And He will reveal to him His mysteries – the mysteries of Divine wisdom, the venerable Trinity, the economy of salvation, its assimilation, the mysteries of sin and virtue, the providence of intellectual and material creatures, and in general the entire Divine order of things, as it is depicted in detail in St. Isaac the Syrian in his Epistle to Simeon. "When the mind is renewed and the heart is sanctified... then the spiritual knowledge of the creatures is felt, the contemplation of the mysteries of the Holy Trinity shines forth in him with the mysteries of the care it worships for us, and then he receives an all-perfect knowledge of the hope of the future. Such a person does not study, does not investigate, but contemplates the glory of Christ, enjoys the pleasure of contemplating the mysteries of the new world. Such perfection of knowledge comes with the reception of the Spirit, Who leads our spirit into that world, order, or realm of contemplation" [19]. The Holy Spirit takes away the veil from the soul, raptures it in this age, and shows it all that is wondrous.

Thus, it is now evident that the grace that comes to the convert through the Sacraments unites with him and first allows him to taste all the sweetness of the life according to God, and then hides its presence from him, leaving him to act as if alone, amidst labor, sweat, perplexity, and even fall; finally, after this period of probation, it dwells in him clearly, actively, strongly, tangibly.

The question arises: what is the reason that the grace of God does not suddenly dwell completely, or, what is the same thing, that the triumph of the soul's full communion with God is not suddenly revealed? It is necessary to know this cause in order to act against it, and to act more successfully, because only by eliminating it can the complete indwelling of grace be attained.

To understand why this happens, let's turn to the inner structure of the convert. Sin takes possession of a person and draws to itself his attention, and all his strivings, and all his strength. Acting under the influence of sin, a person imbues himself with it and all parts of his being, and accustoms all his forces to activity according to its suggestion. This alien, externally imposed activity from a long stay becomes so close to us that it turns into natural, takes on the appearance of natural, and therefore unchangeable and necessary. In this way, for example, arrogance grows together with the mind, self-interest with wishes, lustfulness with the heart, with all undertakings - egoism and a certain hostility to others. Thus, in his consciousness and volition, in the powers of the soul - mind, will and feeling, in all the functions of the body, in all his external affairs, in behavior, in relations, rules and customs - man is completely imbued with sin, that is, egoism, passion, self-gratification.

In this darkness, under the yoke of sin, in the realm of Satan, there dwells every person who is not converted, who has not repented, who has not come to the determination to serve God in spirit and truth.

The grace of God that has come, first through excitement, and then through the period of conversion, splits man into man, brings him into the consciousness of this duality, into the vision of the unnatural and what should be natural, and brings him to the determination to reject or purify all that is unnatural, so that God-like nature may appear in full light. But it is obvious that such determination is only the beginning of the matter.

At the same time, a person has lost his temper, as if from a stinking corpse, and sees what part of him exudes a passionate stench, and sometimes, to the point of darkening his mind, he smells all the stench emitted by himself.

Thus, the true grace-filled life in man is in the beginning only a seed, a spark; but the seed planted among thorns, the spark covered everywhere with ashes... It is still a weak candle, shining in the thickest fog. By consciousness and volition, man cleaved to God, and God received him, united with him in this self-conscious and volitional force, or mind and spirit, as it is said in Saints Anthony and Macarius the Great. And there is only good, saved, God-pleasing in man. All the other parts are still in captivity and do not want and cannot yet submit to the demands of the new life: the mind does not know how to think in a new way, but thinks in the old way; the will does not know how to will in a new way, but wants in the old way; the heart does not know how to feel in a new way, but feels in the old way. It is the same in the body, in all its functions. Consequently, he is still completely impure, except for a single point, which is the conscious and free force, the mind or spirit. God is the purest and unites with this one part, while all other parts, as impure, remain outside of Him, alien to Him, although He is ready to fill the whole man, but does not do this because man is unclean... Then, as soon as he is purified, God immediately manifests His complete indwelling. St. Gregory of Sinai writes: "If our nature is not preserved from defilement through the Spirit and is not made pure as it was, then neither in the present nor in the future life will it be able to unite with Christ into one body and spirit; for the all-encompassing and unifying power of the Spirit is not accustomed to sew the rags of the old passions to the new robe of grace to fill it up" [22]. It is impossible for the Lord to dwell completely, for the dwelling is not yet prepared; it is impossible to pour out grace into it completely - the vessel is still bad. To do so would mean to waste and destroy spiritual treasures. What fellowship is there between light and darkness, or between Christ and Belial? (2 Corinthians 6:14-15). And the Lord, who promised to come with the Father and create a monastery, sets as an indispensable condition for this the fulfillment of the commandments – of course, the commandments of all, in other words, the right activity in everything, which is impossible without the righteousness of the forces, and the righteousness of the forces without the rejection of the wrongness that has come from them, or the rejection (rejection – Ed.) of sinfulness and passion. In a way, the following passage may be included here: "If we say that the Imam is in communion with Him, and in darkness we walk, we lie, and do not do the truth; but if we walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, the communion of the Imams with one another (1 John 1:67). This darkness is the darkness of the passions, because afterwards St. John uses instead of its dislike and threefold lust (cf. 1 John 2:10-11, 16). Light, on the contrary, is the light of virtues; and again because afterwards the light is replaced by virtues. From this it can be seen that only then is it possible to truly stand in the perfection of communion with God, when the darkness of the passions has been driven away and the light of the virtues has shone, when they have been imprinted, have grown together as if with our being, have clothed and penetrated our powers, expelling and ousting from them the passions so that they are no longer luminous, but self-luminous. Up to that time, communion with God is so hidden, so unknown, that it may seem to be non-existent and to some extent must be considered unreliable, indecisive, incomplete, or inconsistent with itself.

Thus, that the Lord, having come into union with the spirit of man, does not suddenly completely fill or dwell in him, does not depend on Him, who is ready to fulfill everything, but on us, precisely on the passions that have dissolved with the forces of our nature, have not yet been torn away from them and have not been replaced by opposite virtues. "Sinful passions," says St. Anthony the Great, "do not allow God to shine in us [23]. If, however, the main goal towards which the penitent must strive is complete communion with God, light-bearing, blessed, and the main obstacle to this is the existence in him of the passions that are still acting and quality, the imprint of the virtues and the wrongness of the powers, then it is obvious that his main deed, immediately after conversion and repentance, is the eradication of the passions and the imprinting of the virtues - in a word, the correction of himself...

This must be convinced as fully as possible, because all active errors seem to arise from ignorance of this principle [24]. Not understanding the power of this, some stop at the outward appearance of exercise and asceticism, others at good deeds and skill in them, without reaching higher, and still others go directly into contemplation. All this is necessary, but everything has its own loin. At first everything is in the seed, then it develops not exclusively, but mainly in one or another part, but gradualness is inevitable - an ascent from external feats to internal ones, and from both to contemplation, and not vice versa.

Having become convinced of this, we can now easily extract the guiding rules for a God-pleasing life, or the spirit and order of asceticism.

Let us turn back a little and again become our attention before the man who has dedicated himself to God and has vowed to act always and in everything according to His will, for His glory, to be enriched by truly good works. Having made up his mind to do this, how else can he act in this way, when, as we have seen, neither one nor the other part of us is capable of doing so? Sin is hated in the spirit, but the body and soul sympathize with it, cling to it, because they are clothed with passions. The good or will of God is loved in the spirit, but the body and soul do not sympathize with it, turn away from it, or, if this is not the case, do not know how to do it. Therefore, he who has decided, out of his zeal, to remain faithful to the vow given and, out of conscious necessity, to abide in good, must inevitably resist the demands of his body and soul in every good deed (and he should not have any evil ones) and, refusing them, compel them to do the opposite. And since the body and soul do not depart from his person, but constitute him, this is the same as resisting oneself in evil and forcing oneself to do good. Self-resistance and self-compulsion are two turns of jealousy revived in the spirit, formed, as it were, the beginnings of asceticism. Both constitute man's struggle with himself, or, in other words, podvig.

Hence, the converted penitent, from the first minutes of his new life, inevitably enters into podvig, into struggle, into labor, and begins to bear no burden, no yoke. And this is so significant that the only true path of virtue is recognized by all the saints as its sickness and difficulty, and the contrary privilege is a sign of the false path: the Kingdom of God is wanting, and the needy delight it (Matt. 11:12). Whoever is not in struggle, not in podvig, is in delusion. The Apostle says: "He who does not endure is not a son" (Heb. 12:78).

Thus, the zealous person is zealous for the feats of self-compulsion and self-resistance with the aim of self-correction, or raising himself to the primordial purity, so that he may be vouchsafed communion with God the more quickly. Obviously, the more zealous, thorough, and swift he does this, the more successfully he achieves his goal. This is the same as the one who goes against himself more hatefully and hostilely, acts more sharply and decisively, is more likely to enter into purity. That is why we see that all the saints who ascended to the height of Christian perfection, after their conversion, began the strictest feats of self-mortification - fasting, vigils, longing (on the ground of lying - Ed.), solitude, and so on. It was a consciously chosen measure, inspired by grace, taken for a speedy ripening, and it was indeed soon given. On the contrary, relief, stopping, self-pity, although not constant, have always slowed down and slow down the course of spiritual growth (growth - Ed.).