Here we are celebrating Easter - the transition to another world. Throughout Bright Week, the Royal Doors are not closed as a sign that Heaven is open for every person. As a sign that every person who follows Christ will want to see where God lives, what God is, how Him, God, to understand how to feel Him, how to come to terms with Him in general, to enter into a relationship; everyone who wants it and tears himself away from his earthly life and desires only this, and neglects everything else, he will reach the Kingdom. That is why the Lord says: "If you do not hate your father, mother, wife, children, you cannot be My disciple." This does not mean that you should harbor anger towards them, do all sorts of nasty things to them. This is not what is meant, but the fact that even such holy concepts as mother, children, homeland and everything else should stand in second place in the soul of a person in comparison with the desire for the Kingdom of Heaven. And we often have the opposite, which is why we do not achieve. Therefore, when we partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, when we enter the Heavenly Kingdom, our heart does not feel this. Therefore, we do not receive healing from confession. Therefore, our body continues to suffer even after we have received the sacrament of Unction. Therefore, when we enter into a church marriage and are given the grace of God to build up a marriage, we still continue to argue, quarrel, and our discord overcomes this grace. Why do we not assimilate the grace that the Church gives us? Because we neglect it; we ourselves expel Christ and His grace from our hearts by our commitment to the world, by our love for it. We are lovers of peace, we love all worldly things, we desire only pleasure. And if we are worried about our loved ones, then we are very rarely concerned about the fact that these people do not go to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are more worried that they drink, smoke, swear, do some other things - things that bring us some annoyance. And a person who does not smoke, does not drink and is polite to us, satisfies us completely, our soul does not hurt about him. The closest example: any grandmother or great-grandmother longs for her grandson or great-grandson to be baptized. The question is why. Does she want the Kingdom of Heaven for him? No, she herself does not know what it is, and she has never aspired to it. And why is she so eager to baptize? So that the Lord protects the child, so that he has a guardian angel, so that he gets sick less, so that he is better, more obedient, so that it is easier with him. And there is nothing to do with the soul of the child. Therefore, many parents and grandparents panic if a child breaks his leg, gets hit by a car, falls ill with jaundice, measles, diphtheria or some other terrible disease. This worries them, because his body suffers, and they, being bodily people themselves, suffer for him. Although a bodily illness can lead a person to God, and I constantly encounter this in my duty. A person did not go to church for 40 years, but was diagnosed with cancer of the third degree - then, if his relatives offer: "Maybe you should call the priest?" - "Oh, come on, come on." And with avidity he begins to read the Gospel, to pray. The head gets tired, of course, and does not understand much, but a person is thirsty. You ask: "My dear, where did you go for 40 years?" - "Yes, there was no time." That is, the disease that a person has received is good for him. Well, he would have lived 80 years and died in the dark. And so he lived for 40 years, but at least in the last months he enlightened his mind and desired the Kingdom of Heaven. Because when everything hurts, there is no time for anything: whether the dishes are washed or unwashed, the wall in the house costs or a wardrobe for 35 rubles - it doesn't matter at all. What to wear, how I look, whether I have combed my hair or not, I don't have gold crowns or half of my teeth, this is no longer so exciting for a person. He is only worried about what will happen in a month, when this rupture occurs, when the soul leaves the body. He is already really thinking about it. Our life here on earth is temporary, and the Lord has so wisely arranged His Church that it constantly tells us about sin, about death, about judgment. As a reminder of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church opens the Royal Doors for us. And each of us can enter the Kingdom of Christ, if only he wants to, if only he devotes his whole life to it, as the apostles did. That is why they became disciples of Christ. The Lord wants to make the whole world His disciples, but for people it is much more important what the program is on television today, how much money they will receive at work. For them, the relationship between relatives is more interesting. Many people care about how they look in front of others, what they think or say about them. They don't care what God thinks of them. It is important to them how the priest treats them, they try to please the priest in everything, God forbid, he frowns - then the offenses will be terrible. People strive everywhere to surround the sharp corners with cotton wool, to comfort everything and to live here on earth for a long time. A man of seventy-eight comes and says, "I'm sick." And how not to get sick? You are approaching eighty, and after eighty there are continuous illnesses and then death. No, they argue with the doctors, they say that they do not treat, they slack, that they are bad, they do not have this-and-that. But illness is a consequence of sin. What can a poor doctor do? He is the same person, the same "C" student as you, and he does not understand what is happening to you at all. Who is there to be angry with? We must be patient. The Lord sends infirmities so that we think about the transience of all earthly and bodily things. He once said: "Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and the rest will be added to you." And each time we must ask ourselves this question: do we seek the Kingdom of Heaven, do we desire to enter the house of God? Why do I go to church, what am I looking for? Why don't I want to read the Gospel every day? For example, I easily watch TV, but I read the Gospel with difficulty. Why? Because television is native, carnal, spiritual, sinful, obscene; This is characteristic of me. And the life of the Kingdom of Heaven is not characteristic of me, because I am a sinner. Therefore, I have a lot to overcome in myself. If we want the Kingdom of Heaven, we must overcome the inertia of our flesh, overcome our soulfulness, and remake our lives in a spiritual way. And whoever really wants it, of course, will strive to go to church every minute, because Christ is here. He's here among us, whether we feel it or not. And we can partake of Him, we can unite with Him. As husband and wife are united in love, so the Church is united with Christ. But only he who strives for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the Church. Because the Church, in fact, is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Many people have very big misconceptions about this. They think: if we are good people, we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Each of us has an idea of what a good person is: modest; has his own opinion, but does not impose it on anyone; He does not offend anyone, he tries to be friends with everyone, and so on. But you can also train the dog so that it will not pester or bark at anyone, it will eat at the right time and follow all the commands: sit, lie, stand, let's go, next to you, face. Does this mean that a dog can inherit the kingdom of heaven? No, because a dog is not a spiritual being. Only the person who hungers and thirsts for it can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for only they will be satisfied. Therefore, if we do not have this hunger and thirst, we will not achieve anything, even if we go to church, confess so dejectedly, and take communion at all costs. And many will simply be horrified when death comes and the Lord does not let them into the Kingdom of Heaven: "Well, how is that? All my life I went to church - both to my own church, and to the neighboring one, where in the evening I listened to akathists. And I have the Gospel, not even one, and the Bible, and the prayer book, and the Psalter; I have all sorts of things, and I have read all this." So what? And nothing. This is all very good, but the main thing is missing. The Apostle Peter, for example, did not read the Psalter, because he was illiterate, but he became the Chief Apostle. It turns out that it is precisely in this striving for the Kingdom of Heaven, in this thirst, in this desire, even if it often cannot be supported by a person by his own life. This is how Peter said, "Lord, I will go to death after You." The Lord says, "The rooster will crow, and thrice shalt deny Me tonight." Peter simply could not calculate his strength, he was not yet spiritualized by the Holy Spirit, so he showed such weakness. A person can do something only by the grace of God. If grace be with you, you will be able to raise the dead, and direct the living to the right path, and help your neighbor. If there is no grace with you, you will not be able to do anything. How many benefactors of mankind have already declared: I know how to save the world; This is how it should be done, these should be swapped, those should be liquidated, and then everything will be all right and paradise will come to earth. No, nothing of the kind, everything only got worse. Because these people have never had the grace of God, but only their own pride. Only the grace of God creates, and man receives it from God. That is why it is called grace, a good gift. No matter how much you pray, no matter how much you bow, it is impossible to deserve it. God is a person. With whom He wills, He abides, and with whom He does not will, He will never abide with him. Therefore, our task is to become such that the Lord will want to be with us. We are sinners, yes. And the apostles were sinners, but He wanted to be with them and sent them the Holy Spirit of the Comforter. And we must understand how we differ from these people, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, James, John and the other apostles, and try to become the same, so that the Lord, seeing us, would want to be with us. And when the Lord comes to us, this will be the Kingdom of Heaven, within us. This, in fact, is the meaning of spiritual life and the meaning of our celebration of Pascha. If we learn this, we can be disciples of Christ; if we do not assimilate it, we will be like other men, and moreover we will find ourselves not only rejected from the Kingdom of God, but we will find ourselves in a much worse place than the atheists. Because they don't know anything, and we go to church, read the Holy Scriptures, we have prayer books at home, we have icons and lamps, we know what confession is, and we dare to take communion. Consequently, the demand from us is completely different. If you call yourself a gruzdem, climb into the back. If you put a cross around your neck, then you have declared your desire to be a Christian, to fulfill the commandments of God. Otherwise, what's the point? You go to church, you read spiritual books, you wear a cross on yourself, but your life contradicts every single commandment of God. Then who are you? Hypocrite. And this is a terrible thing. The Lord forgave harlots, forgave greedy tax collectors. The Lord forgave the robber, who was a murderer and, of course, a swearer, a drunkard, and an adulterer. But to the hypocrites of the Pharisees He said: "Woe to you!" and called them "the offspring of vipers." Because external piety without internal content is much worse than any murder, much worse than any drunkenness. Yes, a drunkard is socially unpleasant, lying stinking and overgrown, but he is much closer to God than many of those who go to church, have a pious appearance, an ironed handkerchief and dwell in their own pride, flattering themselves with the hope that they have a good chance of getting to heaven. Nothing of the kind! That is why the Lord said so: "Fornicators and adulterers, tax collectors, precede you in the Kingdom of Heaven." They precede, go forward, because they often have more humility, they have a true consciousness of their own sinfulness. All people are sinful, everything is absolute, and only the consciousness of one's sinfulness can cleanse a person. If a person does not understand in what he is sinful, it means that he is blinded by his own pride, he is in perdition. This is a terrible state of mind. Save us from this, Lord! We need to ask God day and night to reveal our sins, to give us spiritual sight. Only in this way will we be able to purify ourselves and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But again, on the condition that we want it. Not just that it would be nice to devote our whole lives to it. Let each of us, coming home today, think: what is my life dedicated to? When I was baptized, the priest shaved my head in the form of a cross as a sign that I was a servant of God, as a sign that I was sacrificing my life to God. Is it there? No. My life is sacrificed to my own thoughts, my ideas; my life is sacrificed to my family; I serve my own body, my comfort, and my pleasures, and God is for me insofar as I do. This is a kind of good force to which I can always turn in difficult times in my desire to receive good from Him. This is our level of religiosity. We are no different from Muslims, from people of other faiths, who do not know about the Kingdom of Heaven, because only the Church has the teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord paved this path for us there with His Cross. And if we do not understand this enough, we need to repent, enlighten our minds, start a new, different life, and not live as people live. This is very difficult, because there are few who really want the Kingdom of Heaven. And when a person is different from others, as they say, sticks out, then it is very difficult for him to live, the world hates him. That is why the Lord says: Know this, the world will hate you, but first it hated Me. The Lord says: rejoice and be glad, because when you feel hatred from the world, then it means that you have drawn near to Christ. And while your life is prosperous, know that you are far from the Kingdom of Heaven. Because only by pleasing the world, you can live safely here. It is not for nothing that all the apostles ended their lives in suffering. And most of the saints of our Church were killed, shed their blood. If we want to arrange our life here on earth, happily, then we must turn not to God, but to the devil, because the one who is friends with the world is hostile to God, so it is said in the Scriptures. And there is no other way. If Christ, our Master and Saviour, was crucified on the Cross, are we not called to the same thing? Therefore, we need to start crucifying. As the Apostle Paul said, "I was crucified to the world." One must crucify one's flesh, give it no rest, force oneself to work, and bore the Kingdom of Heaven. "Since the days of John the Baptist, the Kingdom of God has been wanting," said Christ, "and only those who use force take it away." And if you do not lift a finger for the salvation of your soul, for the sake of forcing your accursed heart to fulfill the commandments of Christ, then there is no meaning in your life, it is an empty flower. As it happens: cucumbers have flowers, but there is no ovary; The flower has bloomed and withered. That's how our life is. Yes, we will make a good hairstyle, and save money, and we will be able to buy something, and we will be respected, and we will be given orders. And then they will forget, because there is no fruit. The meaning of cultivating a vegetable garden is fruits. Potatoes are an inconspicuous flower, but they have become the main food for a huge, multi-million people. And it does not matter to us at all whether its flowers are pink or blue, large or small. It is important that inside there is something that is not even visible, what is lying there, in the mud, these tubers. It is the same in the spiritual life: it is not important how we look, how much we get, where we live, all this external is unimportant. The main thing is what is hidden inside, whether there is a thirst for the Kingdom of Heaven. If this is not the case, then everything is empty, everything is meaningless, everything will wither. This is what the Church tells us every day, and this, in fact, is what today's Gospel is about. Amen.

Sermon on Divine Freedom and the Communion of the Holy Spirit (June 3, 1990)

The Lord came to earth in order to unite man with Heaven. Adam fell away from God as a result of the divine freedom that God could not help but give him, because without it Adam could not have responded to God's love. The Lord, Who is Freedom and Love, created man free, in His image and likeness, so that man would respond to His love, so that he would be worthy of this love and live by it. Love cannot be compulsory. Many of us know this from our own experience. Those who tried to persuade unbelieving family members to go to church found that this was impossible because they did not have love for God. Taking a person by the throat, you can force him to confess and take communion, you can force him to serve molebens, even read the Holy Scriptures, but you cannot force him to love God. Love is a manifestation of freedom. But once there is freedom, it can be used for good or for evil - just as you can use your time for drunkenness, or you can use it to take out pots for the sick. Adam, our forefather, used his freedom for evil. He did not listen to God, he doubted Him. The devil put the thought into his head: is God right? And since then, every person has been doing the same from infancy. A mother and father who love their child say: don't do this, it's bad. And the child doubts whether the father is right, and does it in his own way, manifests his evil will, and thus destroys the love between himself and his father, between himself and his mother. We are familiar with all this, we have repeated the sin of Adam repeatedly, so we understand what happened to Adam. He fell away from God, fell catastrophically, because as a result of sin he became mortal, the seed of sin entered into him. And evil has increased in the world since then, and is still multiplying. In the ancient Egyptian papyrus, which is more than one thousand years old, it is said that a certain elderly man complains that today the youth has become bad. And for thousands of years we have been hearing this moan of people who are already aging, who look at the young generation. Each new generation becomes worse, more shameless, more impudent. This is quite obvious. It seems that there is nowhere to fall - but no, it turns out that you can. It turns out that you can be even angrier, meaner, even more persistent. Humanity, using its divine freedom not for good, but for evil, plunges more and more into the mire of sin. But one day, when nothing seemed to be able to save fallen humanity, a beautiful flower was born on earth. This flower, which Old Testament Israel brought as a response to God's love, was the Most Holy Virgin. She manifested humility incarnate, and therefore God (and humility is one of His main attributes) was able to incarnate from Her and come into the world as a Man in order to save man. To save from sin. It is not difficult for God to destroy all mankind and create something new. He once said to the Apostle Peter, who wanted to protect Him: "Do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will give Me more than twelve legions of angels?" The fact is that if we are all destroyed and a new Adam is created, then he may not repeat the sin of the first Adam. But who can guarantee that his son, or grandson, or great-grandson will not also use his freedom for evil? Because freedom lies in the fact that a person can always voluntarily choose whether to steal or not to steal, to yell or remain silent, to forgive or hold a grudge. There is always this free choice of a person. Therefore, nothing will change if the old humanity is destroyed and a new one is created. And so it has already happened. The Lord once left one righteous family of Noah, and the rest were all drowned in the depths of the sea, for our edification. And yet, already in the second generation, one of the sons, Ham, sinned, and rudeness, which began to be called a bad attitude towards the elders after the name of this son, began to develop further and further. Therefore, the Lord bowed down to Heaven and descended Himself. He Himself became the New Adam in order to recreate in Himself a new humanity. And out of all the multitude of people inhabiting the earth, some responded to the call of Christ - and He says thus: "I am the light of the world: walk in me, not to walk in darkness, but to have the light of life," the light of life. The majority, of course, believe that they are not sinful in anything, no worse than others. These are the dead people. But some are aware of the entire abyss of sin in which they live, and they cannot agree with this sinful life. They suffer because they do not see God; because they do not know Him. They want to know Him. To love Him, they want to be with God in full communion. They are tormented by the fact that they cannot get close enough to God to be completely immersed in the love of God. It is to them that the words of Christ are addressed. God is light, and whoever follows Him will follow the path that He has paved. The landmarks of this path are the commandments of Christ. We must study, cognize and begin to fulfill them, despite the fact that all our fallen, filthy, corrupt nature resists this. To fulfill the commandments for fallen man is very hard work. But when he is strengthened in the faith, strengthened to such an extent that he cannot think of himself outside of the commandments of Christ, then he will suddenly notice that it is not only not difficult for him to fulfill the commandments, but so easy that he simply cannot sin. No matter how much you beat him, some unclean, dirty word cannot fall from his lips. Whatever happens to him, he cannot steal. He is not capable of malice, hatred, rancor. He will never be greedy. How does this happen? By the grace of the life-giving power that God sends into the heart of man, by which He transforms him. If any person believes that Christ, the same Jesus, the Son of Mary, who walked in Galilee and Judea two thousand years ago, is not just a man, but truly the Son of God, and that His every word is really the immutable law of the universe, and, having believed, voluntarily submits to this law (despite the fact that another law, the law of sin, operating in him, resists this) and begins to live according to it, then Christ, according to His promise, will be united with him. This union takes place through Baptism. For the first time, a person is born from the mother's womb for bodily, human and, unfortunately, sinful life. And the second time he is born again in the baptismal font. The Lord has chosen water Baptism for us as a sign that a person is washed of all sins and begins a new life, that he is dedicated to God. That is why the hair on his head is cut in the form of a cross, because he devotes himself, his whole life to God, promises to serve Him with every breath, to do every deed for the glory of God. In any person who has been consciously baptized, spiritual life begins, the Spirit of Christ begins to live in him. The Christian receives the germ of this Spirit in Chrismation, the sacrament of Pentecost, which we celebrate today. His further life should be directed towards cleansing himself of all defilement. And when he begins to correct his life, begins to work on his soul, then the Holy Spirit, Whom a person received in embryo, gradually fills his whole being and heals him, heals all the sinful wounds, all the passions that rage in his heart. Through Baptism, a person becomes a partaker of Christ. He enters the Church, which is the fellowship of saints who love God; gradually grows to it, becomes a member of the Body of Christ, because the Church is the Body of Christ. Christ is the true vine, as He said of Himself, and we are wild branches. And these wild branches are grafted into the vine through Epiphany. How is the vaccination carried out? At first, the twig hurts. In order for it to take root, you need to cut off all unnecessary shoots. Therefore, every Christian who wants to be grafted into the vine of Christ, into the Church, must circumcise all the worldly things that are in him; He must leave all evil in that old life and begin a new life. And then, finally, the life-giving juice - the Lord compares it to the water of life, the grace of the Holy Spirit begins to flow from the vine into the soul of a person. The vine grafts this twig to itself, and new leaves appear on it, which were not there before, patience, prayerfulness, goodness, and faith appear. And then this twig begins to bear fruit. It brings love, joy, peace. Why does the gardener graft a branch on the trunk to admire the leaves? No, that it bears fruit. And we were all baptized once with only one purpose, so that our spiritual life would bear fruit. So that our life may be multiplied by love, meekness and humility - the most important Christian virtues. Spiritual life takes place in a person in a mysterious way. The Kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit, comes imperceptibly into the heart of man. If we look at a flower from morning to evening, we will not see how it grows. This happens very slowly. In the same way, the grace of the Holy Spirit very slowly, but fills the soul of a person, if he struggles with sin, if he constantly pulls out the weeds that constantly grow in the garden of his heart. But this struggle with sin can take place only in one case: if a person has a constant thirst for communion with God, if he neglects everything for its sake. That is why the Lord says that there should be not desire, but thirst: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink." God is the source of our life. And if there is no thirst, then you will never know any God and you will never see him as your own ears. The Lord Jesus Christ went to Heaven, sat down in the flesh at the right hand of God and sent the grace of the Holy Spirit to the small Church, consisting of 12 apostles. He impregnated her, and since then the Holy Spirit has lived in the Church. And we, having been baptized into the Church, can partake of this grace, of this source of life, of true life. Because true life is life according to the law of God. And life not according to the law of God is prison and death. Ask any person in prison: how do you live? And he will say: is this life? Life in prison is not life. And life according to sin is also not life, because a person does only what sin forces him to do, he is a complete slave of sin. If passion tells him to be irritated, he is irritated. If passion tells you to scream, he screams. If passion commands him to take what is not his, he takes. If passion inspires him to fornicate, he fornicates. He completely obeys his desires, his animal and demonic passions. And the Lord wants us to have only one passion, one thirst – love for God, a desire to partake of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is life. And in order for us to partake of the Holy Spirit, everything bestial and demonic in us must die, move away, give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to dwell in our hearts. It is to this postponement, to this annihilation of sin in us, that our will must be directed – to the thirst for God and to the hatred of sin. And if this is really in us, then we will know God, we will commune with the Holy Spirit. Then we will know what the apostles experienced on the day of Pentecost. A sea of joy poured out of them that people could not even comprehend; they could not understand where this joy came from, gushing like Niagara Falls, and, looking at the apostles, they said: they have drunk sweet wine, something is happening to them. The source of this joy is the Holy Spirit. When a person has been vouchsafed the Holy Spirit, he has an endless Paschal joy, he is already in the Kingdom of Heaven. And cut him into pieces - his bliss will not be impoverished by this in the slightest. That is why the holy martyrs, whom we glorify and love, on whose blood the Church stands, always went to death with joy. Not because death is beautiful in public, no. For their love for God, for their thirst, the Lord gave them such grace that they endured terrible torments, which no person can endure without the grace of God. Most of us live in sorrows: we grieve from people, and from our own ill-health, and from the environment, and from microbes - from everything. Why is it so hard for us, why does joy not overshadow this suffering? Because we have a very great poverty in the grace of God, and without it it is impossible to endure sorrows. The only way to get rid of suffering is to partake of the Holy Spirit. And if we still become zealous for God, if we become thirsty in our hearts, the Lord will give us to drink, because He came for this, and shed His Blood to nourish us. The only source of God's grace on earth is the Blood of Christ, which we will partake of today. There is nothing more precious than this gift. But to learn it, you need to work hard. Therefore, the more we work in order to partake of Communion in all its fullness, as far as it is possible for us, the sooner we will be filled with the grace of God. It is only necessary to remember what the Apostle Paul says: see to it that communion is not for your judgment or condemnation; Many, taking communion unworthily, often fall ill and die a sudden death. What does unworthy mean? This means without repentance, without weeping over one's sins, without a desire to correct one's life, without prayer, without fasting, without laboring over one's soul, without being aware of who one is and what one is communicating, without thinking that one is contemplating the entire Divine mystery of Communion. Although God is a merciful sufferer, Who came to save us, He is at the same time a consuming fire. And in order for this fire to burn away the evil that is in us, we need to take this evil out of our soul and carry it out, so that it burns separately from us, without burning us. Let us thank God that He, by His grace, has gathered us all here and given us an amazing, mysterious opportunity to begin a new life in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon on the Day of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land (June 17, 1990)

Today is the day of all saints who shone forth in the Russian land. There were not so many saints as the people who lived on our land gave anywhere else. The Gospel says: "The Sower went out to sow." The Lord sowed the word of God in all nations, and each of them reacted to it in his own way. Holiness is man's response to the call of God. God came to earth to call everyone. He said, "Many are called." We live in an age when there is not a single person left on earth, except for little children, who has not heard of Jesus Christ. The very sound of His name already gives rise to certain associations. At any rate, everybody knows that this man said of himself that he was the Son of God who came down from heaven. And everyone knows that He was crucified on the Cross. But the reaction of the human heart to this event can be completely different. Most people are not interested in this at all. They do not even bother to find out what Christ said while living on earth; what He did when He walked two thousand years ago in Palestine; how it came to pass that, though it was evident that he was a good man, he was crucified. The life of Jesus is of no interest to the majority of those who live on earth, that is, although they hear the call, they do not give an answer to it. The Lord came to everyone. Of course, He began with His people, chosen, beloved. But this people in their mass rejected Him, just as now our people in their mass have completely rejected Christ - and, by the way, for the same reason. This, apparently, is the fate of mankind in general - to reject God. But there were people who responded to this call. In what way was their response to God accomplished? In the example of the apostles, these first saints of the New Testament, we see how this happens. In the Gospel of Matthew, which we have read today, it is told how the Lord called the Apostles Andrew, Peter, James and John. And he came to the Sea of Galilee, and saw two brothers casting their nets into the sea, and said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed Him. So are the sons of Zebedee. Imagine the picture - fishermen are fishing. This is the source of their existence: from this fish they eat, from this fish they dress and maintain their homes. And so He calls them - they give it up, leave it completely, forever and follow Him. And James and John even left their father, and Peter left his wife at home and began to follow Christ. Few people can do this - to give up everything for Christ's sake. Therefore, few people can be an apostle. And it is impossible for all of us to become fishers of men, apostles. It is impossible for all of us to become martyrs. This is only who will be vouchsafed, whom the Lord will choose, whom He will allow to suffer for Himself. It is impossible for all of us to become venerable, because not everyone can go to a monastery, and now there is no one to learn the spiritual life from. But the path of salvation is not closed to us. Living in the world, we can also acquire righteousness in our own measure. To do this, it is necessary to arrange this life in such a way that it is not the world that owns us, but Christ who owns us, so that His commandments govern our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. And to the extent that we labor and are able for the sake of Christ to overcome all the worldly things that are in us, to the extent that we displace all evil and allow God's grace to work in us, to that extent we will partake of the Kingdom of Christ, of His teaching, of His love, of His grace, which He sent to earth, to His Church. Everyone in his life necessarily encounters the word of God, hears His call. It comes to us from the Gospel, and the entire world around us, with the exception of the creation of human hands, bears witness to God. Therefore, many came to God just by looking at the sky - blue or dark blue, full of stars. Only a completely wild person, contemplating the night sky, will not come to the thought of God and will not want to pray to Him. But the vanity of the world gradually steals away such good thoughts, and a person is not always ready to give God the answer that the Lord expects from him. Christ called the apostles - and they left everything and went. The more a person leaves in this life in order to follow Christ, the closer he will come to Him, the deeper he will enter into His teaching, the more beloved he will become to Him out of all the disciples. Peter once asked Christ: "We have left everything, what will we get for this?" And the Apostle Paul, another disciple of Christ, said that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." If a person once believed Christ that His words are not idle, but true, then he does not doubt God's promise in the least. If Christ said, then it will be so. But for this to happen, you need to fulfill the condition - to leave as much as possible in this world. And what is in this world? Lust, worldly vanity, and, of course, worldly pride. Our life largely consists of pride, vanity, arrogance, from the desire to occupy a certain place, to look like someone, to represent something. Pride guides our actions, thoughts, and feelings. We are also overwhelmed by all kinds of desires, mostly of animal origin, which pull us back there, into the animal world, into a bestial existence. And the salvation of a person from this darkness and horror in which he lives depends on what his response to God's call will be. If we want to be citizens of Heaven, fellow citizens of the saints, our own of God, then we must conquer in ourselves what is in us from the animal. And it is imperative to overcome the multiplicity of care that is characteristic of all of us. Peter, Andrew, James and John overcame this completely and became apostles. But everyone is called to salvation, each of us is given this opportunity, the question is whether we will be able to take advantage of it. Some of us will perish, some of us will be saved, some will become saints. The Lord, Who governs everything, will ask of everyone exactly as much as is given to him. And temptations, and all kinds of labors, sorrows, illnesses, sufferings the Lord will never send more than we can bear. Therefore, if for some reason you and I do not enter the assembly of the saints of the Russian land, then this will be only our fault and no one else's fault - our laziness, our dislike of Christ or the lack of fullness of this love, which would force us to work. This means that the world and all the beauty of this world turned out to be dearer to us than the word of God. It means that somewhere in the depths of our souls, secretly, maybe even without realizing it, we have made this choice. And we make this choice every day. Every day, God's providence invites us to fulfill the commandment or break it, to help our neighbor or reject him, to pray or to be lazy. And so it is in everything, in every business, at any level, on any plane of our existence. A thought has come - you can accept it, you can reject it. If you accept it, enjoy it, then you choose the world. If you reject it with anger, it means that you choose Christ. The Lord says that in order to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, one must deny oneself. We reach Christ only to the extent of self-denial. The more of this self-denial, the closer we are to Christ. And this is the law of spiritual life, because there is nothing of our own in us but sin. All that is beautiful in us is from God. He created a body for us, He gave us reason, He put into us an immortal soul, in which there is a primordial love for good and a desire for the Kingdom of Heaven. Any person has a desire for the best, it is in us from God. And ours is what we have brought into our souls, all the evil, starting with the fall of Adam and ending with the sins that we ourselves have committed. And it is possible to give Christ a place in our soul only by displacing the evil that is in us, which we have managed to accumulate in our souls. If there is some part of our conscience in us that has not yet been affected by sinful leprosy, which compels us to move towards good, then this is what we must live, this is what we need to develop and expand in ourselves, and gradually push all the darkness out of our hearts. In this way we will give freedom to the grace of God to act in our hearts, and the action of God's grace in the heart of man is holiness. Holiness is not of human origin. This is a gift of God to man for his work, for his rejection of evil, for his choice. If a person chooses God in his life, then the Lord Himself cleanses him, and saves him Himself, and fills him with Divine life. And to this fullness of Divine life, dear brothers and sisters, we are all called. If we follow in the footsteps of the apostles who began this path, and all the saints who lived before us and prayed – we know that they prayed even in our church – then we will continue this work, we will continue the radiance of God's glory in our land. And through our land, through us, this glory of God may spread further. Because you can't save yourself alone. This is how the salvation of the human soul turns out: the Lord calls, and the person responds and follows Him. This path, of course, is difficult, because sin has grown to our soul and must be torn off with blood and meat. That is why few people want to work on themselves at all - it is easier to lie in relaxation. And so few reach the Kingdom of Heaven. We must always remember that we are a new people of God, called to heavenly life, and the Lord wants to give us this heavenly life. Sometimes, it happens, sin surrounds us so that it seems that there is nothing left but darkness. But we simply forget that the Lord, Who loves us, is near, and all the holy lands of Russia are also near. And they pray for us, loving us. It is impossible to even imagine that it would be otherwise. If we, sinners, are capable of such love for them, how much more should their holy hearts love us and sympathize with us. And if we, who are already drowning, turn like Peter and exclaim: "Lord, save us, we are perishing!" - the Lord is ready to come to our aid, and our holy relatives will certainly hear our cry. Only it must come from the depths of the heart. We really need to understand the depth of our fall, all the huge difference between our lives and the lives of the saints, and burn with our hearts and strive for this righteous life. And then we will attain, because the Lord said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." It is then, through the merging of our soul with the Spirit of God, that saturation will take place, which every person strives for and which he does not receive in worldly life. Therefore, let us try to be faithful to our God, not to allow evil to act in us, to try with all the strength of our souls, as far as we have them now, at the moment, to resist the devil. And the weakness that we naturally experience in our struggle, let us make up for by prayer, asking God for help, and it will not be long in coming. The Lord said, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." When we come to know our weakness, when we feel ourselves truly poor in spirit, when we abandon all our proud pompousness and become simple, as the fishermen-apostles were – only then will we be able to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Sermon on the Day of the Dormition of the Mother of God (August 28, 1990)

The Lord came to earth in order to adopt us as sons of His Father and to give us the Kingdom. Children inherit the Father, and the Lord came down to earth to make us heirs of the Heavenly Father. This is possible only through union with Christ. He is the Son of God and the Heir, and if we become His brothers and sisters, then we too will become sons and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. Unity with Christ takes place through the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The deeper our entry into the Church, the deeper our adoption by God. But it happens gradually, because not everyone can immediately accommodate a new life. The union begins with faith; faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God, as the Apostle Paul said. A person can go to church and not be a Christian, and even know nothing really about Christ, and never be united with Him. He may even take communion, not understanding what he is communing. And this is quite often observed. Until the word of God touches a person, he cannot be a Christian, but even if it does, this does not mean that he immediately became one. The Lord said: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it – that is, those who live by the word of God, who keep it in their hearts, those in whose lives the word of God is always active. This action occurs very imperceptibly and gradually. The Lord even once said that the Kingdom of God would not come in a noticeable way. It grows, as from a pea seed, slowly, until it grows into a large tree. So we all gathered in church. It is necessary for everyone to ask themselves the question: why did I come here, what is the purpose of my visit, what is the meaning of my faith, what do I want from God, who do I want to become? And if our goals and desires coincide with what God wants, then He will help us in this. Even if our goals are different, the Lord can help us here too. Someone complains about their health - the Lord can give relief. Someone has a difficult situation in the family or at work - if a person asks God, the All-Merciful Lord, seeing his faith, helps him. But the blood of Christ the Savior was not shed so that no one would offend us at work. It's just ridiculous. If the Apostles were offended, if the weapon pierced the soul of the Mother of God Herself, then it is clear that the Lord did not come for us to live well and prosperously here. He came to make us partakers of the Kingdom of God. But in order for the Kingdom of Heaven to enter us, and for us to reach it, we must work. Once the Apostle Paul said: the law is a guide to Christ, a teacher. In order to attain communion with the grace of God, it is necessary to follow certain rules, a certain law. There are certain stages, gradual steps, without which no spiritual life is possible. Just as without knowledge of the most elementary arithmetic - the multiplication table, the rules of addition and subtraction, there can be no question of any higher mathematics, so in spiritual life it is impossible to jump over several steps. The very initial stage, the first thing we must learn, is to be in church every Sunday. If we don't learn this, we will never learn anything. If a person does not attend church at least once a week, then there can be no question of any spiritual life at all, with the exception of special circumstances: a person serves in the army, is in the hospital, and so on. But is going to church every Sunday a spiritual life? No of course not. You can go to church every Sunday all your life and not understand anything; But even without this it is impossible. In mathematics, the following concept is used: necessary and sufficient condition. So this condition is necessary, but not sufficient. What else? You need to learn to read morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after meals. If we have not already accustomed ourselves to this, no next step can be taken. But even if we regularly, never omitting, read morning and evening prayers, before meals, after meals, for every business, after every work, can this be called a prayer? Of course not, God forbid those who think so, this is not yet a prayer, it is just reading a rule, more or less attentively. But without this necessary step, we will not be able to approach the Kingdom of Heaven. Next, you need to correct your life according to the Old Testament commandments, which were given one and a half thousand years before Christ. If we do not do this, we cannot, strictly speaking, even go to church. What are these commandments? Know God alone, do not worship other gods, honor Him. What does that mean? This means that God should be in the first place in our lives. Neither a dacha, nor a job, nor friends - nothing, but only God. As long as this is not the case, there can be no talk of any spiritual life either. Do not make for yourself an idol – this is a similar commandment, that is, nothing should hide God from us: neither a person, nor an object, nor any occupation. Remember the Sabbath day - this refers to Sunday church attendance. Do not kill, do not fornicate, do not lie, do not envy, do not steal - if we violate any of these ancient, pre-Christian commandments, then how can we become Christians? If we lie, envy, God forbid, forbid we commit fornication, we are outside the Church. Therefore, we must learn these commandments. And if a person learns the Old Testament commandments, no longer kills, steals, fornicates, lies, creates an idol for himself, goes to church every Sunday - will this be a spiritual life? No, God forbid you think so, it will only be a step towards her. A rich young man came to Jesus and said, "I have had all these things since I was a child." Still, he did not become a disciple of Christ, that is, the fulfillment of the Old Law is not enough for a Christian. And we still do not know how to make much out of it - and already dream that we will have a pure prayer and so on. This is absolutely impossible. In the spiritual life, you can only go by steps, from the simpler to the more complex, as in any business, take figure skating or architecture. Earlier, about three hundred years ago, if a person did not fast on Wednesday and Friday, not to mention, for example, not observing the Dormition Fast, he was not considered a member of the Church. One of the questions at confession was: how do you observe the fast? And for many of us, this is still difficult, we sometimes forget that the fast is going on. Is it a great sin if a person does not remember about fasting? No, there is no sin in this, it simply testifies to the fact that the life of the Church is alien to man; he is busy with some of his own affairs and is so far from the Church that he forgets about it. His own life is so fascinating that the life of the Church is of secondary interest to him. This is evidence of the imperfection of this person. Therefore, if we strive for the perfection that the Lord prescribes for us, then, of course, this defect must be eliminated. But the observance of fasting according to all the rules, according to all the rules, is not yet spiritual life. And what is spiritual life? Spiritual life does not depend on a person, it is given by God if a person observes certain conditions. These conditions are the commandments of Christ. Let us imagine that we have already learned to fulfill the Old Testament commandments, we observe the law, we observe order, order, that is, we have become pious Jews in everything. Then we need to take the next step - to learn to fulfill the commandments of Christ. We need to study the Sermon on the Mount, to see what the Lord requires of us. And He demands a new morality from us. He says: "I have not come to break the law, but to fulfill" - that is, to fill in, to pour into it a new content, even more. To pour into the skins the new, young wine of Christ's commandments. Here are completely different requirements: about love for enemies, for example, about forgiveness of offenses. And so, if a person fulfills these requirements, corrects his actions, words, thoughts and feelings, if he becomes akin to Christ in the structure of his soul, then the Lord, in His mercy, instills in him the grace of God. This indwelling of God's grace in man is spiritual life. When a person tries to do something on his own, then, of course, nothing works. That is why many of us are very surprised: what is it, I am reading and reading the rules, and all my attention is scattered, all the evil thoughts come to me, some impure thoughts besiege me. And man does not understand that he can get rid of this only by the grace of God, without it it is impossible. And the grace of God is called grace because it is a good gift from God. And how can a gift be delighted? It is impossible, because it exceeds all conceivable, possibly attainable purity of man. A gift is always a gift. And the whole point is whether the Lord as a person will want to give us this gift or not. What should we become for this? This is the task of a Christian's life: to become such that the Lord would give him this gift. The Holy Fathers noted that if a person is zealous in piety, tries with all his might to fulfill the commandments of Christ, tries to forgive, not to condemn anyone, to show love to everyone, tries to be what the Lord would like him to be, then the Lord, seeing his diligence, begins to help him in this, and helps him until the person is freed from his past, the old man. And then a new life in Christ begins for him. In this way, gradually, starting with the small and ending with the great, each achieves in his own measure, who will work as much. For each of us there is an abode in the Kingdom of Heaven; Everyone can achieve this, you just need to make a choice: what is sweeter for you? The Kingdom of Heaven, of which you do not know what it is, but choose simply by trusting in the word of God, or sin, all the sweetness and bitterness of which you have already tasted and experienced? Here are two paths, two ways of life. If a person nevertheless wants to become a Christian, then gradually, throughout his life, he climbs out of the abyss, from this stinking pit of sin in which he lives. He lays down his life in order to get out of it into the light of God. This is the first way of life. There is another: to try to live here on earth, naturally giving yourself as many pleasures as possible, because the meaning and purpose of the biological existence of the organism in general is the achievement of pleasure. To do this, people eat, drink, and so on. Unlike animals, they also have other pleasures: movies, wine, dominoes and other things that animals do not have. And everything would be fine - some would live a spiritual life, others - carnal and spiritual. But after a certain time, a very short time, a certain disorder awaits each person, and it consists in the fact that this earthly life will have to be abandoned. Leave the granddaughters with whom you are aunting; to leave the apartment that you lick; To leave the dacha, in which he had invested so much sweat, to leave everything. All your spilkins: clothes, and a savings book, well, everything - you leave everything here. They will give you very little land, put you in a single garment and bury you. And if that was the end of the matter. But no. It turns out that there is life there too. So, if a person lived only by nourishing and enjoying his body and soul, and he was so accustomed to it, addicted and loved this work, then there, in the next world, as we say, he will be very bored, so bored that this state is simply called hell - because there is nothing to do there. Nothing that he lived for, nothing of this is there. How to live? Whoever wants to visualize such a state in his mind or experience it, can do it very simply. When all the household members go on vacation, close the curtains in the room, lie down on the bed and lie in the dark for two days, doing nothing. And imagine that it will not be a billion years or a thousand billion, but forever. You are alone, your own personality alone with your own thoughts, and you can do nothing, go anywhere, hear nothing, only darkness. And a person who has striven all his life to get out of this horror, who has striven to attain spiritual life, for him this spiritual life receives its remarkable resolution after death. What he saw only with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of his soul, he begins to see with his own eyes, because the last barrier falls. A person dwells in the arms of God and lives, continues the same endless and also eternal life, but among those souls. who set spiritual life as their goal. Such ways. The one leads to horror and darkness, the other to light and eternal bliss, for what man has striven for he now at last receives in his highest development, and this development will again increase in infinity. Why do we know this? Because love has no end. If anyone has ever loved at least one person in his life, he knows that from time to time this love can only deepen and improve. The same is true of the relationship between man and God - they can only deepen and perfect in love. And this development and approach to God, this combination with Him is infinite. We have two ways of life in front of us. We have a concept of the experience of life in darkness, because we are all sinful people. And we have a very vague idea of what spiritual life is, but we can believe in Jesus Christ, Who spoke about it. And so that we would not doubt His words, He gave His life for them. For these words that He brought us, the Lord paid with His blood. And if there is an echo of them in our souls, it means that we will choose the spiritual path. Then everything that prevents us from moving along it, we will push back and displace in our lives. And the further we go, the more diligent we will be, because the older a person is, the more gray hairs he has on his head, the more he approaches the fateful moment when he will have to leave his body. And this is a very serious matter, and we need to think deeply about it. We celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God. Here lies the One Who has attained spiritual life in perfection. This is an image for us. Why do we have such a custom - to venerate Her image? We do this as a sign that we love the path She walked. And if we are still attached to worldly life, then it is somehow impious for us to venerate Her image. How can we, being prodigal, touch chastity? How can we, being lazy, touch the diligent one? How, being unclean, can one touch the Purest and Most Honorable Cherubim and Angels? How can we dare to do that? Only if, being sinners, we still desire a spiritual life, only then can we dare to do so. And if we reject it within ourselves and strive only for carnal and spiritual pleasures, then it means that our entire imaginary religious life is sheer hypocrisy. The Lord said, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." This is the most terrible thing, we must be extremely careful about it. And again the Lord said: "Unless your righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." If you and I, dear brothers and sisters, have learned to go to church constantly, if we have learned to fulfill all the prayer rules, to read the Holy Scriptures daily, to fast, if we have learned to behave decently, then this is still only Phariseeism, and we must surpass it. And whoever does not even know how to do this must hurry, because the days are evil and time is short. Let us follow the advice of Christ the Savior, Who said: "Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." Amen.

Sermon on Chastity (February 23, 1997)

... In fact, it turns out that not a single product, not a single advertisement can do without saturating it with fornication. Fornication is so attractive for a person who has lost the image of God, because acute experiences are not only bodily, but also mental, and for a person in whom there is no spiritual life, if he has to live, it is only fornication, and everything revolves around it. This is the main theme of everything. And now our state school has been very actively involved in this, and medicine... To the point that even fathers and mothers. Dad wants to look, but the child is right there. Mom seems to be like a woman - there is still more shame in them, thank God (as one ancient holy father said that if a woman loses shame, then no one will be saved!) - that's why there is such a natural, natural shame, it is greater in a woman. For example, a woman says: "Father, don't do it!" and the father says: "It's okay, let him watch." Let!.. Why? Because I really want to, that's the point. And so it has become a common place, you constantly encounter this, and, of course, on the eve of Lent, when all Orthodox people live in a monastic way: they try to pray more, and more often they go to church, and fast, and, so to speak, such an ordinary family life is postponed until after Lent... In this reading from the Apostles, the Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians, chapter VI, 12-20), the Apostle Paul speaks of the special importance of chastity and tries to explain why fornication is so unacceptable for any spiritual life. There have been such curiosities even on this basis. Western missionaries would come to Africa—and polygamy was common among many tribes there—and preach Jesus Christ there. And our dark-skinned brothers were already ready to accept Holy Baptism, but then, the missionaries explained to them that they would have to part with their wives, they had to leave alone, and the rest was not needed. And they say: "Well, what's wrong with that? This is our custom!" There are ancient customs, there are completely new ones - as we often say: "For the second year now, it has become a good tradition..." There are ancient customs that are very good, and there are the most disgusting customs. The very antiquity of the custom, it does not say anything - it is not a matter of antiquity. And in this tribe there was some kind of bewilderment: how could it be, a person could not understand - well, why, what's wrong with that?! Most modern people, brought up in this prodigal atmosphere of our modern civilization, simply do not understand why this is so important. For example, the Apostle Paul says: "All things are lawful to me, but not all things are profitable..." Yes, indeed, a person can do whatever he wants, and it is impossible to forbid a person to do all sorts of things, maybe even "mortal" ones - even if there is a criminal code and prisons, they still do not eradicate all lawlessness. "... Everything is allowed to me, but nothing should possess me" - that is the point! Sin, it has such a property that it enslaves a person. Christ came to earth to set us free from this. What the Apostle Paul says is not addressed to the whole world. The world lives quietly by its fornication, and the result of this prodigal life will neatly be fiery Gehenna – regardless of any other things, thoughts, philosophies, achievements, because fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Moreover, a fornicator is not one who constantly realizes his fornicatory passion, not one who does all this, but one who in his essence, within himself, fornicates, for everyone who looks with lust is already committing adultery. And into this heart, the prodigal, the grace of the Holy Spirit cannot enter it. Why? Because the grace of the Holy Spirit is the energy of God, and the Lord is holy. And spiritual life belongs only to spiritual beings. And fornication is a bestial thing, it is quite an animal experience. And if in the heart of man the main place is occupied not by striving towards God, but by striving towards fornication, then of course – if this is the main thing for man – then surely can God enter into this heart? This is absolutely impossible! And, as the Apostle Paul says, nothing should possess me - except Christ, of course - then a person will inherit eternal life and communion with Christ God. He goes on to say about food: "Food for the belly, and the belly for food..." What amazing words! As if it's not obvious anyway. Yes, indeed, he simply emphasizes that there is a stomach - for what? To digest food. And what is food for? Well, of course, to eat it. But! "... God will destroy both." And indeed, any food product is either eaten or spoiled. And a person with any stomach - no matter how iron it is, capable of digesting nails - will still grow old, and this is all perishable. All this has no eternal importance. And what is a holiday for a modern person - today is the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland - how will people celebrate it? Well, how... well, they will sit down at the table, eat and drink. "Here it is, the highest experience of the holiday!" And here, of course, a kind of spiritual life is added to talk, to communicate. And there is also a touch of a certain spirituality: at least to remember those who, defending this Fatherland, gave their lives. This already belongs to spiritual life, because the souls have gone to the other world, we have remembered them, and thus through this memory of ours we are united with them, with that spiritual world. It is as if we, not performing any podvig ourselves, but honoring their podvig, we thereby have a certain tangential participation in them. But, unfortunately, very little attention is paid to this, and unfortunately it is often so purely formal. Why? Because there is not enough soul for it to occupy the main place... And the main thing is to eat and drink, and if you drank too much, then the opposite effect can also happen in general... "God has raised up the Lord, and He will raise us up also by His power." Yes, He will raise up all, the righteous and the sinners, the chaste and the fornicators. But some go into eternal life, others into eternal punishment. God's will is such that the Lord wants everyone to be saved. Then he says: "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" Why do I say that these words are addressed only to Christians? Because what does "a member of Christ" mean? The Church is the Body of Christ, every Christian is a part of this Body. The Lord Jesus Christ is holy, and His Body must be holy. And so, "Shall I take away the members of Christ, that I may make them the members of the harlot?" As soon as a person enters a state of fornication, even if he does not commit a sin in practice, but only in feeling, he thereby separates himself from the Church, instantly. To do this, there is no need to pronounce an anathema there, as over Gleb Pavlovich, - he excommunicated himself, instantly. Because the grace of God in this sense immediately departs from a person, because we all unite with the Church only through the grace of God, and not through some papers, seals, signatures... Although a visible sign of this seems to exist. Here is confession, prayer of absolution, a person kisses the Cross and the Gospel – this is an external sign that at this moment he is united with the Church. If there is an anathema, a seal, a signature, then this is already an anathema, nothing can be done about it. A person has been excommunicated from the Church... Again, not because he was excommunicated at this moment, he had long ago excommunicated himself from everything, but it is a matter of recording this, so that no one would think, so that no one would think that this person is a Christian, and an Orthodox one at that! So that no one doubts that there can be no other things here. Or there is another "false Ukrainian patriarch". So that no one would think that he is really a patriarch, a Christian - he is just an unbaptized man! Not even a monk, no matter what he wears. You can dress anyone, you can dress Shirvindt - and he will play in films, and he will play no worse, maybe... So when we sin, even in feeling, we already separate ourselves. And so the Apostle Paul wonderfully says, what do we do? To take away the members from Christ and "make them members of the harlot." That is, when a Christian sins by any sin – it is just fornication – it is so obvious, and most disgusting, it looks even blasphemous: a sinning Christian, a person who has been baptized, renounced the devil, united with Christ, then, by sinning, he blasphemes, because he defiles the sanctity of his body (which is truly holy – every Christian is the Body of Christ.. This is the thought that the Apostle Paul pursues. Therefore, when a person sins, he is not just, so to speak, sinning, just by himself, he is sinning against Christ, he is sinning against every member of the Church. That is why the Apostle Paul says - do not communicate with such people at all! In general, you can't even welcome it. Therefore, what kind of unification of the Orthodox Church and the Anglican Church can there be, if they officially have gays "ordained priests" there. Well, how do we connect with them, with this very abomination, or what?! How, what is the possibility? This is not Christianity for a long time! What to unite with? Is this possible? On the contrary, there can be no communication between Light and darkness.. Therefore, if a person sins, and if it becomes known, then he is immediately separated from the Church, because he defiles it all. Because if we greet him as a brother, then the other, knowing his prodigal life, will say: "Ah, since he greets him, then it is possible!" "Do you not know that he who copulates with a harlot becomes one body with her?" Yes, this is indeed so, because God has arranged that those who are united in marriage are united into one flesh. That is why this is impossible, this sin is impossible by virtue of the fact that one becomes one being. "... For it is said, The two shall be one flesh." And he who unites with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord. Why? The Holy Spirit and the grace of God themselves enter into man, and our spirit, man, has communion with the grace of God, with the Holy Spirit. "Flee fornication; every sin that a man commits is outside the body, and the fornicator sins against his own body. Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them, Whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" From the time a person was baptized, he does not belong to himself - he belongs to God. And if he somehow changes his mind, then he must already depart from the Church. Therefore, man hopes in vain... And many live in marriage, as in fornication, why? Well, for example, marriage exists in order to be one of the functions, not the main function, but nevertheless it exists - it is the continuation of the human race. And a person lives in marriage and does not want children to be born. And what does he want? And he only wants to fornicate! That is, marriage becomes only formal, legalized fornication. What difference does it make: buy for a hundred dollars or have a legal one with a stamp in the passport? Because the goal is fornication! Why? Because we want not to give birth to children. Why don't we want to? Well, why? Of course, it is difficult! Hard... Eat a little less, sleep a little less... Got it! You'll put on a little less. And about the vacation - you will have to forget about the vacation for twenty years. Because where can you get away from them? If only you float them somewhere! That is why the Church always says that of all the acts of civil status, marriage is one of the main Sacraments. Yes, God's grace is really needed here. This is the hardest, most difficult feat. Among other things - simply to give birth, to raise, to feed, to clothe (everyone who has children knows how difficult it is) - but, among other things, to raise him as a Christian in such a prodigal environment, to raise a new member of the Church - this is also a spiritual feat, which requires the exertion of all creative, all bodily, all spiritual, all spiritual forces - all! You need to give your soul to it! That is, exactly what the Lord requires: "Whoever lays down his life for his neighbor has no greater love." Indeed, a mother, a father - they must lay down their lives for their child. "And how can I live for myself-me-me?!" So then it turns out to be such pseudo-Christianity: everything seems to be decent, and the hands are well-groomed, and so he crosses himself and rams the icon with his forehead, everything - everything seems to be... All! And what's inside? And inside there is a coffin made up: a person who consciously distorts marriage, consciously rejects the Christian feat... No one says: "You must go to the Northern Thebaid, live there in the Ferapontov Monastery, eat hominy there, make a thousand and a half prostrations a day, do not eat or drink, and also work in between services." No! What is required? A very simple thing: if you get married, please give birth to children, bring them up, do your best, and so on. And you, since you got married, then provide for the family. If the frosts are severe, buy a fur coat. That is, not only nourish it, but also warm it. I have to buy a fur coat! Not just what, but a direct duty before God - that a husband should love his wife... "Why?" You can arrange everything very decently, and even have friends among the people of the church, and go to church, but live in fornication. You can marry all this, please. There, you paid money - and you will be married: sometimes for five hundred, sometimes for two hundred and fifty, and that's it. And everything seems to be legal, all the seals are kept - but the grace of God will never enter the heart! Because you will deceive no one, no one: neither your children, nor God! And no life will be arranged: all this is rotten anyway, it will all fall apart. Why? Because it is not natural, it is not real, it is all polyethylene and plastic, it is nothing - it has nothing to do with spiritual life. Therefore, relations with God must be honest and sincere. If you do not understand something, perhaps this is what the Church exists for - in order to teach us all. There is the Holy Scriptures, the epistles... And if we want to truly preserve our body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, you see: this body is not something like some Eastern religion teaches, a kind of case that must then be thrown off. No! Our body is a temple. This is a shrine! It is not without reason that the Lord often arranges that the bodies of saints are even incorruptible. And hundreds of years pass, and people venerate them and pray before them, venerating this shrine, this body, which is already dead, dried. And why? Because at one time the abundant grace of God was present in this body, and traces of this are preserved, and we draw from the holy relics this grace of God. We apply ourselves to them, and not just purely mechanical diffusion occurs there, no! - All this is done in the heart of man. Just as through the commemoration of the departed soldiers we become indirectly involved in this podvig through our respect and veneration of it, so it is here: through the veneration of this holy object, a certain grace of God comes into contact with our hearts. This is what it means - the body of a Christian! Therefore, a Christian, if he wants to be such, if he does not want the grace of God to depart from him, if he does not want to be, like the Pharisee, a tomb painted over – he must repent of this. He must correct his life. Or he must be perfectly aware of who he is: he must take the cross off his neck and no longer wear it. Why? Because either you are a Christian or you are not a Christian. Because a Christian is not required to do beyond natural morality, beyond natural feats. No! The Lord demands of us only what He has in us. He just doesn't want us to be worse than the way He designed us to be. And each of us always knows perfectly well within his conscience: where he was right and where he was wrong, where he justifies himself, indulging his weaknesses, and where he is not guilty. That's how important it is. The parable that the Holy Church reads today in all churches says that the youngest son, by whom is meant all sinful humanity, left God the Father for a distant country and squandered his possessions, living in fornication. Often a person, living in fornication, thinks that he will get joy from it. And not only living in fornication, but sinning in general, a person thinks that he is doing what he wants, and gains freedom. In fact, he is becoming more and more enslaved, becoming, unfortunately, a slave of the devil. And this parable, it tells us that the Lord is not the Judge. Because if each of us is judged, fluff and feathers will fly, there will be no stone left unturned, and we must all be killed for our sins. The Lord is a loving Father who is angry with us for our sins, but wants our salvation. Who punishes us, and admonishes us, gives us some difficult circumstances, each of us - necessarily each of us - will allow us to feel all the consequences of our own sins. Again, by his mercy. Everyone wants to sin somehow, and so that there are no consequences. But people have long noticed that no matter how much the rope twists, it will still end! And every stick has two ends... Not a single person will slip through life in such a way that he will sin, and that he will receive from life what some righteous person would have received, could hope to receive. No! Everyone will drink their own cup! Some more, some less, but everyone here on Earth will still receive for their sins - this is completely inevitable. Either by himself or in his own children, and this is especially painful: when a person sees the disintegration of his own children and understands that this is a consequence of his sins! It is even more difficult, but some people cannot be overcome in any other way - they will not think about their sin in any other way, so the Lord is forced - this is how such suppuration happens, when you need to chisel a bone, because otherwise you can't do anything, you need to clean it all out, because otherwise there will be gangrene - and the Lord is not that He is so evil and wants to do this: "Oh, you're so! No, the Lord does not take revenge, He wants to cleanse us, to cleanse us - because when a person suffers, he has no time for sin. Therefore, the One Who wants to cleanse us from sin, He allows us to suffer, no matter how much it hurts Him, no matter how much He empathizes with us – and the fact that He empathizes with us, do you know how He suffered when Lazarus died – although Lazarus can die without the will of God? No, but He is compassionate, He is compassionate... We are like crazy children to whom you can tell or not that you can't run across the road, that you need to look - no, he runs and is hit by a car. Well, do you understand now? But to understand this, is it necessary for everyone to get hit by a car or what? Of course not. You can believe a little, a little: believe your father a little, believe your mother that you don't need to do this. You have to believe it! And each of us needs to believe our heavenly Father a little bit, that if He says this, then it means it is so. This is not a joke at all - Gehenna of fire and a worm that does not sleep. These are not laughter at all, these are very serious things, and we often abstract from this, and in general, certain habitual images become for us, and in general, the Church no longer responds strongly enough to this... This younger son, under whom each of us is hidden, and this parable can be viewed in such a way that the eldest son is the people of Israel, the younger son is the Gentiles. It can be viewed in such a way that the eldest son is the one who is already churched, goes to church, and the younger son is the one who came right out of the cold and wants to get everything here at once, what he should rightfully be entitled to... But this is also about our every day and every hour of our life, because - well, how do we live? For example, we have come to church and are standing at the Divine Liturgy, and during this standing many times our mind and our heart "go to a country far away" from the Heavenly Father. They return to their thoughts, return to their affairs; sometimes they run away so far that the entire service passes, then the person wakes up like this: "And where have I been?" because, as John Chrysostom said: "With his body he is in church, and with his mind in the market" - what to buy, what to sell, who told me what, and all sorts of worldly cares. And some of them just sometimes stand in church, and are bathed in prodigal thoughts - that is, they have completely forgotten what they need to do in church. That is, this parable is even about this, what happens to our mind. This can be seen in such a way that, as the Apostle Paul says, there is both the "old man" and the "new man" in us. So, if we consider the "new man" in us, who was born in us as a result of our faith, then yes - Christ lives in us, and therefore we strive to come to church, and pray, and cleanse our souls with the Sacrament of Repentance, and commune of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, and buy some book about the spiritual life in order to read it - this is all new. what was born in us, in some a long time, in some recently. And there is also the "old man" who pulls us back, who lives a completely different life. And in each of us there is this schizophrenia, this duality, and we need to strive for chastity, so that a person is whole, holy. So that this "old man" would die in us completely. This is what you need to strive for! We can consider this parable in this way. But what a mercy of God, how the Lord meets us! If we - or in our minds suddenly return to God again: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" and again our thoughts into ashes, and our mind into ... - The Lord immediately comes out to meet us, and immediately the grace of God comes and immediately cleanses us from bad thoughts, and from worthless feelings, and so on and so forth... - And again our mind sobers up, and again all dreams fade away. Each time we must not feed these fat pigs with horns our thoughts and sinful feelings, but constantly strive to return to the Father's house, and this is what spiritual life actually consists of. For example, the Lord gave the thief the opportunity to repent, and after that he was immediately killed, and could no longer return to that former sinful life - and for a person who is not capable of this repentance, the Lord sometimes prolongs his life - he hopes that maybe he will still live somehow, suffer, understand something in life, maybe his conscience will awaken in him and return to the sources of his life. And we must work on this - and this is the work of the soul, because when we swim after our thoughts, after our sinful feelings, we are, as many of us say, and this is the right word - "we are carried". "Here it is" means that they began to condemn someone, to swear at someone, to get angry and so on - to be in some kind of sinful feeling: either anger, or envy, or fornication, and so on and so forth... We are literally carried along the waves, that is, it does not require any effort from us. And to be a Christian is always an effort, it is always to slow down, it is always to turn in the other direction, it is always to swim against the current, it is always to do it against oneself, against one's will. Why is it so hard? Because we are sinners. It is easy for a sinner to sin - this is such a tragedy, the drama of our human life. And one could have completely despaired if it had not been for the Lord, if not for the All-Merciful Lord, Who meets us and is ready to return to us again our garments, which affirm us in filial dignity, in adoption by God Himself, and give us a ring on our hand, and kill a well-fed calf! Just think about what kind of food the Church offers us - to us, sinners, who, in fact, according to the canons in the Church, are not only halved, this is our large meeting - but in general, to leave, perhaps, two dozen people, and the rest all there, not even in the churchyard, but there - behind the iron fence, there, closer to the public toilet. This, according to the rules of the Church, is what place we should occupy - we, all of us. This is not only fair - it is quite canonical. This is our place there... And we are the Lord, by His mercy, not that which brings us into church, not that which nourishes us with our grace-filled Divine services, but is also ready to cleanse us at confession, if we bring our repentance, if we really want to improve, and not just to complain to the priest about our sinful life! "Here, father, you know - I am such a sinner, and this is a sin for me..." Of course, the priest nods - the priest is the same, in fact, a sinner, so he sympathizes: "Yes, they say that I am a sinner, and maybe even more sinful"; The priest is embarrassed to discuss this somehow - the doctor does not tell the patient about his illnesses, so they talked, nodded and that's it. This is not enough. It is necessary that there be repentance. After all, repentance is not a feeling, because there is a special term called a feeling of repentance. And this is an important component, but still repentance is not a feeling of repentance. Therefore, to hollow out your chest in such a way as to squeeze out something so soulful, so compassionate to yourself - this is not enough. One must very calmly and soberly force oneself to fulfill the Will of God. You need to force yourself to correct your sinful life. And of course, this requires the Power of God, you need to pray to God for this. We cannot fix our insides ourselves, we cannot, for example, get rid of the feeling of revenge. For example, there is a feeling of revenge - here is a person who has done something to me, and I want to make him understand that I understand what he has done, and, as they say in politics, "take adequate measures against him." So that he knows! That's the feeling I have for him. But if I am a Christian, can I not apply these "adequate measures" to him? Can. If I do this, it means that I forgive him. But! If I have done this, it is good, but it is not enough and I still need to get rid of the feeling. But here I need to pray to God: "Lord, I am a sinful man, but I want to be a Christian. And you can see that I want to be a Christian, instead of kicking him in the mouth, I forgave him. Although I still want to kick in the teeth. And so I ask Thee to deliver me from this feeling, from this desire to kick him in the teeth, although - it is evident from everything and no matter who I tell - it is absolutely fair that if I give him a kick in the teeth, then no one will not only not condemn me, but will say that I did not give enough, I should have done more. But if I want to live like a Christian, I have to sweep it aside." But you need to have the courage to do this... That is why our Venerable Seraphim used to say that Christians, who are still contemporary with him – there is nothing to say about us – lack determination, determination to do the simplest things, the most elementary ones. That is, we have been so surrounded by this sinful outward life of ours, so much has the whole level of morality in general fallen so endlessly, that even our efforts are to drag ourselves to church, or put a piece of sausage aside, and it seems to us that we are almost righteous, not saints, and so on. But the Word of God, it remains the Word of God - what sin is, that is, sin, and there is nothing you can do about it. Of course, we have to use more effort to make this jelly, which is our soul, in order to give it at least some form. This, of course, is very difficult for us. And the Lord knows this, so nothing is required of us, no podvigs. If a person in our times takes upon himself some feats, then in 99 percent it is either out of madness or out of pride. Simply, straightforwardly, you can't think of a way to live in a Christian way! The smallest thing that is required for piety is to be saved by what is around: here is my family, here are my children, here is my work, here is my church - the field of activity for each of us is enormous. There is no need to invent anything, to look for anything - salvation, it lies right here. But! But you need to be honest. You don't need to deceive yourself or your neighbors, let alone the Lord God, of course! This parable says that the Lord knows our deceit, that the Lord respects our freedom: each of us can go "to a distant country", each of us can do whatever he wants, each of us can decide everything as he likes, live as he pleases. But salvation is only for those who want to be saved. And whoever wants to be saved must feel that not everyone who comes to church will be saved, no matter how sad it may be. There are cases when a person who does not go to church can be saved - there have been such cases. Therefore, our very coming here, although it testifies to our good intention, is not enough. Why? Because it would be too simple: make a pilgrimage to Mecca - and you are already a khoja?! No! No, this is too little, this is external. The Lord wants us to renounce sin inside, to renounce it within ourselves, to renounce it - for Christ's sake... ... Even if you are a ninety-year-old man, you can always repent! The question is: "And where is justice then?" One, there, all his life, went to church, prayed - this is how the elder brother thinks - and... At least. And the other was lying paralyzed, he had already received communion... And what happened? "I," he said, "went to church and prayed, and this one just took communion, on his sickbed, and he went to the Kingdom of Heaven, or what?" Are you sorry? Are you greedy? Is this your kingdom of heaven and not mine? Is this what envy says in you? Yes? Envy... Do you regret that you went to church?" Yes, the fact that you went to church (as one village grandmother told me: "The more you go to church, so many times you will be in the Kingdom of Heaven!"), for many of us who will not see the Kingdom of God as their ears - the fact that we have been here, in this church, will be what we will live there, in that darkness, that awaits us! Because this too is the Kingdom of Heaven – in its perfect, fullest power! We just can't realize it yet. So it often happens that a person got a "three" in the first year, and when he retakes it in the fifth, he gets a "five" for the same exam. Why? But he has become five years wiser, everything is much easier for him, he has mastered all this. This is a completely natural phenomenon. So it is with us: we will live by this, we will live by what we have seen here, heard, prayed for, tasted – we will live by this: by the remembrance of the opportunity that was given to all of us. Do not regret that we went to church "in vain"! "We walked and walked - and nothing came of it!" ... No, it is everyone who has come to church at least once - this is such a blessing that cannot be compared with anything else in this world at all! If you put all this Earth on one side of the scales, with all these wonderful achievements, and one visit to the temple on the other side, then this Earth can be burned, the whole thing - it is so precious that it is. But we cannot even think on such a scale, due to our limitations. We can only take our word for it and say: "Father gave such a hyperbole." That's all. Because this can only be evaluated from there, from hell, it can only be really appreciated - what is given to us now. That is, the Lord, in His Fatherly mercy, is ready to give us everything! He - now we are completely unworthy! - but He gives us the Kingdom, He gives us Divine food, which even angels do not have. And only to melt our hearts. So that we would want to do something, in gratitude to our Heavenly Father, in order to correct something in our lives, even if we do not reach the Kingdom of Heaven. If we fix what we fix, it won't be enough, but it doesn't matter. This correction will still be a striving for good, and the Lord will notice it anyway. And after all, the abodes in the Kingdom of Heaven are different... In the underworld, too, the abodes are different. And the great prophet of God Moses, and Enoch, and even Abraham himself, and even John the Baptist - all were in hell! Everyone was in hell until the Lord Himself descended into hell, until He brought them out of there. Everyone - some a thousand years, some seven hundred, some five hundred - all the Old Testament righteous and saints - all were in hell. These are, of course, different monasteries. Therefore, even if the Kingdom of Heaven does not await us, then there are also different abodes in the underworld. And with God nothing will be lost: not one of our thoughts in our hearts, not one of our slightest improvements. Although you should not think that it is mechanical or automatic... The Holy Fathers said: "From earth to heaven there is often one breath...", but this sigh must be very deep. Indeed, it is not some kind of exalted experience, not this, not the seething of feelings that is some kind of achievement and result - feelings can be influenced by some kind of autogenic training - all this has no value, but only a real determination for correction, for repentance. Help us in this, Lord!

Sermon on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers (January 3, 1998)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Today's Sunday is called the week before Christmas, the week of the Holy Fathers. We usually call the teachers of the Church the Holy Fathers, but here we mean people who belonged to the family from which the Savior came. Why do we remember them? Because although sin was active in each of them, as in any person, as in us, at the same time they lived in anticipation of the coming of the Savior, the Messiah, the Deliverer, and this main idea of their life was a guiding star for them. They sinned, because in those days they did not have the opportunity to partake of the grace of God, as we do now, but nevertheless they knew how to repent of their sins and mourn them truly. They waited for Christ the Savior, they waited for the forgiveness of their sins, and although they were mistaken on this path, the main thing for them was this expectation, which was passed down from generation to generation and began with Abraham. Abraham was not a righteous man, but God imputed his faith to him as righteousness, because at that time there were fewer believers in the whole earth than fingers on one hand, and, despite his sins and some human infirmities, Abraham had this main virtue, which almost no one living at that time had. He constantly prayed to the one God and, being already old, believed when the Lord said that he would have a child and that from him would come a whole generation, from which the Savior of the world would come. We often doubt both God's mercies and many important foundations of our faith, but Abraham did not doubt the words of the Lord. And when a son was born to him, and the Lord commanded, "Go and offer him to Me as a sacrifice," Abraham did not say, "If I sacrifice my son, how will the generation come from me?" He was a man of indestructible faith, and it was imputed to him as righteousness, the Holy Church calls him the father of all believers. Therefore, Abraham can be such an example for us, although he had weaknesses, infirmities, and all sorts of errors. Those who read the Old Testament often do not understand how such a person can be among the righteous. From our Christian point of view, what he did in his life is unacceptable. But we forget that that era was not Christian, but the era of the most terrible paganism, when such terrible and terrible outrages and such sins were committed, which are scary to read about, and if you live in the midst of this, you can simply turn gray with horror. And all the infirmities of Abraham simply pale in comparison with the iniquities with which the earth was overflowing. So did King David, and King Solomon, and all the others who were listed in this genealogy of Jesus. The born Christ sanctifies all mankind by His birth, but especially in His race rests the grace of the Lord, for the hope of salvation was present in each of those people who stand in the chain of Christ's race, and each of them served for His coming, prepared it in some way. The Virgin Mother of God could not have come from a bad family, because the apple falls not far from the apple tree. And in Her birth all the best that was in them was embodied. What lesson can we learn from this? The biggest problem for us is our family, our children. Some spiritual people call children the plague of the twentieth century. Now what the Apostle Paul spoke of is happening: "In the last days... people will be haughty, slanderous, disobedient to parents." If you talk to teachers who have been working for a long time, they say that today's children are really completely different. And even if you devote your whole life to raising your child, it turns out to be difficult, because the environment is just scary. What should we do? What forces should be put into ensuring that our race also lives in anticipation of the coming of Christ the Savior into our hearts? How to pass on the love of God to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren? You can only pass on what you have. Therefore, all attempts at education will be unsuccessful if a person does not learn what he wants to instill in his children. And if he cannot teach, show, if he cannot give the child the opportunity to feel Christ, then punishment awaits him. It lies in the fact that when the child grows up, parents will look at his tricks all his life, will see everything that they have not reported to him, that they have not been able to do, and suffer from it. And many of us agonize when we look at our children, but this does not mean that we should despair and lose hope. After all, many came to God at a late age, and some half, some third, some two-thirds of their lives spent who knows where and who knows how. What should be demanded of children when they saw that this most important part of their lives was lived by their parents without prayer, without God? And now we are trying to force them to Christ, to force them to act as we would like? This is unthinkable and useless. It is always better to build from the beginning. But if you build poorly, then you will have to redo everything later, which is always more difficult, and tedious, and associated with high costs. And since we started late, it's not surprising if we don't do well. But there is no need to despair, because we do not build ourselves, but with God's help. And our main zeal, our main work should consist in prayer for children. The first thing, the most important thing, is that children need to be begged for. The second thing is a good example. What happened to the American, Australian, French, Russian, Tatar children? Why is the same process going on in all of them? Why is morality falling so quickly? The morality of Pushkin's era is not much higher than the morality of Nekrasov's era, and now we observe such failures every ten years, which is simply surprising. Take, for example, drunkenness. Statistics say that in the 50th year they drank 10 times less than in the 65th. This is one sin, and it is better not to touch the rest, it is even shameful and shameful to talk about it. Children do not have a good example. For example, a child is lying in a stroller, with his legs and arms twisting, and, of course, he is not a drunkard, not a drug addict, he is not a villain, not a blasphemer, not a foul-mouthed, not a thief. And even if his father is a robber, and his mother also leaves much to be desired, he is still a child, he is an angel. His soul is pure, although, of course, there is a tendency to sin, like any other person. But now the child finds himself in the atmosphere of our world, and what does he see? He grows up among swearing, squabbles, mutual resentment and constant lies. The child goes outside, and what does he hear? Already in the sandbox, all sorts of battles begin, one breaks the other. The mother said: "And you give him a kick, and you don't mess with it." If the children are older, then all you hear is: fool, fool. And in such terrible voices that you think: are they children? Here is the child turning on the TV. What moral qualities are instilled there, what do they show? A movie about love? And how is this love expressed? In only fornication. And so the whole world, everything that surrounds the child: books, and relations between children at school and in the family, is aimed at corrupting him and killing holiness in him. Where can he, poor man, go? They protect him from the church in every possible way, and if he does come there, some aunt will immediately run into him: where did he get up? Don't touch... And his heart absorbs only anger, envy, irritation, only rudeness, only lies. And of course, the heart cannot stand it; He becomes angry, withdrawn, goes into bad companies. These companies are semi-criminal, but they still have some semblance of human relations, although the guys say obscene words, and elevators are broken, and entrances are painted. And then, of course, tobacco, and booze, and drugs begin, then fornication, and then prison. It's all very close and close. And looking at him lying in a wheelchair, would you think that at the age of 17 he would go to jail for theft? No, it doesn't even occur to me. Therefore, parents, if they really want to raise a child, must create an atmosphere of paradise at home, so that wherever he is, whatever he does, he compares life in the world and life at home as hell and heaven. So that he feels good at home, so that there is an atmosphere of love, peace, patience, humility, meekness, prayer, mercy. And how do we do it? Some parents force their children to pray, swear, shout; They think that this is how something good can be instilled. And as a result, the mere mention of God causes torment in the child. Some times a year a child is brought to church, he is twisted, he yells, breaks out. Communion at all costs! So what? He will only remember the church with horror. And many adults remember it as something terrible, because they were grabbed, tied up, brought somewhere, stuck in their mouths; Wild screaming, fear, unfamiliar surroundings, many people, lights burning... This is not how it is done. If we want our lineage to continue, our faith not to fade away, so that our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren also come to Christ, we must set an example of Christian life in at least something, we must be strikingly different from worldly people, but not hypocritically, not put on some kind of mask, because a child cannot be deceived. Children, by virtue of their angelic state, are clairvoyant beings, spiritual things are open to them, which have long been closed to adults through their sin. Therefore, they perfectly feel people, relationships, perfectly understand lies, hypocrisy, but they understand not with their minds, but directly with their souls. Therefore, the only way to raise children correctly is to start education with themselves. And if this does not happen, then no persuasion, shouting, punishment, beating will give anything and we will look at our child for the rest of our lives and, as in a mirror, see ourselves. Everything that is in us will be there, look and admire. And this is very difficult and painful. Why did the Lord arrange it this way? Because otherwise you can't get through us! Yes, we love our children and wish them well, but each parent molds his child in his own image and likeness, because, except for himself, he knows nothing and cannot do something that he does not possess himself. Education does not consist in moralizing, not in telling how to do it, but in showing it. And here the Lord God Himself is an example for us. After all, He does not force us, He does not force us to do anything, He simply shows what beauty God's creation is. Everything that the Lord has created is always beautiful and always perfect. In order to paint a picture, an artist needs to think about the composition, about the color, and the Lord has a beautiful landscape everywhere in His creation, everything is harmonious and harmonious. How amazing it is! Or when the birds in the forest sing, we hear that wonderful music is made! And so everywhere we look. Is it to the sky - what beauty, what can be more beautiful than the stars? Or the sun, a tree, a butterfly or a lizard! Whatever God has created is all beautiful and supremely perfect! But earthly life is a pitiful reflection of heavenly life. This is how the Lord calls us to beauty. Christ did not drive anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, He simply told. Whoever willed, accepted; Whoever did not want to, did not accept. The Lord respects the freedom of man. And education can only be associated with respect for freedom, and not with the suppression of a person. It is necessary to respect your child, because without it there can be no love, but only a manifestation of self-love, your own egoism and the desire to crush a person and make him what you want. This does not mean that the child should not be punished, there should be no need to force him to do anything: let him grow, they say. No, it is necessary to punish and to coerce, but punishment must be associated with love, as the Lord does. After all, he also punishes us, but in such a way that we draw conclusions from it, understand it ourselves. Therefore, many of us already in adulthood or even in old age begin to understand something: why something happened, why it happened. If a person comes to church for the first time and thinks: "Why do I need this?" then when he comes for the hundredth time, he already knows why. And he begins to understand that he needs to correct himself so that the same thing does not happen again in the future. These are the reflections that the Sunday of the Holy Fathers should lead us to. The generation of Christ brought forth perfect fruit. The Lord Jesus Christ was able to become incarnate from the Virgin Mary and come into the world. And our lineage can also bear worthy fruit. We must dedicate our children to God, we must also work to ensure that the Holy Spirit visits them, we must try to instill holiness in them, to show them, to reveal to them this heavenly beauty. The fact that holiness, kindness, and love have become scarce in the world has a bad effect on our children, and because of this impoverishment, all the evil that we see occurs. Of course, you can set up stadiums, arrange all sorts of circles, sections, art studios, music schools. But this will not save at all, it will only be a temporary distraction of a certain group of children from their fruitless pastime. Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can protect from evil. For example, children in rich countries have everything: stadiums, discos, money, any clothes, whatever, but this does not affect morality in any way. And our children can be given everything, everything can be built, but kindness, love, humility, meekness, patience, grace will not be added by this one iota. They think that children have nowhere else to be except for the entrance, but we will build clubs - and they will immediately become good. This is an insane hope. How many times have they tried to feed everyone, believing that then crime will disappear. But crimes suddenly begin to be committed by very rich people, children of very wealthy parents. And we often read in the newspapers: Minister So-and-so stole. It would seem, well, where else can he go, and everything is already there. And why? Because no worldly well-being adds morality, but only the grace of the Holy Spirit. And this is what we need to work on. Then our race will not be impoverished by the grace of God, but, on the contrary, it will be possible to hope that our children will still multiply what we have managed to acquire in our lives. Lord, help me!

Articles, speeches

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Today's Sunday is called the week before Christmas, the week of the Holy Fathers. We usually call the teachers of the Church the Holy Fathers, but here we mean people who belonged to the family from which the Savior came. Why do we remember them? Because although sin was active in each of them, as in any person, as in us, at the same time they lived in anticipation of the coming of the Savior, the Messiah, the Deliverer, and this main idea of their life was a guiding star for them. They sinned, because in those days they did not have the opportunity to partake of the grace of God, as we do now, but nevertheless they knew how to repent of their sins and mourn them truly. They waited for Christ the Savior, they waited for the forgiveness of their sins, and although they were mistaken on this path, the main thing for them was this expectation, which was passed down from generation to generation and began with Abraham. Abraham was not a righteous man, but God imputed his faith to him as righteousness, because at that time there were fewer believers in the whole earth than fingers on one hand, and, despite his sins and some human infirmities, Abraham had this main virtue, which almost no one living at that time had. He constantly prayed to the one God and, being already old, believed when the Lord said that he would have a child and that from him would come a whole generation, from which the Savior of the world would come. We often doubt both God's mercies and many important foundations of our faith, but Abraham did not doubt the words of the Lord. And when a son was born to him, and the Lord commanded, "Go and offer him to Me as a sacrifice," Abraham did not say, "If I sacrifice my son, how will the generation come from me?" He was a man of indestructible faith, and it was imputed to him as righteousness, the Holy Church calls him the father of all believers. Therefore, Abraham can be such an example for us, although he had weaknesses, infirmities, and all sorts of errors. Those who read the Old Testament often do not understand how such a person can be among the righteous. From our Christian point of view, what he did in his life is unacceptable. But we forget that that era was not Christian, but the era of the most terrible paganism, when such terrible and terrible outrages and such sins were committed, which are scary to read about, and if you live in the midst of this, you can simply turn gray with horror. And all the infirmities of Abraham simply pale in comparison with the iniquities with which the earth was overflowing. So did King David, and King Solomon, and all the others who were listed in this genealogy of Jesus. The born Christ sanctifies all mankind by His birth, but especially in His race rests the grace of the Lord, for the hope of salvation was present in each of those people who stand in the chain of Christ's race, and each of them served for His coming, prepared it in some way. The Virgin Mother of God could not have come from a bad family, because the apple falls not far from the apple tree. And in Her birth all the best that was in them was embodied. What lesson can we learn from this? The biggest problem for us is our family, our children. Some spiritual people call children the plague of the twentieth century. Now what the Apostle Paul spoke of is happening: "In the last days... people will be haughty, slanderous, disobedient to parents." If you talk to teachers who have been working for a long time, they say that today's children are really completely different. And even if you devote your whole life to raising your child, it turns out to be difficult, because the environment is just scary. What should we do? What forces should be put into ensuring that our race also lives in anticipation of the coming of Christ the Savior into our hearts? How to pass on the love of God to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren? You can only pass on what you have. Therefore, all attempts at education will be unsuccessful if a person does not learn what he wants to instill in his children. And if he cannot teach, show, if he cannot give the child the opportunity to feel Christ, then punishment awaits him. It lies in the fact that when the child grows up, parents will look at his tricks all his life, will see everything that they have not reported to him, that they have not been able to do, and suffer from it. And many of us agonize when we look at our children, but this does not mean that we should despair and lose hope. After all, many came to God at a late age, and some half, some third, some two-thirds of their lives spent who knows where and who knows how. What should be demanded of children when they saw that this most important part of their lives was lived by their parents without prayer, without God? And now we are trying to force them to Christ, to force them to act as we would like? This is unthinkable and useless. It is always better to build from the beginning. But if you build poorly, then you will have to redo everything later, which is always more difficult, and tedious, and associated with high costs. And since we started late, it's not surprising if we don't do well. But there is no need to despair, because we do not build ourselves, but with God's help. And our main zeal, our main work should consist in prayer for children. The first thing, the most important thing, is that children need to be begged for. The second thing is a good example. What happened to the American, Australian, French, Russian, Tatar children? Why is the same process going on in all of them? Why is morality falling so quickly? The morality of Pushkin's era is not much higher than the morality of Nekrasov's era, and now we observe such failures every ten years, which is simply surprising. Take, for example, drunkenness. Statistics say that in the 50th year they drank 10 times less than in the 65th. This is one sin, and it is better not to touch the rest, it is even shameful and shameful to talk about it. Children do not have a good example. For example, a child is lying in a stroller, with his legs and arms twisting, and, of course, he is not a drunkard, not a drug addict, he is not a villain, not a blasphemer, not a foul-mouthed, not a thief. And even if his father is a robber, and his mother also leaves much to be desired, he is still a child, he is an angel. His soul is pure, although, of course, there is a tendency to sin, like any other person. But now the child finds himself in the atmosphere of our world, and what does he see? He grows up among swearing, squabbles, mutual resentment and constant lies. The child goes outside, and what does he hear? Already in the sandbox, all sorts of battles begin, one breaks the other. The mother said: "And you give him a kick, and you don't mess with it." If the children are older, then all you hear is: fool, fool. And in such terrible voices that you think: are they children? Here is the child turning on the TV. What moral qualities are instilled there, what do they show? A movie about love? And how is this love expressed? In only fornication. And so the whole world, everything that surrounds the child: books, and relations between children at school and in the family, is aimed at corrupting him and killing holiness in him. Where can he, poor man, go? They protect him from the church in every possible way, and if he does come there, some aunt will immediately run into him: where did he get up? Don't touch... And his heart absorbs only anger, envy, irritation, only rudeness, only lies. And of course, the heart cannot stand it; He becomes angry, withdrawn, goes into bad companies. These companies are semi-criminal, but they still have some semblance of human relations, although the guys say obscene words, and elevators are broken, and entrances are painted. And then, of course, tobacco, and booze, and drugs begin, then fornication, and then prison. It's all very close and close. And looking at him lying in a wheelchair, would you think that at the age of 17 he would go to jail for theft? No, it doesn't even occur to me. Therefore, parents, if they really want to raise a child, must create an atmosphere of paradise at home, so that wherever he is, whatever he does, he compares life in the world and life at home as hell and heaven. So that he feels good at home, so that there is an atmosphere of love, peace, patience, humility, meekness, prayer, mercy. And how do we do it? Some parents force their children to pray, swear, shout; They think that this is how something good can be instilled. And as a result, the mere mention of God causes torment in the child. Some times a year a child is brought to church, he is twisted, he yells, breaks out. Communion at all costs! So what? He will only remember the church with horror. And many adults remember it as something terrible, because they were grabbed, tied up, brought somewhere, stuck in their mouths; Wild screaming, fear, unfamiliar surroundings, many people, lights burning... This is not how it is done. If we want our lineage to continue, our faith not to fade away, so that our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren also come to Christ, we must set an example of Christian life in at least something, we must be strikingly different from worldly people, but not hypocritically, not put on some kind of mask, because a child cannot be deceived. Children, by virtue of their angelic state, are clairvoyant beings, spiritual things are open to them, which have long been closed to adults through their sin. Therefore, they perfectly feel people, relationships, perfectly understand lies, hypocrisy, but they understand not with their minds, but directly with their souls. Therefore, the only way to raise children correctly is to start education with themselves. And if this does not happen, then no persuasion, shouting, punishment, beating will give anything and we will look at our child for the rest of our lives and, as in a mirror, see ourselves. Everything that is in us will be there, look and admire. And this is very difficult and painful. Why did the Lord arrange it this way? Because otherwise you can't get through us! Yes, we love our children and wish them well, but each parent molds his child in his own image and likeness, because, except for himself, he knows nothing and cannot do something that he does not possess himself. Education does not consist in moralizing, not in telling how to do it, but in showing it. And here the Lord God Himself is an example for us. After all, He does not force us, He does not force us to do anything, He simply shows what beauty God's creation is. Everything that the Lord has created is always beautiful and always perfect. In order to paint a picture, an artist needs to think about the composition, about the color, and the Lord has a beautiful landscape everywhere in His creation, everything is harmonious and harmonious. How amazing it is! Or when the birds in the forest sing, we hear that wonderful music is made! And so everywhere we look. Is it to the sky - what beauty, what can be more beautiful than the stars? Or the sun, a tree, a butterfly or a lizard! Whatever God has created is all beautiful and supremely perfect! But earthly life is a pitiful reflection of heavenly life. This is how the Lord calls us to beauty. Christ did not drive anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, He simply told. Whoever willed, accepted; Whoever did not want to, did not accept. The Lord respects the freedom of man. And education can only be associated with respect for freedom, and not with the suppression of a person. It is necessary to respect your child, because without it there can be no love, but only a manifestation of self-love, your own egoism and the desire to crush a person and make him what you want. This does not mean that the child should not be punished, there should be no need to force him to do anything: let him grow, they say. No, it is necessary to punish and to coerce, but punishment must be associated with love, as the Lord does. After all, he also punishes us, but in such a way that we draw conclusions from it, understand it ourselves. Therefore, many of us already in adulthood or even in old age begin to understand something: why something happened, why it happened. If a person comes to church for the first time and thinks: "Why do I need this?" then when he comes for the hundredth time, he already knows why. And he begins to understand that he needs to correct himself so that the same thing does not happen again in the future. These are the reflections that the Sunday of the Holy Fathers should lead us to. The generation of Christ brought forth perfect fruit. The Lord Jesus Christ was able to become incarnate from the Virgin Mary and come into the world. And our lineage can also bear worthy fruit. We must dedicate our children to God, we must also work to ensure that the Holy Spirit visits them, we must try to instill holiness in them, to show them, to reveal to them this heavenly beauty. The fact that holiness, kindness, and love have become scarce in the world has a bad effect on our children, and because of this impoverishment, all the evil that we see occurs. Of course, you can set up stadiums, arrange all sorts of circles, sections, art studios, music schools. But this will not save at all, it will only be a temporary distraction of a certain group of children from their fruitless pastime. Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can protect from evil. For example, children in rich countries have everything: stadiums, discos, money, any clothes, whatever, but this does not affect morality in any way. And our children can be given everything, everything can be built, but kindness, love, humility, meekness, patience, grace will not be added by this one iota. They think that children have nowhere else to be except for the entrance, but we will build clubs - and they will immediately become good. This is an insane hope. How many times have they tried to feed everyone, believing that then crime will disappear. But crimes suddenly begin to be committed by very rich people, children of very wealthy parents. And we often read in the newspapers: Minister So-and-so stole. It would seem, well, where else can he go, and everything is already there. And why? Because no worldly well-being adds morality, but only the grace of the Holy Spirit. And this is what we need to work on. Then our race will not be impoverished by the grace of God, but, on the contrary, it will be possible to hope that our children will still multiply what we have managed to acquire in our lives. Lord, help me!

Pharisaic hypocrisy