Heartfelt Meditation on Sufferings to Christ

Christ. For this it is good to choose one of the sufferings of Christ every day, to meditate on it in detail, and to remember it more often during the day. From this we will always get

the spirit of patience, meekness, daily voluntary mortification, and grateful, completely

devoted love for Christ. "How do you spend

time?" the aliens asked one, almost not

who knew how to read the hermit. The hermit said:

"Our Saviour has endowed me with sight, and I have always

I'm watching." — "For what?" — "For the Passion of Christ.

They are always in front of my eyes. In them I find

everything I need, and nothing sticks so much

me with love for my Lord Jesus Christ, as the sight He has given me"2.

All of us, without exception, can imitate this hermit!

1 Jerom. Vladimir (Musatov). The Elder's Answers to the Questions of the Cell Disciple. Moscow: Podvorie Svyato-Troitskoy

Sergius Lavra. 2002.

2 St. Boniface of Feofania // Old Age Councils of Some Domestic Ascetics of Piety

18–19 centuries. Moscow, 1913.

How can we protect the soul from addiction to perishable things?

Meditate reverently and gratefully

about the greatness of one's soul granted by grace and

its multiplicity in the eyes of God. Imagine, as in a picture, the vastness of the earth, and examine impartially the objects that fill it:

how insignificant they will seem to you in comparison

with the dignity of the human soul, raised

By God's love for mankind, in a sacred secret way – to a degree of perfection similar to the life of an Angel. From this you will see that every thing

extremely invaluable before the lofty nobility of the Christian soul. For what profit is it to man, says our Lord, if he gains the whole world, and forsakes his own soul? (Matt. 16:26). If

And this is so, then consider: the incomparably worse is unworthy to be loved before the most precious

and incomparably better, i.e., perishable matter

before the imperishable and immortal soul.

Therefore, proper love for one's soul requires zealous care for gifts and benefits