***

Willpower is a great thing: it is like a rudder on a ship. By means of will-power, all our inner movements can be given the right direction. Willpower helps us to put up with everything, to endure everything; as a result of all this, a calm, serene life in God.

***

What a lofty, divine feeling love is! It truly reflected the image of God in man. Love is the head of all virtues: it leads to all that is good; it compels us to be meek, and humble, and pure in heart, and peace-loving, and patient, and gracious, so that it is fair to say: whoever has true love fulfills the whole law, as the Apostle Paul says: love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10). Holy love is an invincible force against all evil; Whoever has it, the enemy flees from him, and against the stronghold of such love all evil breaks, as waves break against a stone. Holy love is already here, on earth, a blessed state of spirit: peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Holy love is a quick, faithful, serene, joyful path to Christ, to salvation.

***

Accursed laughter, how inappropriate you are for a Christian! How many insults have been inflicted on the majesty of God through you, when, for example, you disturb in the temple of God during divine services and in sacred places, where there should be only a reverent, trembling, holy feeling for the Lord God! Did not the Apostle say, "Idle talk and ridicule are not fitting for you" (Ephesians 5:4). Better lamentation than laughter, because when the face is sorrowful, the heart becomes better (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

***

God's mercy is so great that it does not abandon even great sinners, the so-called fallen people. There are moments in the lives of the latter when the grace of God with a special effort begins to knock at their hearts, as if trying to open the door for them to come out of the depths of the fall. And how important are these moments in the lives of fallen people.. To take advantage of them, not to miss them, to feel them means to find the way to moral rebirth. It was this moment that St. Mary of Egypt had[2]. Indeed, how do you explain the circumstance that Mary the sinner suddenly accidentally bumps into a ship departing for Jerusalem, instinctively embarks on it, continuing to think, however, about the satisfaction of her passions, then in Jerusalem again someone draws her to enter the temple; She tries to do so, but an unknown force does not allow her to reach the holy place. It makes her think. "It seems that my sins," she thinks, "hinder me... Yes, I am a great sinner"... Hence then the awakening of conscience and the further course of moral rebirth. Is not the influence of God's grace on the heart of the sinner clear here?

Or, here's an example. A man who has completely lost his way, who has completely ruined his health by drunkenness and depraved life, walks through St. Petersburg past the station and involuntarily notices a crowd striving for an approaching train. Simple curiosity made him ask where the people were in such a hurry. They told him: "Father John of Kronstadt is to come now." "Here, queers," he said to himself, "it is worth pushing and striving so much, and yet I will come up and look at this priest, what is special about him, they say too much about him." Goes... Everyone is in a hurry to take a blessing from the priest who has arrived, and our hero instinctively approaches. Father John looked at him tenderly and with bold faith, blessing him, said: "May the Lord bless you and help you to set out on a good path, my friend, it is clear that you are suffering a lot"... Like an electric spark, the inspired words of the grace-filled pastor pass through the entire being of fallen man. Stepping aside, he notices that a kind of tenderness appears in his heart, and his consciousness says: "And indeed, how difficult it is for me to live, to what baseness I have come; I seem to have become worse than cattle, and is it possible for me to rise? And how good it would be! But the priest wished me this, and what a kind priest he is, how sorry he is for me, I will certainly go to him in Kronstadt"...

And then he goes, confesses, fasts, communes there and, with God's help, gradually is morally reborn. The grace of God prompted Mary of Egypt to go to Jerusalem, and here, too, the grace of God prompted fallen man to meet with the great pastor and thus showed him the way to correction. In a word, every sinner, if he wishes, can trace in his life the moments of the special influence of God's grace on him, and these moments are, as it were, points, crises, from which a turning point can begin, either in the good direction towards moral rebirth, or in the bad direction, when the sinner is threatened with complete moral destruction. Thus, if, for example, a non-believer experiences this moment, then after it he can make a turn towards faith and be confirmed in it, or, on the contrary, follow the inclination of unbelief and reach satanic pride, complete unbelief. Life at every step confirms this.

We have many examples of very ecclesiastical people, firmly devoted to the Orthodox Church, who, nevertheless, in their time were infected with unbelief; but when the grace of God touched their hearts, they sensed this moment, did not reject Christ pushing into their hearts, accepted Him and then loved Him completely. Undoubtedly, this moment of the influence of God's grace was also experienced by the unbeliever Count Tolstoy, known to all of us. But he himself, and under the influence of his household, neglected him and followed the further path of unbelief, and came to the point of complete apostasy. When an adulterer, a thief, a wine-drinker, a thief is touched by this spark of God, they can all rise up morally, recover, and, conversely, when they stifle it, do not accept it, they morally perish. And not only morally, but often physically. In most cases, such people are seized with despair, disgust with life, and they end it with suicide, or they simply die a starving, cold, if not to say bestial death.

God, be merciful to me, a sinner.. (Luke 18:13).

***

Do you know for what motives the Holy Orthodox Church commemorates St. Mary of Egypt during Great Lent? - In order to show us, sinners, that the merciful Lord expects conversion from all of us, no matter how sinful we are, and He is always ready to accept our repentance with love. Sinners! Do not despair of salvation, as the Lord would say to us, "take the example of repentance from St. Mary of Egypt, and I will blot out your sins: the Lord is long-suffering with us, not that any should perish, but that all may come to repentance (cf. 2 Peter 3:9).