us. Truth is driven out of the soul with nothing. And the voice of conscience is gradually weakening. This is the first stage of the destruction of God in the soul. And this is where the illness of the soul begins.

The soul’s increasing brushing aside of the call of God turns into a hardening of the soul.

Reproaches of conscience begin to irritate us.

And in this state, a person, irritated by everything holy, by everything of God, goes into an attack on Him. Reveling in the sweetness of vice, he ceases to see the abyss opening under his feet.

A person with cynicism tramples the shrine, dishonors it, as if the power of evil, which has already grown in man, is afraid of the shrine.

And after this, the soul descends to the next stage of self-destruction. The holy is not allowed into the soul at all. The call of conscience has ceased. The light has gone out, the animal, bestial, carnal, has reigned and reigned in man. This is a time of complete spiritual savagery.

And so in the soul, freed from the watchtower – conscience, a reckless, uncontrollable rampage of evil unfolds. Evil has reigned in man and must satisfy itself. And man becomes his pathetic, obedient slave.

In the frenzy of this whirling, a person no longer notices the darkness around him, the decay and stench, he quickly flies towards the abyss, towards ultimate death.

Thus begins the final stage—death. But death is certainly preceded by the last and strongest influence of God’s Providence on the human soul. For the last time, the Lord opens His arms to the soul, reveals that for its sake, for the sake of the human soul, the Lord gave the earth all the best, did not even spare His only Son, and that the love of God the Son for fallen man is capable of covering all the crimes of man.

And in response to this last call of God’s love for man, the soul, drowning in sin, commits the last act of its fall: it kills God within itself.

The last onslaught of an unbridled mind and a dirty heart declares that there is no God, that human life is not accountable to Him, and God is thrown out of thought and consciousness.

Now evil reigned in the soul undivided and powerful. And with evil comes darkness, decay, destruction, death…

There is no God – and there is no life in the vineyard. The fence has been removed – the Law of God, the watchtower – conscience – has been knocked down, the building has become desolate, littered and rotten – good deeds born of God’s grace. And in the former garden of the soul death reigns. Evil has undermined the nutritious roots, passions have dried up the greens, the breath of rot has blown in – don’t expect any fruit!

The vineyard of the soul is trampled by vice and withered. And with the death of the soul, the natural abilities in a person fade, the destroyed mind fades. A pitiful, powerless, decrepit will crawls on the earth. Natural death will only complete the job. The picture of the death of the soul, the death of all living things is terrible.

But it is with the death of a person’s soul that the death of an entire nation begins, the death of the world begins.

And from what we are experiencing now, it is clear that our souls are sick, that there are fewer and fewer living souls of God in the world, which means that the hour is getting closer to us when the Lord “will come and put the [evil] husbandmen to death” (Mark 12:9).

Let us not forget, my dears, that the cornerstone of life is God. Let us hasten to do the works of God while there is still time, while there is still time to gather fruit.

Let us live in God and with God, every hour bridling our self-will and selfishness, fearing the fate of those rejected by God, so that the Kingdom of God may not be taken away from us.

We will live forever

None of the people knows either the day or the hour when for the only time in their life they will know and taste the mystery of death. And this sacrament is the unchangeable and immutable voice of eternity. And the voice of eternity constantly sounds in the world.

The proud human mind weakens and retreats before the mystery of death, for it is the mystery of God.

Death will enter our lives too. The soul – the breath of life, the Spirit of God living in us – the Lord will call to Himself, and the mortal body left by the soul will “go to the earth.” One moment – and the line separating earthly life from the mystery of life after death will fall for those who have tasted death, and the living will again bow before the incomprehensible mystery, and numerous “why?” will remain unanswered.

Do not be afraid of death, which separates the soul from the body – this is the first death. It is scary to you, man, with its unknownness, but it does not determine your life in eternity. Behind it stands the second death, fed by sin, sending its sacrifice away from God to continue life in torment for eternity. And earthly life is only the beginning of eternity for a person.

There was no death on earth at the creation of life, but death entered the world through sin, and in the first Adam his descendants die, and in the second Adam – in Christ – all will come to life according to the promise of God. And the time will come when death will be completely destroyed by Christ.

“And there will be no more death,” says the Lord in the Revelation given to the holy Apostle John the Theologian (Rev. 21:4). But this longed-for and joyful news of eternal life will at the same time become terrible news for many.

“The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live… and those who have done good will come forth into the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil into the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:25, 29). And there will be no more death, but eternal life embraces everything, resurrection embraces everyone. For some – the resurrection of life in the light of God’s love, long-awaited, long-awaited, suffered and joyful; for others – resurrection, but in total darkness, unwanted, unexpected, unnecessary and terrible.

For those who want to know the truth, the revelation of the Lord is a certifying, indisputable, undoubted proof of it. For those mired in sin, entangled in its sticky lies, who do not love the truth, even the most obvious evidence is unconvincing.

How many believe the Divine revelation given through the prophets, how many submit to the Divine truth of the Holy Gospel, revealed to us both as a way of life and as a judgment on how we live? How many people really believe in their future resurrection for eternity?

We, my dears, will live forever. Let us also remember that neither wealth, nor poverty, nor illness in themselves destroys us or saves us, but the turning of our souls from earth to heaven, to God and, through the love of God, to people – this is what undoubtedly gives a person eternal joy.

Are you rich – save yourself by mercy, compassion and humble generosity, grow rich in God. Whether you are poor and sick, save yourself by patience and submissive meekness before God’s will. Seek not your own, but God’s and the benefit of those whom the Lord places on your life’s path. With God there is no untruth, nothing is accidental, and every person on our life’s path is our guide to Eternal Life, we just need to understand how we can be useful to him. Let us not close our hearts with unmercifulness and cruelty, for only this can close the coveted bright paradise from us.

Strive with your desire to where youth blooms without old age, life without death, joy without sorrow, sweetness without bitterness, every good without the slightest evil.

States of the human soul

Here it is, our heart: now it is a stone, but tomorrow, with the effort of will and our labor, it can become fertile soil; now it is a roadside and a crossroads of life, and what kind of garbage has not found a place in it, and what evil has not taken root in it. And tomorrow our same heart, washed by repentance and caring attention to it, will become cultivated and rich arable land and a haven for all good things. Now it is a heart overgrown with thorns of sin, and tomorrow it, weeded and well-groomed, will become soil ready to receive good seed.

These are four states of the human soul: three are barren, and only in one will the seed of God give fruit into Eternal Life.

The human soul is like a road. Thousands of people walk along it and trample it, life’s influences and impressions pass through it in an incessant stream and replace each other. In this confusion, in a series of general impressions, a word about God and God’s word will suddenly slip through. But nothing stays in such a soul for long. The thirst for novelty quickly erases the past, and the soul is empty again. And the winds of evil teachings raise a whirlwind of evil thoughts in her, and excited passions rush to fulfill them.

This is the crossroads in the human soul. The Lord sowed the seed of life, but the heavy feet of triumphant evil trampled the seed. Otherwise, while reading or hearing the word of God, our absent-mindedness and worldly thoughts will fly like birds of prey. And again the work of the Great Sower was in vain. The seed was stolen without touching the human soul. She was left empty, cold and uncomfortable in the world.

And the word of God is brief: “What was sown along the way means those in whom the word is sown, but when they hear, Satan immediately comes and snatches away the word that was sown in their hearts” (Mark 4:15). And will we now blame the Sower? Wasn’t it in our power to preserve the seed? And if the devil is a predator, then isn’t it up to you and me not to let him steal? ours? Be sober, be vigilant. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

But another grief is already felt by us – we complain that petrified insensibility has prevailed in the soul. We suffer, feeling the hopelessness of this condition. And the Lord confirms our worst fears.

“Those sown on rocky place signify those who… have no root in themselves and are fickle; then, when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, they are immediately tempted” (Mark 4:16-17), “for a time they believe, but in the time of temptation they fall away” (Luke 8:13).

Yes, our hearts burned for God. We remember the joy and inspiration of the soul when the great discovery pierced it: there is, there is a God! And how the world was transformed in that moment, how the heart rejoiced, absorbing the Divine Word of the Gospel for the first time. But suddenly the world faded again, and what had recently made me happy and attracted me to God became unbearable chains, shackles that prevented me from living.

Yes, my dears, it was the word of God that called us to the feat of self-denial, it demanded that we bind our selfhood, our affections, it demanded from us the sacrifice of love. It was this that encroached on the idols that nested in our soul. But not everyone, it turns out, is able to raise their hand to the idol.

And for some time the soul languishes, wanting to combine the incompatible – to serve God and the devil at the same time. But the heart has already made a choice, and God is betrayed by the deeds of our life. And there is no boldness in the soul, there is no living God’s power in us to resist the temptations of life, to resist the devil.

And we see how weak the word of truth is in us, how lifeless, how close to dying. It turns out that it is not enough just to hear the word of God, you must also, through the effort of your will and your labors, accept it as the only light of truth, the only life.

And how inconspicuously, but effectively and faithfully, the sorrows, wealth and pleasures of life rise up in our life in God! Vain attachment to the earthly and temporary, filling our heart, suppresses the action of the word of God and God’s grace in it. The Lord calls all this in one word – thorns: “and the thorns grew and choked the seed, and it did not bear fruit” (Mark 4:7).

Addiction to earthly things gives rise to incessant, enduring concern for them. It begins with the concern of acquiring what seems to be necessary – but how quickly this necessary thing becomes needed more and more! And the wheel began to spin – to multiply in any way, to store, fearing to lose what had been acquired. And now the thick thorns crushed the heart, drowned out everything good in it, stole time.

And the most dangerous thorns of the spirit are passionate desires and worldly pleasures? Their root is found in the depths of the human heart, for it is that other law in our members that opposes the law of God and takes us captive to the law of sin.

Evil roots are the works of the flesh, about which it is said that those who do such works “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).

In many, this evil begins so harmlessly, with children’s pranks, which unnoticed become life partners, and their result is death here on earth, mental disorder, lack of will. And these evil branches, like weeds and thorns, constantly grow and are reborn even when we want to eradicate them, but we do not do this decisively and mercilessly enough.

Let us not forget, my dears, that we live in a world of evil, we are weak, we are prone to sin. Sin guards us at every step. And if we give him freedom, then he, growing in us like a cancerous tumor, devours our lives.

But how, how can we live in order to hear the good voice of the Heavenly Father: “good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21)? How to become a fruitful land that, having heard the word, keeps it “in a good and pure heart and bears fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15)?

We must completely surrender to God with love for Him and the fear of God, and protect ourselves with attention and prayer at every hour, so that the first three fruitless states do not take root in the soul. In the field of the soul there must be a vigilant guard – a clear conscience, which will crush the petrification of the heart and put the weeds of passions to fire before they take root in us and lead us.

You cannot expect the seed of truth and goodness in the spiritual field of precocity. Every seed grows in patience, in struggles, in the sweat of many days and years, in great patience.

Thus says the Lord: “Through your patience save your souls” (Luke 21:19). “The kingdom of God is preached, and everyone enters by force” (Luke 16:16).

Then the promises of the Savior will crown our labors in this life.

Angels

The word “angel” means “messenger”. Disembodied spirits have this name because they proclaim the will of God to people. An angel is someone whom the Lord can send with an assignment and who will exactly fulfill that assignment.

Angels live everywhere. But mainly in heaven, around the Throne of God. Where God most reveals His glory to them, and through them His will towards people.

The Holy Fathers of the Church call them second lights, as if a reflection of the Divine light.

They are the second lights! How can we understand this?! What to compare with so that it is accessible to our mind?..

Being in close proximity to God, Angels are filled with admiration, God’s greatness, His holiness, wisdom and the greatest love of the Creator of the universe for His creation.

A certain Divine light freely flows through them like a wide river.

This is the image of true holiness. The Heavenly Forces received the light of God. They refracted it in themselves and, reflecting and crushing it into many beautiful rays, distributed it around themselves, giving it to people capable of perceiving it. And in this reflected radiance of the Divine light, an undiminished, undarkened radiance, but an increased and joyful radiance that brings life, we come to know God!

If it were not for the Angels, we would never be able to feel and perceive the Divine light, even to a small degree accessible to man.

We ourselves are not able to see and feel the glory of God – we need intermediaries who transform it so that it becomes available to us.

And so the Angels are these intermediaries for us.

Angels differ from each other both in enlightenment and in varying degrees of grace.

The highest hierarchy of those directly close to God consists of Angels who bear the names: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Seraphim, true to their name, have hearts flaming with love for God, and they excite others to ardently love their Creator. Seraphim means “fiery.”

Cherubim have fullness of knowledge and abundance of wisdom. They are illuminated by abundant rays of God’s light. It is given to them to know everything to the extent that created beings can know.

Thrones – these Angels are so exalted and so illuminated by grace that the Lord dwells in them and through them manifests His justice.

The second, middle hierarchy consists of Angels bearing the names: Dominion, Strength and Authority. The Angels of Dominion teach people to dominate their will, to be above all temptation, and also to resist those evil spirits who have sworn to destroy a person. The powers are Angels filled with divine strength. These are the spirits through whom the Lord performs his miracles. They were given by God the ability to send down the grace of miracles to the saints of God, who work miracles during their lives on earth. Authorities – Angels who have the power to tame the power of demons and repel enemy temptations. In addition, they strengthen good ascetics in their spiritual and physical labors.

The third, lower hierarchy also includes three ranks: Principalities, Archangels and Angels.

The Beginnings are the rank of Angels, who are entrusted with governing the universe, protecting and governing individual countries and peoples. These are the Angels of the People. Their dignity is higher than the Guardian Angels of individual people. From the book of the prophet Daniel we learn that the care of the Jewish people was entrusted to the Archangel Michael (see Dan. 10:21). Archangels are the great evangelists of the mysteries of God, of all that is great and glorious. They strengthen the holy faith in people, enlightening their minds to the knowledge and understanding of the will of God.

Angels (the last, ninth rank of the hierarchy) are bright spiritual beings who stand closest to us and have special care for us. I will talk about them in more detail a little later. And now briefly about the Archangels.

From the Holy Scriptures we know that there are seven Archangels, that is, the senior Angels who rule over everyone else.

In the book of Tobit (Tov.12:15) we read that the Angel who talked with him said: “I am Raphael, one of the seven… Angels.” And the Revelation of John the Theologian speaks of seven spirits who are before the throne of God (see Rev. 1:4). The Holy Church includes among them: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selafiel, Jehudiel and Barachiel. Tradition also includes Jeremiel among them.

1. Archangel Michael is the first of the supreme Angels, the champion of the glory of God. He is often depicted in military garb with other Angels faithful to God. Or he is depicted alone in the clothes of a warrior with a sword or spear in his hand, trampling underfoot a dragon or an ancient serpent – the devil.

This is how he is depicted in memory of the fact that once in heaven there was a great confrontation between Angels – the servants of God and evil spirits – angels who fell away from God and became servants of Satan.

Sometimes he is depicted with a spear, the top of which is decorated with a white banner with a cross. This is a special distinction between Archangel Michael and his army, meaning moral purity and unshakable loyalty to the Heavenly King.

2. Archangel Gabriel is the herald of God’s destinies and the servant of His omnipotence. Sometimes depicted with a branch of paradise or with a lantern with a burning candle inside, in one hand and with a mirror in the other. A candle closed in a lantern means that often the destinies of God are hidden until the time of their fulfillment, but even after their fulfillment they are comprehended only by those who carefully look into the mirror of their conscience and the words of God.

3. Raphael is depicted with an alabaster vessel filled with healing oil. The name Raphael means “mercy, help to all who suffer.”

4. Uriel – the Archangel of light and fire of God – is depicted with lightning lowered down. He illuminates with the fire of fiery love, enlightens the minds of people with the revelation of useful truths. It can be said about him that he is a special patron of people who devote themselves to science.

5. Selafiel – Archangel of prayer. He is depicted either with a rosary in his hands, or in a prayer pose with his hands placed in reverence on his chest.

6. Yehudiel – “praise of God.” Depicted with a golden crown in one hand and with a scourge of three cords in the other. The crown is to encourage people who strive for the glory of God, and the scourge is to protect them in the name of the Holy Trinity from enemies.

7. Barachiel – Archangel of God’s blessings, sent during earthly life to those who work to receive heavenly, eternal blessings.

These are the Archangels.

And now about the Angels.

Among the host of Angels is the Guardian Angel of each of us. And so all of us, my dears, must strive to know our Guardian Angel as best as possible, to know him enough to feel his presence near us. And for this we need to know as much as possible about him.

Our Church teaches that God created Angels in His image. These are incorporeal, intelligent, purest beings, similar to spirit. They are generously endowed by God with natural gifts: intelligence, the ability to know and love both their Creator and people, and to be a living example of God’s perfections. They are faithful servants of God, doers of His will. Not only are they able to understand and converse with each other, but they also understand the language of our souls, and therefore we can turn to them in our prayers. And this is the guarantee of close direct communication with our Guardian Angel available to each of us.

As the Holy Gospel says, the Son of God came to earth to serve people and save them. And Angels are sent to earth for the same purpose – to serve people.

According to the teachers of the Church, man was created in order to replenish the number of fallen angels. Therefore, we must enter the Council of Angels. And for this, think, my dears, how pure and holy our life should be. Just as here on earth, we must prepare ourselves in advance for cohabitation with the Angels, for entering their bright and holy assembly. To that cathedral of theirs, which you and I now so solemnly celebrate!

But for this we must acquire both angelic thoughts and feelings. We are required to clear the place for love, to prepare our hearts to accept supernatural love, the love that God expects from us.

And it’s not difficult! Live according to the Gospel commandments – and you will achieve what you need. But they are not impossible. And in this matter the Angels again help us, enlightening our minds with the knowledge of the Holy Gospel. Realizing the importance of our close union with the Angels, let us set ourselves, my friends, the goal that every day we live does not separate us, but brings us closer to the Angels, especially to our Guardian Angel.

Guardian Angel

Guardian Angels are the servants of our salvation, so we are not alone in our earthly life, in our labors for the salvation of our immortal soul. We know for sure that our helpers are with us, protecting us from all sorts of troubles encountered on the path of life, and from the wrath of God deserved by each of us. Our Guardian Angel is a being who endlessly loves us. He loves us with the fullness of his love. And his love is great, and its effect is strong, since, contemplating God, he sees eternal Love, which desires our salvation.

Our Guardian Angel is like our second mother. He has the same concern for us, and even more. Mother takes special care of us while we are in infancy and childhood. Our Guardian Angel, from the moment of our baptism until the last days of our lives, is our caring teacher. And, if we ourselves do not push him away from us during our earthly life, he will lead our soul to worship God when the time comes to separate the soul from the body.

Our Guardian Angels are powerful in their personal virtues, powerful in the strength they receive from God, and powerful in the prayers they send for us to the Almighty God.

Everything that is good, pure, bright in us: every good thought, every good movement of the heart, our prayer, repentance, good deeds – all this is born in us and is accomplished at the inspiration of our invisible Guardian Angel. Acting through our conscience and our heart, it is he, our Angel, who keeps us from sin and temptation, it is he who helps us fight temptations, it is he who instills in us the fear of a serious fall.

The Guardian Angel given to us is like our expanded and revealed conscience. He strives with all his might to save us, and we have no right to interfere with him in this. We must help him in his efforts to save us. We must ask him to enrich our mind with an abundance of holy thoughts and strengthen our habit of pious reflection. We are obliged to love him as our older and stronger brother. But in fact, we so often forget about him, do not pray to him, with our sins we insult his shrine, and he again and again shows his concern for us. He intercedes for us before the mercy of God, he begs God for our needs, and the Heavenly Father will never refuse him his requests.

But why do the Angels of God show such concern for people?

Firstly, because they are servants of God and received a command from God to protect and save people. Secondly, they themselves are creations of God, and the words apply to them, just as to people: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). They understand this and try, imitating their Creator and God, to show both their mercy and their long-suffering towards people.

What joy it gives them to save souls which Christ has redeemed with His Blood and who (with their help) will share with them their glory and their blessedness!

If we were just a little more sensitive, we would notice how carefully our Guardian Angel helps us return through repentance to the path of salvation. He not only encourages us to repent, but he also promises to remind us of all our sins, all of life’s mistakes and missteps.

Our Guardian Angels, messengers to us from God, freely and quickly make their way from God to us and from us to God (as long as our deeds do not interfere with this). They come from God to us to bring us His grace; They also ascend from us to God in order to convey to Him our prayers and thanksgivings.

How close our Guardian Angel should be to each of us! What confidence we should have in him! During our lifetime we can tell him the most intimate secrets of our soul. Those secrets that we would not trust to our closest people. And this is because in the Guardian Angel we see the wisest in advice, the most selfless in love and help, tender in his affection for us, caring for our needs.

About talents

Many things are entrusted to man by God, and everyone is given his own talent. God has no dispossessed. But in themselves, all these benefits, riches and treasures, my dears, are of no value to us, for they are not ours – God’s gift. “What do you have that you wouldn’t get?” – says the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 4:7).

One moment, and death will take away everything from us – both given and acquired. Only while we are alive, while treasures are entrusted to our freedom – in our heart, in our soul and in our hands, earthly riches are transformed into eternal values ​​for us, becoming for some a staircase to heaven, and for others – a road to the eternity of hell.

Only the fruits of the spirit that have grown in the fields of our lives entrusted to us by God are our true wealth if they consist of all goodness, righteousness and truth. Only that which has borne the fruits of love on earth will lead us into an eternity of joy, going ahead of us.

Lifetime is our repository in which we collect treasure. But which of us thinks about time? Almost always, a person’s thoughts stretch into the future, forgetting that in reality he only has the present minute, the next one is no longer in his power. And by wasting the present time in idleness or wasting it on sin, we kill time and lose the value of human life.

How often, in moments of remorse, do we plan to start doing good deeds tomorrow, to leave sin in the future, and to repent at the end of our lives. But tomorrow happens every day, and the end of life is even further away, and with our good intentions we pave our way to hell. After all, alas, the future may not come for us, but immediately, bypassing the future, eternity will open. Eternity is inevitable! And what will it be like?

And let us remember that none of those who lived before us and none of us could and will be able to say to the coming death: “Wait! Go away, I don’t want to die yet! I’m not ready to die yet.” No one could stop her or hinder her. Strict and unforgiving, most often unwanted, she does her job, revealing the true value of our life and our acquisitions in it.

This is what mortal memory makes us think about today. The ghosts of perishable goods, which deceive those living for a short time in an earthly inn, will retreat at the moment of death, and the deceptive dream will end. And only the one who now, now, this very minute becomes rich in God will be rich.

And the first thing the Lord strictly calls us to is the desire for truth, the thirst for truth and knowledge of what God’s will is for us. Children of light are born of the spirit and filled with it, therefore they must bear the fruits of the spirit – live in goodness, in love, in righteousness and truth. Arise from your sinful sleep, rise from the deeds that are deadening your spirit and approach the Lord with faith, and He will revive your soul and sanctify it with the light of truth.

The reason for our disorder

This is where the reason for our disorder lies, my dears – while remaining outwardly with Christ, we internally forget about Him, we do not follow Him, but we lead Him behind us. “Look, Lord, admire my labors, my exploits, I will do this and that.”

“I! I! I!” And now the “I” has shielded Christ from us, but it – our “I” – is exhausted from its own weakness, from powerlessness. But Christ only looks at us with some reproach as at His foolish children, allowing us to fully enjoy our own powerlessness, so that we will come to Him again – now on our own.

Sin

The sin of pride and self-righteousness, the sin of evil unbelief, rose up against the simplicity of faith, which clearly sees the truth. The Pharisees expel the one who has received his sight. Book learning drives out the truth of faith. And the Lord utters the words: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). Since then, God’s judgment has been carried out constantly – both in our days and on us.

We sometimes gain spiritual sight, but how often, blinded by sin, we lose a ray of light – the light of Christ – and wander through life in darkness, imagining ourselves to be sighted.

The main disaster of our time lies precisely in the exceptional spiritual blindness of people. A spiritual mind that can clearly see the light of truth is now becoming an extremely rare phenomenon. The carnal mind, mired in the things of this life, loving only earthly things, always wages conflict with the teaching and revelation of the Divine.

Sin gives rise to spiritual blindness, and spiritual blindness roots a person in sin. And the human heart hardens and becomes coarse. He hears with his ears and sees with his eyes, but he does not heed either one or the other. And the sin of bitterness, perseverance against the truth and resistance to it make a person a participant in the fruitless deeds of darkness. And the voice of the heart weakens, and the cold, rational, proud mind tramples on Christian love. And the man became completely blind. And God retreats.

This is how God’s judgment is carried out on the stubborn “clever guy”. “God has given them a spirit of slumber, eyes with which they cannot see, and ears with which they cannot hear, even to this day” (Rom. 11:8).

About Satan, Man and God

“The daughter of Abraham… has been bound by Satan these eighteen years” (Luke 13:16). The words of the Gospel especially give us reason to talk about the existence of the devil, about his destructive, deadly activity. And our present life urgently requires that we all pay very close attention to this topic. For our ignorance, or bashful silence, or even denial of the existence of this terrible force makes us completely unarmed before it, and it can lead us, like sheep to the slaughter, to destruction. After all, we sometimes, and even often, cease to understand where the light is, where the darkness is, where life is, and where death is.

And the greatest victory of this force, without a doubt, must be recognized as the fact that it inspired many generations of people as if it did not exist at all. But until some time, while the spiritual vision of people was not yet completely darkened, the devil acted cautiously – by the power of suggestion. Now, in our time, when our carelessness and spiritual sleep have exposed us from the cover of God’s grace, from the power of the spirit, the devil stands before us in all his evil appearance, he appears as a living, tangible, active force, and a fierce force.

The Lord in the Gospel announced to everyone who lives on earth and believes His word, warning and due to be wary and call for special vigilance of His word. “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18).

And in another place of Scripture it is said that there was no place for him in heaven, and in terrible rage he came down to earth to walk on it, to dwell on it and to roar “like… a lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8; see Rev. 12:9, 12). And he, the destroyer-devil, became “the prince of this world,” and with him countless hordes of his servants settled and rule on earth. And since then, their habitat has become the deep abyss that separates the Militant Church from the Triumphant Church.

And our forefathers Adam and Eve bore the very first and bitter experience of his insidious power, for through his efforts they learned the sweetness of sin and tasted the bitterness of death. And since those distant times, he has been tirelessly doing his job. And his main task for all times was, is and will be the struggle against God for the souls of people, where the place of battle is human hearts. Everything happens there, in the heart: the abyss of hell will fit there, and there – a spark of faith, preserved by God from the corrupting breath of the enemy, will give birth to the flame of Divine love – the intercessor of eternal joy.

And you and I need to look closely at all the events happening around us and personally to us. We must know our hearts, because inattention and ignorance will not justify us on the day of the Last Judgment, which is inevitably approaching the earth.

“Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” the Son of Man will say to those who did not know, who did not want to know their hearts (Matthew 25:41).

And there are many examples of possession and violence against people by demonic power in Scripture: this is the Gospel image of a woman bound by the devil for eighteen years; these are two possessed people who lived in grave crypts, tearing with terrible demonic force the forged chains with which they tried to bind them, completely uncontrollable by rational force; this is the possessed man, whom the demon, wanting to destroy, threw first into the fire, then into the water; and many other examples.

And the Lord never, when healing those possessed by demons, called demon possession a natural disease. He directly recognized demons as the culprits and cast them out.

But these examples, due to our hardness of heart and thoughtlessness, do not touch our hearts when we read or hear about them.

After all, this happened once and somewhere, and many even have the audacity in the depths of their hearts to doubt the example of someone else’s life, and some go even further, rejecting the words of Divine Scripture with unbelief.

But now you and I are no longer distant examples, but our own lives make us feel the violence and tyranny over us of both the devil himself and the sons of disobedience, that is, people who became the executors of the evil will of the devil on earth.

And our mother-nurse the earth is already giving birth to only weeds and thorns from the malice of those living on it. And the sky, which once gave people the bright rain of life and fruitful dew, sows chemical poisonous moisture on our heads, and the wind of Chernobyl scorches the world with its deadly breath. And the revelry of evil, deceit and enmity is spreading across the earth. And there is no prayer to douse this fire of evil, there is no spiritual power to prevent the coming destruction.

Was all this really created by man?!

All the little evil that we, sinful people, manage to do, is brought together by the main conductor – Satan, the one who sows little in us. He sows small things and grows small things into big things. And this is called the “mystery of iniquity.” And the mystery of lawlessness rises from strength to strength precisely because our resistance to it has completely weakened, our understanding of it has become impoverished.

In our seduction we forget God, we forget heaven, we forget eternity. On this basis of people’s complete immersion in carnal life, all-consuming depravity grows.

Babies conceived in lawlessness can appear in the world sick, possessed from birth by the spirit of malice, and they are often more cunning than adults. Adolescents, not knowing the innocence of children, play at adults; they look for special visions and sensations in stupefying chemicals, often finding death in them. Boys and girls, not knowing the very concept of innocence and purity, plunge into a swamp of such dirt, which is scary to think about and shameful to talk about. For many, drug addiction becomes the only real life. And the roar of demonic noise that burst into our homes from television screens deafened, stupefied everyone from small to large, drew everyone into the whirlpool of hellish whirling, enslaving souls with violence.

And now we do not so much deny God as we force it out of the human heart with various passions and worldly cares. God is simply forgotten.

“Give Me, son, your heart” (“My son, give your heart to Me),” the Lord asks and calls (Proverbs 23:26). Where is it, our heart?! And is it still there?.. If it is, then there is no corner in it – a place for God, for light and silence, for peace and love. And we are afraid that the light of God will reveal to ourselves the terrible trash of our hearts. And we again persecute God and run from everything that our true face can reveal.

Yes, again, it’s not us, my dears, but the same murderer, dragging us further and further towards falling away from the salvation prepared for people by the Son of God. The enemy himself has already entered our heart and taken possession of it.

But he could not do this without our consent. After all, the Wisdom of God created man in such a way that without him or against his will it is impossible to save or destroy a person. And we ourselves, rejecting God through unbelief or believing in God, but rejecting the works commanded by Him, reject our salvation. And, not accepting the dark, formless, terrible power of the devil, but doing the works of darkness, we ourselves give ourselves into its hands, we prepare for ourselves the abyss of hell.

So know, my dears, that the devil penetrates us in no other way than by taking possession of our mind, our thoughts. In some, it steals faith from the mind and heart, in others, its foul breath incinerates the fear of God, in others, having struck with vanity, it leads into captivity of many passions, for vanity and pride give rise to such vices in us that they open the gates of the soul to all demons. And the person does not notice how he becomes obsessed.

We must firmly remember that the main distinguishing feature of the devil’s warfare is adaptability, that evil spirits wage war against us incessantly, and its variety is endless.

The main thing is that we must certainly know that their approach to us is unnoticed and their action is gradual. Starting small, evil spirits gradually gain great influence over us. Demonic cunning and cunning, as a rule, helpfully meet our desires and aspirations; they are able to turn even good and innocent things into their weapons.

Now many young people have rushed to the Church: some having already grown old in the filth of sin, some despairing of understanding the vicissitudes of life and being disappointed in its lures, and some thinking about the meaning of existence. People are making a terrible leap from the embrace of Satan, people are reaching out to God.

And God opens His fatherly embrace to them. How good it would be if, like children, they could fall in love with everything that the Lord gives to His children in the Church, and would begin to learn in the Church to think anew, feel anew, live anew.

But no! The great “suitor” the devil, at the very threshold of the Church, steals from most of them the humble consciousness of who he is and why he came here. And a person does not enter, but “barges” into the Church with everything that is and was in him from the life he has lived, and in such a state he immediately begins to judge and order what is correct in the Church and what is time to change.

He “already knows what grace is and what it looks like”; Before he even begins to be an Orthodox Christian, he becomes a judge and teacher. So again the Lord is driven out of his heart by him. And where? Right in the Church.

But a person will no longer feel this: after all, he is in the Church, after all, he has already leafed through all the books, and it is already time for him to take holy orders, and it is already time for her to dress in monastic robes.

But, my dears, they will also accept holy orders, they will also accept monasticism, but all this is already without God, led by the same power that led them in life before coming to the Church and that has so cleverly deceived them now. And then wait for other exceptional phenomena, possible only on the basis of a distorted faith.

And you and I must all remember that in a bright and pure soul, even one thought thrown from the devil will immediately produce confusion, heaviness and heartache; in a soul darkened by sin, still dark and defiled, even the very presence of the enemy will be unnoticeable. And this inconspicuousness is helped by the spirit of malice itself, for it is beneficial to him. He, tyrannically ruling over the sinner, tries to keep him in seduction, convincing him that the person acts on his own, or suggesting that the Angel, whose bright image the evil one has taken, has already honored the life of this person with his appearance.

And in our time, everyone living on earth has a premonition of an impending catastrophe, but humanity, tormented by a heavy premonition, does not want to stop, think, understand what is happening to it. Devilish forces have enslaved the mind and heart of those living by sin, which has bent and distorted man so much that he has ceased to see God; he can no longer straighten up so that the light of Divine truth illuminates his mind and the darkness disappears.

The deceived one, like a moth, flies into the ghostly light of a demonic vision or revelation that will mortally scorch his soul. He desired a miracle, sought revelation, and it appeared. And a person does not even think about his life lived in sin, which has already become a wall between him and God. How much more work must be done to break this wall in order to see the light of truth!..

Fasting and prayer

By fasting and prayer, a Christian receives the power of the Spirit from the Lord to fight the enemy; through fasting and prayer he receives the gift of reasoning and the mind of Christ; fasting and prayer kindle a light that dispels the darkness of a sinful life, for “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Man, by his will, chooses a path in the midst of corruption and incorruption, chooses good or evil. And if through the sin of disobedience to God grief, suffering and death entered life, then only through obedience, fasting and prayer – this our living sacrifice of love for God – does the light of the highest truth, peace and joy return to life. And this, my dears, is heaven on earth.

The heart of a Christian can warm and burn only with dual love for both God and people at the same time. If our heart is callous and cruel towards our brother – towards man, then, clouded by hostility, coldness, cruelty, it becomes indifferent or hypocritical towards God. And paradise, which could be so close – in our hearts! – goes away, fades, and the sin of unlove gives birth to disobedience, selfishness and selfishness.

But how to love a sinner, how to love someone who is unloving to us, how to love an enemy? And the Lord comes to the rescue. By fasting and prayer, a Christian receives the power of the Spirit from the Lord to fight the enemy; through fasting and prayer he receives the gift of reasoning and the mind of Christ; fasting and prayer kindle a light that dispels the darkness of a sinful life, for “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

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Child of God! Let your mind fast from vain thoughts;

let your will fast from evil desire;

let your eyes fast from evil vision;

Let your ears be kept from vile songs and slanderous whispers;

let your tongue fast from slander, condemnation, lies, flattery and foul language;

let your hands fast from beating and stealing other people’s goods;

May your feet fast from walking in evil deeds.

This is the Christian fast that the Lord expects from us.

Forgiveness

God, my dears, is merciful, but also fair and just. This means that before we ask God to forgive us, we ourselves must forgive our neighbors who have sinned against us. And if we do not do this, then no matter how deep and sincere the repentance, the Lord will not forgive us. To prevent this from happening to us, we must learn to forgive so that resentment does not lurk within us. The truth of God requires us to tear out from the depths of our hearts even traces of the offense once inflicted on us, so that bitter memories and unkind feelings towards our offenders never arise in our memory. Otherwise, how can we dare to count on the fact that God, who endlessly offends Him throughout our lives, will forgive us and accept us into His Heavenly Kingdom.

But this is exactly what – to truly forgive your neighbor – for many of us is the most difficult moment in our spiritual work. We are able to repent of our grave, terrible sins; are capable, having overcome shame, to open the purulent wounds of their soul to their confessor in confession. But to sincerely and lovingly forgive a person who has offended us from the bottom of my heart is the most difficult feat for many of us. Yes, this is difficult to do. Difficult, but necessary! But those of us who have learned this difficult task, who are able to bow to our neighbor, asking for forgiveness, and who forgive everyone from the depths of our hearts, he – according to the word of St. Gregory of Nyssa – has the boldness to say in his prayer to the Lord: “My Heavenly Father, I have done what You tell me to do. Fulfill what You promise to do. I have forgiven all sins and offenses and, resorting to You in my repentance, I expect that You, according to Your promise, will forgive me my countless sins.”

But do not forget that only those who forgive themselves can have such boldness.

Cross of Christ

All the shame of human sins and vices was washed away by the shameful death of the Divine Savior. Through Baptism we entered the Church of Christ. But if we are not true Christians in life, this will not give us the right to eternal blissful life in the Kingdom of God. And let the Cross of Christ awaken in us a sincere desire to live in such a way as not to inflict new wounds on the Lord who suffered for us. And the Lord, seeing the sincerity of our good intentions, will strengthen us on this path with His omnipotent grace.

We have the Cross of Christ as a sign of our salvation. He instills in the heart of even the greatest sinner hope for forgiveness and salvation.

Resurrection of Christ

The Resurrection of Christ is the basis of our faith, it is an unbreakable support in our earthly life.

By His Resurrection, Christ allowed people to comprehend the truth of His Divinity, the truth of His lofty teaching, and the salvific nature of His death. The Resurrection of Christ is the completion of His life’s feat. There could be no other end, for this is a direct consequence of the moral meaning of Christ’s life.

“If Christ had not been resurrected,” says the Apostle Paul, “then our preaching would be in vain, and your faith would be in vain” (see 1 Cor. 15:14). But Christ rose again and resurrected all humanity with Himself!

The Savior brought perfect joy to people on earth. With the Resurrection of Christ, a new world of holiness, truth and bliss was opened to man.

A new life has opened up for man. He was given the opportunity to die to sin in order to be resurrected with Christ and live with Him.

Easter joy is the joy of the transformation (change) of our entire life into imperishable life, in our striving for undying goodness, for imperishable beauty.

Christ is risen! – and may our soul rejoice in the Lord.

Christ is risen! – and the fear of death disappears.

Christ is risen! – and our hearts are filled with joyful faith that after Him we too will rise again.

Celebrating Easter means knowing with all your heart the power and greatness of the Resurrection of Christ.

Celebrating Easter means becoming a new person.

Celebrating Easter means thanking and glorifying God with all your heart and mind for His ineffable gift – the gift of resurrection and love.

Ascension

The Lord did everything for our salvation. By His Ascension into heaven, the Son of God opened the way for us to the heavenly abodes. But whether we follow the indicated path or stop somewhere halfway is up to us.

After the Ascension of the Lord into heaven, now at the right hand (on the right hand of) God the Father is the Son of Man, clothed with our human flesh. And He put on it not for a short time, but forever, thereby revealing the wondrous power and wondrous properties of the world He created. Namely: everything created by Him is capable of being spiritual and God-bearing.

And here the greatness of man and the high destiny that God has prepared for man become obvious.

The beginning of everything is God

Life is a difficult business. And it becomes unbearably difficult when God is expelled from it. After all, when God is expelled from the house, the most evil spirits come in His place, sowing their deadly weeds. Gloom and darkness have long begun to carry out their deadly plans, rebelling against the family, against motherhood, which contains the future of the world – the upbringing of offspring.

What can we expect from children if our care for them is limited only to the desire to feed and clothe them? And who will do the rest? Street? School?

Only love crowns the path of spiritual improvement, leading to deification (restoration of the image and likeness of God in oneself).

Every person must go through the crucible of temptation and torment. And now it is obvious that wherever a person turns, everywhere he will face pain and suffering. And one thing remains for us in this life – to take up our cross and carry it to the end, until death, to carry the cross, following Christ. And in this bearing of the cross, by the will of God, we will find heavenly bliss – to be a child of God.

Our hope and strength lie in the unshakable confidence that nothing happens in the world without God, but everything happens either according to His will or according to His permission. All good things are accomplished by His will and His action; the opposite happens only by His permission.

With God, one day is like a thousand years – and a thousand years are like one day, and this is eternity that has invaded earthly time. And our lives are also an example of this, for they too flow into eternity, erasing time.

The human heart must become like the Bethlehem cave, where Christ, God and Man, is born, grows, lives and reigns. And, opening towards Christ the Savior, it, our heart, will be sanctified by His Divine light and become strong by His Divine power. And the “cattle” – our human passions living in it – flee from it into outer darkness, and we will be able to bring a gift to God with a pure heart – our love, co-reigning with it to Christ and God.

The purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God is the revival and renewal of the world, the elimination from it of all the consequences of the Fall, the restoration of the pristine Kingdom of God. And the Blessed Virgin served this great purpose. Through her feat of life, prayer and love, we have gained eternal salvation. And “God (now) is called our Father, because the Word has partaken of our flesh, for the Son causes His Father to become our Father,” as St. Athanasius of Alexandria says.

Each of us has to do the work of our own personal salvation. Each of us is given the cross of our personal life, the path is indicated, and only on it will you be useful, it is on it that you will do things according to the will of God, and not according to your own or, even worse, according to the enemy’s will; This is precisely why God gives us the necessary strength and understanding.

Our earthly life is the threshold of eternal life, this is a field blessed by the Lord on which wheat grows for the Kingdom of Heaven – that is you and me – ripening here for the heavenly granary. This is a garden in which, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, beautiful flowers and fruits, fragrant with a wonderful spiritual aroma, grow, about which the Apostle Paul says that these are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23).

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Notes

Son of God.