Under the influence of this book, the "People's Orthodox Christian Community" was created, headed by Bishop Nicholas himself, which numbered more than two hundred thousand registered members and made an invaluable contribution to the preservation of faith and morals in Serbia.

With heartfelt warmth, we hand this book into the hands of the Russian reader, we hand it over to the fraternal Russian people with the hope that it will bring us even closer together in our holy and beautiful Orthodoxy. Bishop Lavrenty of Shabatsko-Valevo

Letter 1

to the worker who asks about the spiritual life

Spiritual life is real life. Everything else is dust.

Our dust and body are the earth borrowed from the earth. Earth, water, fire and air – from these, these four elements, the human body is created. It is created so skillfully, so wonderfully that it is impossible to express. And yet the body itself is not life, the chariot is not a traveler, the cage is not a bird.

What is life? The Holy Scriptures of God clearly answer this question on its first page: And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul [1].

Do you understand well the meaning of the words "indirectly" and "directly"? Indirectly, that is, through the earth, the Lord created flesh, and directly from Himself He breathed into his face the spirit of life. Thus man became a living soul.

Thus, man is visibly bodily, but the body has within it the breath of life, which is directly from the Creator.

This spirit connects a person with the Creator and with the heavenly spiritual world around Him. A small flame like the eternal Divine flame. And although our body drags on the earth among insects and beasts, we are connected with heaven and eternity by this flame.

The life of the soul, which is led and lived by the Divine Spirit, is what human life is.

In other words, spiritual life is an unceasing work in order to become worthy of the Divine Spirit that is in us. Why should we work? Because we have received a gift from the Creator. None of us bought it or paid for it; it is given to us by Eternal Love. There is no payment for the gift. A gift is a gift. But he who accepts a gift, and such a precious gift as life, must show himself worthy of this gift.

How we can respond to the Lord's love with love and how we can become worthy of this Divine gift – this is the great science called spiritual science, which is above all sciences. It is given to man by the Holy Spirit. He Who gave the most precious gift, Himself taught man to be worthy of it.