Блаженного Йоана Карпатійського Слово подвижницьке і вельми утішительне до іноків з Індії

Blessed John of the Carpathians The ascetic and very comforting word to the monks from India, who asked about him and never want to glorify a layman above a monk, who has a wife and children and rejoices that he does good to many, generously gives alms and is not tempted by demons at all. Do not think that you are less pleasing to God than him and do not mourn yourself as if you were perishing. I do not say that you live blamelessly by enduring the life of a monk, but when you are even very sinful, the sorrow of your soul and the endurance of suffering have more honor in God than the outstanding virtues of life. Your sadness is too great, and pity, and sighing, and complaining, and tears, and pangs of conscience, and misunderstanding of thought, and condemnation by thought, and sobbing, and weeping of the mind, and weeping of the heart with a cry, and grief, embarrassment, and spitting, and weakness, and contempt – all this and what so often happens when we throw ourselves into the iron furnace of temptations, more honest and pleasant than the approval of a layman. Therefore, be careful that the Divine Scriptures do not condemn you, repeating as if your words: “What is the benefit of the supplicants who have come to the Lord and are always in His house?” (cf. Fig. 3, 4). It is known that every slave who is close to the house of the Master, sometimes they beat him, and shake him, and scold him, and despise him. And those who are outside, do not experience this – as strangers, or adulterers, or haters. What is the use for us, they say? We, who always pray and sing, experience sorrows in soul and body. And they do not pray and do not listen, but rejoice and rejoice, and they are doing well, and they lead a good life. And the prophet says: “They are building other people’s houses, and we glorify strangers.” And he adds: “This is what the servants of God who have knowledge said” (cf. Mal. 3, 15, 16). However, it is necessary to know that there is nothing surprising in the fact that those who are afflicted suffer and grieve in different ways, those who endure different temptations for their Lord, because they heard how He said in the Gospels: “Truly, truly, I say to you: You will shout, you will wail, but the world will rejoice” (Jn. 16, 20). A little more, and I will visit you in the Comforter, and I will dispel your despair, and I will cheer you up with thoughts of heavenly life and comfort, and with sweet tears, which tempted you, left for a few days. And I will give you the reward of my grace, as a mother gives her breast to a crying baby, and I will strengthen you with strength from on high, because you are exhausted from endless struggle. And I will comfort you who weep bitterly, as Jeremiah says in weeping over his secret Jerusalem, and I will see you, and your heart will be glad with our secret visits, “your sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20), and no one will take away your joy from you. So let us not close our eyes and become blind, praising the laity more than us. But, knowing how the real sons differ from the sons of adultery, let us love more the supposed evil that the monks endure, patience and great tribulations, the end of which is eternal life and the unfading crown of the Lord’s glory. Let us accept the fasting people who consider themselves sinful, and I am not talking about the suffering of the righteous.Let’s take care to settle in the house of God, that is, among those who serve Christ unceasingly, and not to live in the homes of sinners, that is, to be with the laity, even though they do great righteous deeds. Your Heavenly Father, who loves you very much, hurts you, and oppresses you with various temptations, speaks to you, O stranger: “Understand well, patient stranger, the words that I spoke through the prophet that I will teach you (Hos. 5, 2) and meet you on the Egyptian road, teaching you with sorrows. “Behold, I will cover your path with thorns” (Hos. 2, 6 – quote from I. Ogienka. I will not let you do what your foolish heart wants. And I will be like a lion for you, reprimanding you for what you did not do – this is the great grace of God. I will not only be like a lion, but like a sting that stings you with thoughts and pains of the heart. And the pain in your house, that is, in your soul and body, which is well trimmed by God’s sweet torments, from which the honey drips, and at the end, and shame, and fear, and despair will not decrease. those who have taken to asceticism, – therefore, the end of all these sad things is not a devilish joy, and an indescribable sweetness, and an unceasing joy. That is why I offended you, – he says, – to feed you with a lot of knowledge, and to do good to you at last and introduce you to the mountain kingdom. Then rejoice, humble monks, freed freed from the passions of the flesh and the temptations of enemies, and then trample the lawless devils who are trampling you now, and they will be like ashes under your feet.” When you are pious and humble and wise and do not magnify yourself with vain pride or arrogance, but are broken in heart and consider yourself to be an unfit slave and a broken spirit – if this is your humility – then your sins, in other words, are better than the righteousness of the laity, and you benefit more from your filth than from the great purification of worldly people. Why should you grieve? It happens that you fall into sin. But know that a certain man, after dirtying his hands with resin, cleaned them with oil – how much more can you be cleansed by God’s grace. If it is easy for you to wash your clothes, it is all the more easy for the Lord to wash you from every vice, which can arise even every day because of temptations. As soon as you say: “I have sinned, Lord!” – then you hear the answer: “Your sins are forgiven. I am the one who makes amends for them and does not remember them anymore.” “As far as the east is from the west, so He removed your sins from [you]. As a father has mercy on his sons” (Ps. 102, 12), so I have mercy on you, only you do not retreat and do not run away from the one who chose you to sing and pray. Cling to Him with your whole life, or with pure courage, or with pious shamelessness and strong thought, confess to Him – and He will cleanse you with one movement.What God cleanses by His will, even the supreme Peter himself cannot defile or condemn, because it was said to him: “What God has cleansed, you do not defile” (Acts 10, 15). “God is the one who justifies [her husband with love]; who is the one who condemns?” (Rom. 8, 34). When we call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, our conscience is easily cleansed and nothing separates us from the prophets and other saints: for God did not place us for wrath, but for salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us. Whether we watch in virtues or sleep because of the attack, that probably after some weakening, we will live together with Christ, contemplating Him with a great sigh and endlessly weeping and sighing for Him. Therefore, let us put on the armor of truth and accept the helmet – the hope of salvation, so that the arrows of despair and hopelessness do not find their way in. But you say that you are angry when you see the laity, whom no one tempts, and then you rage. Know, beloved, that Satan has no need to tempt those who tempt themselves, and those who are dragged down by the things of this world. Know also that honors and crowns are assigned to the tempted, and not to the laity, who lie to themselves and snore. You say that you yourself experience many temptations, that your loins are full of heat, as the prophet says, and there is suffering, and oppression, and there is no rest in the body and “newness in the bones” [Prov. 3, 8]. But the great Physician of the afflicted is present nearby, who took upon himself our infirmities, healed us with his wounds and now applies healing medicines. “I,” he says, “struck desolation, and I will heal. So do not be afraid. When the anger of my rage subsides, I will heal again. “Just as a woman does not forget to pity the child she has given birth to, I will not forget you” (see Is. 49, 15). When a bird pours out its love to feed the chicks and flies to them again and again, and they call to her, and she with his beak, much more of my bounties is poured out on my creations, and much more of my love is poured out on you; I secretly visit you, and I give food to your open-beaked thought, like a swallow. I give you food of the best fear, and food of heavenly desires, and food of comforted sigh nya, and I will feed on touching, and I will feed on song, and I will feed on the deepest knowledge, and I will feed on some Divine mysteries. Telling you this, your Lord and Father, I rebuke and intercede.” This is how the Lord always talks with us in our thoughts. I know I’ve gone overboard because I’ve written a lot, but you’re the one who pushed me to do it. I have magnified my Word to confirm those who are afraid to fall through cowardice. For it turned out – and you wrote to me about it – that you have brothers in India who are very burdened with temptations; they renounce the monastic life and stay, saying that it is full of oppression and sorrow, they praise the laity and lament the day when they accepted the monastic rank. That is why I was forced to write this Word longer and in simple words, so that even the ignorant and the unlearned would understand. Therefore, he wrote a lot so that in the future the monks would not praise the laity, but their rank, because they are undeniably better than those who wear diadems on their heads, and brighter and more glorious, because they always fall to God.Having written this, I beg your love to always remember me in prayers, so that I, the wretched one, may receive the grace of God and live this life to a better and better end. “The Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort” (2 Cor. 1, 3) will give you eternal comfort and good hope in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen”. Our venerable father Diadochus, called the bishop of Photica, lived in the ancient Epirus of Illyria. That he lived long ago, even before the seventh century, can be understood from the words of St. Maximus, in which he mentions the chapters of Diadochus. That he was a wise man and shone with deeds and reasoning, anyone who wants to understand from this preserved Word of his. He. he wrote it, having acquired great wisdom in his heart, and divided it into a hundred chapters. And he explained with all zeal the deepest mysteries of the desired virtue, and confirmed it with the words of the Scriptures and the knowledge that comes from contemplation. His Word is, as it were, the primordial teaching about the sacred sobriety, which, having compiled of all the virtues, he left to his contemporaries – sober and to the God-bearing fathers. That is why many of them refer to these chapters as abbreviated and carefully compiled, and when writing about sobriety, Photius also mentions them in the 201st reading on page 263: “After the Word about the ten boundaries, the Word of a hundred chapters is given for good, and they do a feat in them by perfectly accomplished works”. Those who were at the Council convened under Andronicus Palaeologus – Gregory of Thessalonica, Simeon of Thessalonica, Gregory the Sinaite, St. Callistus and many others – testified about them as blameless. Although, it seems, one can reproach the hundredth chapter, as Photius says, but the divine Maximus removes all accusations from it, directing it to the true piety, as will be seen at the end

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