Information about the original source

When using library materials, a reference to the source is required.

When publishing materials on the Internet, a hyperlink is required:

"Orthodoxy and Modernity. Electronic Library." (www.lib.eparhia-saratov.ru).

Convert to epub, mobi, fb2 formats

"Orthodoxy and the World. Electronic Library" (lib.pravmir.ru).

From the author

Dear brothers and sisters! A few words before you turn this page. There is a long-standing tradition in our church: in the evenings after the service, the priest reads the works of the Holy Fathers and ascetics of piety to the parishioners from the ambo, simultaneously explaining the meaning of the spiritual advice contained in them. He comments on the most difficult passages in detail, trying to make them more accessible to the understanding of a modern person seeking salvation. My friends Galina Vasilievna and Nikolai Mikhailovich Novikov took the trouble to make a literary record of my comments on the readings of the instructions of Archimandrite Theophan of Novoyezersky, an outstanding ascetic of the 18th century (In the text, the words of Father Theophan are highlighted in bold italics. (published by the Moscow Patriarchate, Moscow, 1994)). This is how this book came about. Priest Konstantin Ostrovsky, rector of the Dormition Church in Krasnogorsk

Eternity

Why we don't believe in the afterlife * What to ask God for * The unbeliever is the most unhappy of all the unfortunate * Everything we are proud of is perishable * We want to go to the Kingdom, but we don't want to obey * The Church is not an authority for the "wise" * The fame of the family does not save * Have been discouraged in order to rise up * We rise up against our neighbor - we rise up against God * The door to the Kingdom of Heaven is open * Fleeing from work - we run away from bliss * After death you will not be bored * Remember death and you will never sin * Toll-houses are a product of our passions * We are afraid of what we should not be afraid of * God loves our loved ones more than we do * 1. All the treasures of this world are nothing before the eternal bliss which is promised to those who love God, the bliss which the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and which has not entered into the heart of man. (6) This idea can be found both in the Bible and in the Holy Fathers. Why don't we live by this precept? The answer is obvious - we do not believe in it, we have mental knowledge, but we do not have heartfelt faith, so we confess one thing and do another. If we had a living heartfelt faith in the fact that either eternal torment or eternal bliss awaits us, then our life would be completely different. St. Seraphim of Sarov said that if a person knew what awaited him beyond the grave, then he would be ready to spend his whole life in a pit filled with worms that eat his body, and to be there with joy, if only to avoid eternal torment and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. First of all, we need to ask God to give us living faith. We must understand that we do not yet have it, humble ourselves from this and endure the difficulties that God sends us, because only sorrows, which come from God and are endured without murmuring, crush our heart and open it to spiritual gifts, the most important of which is faith. 2. And how long, how long is it to live? And there will be no end! If a mountain of sand were poured from the earth to the sky and a grain of sand was set aside every year, there would be an end, and there would be no end. (25) And so it is. Our temporal life is almost nothing in its duration compared to eternity. In its meaning, it can be said to be equal to eternity: as we manifest ourselves in this temporal life, so will eternity. But all the sorrows, all that we have to endure here, all this is absolutely nothing compared to the blessings or torments that await us in eternity. The Apostle Paul wrote that temporal sufferings have no meaning in comparison with the glory that is to be manifested in us. Whether life is long, short, easy or difficult, it will still end. Therefore, all our desires should be directed towards eternity, and we should prepare for eternity, not regretting that our life is shortening, and not being discouraged when our sufferings are prolonged. Everything must be endured with gratitude and entrust oneself to the will of God. 3. And that there is a better and endless future life, of this you must undoubtedly and firmly be sure. (396) This is the subject of our Orthodox faith. A big mistake is made by people who think that it is possible to believe in God and doubt the existence of eternal life. At the same time, they often consider themselves Christians. If a person does not believe in eternal life, does not believe in the Kingdom of Heaven, all his other faith is in vain. The Apostle Paul wrote that if Christ is not risen, then your faith is in vain, and you are more miserable than the unfortunate. This is a diabolical deception that there is no eternal life. If such doubts are not driven away decisively, then spiritual life can be completely destroyed. 4. Our flesh is subject to corruption, dust is food for worms, so why should we feed it and be proud of it? What to be proud of? Are they worms? (502) This sounds naïve, to our perverted intellectual view. But these are words of truth. If we look at our life from the point of view of eternity, we will see: everything that we are proud of, that we are occupied with, that we pay attention to - all this is perishable. It happens that children fight over a shortbread pie, push, suddenly someone steps on it - and there is nothing. In the same way, all our temporary cares and attachments - eternity will run over them like a sea wave, and nothing will remain of them. We must conscientiously do all the earthly deeds entrusted to us by God, but remember that our activity acquires meaning when it is subordinated to the spiritual task of being obedient children of God and fulfilling His will. 5. While there is time, we must try not to spend our lives in vain, so that, after departing from here, we may inherit the Heavenly Kingdom, which we will not be worthy of if we are not like gentle children. (7) Here, of course, we do not mean childish foolishness or childish physical weakness, but childish kindness and childish simplicity. We must treat God as children treat their parents: trust Him completely, obey and endure with good humor when He educates and teaches us. We want to go to the Kingdom of Heaven, but we do not want to obey God. This is a reproach to all of us. What do we expect from the kingdom of heaven? Consolations and eternal pleasures. And the Kingdom of Heaven is complete unity with God. If we do not want to reconcile our will with the will of God now, then where will this agreement come from in eternity? We don't live like children. If we behaved like children, we would run to our Heavenly Father and would not run away from our mother, the Church. And we are all so grown-up, wise, and therefore we do not need God and the Church is not an authority for us. 6. Rejoice in righteousness in the Lord; We must rejoice in that which has been promised to us, which the human mind cannot comprehend. (55) I often draw my attention and yours to words that the people of the Church are tired of. For non-church people, they are usually completely incomprehensible and uninteresting. Rejoice and rejoice. The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven. And yet this is indeed the Kingdom, of which it is said that the mind cannot comprehend, not because it is unreal, but because the bliss that awaits those who enter it is far beyond anything we can imagine. Not alien to us, not incomprehensible in this sense, but surpassing all human experience. Just as a two-month-old infant is completely alien to the knowledge of higher mathematics, but not because higher mathematics is generally alien to the human mind, but because the child has not yet grown up to it, so we have not grown up to the Kingdom of Heaven. And if, with God's help, we grow up, then we will have eternal and greatest bliss. We have something to be happy about. Archbishop Anthony of Voronezh wrote: "The celebrity of the family does not save us... True nobility is acquired by doing the will of God." It's about making us aware of what kind of people we are. After all, we belong to the race of Christ, but do we remember this? By partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we become one body with Him, one Church of God, we are one people with Him. We are all related in flesh and blood to Christ, we are in close kinship with God. This is the true, incomparable nobility. We are of royal lineage and are called to live as kings in the Kingdom of Heaven. Are we living worthy of our calling? 7. Access to the King of Heaven depends on us; in any confusion one can have recourse. (55) Orthodox teaching says: every person can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the entrance to it depends only on us. This is the opposite of what is offered by occult teachings, where the attainment of perfection (in fact, false) is promised only to the elect, where a person who has abilities can develop them to the degree of a "superman", and a person without talent is hopeless. Indeed, people's abilities are different. Not every Christian can attain high spiritual states in temporal life. But this is not important for eternal life - in eternity, the height of a person is determined by how much he has humbled himself here, that is, how much he has humbled himself in this temporal life. And to see our sins, to reproach ourselves for them, to humble ourselves before God - this depends only on us, it is available to everyone. We can boast and boast of our imaginary virtues, or, on the contrary, we can honestly confess to ourselves, and to God, and to people, who we really are, and then there is hope that at the Last Judgment we will be pardoned by the merciful God. 8. One must imagine how one lives in heaven: there is no envy, suspicion, or anything like that! There are no contradictions, no contradictions, there everything obeys the mania of the Creator! (69) If our souls remain as they are now, if they are not changed with God's help, they will not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven, because they are alien to it in their qualities. I remember when I was still an altar boy, I complained to my spiritual father about a friend of mine who had upset me in some way, and my spiritual father sobered me up: "We must all enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but how are we going to enter it with our reproaches?" We must know that when we inwardly rebel against our neighbor, we rebel against God Himself. 9. "If the Lord does not build a house, they labor in vain to build it" (Psalm 126:1): we must ask the Lord to be the cornerstone in our spiritual structure. (407) Even if we build a magnificent spiritual edifice, but Christ will not be its foundation, we will perish. The pseudo-spiritual achievements of occultists may seem attractive to some. But it is enough to reject them, that Christ is not at their foundation. All the false spiritual occult-pagan religious knowledge, all the vain teachings of the world - all this at the moment of transition to eternity will crumble and disappear, dragging its followers into eternal perdition. Christ came to earth not as a king or a hero. He did not bring with Him any new technologies - He came in the form of a humble and physically weak man, suffered and died for us. But it was precisely this that opened the door to the Kingdom of Heaven for us, and not some inventions of the human mind. 10. Since we have no idea of the Kingdom of Heaven and do not understand its sweetness, we also do not know what torment is. (239) A person born blind does not suffer as much as a person born sighted and subsequently blinded. He who had sight is tormented by the memory of the lost joy of contemplating the world of God. In the same way, a person who has not known the joy of grace-filled union with Christ cannot understand that he is in a terrible state of distance from God and that after the Last Judgment he will face the eternal horror of complete abandonment by God. 11. In this life it is to endure and to work. (421) Earthly life is given to man in preparation for eternity. If we avoid working on our souls (obedience, enduring sorrows), we run away from eternal bliss. When a person has time to prepare for exams, and instead of reading books and making notes, he has fun, he will fail. The choice of how to spend our time is ours. Christ does not force anyone to be saved. Therefore, those who believe in the seriousness of the exam that awaits all of us at the Last Judgment will engage in the practice of God's commandments. Some prefer to slack, do not want to believe that the unprepared will fall, and not anywhere, but into hell. 12. It's a pity that we don't think much about death. When it becomes boring, think so about death, about the coming of Christ. Think how you will be restrained in the air, and what you will answer at the toll-houses. (20) These words seem paradoxical, because all of us, even church people, are accustomed to the fact that if we are bored, we need to somehow unwind, to tune ourselves in to a cheerful mood. But in fact, if we remember that we will die, that our soul will not disappear, as unbelievers think, but will pass into another state and the entire past life will fall upon it, and torments will begin for those who have not had time to repent, if we remember that every soul, as soon as it leaves the body, awaits the toll-houses (posthumous trials and tortures), and then the Last Judgment, then, of course, we will not be bored, and we will use the little time that God has given us for soul-saving deeds. "Soul-saving deeds" - these words have become almost ridiculous for a modern person, because we are all brought up in an atheistic country and do not believe that earthly time is given to us in order to "earn" eternal blissful life, and we spend it on anything, but not on the salvation of the soul. 13. Nothing is so useful for those who live in a monastery as the remembrance of death, the dreadful judgment of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal torments. It will accustom you to good-natured endurance of sorrows of all kinds. (82) We need to think more often about what will happen to our soul when it leaves the body. For then it will turn out that everything that grieved us, everything that seemed bad to us, from which we tried to escape, was useful to us, was what God in His mercy sent us. And the earthly things that we strove for, what we desired, what we rejoiced at, were to our detriment, were temptations. If we begin to look at everything from the point of view of the Last Judgment, we will be able to endure sorrows complacently, since they are extremely useful to us. The Holy Fathers write that if a person remembered death, he would never sin. And indeed, if we are afraid of death not because of a vain attachment to pleasures: if I die, I will be gone, I will no longer be able to drink coffee in the morning (such fear is harmful and sinful), but because our soul will leave the body and go to judgment, and the judgment will be according to the commandments of God, and not according to the laws of worldly morality, then such fear will protect us from sin. The devil tries with all his might to prevent us from remembering death. His concern is to put empty thoughts into our minds, to distract us from the main thing, so that we completely forget that we are mortal and live like immortals. But he can also remind us of death, but he will whisper a lie - he will instill an animal fear of death, and then from fright we again fall into vanity, begin to take excessive care of our physical health. When the soul leaves the body, it will be necessary to finally part with everything earthly to which it has clung here. The sweeter we are here on earth, the better, more pleasant and calmer, the more terrible, the more unbearable it will be after death. Posthumous toll-houses are the product of our attachments, our passions. The toll-houses consist in the fact that we part with what we have loved. It is impossible to enumerate the significant and insignificant, crudely sinful and decent-looking things to which we are attached in our hearts, which separate us from God. Without this, there would be no toll-houses. If a person has not lived according to the commandments of God, and has not repented, and has not tried to reform, then it will happen as promised: Let the wicked be taken, that he may not see the glory of the Lord. And it will be said to the righteous: Come, by the blessing of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. That this is exactly how it will be, that each of us will hear one or another word - this must be remembered, it must be believed, it must be lived. 14. Your letter is filled with embarrassment and fear; according to the words of St. David: "Where fear is afraid, where there is no fear." (143) This applies to all of us, because we are constantly preoccupied with something, trying to avoid some trouble, afraid of something. If we look at our life "from eternity", we will find that we are always afraid of what we should not be afraid of, and we strive for what we need to avoid. Therefore, we should remember death more often and that it is the beginning of eternal life. There is no need to be afraid of death. It is inevitable and not so terrible, because, as we know, the resurrection awaits us all. We must fear the Last Judgment, where it will become clear whether we will be resurrected to eternal bliss or to eternal torment. When God takes our loved ones to Himself, we must understand that by doing so God's good providence is accomplished. God loves our loved ones more than we do. It is we who care for their health and well-being in temporal life, and the Lord cares for their eternal salvation. If eternal salvation were possible without sorrows, then God would not send them. We should pray for the health of our loved ones (this is natural, this is a manifestation of love), but not forgetting to add: "God's will be done." St. Isaac the Syrian writes: "The humble dare no longer ask of God, only: Thy will be done, O Lord." It is not temporal death that is to be feared, but eternal death, which awaits us if we fall away from God.

Exploit

Fasting is the spiritual education of the body * The more severe the illness, the more useful it is * When jealousy becomes foolishness * What is a sin for one, is a feat for another * Fasting, we recognize our weakness * The pleasure of the flesh chains to the earth * Do not be offended by God * We are ashamed of the external, not the internal * The cause of all troubles is our passionate heart * Idleness intensifies the strife * God destroys the proud, exalts the humble * Murmuring means we do not repent * "Pray for me - I am possessed" * Hope only in the mercy of God * Rites are an external means for internal benefit * Our values are the opposite of true ones * 15. Neither chains, nor sackcloth, nor fasting, even if one eats once a week, nor long vigils and standings, nor many prostrations, nor all bodily exhaustion will be of any use... if there are no spiritual virtues. (9) If a person gets into a car and goes very fast in the opposite direction to the destination, the faster he goes, the worse it gets. Bodily feats are good when they are used correctly. They are just a means to make our spiritual life more intense. When we concentrate our efforts on them alone or are proud of them, then our movement is accelerated, but not into the Kingdom of Heaven. Fasting is the spiritual education of our body, so that the flesh does not rage under the influence of passions. For those who want to succeed in the struggle against sin, fasting is absolutely necessary. But sick people often cannot fast. One should not be upset, because illness has an advantage over fasting. It has the same effect on the body, but the suffering caused by it protects a person from pride, and besides, everyone gets sick, both the righteous and the sinners, and the majority of people die from illnesses. What is there to be proud of? Fasting, on the other hand, is dangerous because it induces vanity. The more severe the illness, the more it crushes the body, the more useful it is for the soul of a person, if he endures the illness with patience, thanking the Lord. And this benefit is greater than from any abstinence undertaken of one's own free will. 16. Everyone should not be kept in the monastery equally, for others coarse food is harmful and can lead to exhaustion; some came from poverty, from labor to rest, and others from wealth and from tender education. (362) Fasting was established by God in the Church so that we might succeed in abstinence, recognize our weakness and therefore remain in humility, so that, enduring these voluntary sufferings, we would be crushed in our souls, and more often remember eternity. And not at all so that people die prematurely, not coming to the measure in which God blessed them to come. In the writings of Elder Silouan, we read how a young monk, a zealous Athonite ascetic, fasted himself to death. He fasted so much (not seriously, but heavily) that he undermined his health and died. If a person with a stomach ulcer observes the fast according to the Typicon, he will go to the hospital and there he will eat everything that is given to him, and watch TV in the ward, but he will not be able to go to church during the entire Great Lent. This is, excuse me, not jealousy, but stupidity. We should not compare ourselves with John of Kronstadt. When doctors advised him to relax his fast, he refused. He was in such a great spiritual measure that for the sake of God's love, for the sake of grace not weakening in him, despite his ill health and the persistent requests of doctors, he continued to fast. And it was right. We, sinful and weak people, are very far from the state of mind that Righteous John of Kronstadt preserved within himself. We must hold on to prudence. When the need arises, a person should relax the fast. But if at the same time his belly is comforted, he must reproach himself for gluttony and humble himself from it. Father Theophan explains why the living conditions in the monastery should be different for different people. Some people are accustomed to a poor, austere life, in comparison with which monastic life seems to them more nourishing and easier. Another person was driven yesterday on the "Seagull", and today he is driving a wheelbarrow with manure. There is a story on this topic in the Otechnik. One monk came to a famous elder in the desert and saw that he was sitting in slippers, drinking tea and someone else was serving him. He was embarrassed: he seemed to be a great old man, but he lived in such luxury. He told another elder about his embarrassment. He asked: "Who were you before you came to the monastery?" - "A shepherd." - "What bed did you sleep on?" - "I slept on the ground." - "What did you hide yourself with?" - "Matting." - "So you came to rest from your labors, and this man was a nobleman at the royal court and came to this need. He will also be credited with leaving everything behind." We also often look at each other here in church, and it seems to us that here I am performing feats, and a person next to me is doing nothing. But we do not know the inner structure of each other. One and the same thing is a great indulgence and sin for some, and for others it is a feat. One ate a piece of fish during Great Lent and thus defiled his entire fast, and the other ate fish throughout Lent - for him this is severe abstinence. So we must leave all judgment to God. External feats, including fasting, should in no case be accompanied by condemnation, irritation and enmity. If this happens, it means that we are fasting to our own detriment. 17. However, if I eat dry food, let me grumble, let me condemn, dry eating is not good for me. (501) It is as if you read common passages. But such commonplaces are not theoretical considerations, but practical advice to be followed. Thanks to them, some people have gone from earth to Heaven. In studying the Holy Fathers, we must pay special attention to those counsels that concern the spiritual virtues, since it is impossible for us to imitate the outward deeds of the great ascetics. One and the same feat can serve different purposes. For true ascetics, people who possess humility, endowed with the grace of God, fasting, for example, serves to increase grace, reduces carnal activity that hinders the manifestations of grace-filled powers. And for people like us, the whole meaning of any podvig is to know ourselves, to know our weakness, to make sure that we have passions. We need the same fast in order to learn that we are gluttons. Fasting in itself, without spiritual activity, can be harmful, since it strengthens pride in a person. The right path is when a person pays all his attention to the struggle with his passions in order to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit, and as an auxiliary means on this spiritual path he uses all possible bodily work. 18. Food does not defile a person, but gives birth to bad thoughts and nails the mind to earthly desires, thickens the flesh and transforms a spiritual man into a carnal one. (500) This is the true harm of overnourishment, and of all carnal consolations in general. But we are, as it were, between two fires. If we please our flesh, then this does not allow us to tear ourselves away from the earth, we fall into the captivity of sinful thoughts. If we begin an intensified fast, then the onslaught of thoughts weakens, but one begins to prevail: "I am an ascetic." And this thought alone nullifies all the benefits of abstinence. That is why God does not give us the strength to fast. You don't need to be offended by God for this, you need to thank Him for it. If we follow the path of humility, God in due time, when it will be useful to us, will give us strength for external feats as well. 19. "Woe to you, Pharisees, for you love to preside in the synagogues and to greet in the assemblies of the people" (Luke 11:43). The Pharisees strictly observed the outward decrees of the Law, and forgot the commandments of God. Unfortunately, this applies to us to a large extent, because we very often perform external rites with enviable zeal, and neglect God's commandments. I read the memoirs of a priest of the last century, how a woman came to him. He dies, cries, falls at his feet: "Father, I have sinned, I accidentally ate a spoonful of sour cream during Great Lent." He calms her down, asks: "Were there any fornication sins?" - "Yes, there was," she says quite calmly. There is nothing funny here. And now we confess in this way. Such a confession as "fornication during Lent" is the most ordinary thing. A person does not go to church, does not pray to God, almost does not believe in anything, but the only thing he repents of is: "I washed on a holiday." There is a lot of evil hidden in our souls. We do not see it in its entirety because of our spiritual blindness. We are very concerned about external decency. If we accidentally do something for which people will condemn us, we are killed, ashamed, tormented, even ready to run to confession, and when we do evil in secret, we remain completely calm. And we do not pay any attention to our inner sins, thoughts, and heartfelt experiences. Even when in thoughts we reach the point of murder, to the extreme degrees of fornication, this does not bother us, we do not consider it necessary to confess such thoughts. When we are rebuked, we are offended. Not only do we want to sin, we also want to be praised by everyone. 20. If you think that it is bad here, and it is better in another monastery, do not believe these thoughts, the enemy flatters. (265) This is the general teaching of the Holy Fathers. But it does not reach us well. It seems to us that if we change our external circumstances, we will be better. The usual temptation is to change your job, apartment, wife... Especially cowardly dissatisfaction with the circumstances of life leads to a logical, in their opinion, way out - suicide. But at least we Christians must understand that the thirst for a "change of places" is also a kind of passion. The main cause of all our troubles and problems is our passionate heart. We are tormented by our passions, they will torment us everywhere and always. Even when we die, they will not leave us. If we depart from life of our own accord, our godless self-will will go away with us. It is not going anywhere. It is another thing when there is God's blessing to change the way of life. Then the Lord helps a person. And when we try to change circumstances through our passions, it only gets worse. This is an immutable law of spiritual life. And the enemy is pushing us to violate it. 21. If you do needlework in a cell, then you must fight with one demon, and if you are idle, then you will struggle with a hundred demons. (337) This does not apply only to monks. For every Christian who tries to fight the passions, it is the most important task to organize his time. As soon as we find ourselves in idleness, the abuse immediately intensifies. Idleness is contraindicated for those who struggle. Rest, of course, is necessary, but as a change of occupation. The state of "doing nothing" is extremely dangerous. 22. "Bring down the mighty from the Throne, and lift up the humble" (Luke 1:52). Christ the Son of God did not say: "Learn from Me to wear a hairshirt, or in what abysses and caves to live; but "for I am meek and humble in heart." (276) These words should not be understood to mean that external exploits are harmful. External podvigs are good and useful, and even necessary, but they must follow the inner purification of the heart and serve it. If a person succeeds in humility, then with God's blessing he can proceed to external feats. If one is afflicted with pride, then one must be very careful with external feats - they can inflame this pride even more. Of course, we are not talking about the generally accepted rules of Christian life, but about special deeds. We only seem important and significant to ourselves. But it is precisely such that God destroys, and exalts the humble. 23. If outwardly humble, quiet, patient, this is not enough; internal, spiritual self-abasement is needed. (470) It is clearly stated that outward gestures are not enough. But it should be noted that the internal also has its own levels. If you mentally call yourself bad, even have some feelings about it - this is far from what you need. It is important to acquire a heartfelt experience of one's insignificance, conscious and unquestionable. As long as we do not have this living sense of our unworthiness before God, we do not have humility. As Mark the Ascetic writes, if we accept the sorrows sent by God with good humor, it means that our repentance is true and we sincerely consider ourselves sinners. If we murmur, then we have no real repentance. The way of obedience to the will of God, according to the words of Barsanuphius the Great, is to "accept the one who strikes as one who warms." Of course, we are not able to immediately acquire such a dispensation. Therefore, we must begin with the external – not to grumble about the troubles that God sends us, to restrain our sinful manifestations and force ourselves not to be enmity, not to be angry, not to be offended by those people who cause us harm and anxiety, by those through whom God acts. Here it is appropriate to recall the life of the Monk Isidore, described by John of the Ladder, who, having given himself over to complete obedience to the abba, was placed at the monastery gates in order to fall at the feet of each one with the words: "Pray for me, I am possessed." Having come to a great measure of holiness, the monk shortly before his death told us that for the first few years he had fulfilled his obedience with great difficulty, and then he really felt that he needed the prayers of his neighbors, and already sincerely asked to pray for him. 24. Non-acquisitiveness, almsgiving, fasting and prayer are nothing without humility! (472) All outward and even internal good deeds are worthless in themselves if a person does not experience himself in the depths of his heart as a sinner before God. But you still need to do good deeds. Although there is no love for God, there is no true humility, it is necessary, as far as one has enough intelligence, as much as one has enough strength, to act outwardly virtuous and try to inwardly correctly tune oneself and pray. And at the same time, it is necessary to rely only on God's mercy, but not on one's own virtues and feats. 25. Humble prostrations do not constitute anything: it is necessary to have inner humility, to have humble thoughts with a humble bow. (475) It is important to emphasize that in practice both are needed. Many, however, are mistaken, believing that humility is expressed in bodily movements: humbly bow, cross yourself, kiss an icon - and this is enough. Others believe that only the internal is important, and externally you can behave as you like. Both are wrong. The external is inextricably linked with the internal. The exception is the holy fools for Christ's sake, whose outward actions were often ugly, but inwardly they preserved purity before God. But those are saints. We need to remember the words of St. John of the Ladder that the position of the body largely determines our state of mind. That is why the performance of church rites is useful - these are external means that influence the soul and help to find the right inner order. 26. The Lord has taken away from us this external beauty, beautiful clothing: it does not use, it only nourishes vanity. He gives us inner beauty, for He looks at the hearts. (504) If it seems to us that we are deprived of something, and we want to dress more fashionably, if we want to have four sweaters instead of two, if we want to eat sweeter, we should remember that all these desires are vanity, that the external pleasure that we miss so much is an obsession with the passion of vanity. Inner beauty is acquired to the extent that God's commandments are fulfilled, when we gratefully accept what God sends us. 27. Even if one has acquired all the treasures of the world, he will be poor if he does not have the treasure of the soul. (505) The phrase seems hackneyed. But do we realize that in fact everything will be like this? If we come to the Last Judgment, it will turn out that everything that we have been grieving about, about which we have bothered, that we have cherished, was superfluous, even useless. It will turn out that it was necessary to gather treasures for eternity: to learn obedience, patience, humility. We live with the earth, with our body, with our soul, not with our spirit - we live in vanity. And everything that goes beyond our vanity seems to us empty and insignificant. But it would be necessary to understand, before it is too late, that our values are directly opposite to the true ones.

Patience