The Apocalypse of Petty Sin

The Agony of Loneliness (Pneumatology of Fear)

But I have this against thee, that thou hast forsaken thy first love. Open. 2.4. Petty sin, like tobacco, has become a habit of human society to such an extent that society provides it with all kinds of comforts. Everywhere you can't find a cigarette! Everywhere you can find an ashtray, everywhere there are special rooms, carriages, compartments - "for smokers". It would not even be an exaggeration to say that the whole world is one huge room, or rather one huge car in the interstellar spheres: "for smokers". "Smoking" - everyone sins pettily and calmly: the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, the learned and the simple... The criminal is allowed to smoke a cigarette before execution. As if there is little air in the earth's atmosphere, or it is too fresh, you need to create some kind of smoky, poisonous air for yourself and breathe, breathe this poison, revel in this smoke. And now everyone gets drunk. To the point that "non-smoker" is almost as rare as "never lying" or "never exalting one"... The tobacco market is one of the most significant in the world trade, and every year millions of people work to give other millions and millions the opportunity to inhale acrid smoke, anesthetize it on their heads and the whole body. The question itself seems strange. Is it in the nature of man to go against nature? Is it in nature to narcotize yourself? Governments forbid the enjoyment of cocaine, but tobacco is encouraged. Minor sins are permitted by human law, they do not lead to prison. Everyone is guilty of them, and no one wants to throw a stone at them. Tobacco, like "little cocaine," is permissible as a small lie, as an imperceptible untruth, as killing a person in the heart or in the womb. But this is not what the Revelation of God says - the will of the Living God. The Lord does not put up with a small lie, not a single murderous word, not a single adulterous look. The small grass of iniquity is as accursed before the Lord as the great tree of crime. A multitude of minor sins is undoubtedly heavier for the human soul than a few great ones, always standing in memory, which can always be removed in repentance. And a saint, of course, is not one who does great deeds, but who refrains from even the smallest crimes. The case of Righteous Anthony of Murom is known. Two women came to him: one lamented over her one great sin, the other smugly testified that she had nothing to do with any great sins [1]. Meeting the women on the road, the elder ordered the first to go and bring him a large stone, and the other to collect smaller stones. A few minutes later, the women returned. Then the elder said to them: "Now take and put these stones exactly in the places from which you took them." The woman with the large stone easily found the place; whence she had taken the stone, while the other circled in vain, looking for the nests of her small stones, and returned to the elder with all the stones. The clairvoyant Anthony explained to them that these stones express... In the second woman, they expressed numerous sins to which she was accustomed, considered them for nothing, and never repented of them. She did not remember her petty sins and outbursts of passions, but they expressed the cheerless state of her soul, incapable even of repentance. And the first woman who remembered her sin was sick with these sins and removed it from her soul.A multitude of small, unworthy habits are a slurry for a person's soul, if a person asserts them in himself or has realized them as an "inevitable" evil, against which it is "not worthwhile" and "impossible" to fight. This is where the soul falls into the trap of the enemy of God. "I am not a saint", "I live in the world", "I must live like all people"... - the aching conscience of a believer calms itself. A man, a man, of course, you are not a saint, of course, you "live in the world", and "must live like all people", and therefore - be born like all people; die like them, look, listen, speak like them, but why should you transgress the Law of God - "like them"? Why don't you smell so morally "like them"? Think about it, man.How difficult it is for the soul to move from a false but habitual thought. The psychology of this atheistic world has become so firmly ingrained in the psychic world of modern man that in relation to sin and crime against God's Laws, almost all people act in the same way - "according to a cliché". The saddest thing is that evil has inspired people to call the requirements of sin "the requirements of nature." The requirement of nature is to breathe, eat moderately, warm up, devote part of the day to sleep, but not to narcotize your body in any way, it is senseless to get attached to a mirage, to smoke. But the fact of the matter is that modern man has no time to think about the only important question concerning not this small 60-70-year life, but the eternity of its immortal existence in new, great conditions. Absorbed in a completely misunderstood "practice," modern man, immersed in his practical earthly life, thinks that he is really "practical." A sad delusion! At the moment of his inevitable (always very close to him) so-called death, he will see with his own eyes how little practical he was, reducing the question of practice to the needs of his stomach and completely forgetting his spirit. And, unfortunate man, he himself suffers inexpressibly from this. Like a child who constantly touches the fire and weeps, mankind constantly touches the fire of sin and lust, and weeps and suffers, but again and again touches... not understanding their state of spiritual childishness, which in the Gospel is called "blindness," and is the real blindness of the heart in the presence of physical eyes. Overwhelmed, agitated by evil, unbridling the lower instincts, mankind prepares a terrible fate for itself, as does every person who follows this path. Those who sow the wind will reap the storm. And this, the only important thing - "no time" to think about... "Live in the moment", "what will be, will be" - the soul brushes aside the very truth that says inside it that it must enter into itself, concentrate, examine the attachments of its heart and think about its eternal fate. The Creator of the world commanded man to take care only of the day; the world commands us to take care only of the "moment", plunging a person into a sea of worries about all life! Here is a reflection of God's apocalyptic reproach to the Christian world that it has "forgotten its first love." How much purer and morally superior is man now even to that shattered nature from which his body is created. How pure is the stone, ready to cry out against people who do not give glory to God, how pure are the flowers and trees in their wondrous circle of life, how magnificently obedient to the Law of the Creator are the beasts in their purity. God's nature does not smoke, does not take drugs, does not debauchery, does not eradicate the God-given fruit. Dumb nature teaches man how to bear the Cross of obedience to God in the midst of all the storms and sufferings of this life. A person needs to think about this.Some people think that everything that happens here on earth will not have any consequences. A person with a bad conscience, of course, is more pleasant to think so. But why deceive yourself? Sooner or later we will have to see the dazzling mystery of the purity of the universe.We feel ourselves as "life." Do we really think of ourselves so little and have such a shallow understanding of the One Who created the worlds to think of this earthly vanity of life as the existence of man? We are much more and higher than what we are accustomed to consider here, in the naked earth, not only our life, but even our ideals. But we are grain put in the ground. And therefore we do not see the surface of the universe now, the true picture of nature that will open to Our eyes at the moment of so-called death, i.e. for everyone very soon. Death is not a coffin at all, not a canopy, not a black bandage on the arm, not a grave of clay. Death is when the sprout of our life will crawl to the surface of the earth and stand under the direct rays of God's sun. The seed of life must die and germinate here in the earth. This is the so-called "birth of the spirit" in the Gospel, the "second birth" of man. The death of the body is the abandonment of the earth by the sprout, the emergence from the earth. Any person who receives even the smallest spiritual leaven, even the smallest pearl of the Gospel "within himself", does not expect death at all, and even far from death. For the dead in spirit, of course, coffins, graves, black bandages are all realities. And their spirit will not be able to come to the surface of true life, for they have not died on earth for themselves, for their sins.Like an egg, we are closed from the other world by the thin shell of the body. And our shells are beating one after another... Blessed is the man who turns out to be a living organism formed for the future life. Worthy of weeping is the state of one who turns out to be a formless liquid... Here on earth we are truly in the darkness of the spirit, in its "womb." And is it not criminal, being in such a state, not to prepare for one's real birth, but to consider one's darkness either an ideal extremely joyful place of life (as optimistic atheism believes), or an incomprehensible place of senseless suffering (as pessimistic atheism believes)? All nature cries out about this meaning; every awakened soul of a person begins to cry out for him.How carefully all of us, "non-germinated" people, need to treat each other... A terrible man is responsible for everything, and it is difficult to theoretically imagine the misfortune of that person who, having lived atheistically on earth "as if nothing exists," suddenly finds himself face to face with a reality that is not only brighter than this land of ours, but even surpasses all our conceptions of reality. Was it not for these souls that the Lord suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane? In any case, he accepted suffering for them in the Cross.If the visible heaven did not separate us from the invisible heaven, we would shudder at the discrepancies of spirit that exist between the angelic triumphant church and our earthly church, almost non-militant, flabby human souls. We would be horrified and would clearly understand the truth that is now incomprehensible to us: what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us and what He is doing for each of us. We imagine his salvation almost theoretically, abstractly.

And we would have a clear picture of the absolute impossibility of salvation by "natural" ways. The reasoning of the occultists about the evolutionary movement of reincarnating humanity would seem to us, at best, insane. We would see that the darkness over humanity is not thinning, but is thickening... And we would understand what the Creator Incarnated on their earth did for people. We would see how ears of corn with even one seed are taken by heavenly reapers to heaven, that the slightest spark of Christ in a person - like a single seed in an ear - already saves this person. Everything dark is crossed out, cut off, only one spark is taken, and it becomes the eternal life of man. Glory to the salvation of Christ! Truly, we have nothing in us except our human dignity lying in the dust. And from this dust we arise by the grace of Christ and are carried away into heaven like a spark. But we are carried away if this spark of love for God has been kindled in us, if we are able to push our souls away from all mortal things in the world, if we are able to notice this mortal in the slightest, and in the same way push it away from us. Sensitivity to the smallest in ourselves will be for us an indicator of the health of our soul. If atoms really contain precise solar systems, then this is a perfect example of the organic homogeneity of all sin, small and great. The discussion of the need to reject even the smallest sin brings us to the most important question of human life: the question of life after death. where, due to the absence of a body (before the resurrection), it will be impossible to satisfy this passion, so that the soul will remain in the incessant languor of self-combustion, an incessant thirst for sin and lust without the possibility of satisfying it. A drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can be satisfied by pouring alcohol on him, and thus calming the tormented soul a little for a while. The fornicator will experience the same feeling. A money-lover too... Smoker - too. Let the smoker not smoke for two or three days. What will he experience? A certain torment, mitigated by all the relationships and amusements of life. But take away life with its entertainments... Suffering will escalate. It is not the body that suffers, but the soul that lives in the body, accustomed to satisfy its lust and its passion through the body. Deprived of satisfaction, the soul suffers. Of course, the soul of a rich sinner suffers in the same way, suddenly deprived of wealth, of a lover of peace, deprived of peace, the soul of a lover of self-love, which has received a blow to his self-love... How many suicides there were on this ground! All this is an experience, a bare experience of our earthly life. Already here, on earth, we can perform experiments on our souls. Everyone should be far-sighted. One must protect one's house from undermining (Matt. 24:43).Feeling this, is it really possible to calmly indulge in passions or even divide them into serious and "innocent"? After all, fire is still fire - both blast furnace and burning match. Both are painful for the person who touches it, and can be fatal. It is necessary to understand this indubitable truth, that every passion, every malice, every lust is fire.God's Law has enclosed the instincts of the human body within limits, and gives the volitional and irritable energies of the soul a true direction, so that man may go comfortably and easily towards spiritualization. What is the name of a person who, understanding all this, calmly and frivolously treats his passions, excuses them, putting to sleep all the signs of salvific sensitivity in his soul? We must pray for deliverance, for salvation. The Lord is called a savior not abstractly, but really. The Savior saves from all weaknesses and passions. It delivers. He heals. Quite evidently, perceptibly. Healing, forgiving. Forgiveness is the healing of what needs to be forgiven. It is given only to those who hunger and thirst for this truth. Those who simply desire, who smoulder in their desire, are not given healing. But to those who burn, flam, implore, strive with a heart, it is given. For only such people are able to appreciate the gift of God's healing, not to trample and give thanks for it, to sensitively protect in the Name of the Savior from new temptations of evil. But even this lust is disgusting to the spirit, and it is impossible even to imagine any of the Lord's closest disciples smoking cigarettes." Destroy the little lust," say the saints. There is no acorn that does not contain an oak. So it is in sins. Small plants are easily weeded. The spiritual meaning of smoking and all the petty "justifiable" illegalities of the spirit is licentiousness. Not only of the body, but also of the soul. This is a false calming of oneself (one's "nerves", as they sometimes say, not fully realizing that the nerves are the bodily mirror of the soul). This "calming" leads to greater and greater distance from true peace, from the true consolation of the Spirit. This calming is a mirage. Now, as long as there is a body, it must be constantly renewed. After that, this narcotic calming will be a source of painful captivity of the soul.It is necessary to understand that the one who "tears off", for example, his anger, also "calms down". But, of course, only - until a new fit of anger. It is impossible to calm oneself with the satisfaction of passion. You can calm yourself down only by confronting passion, refraining from it. One can calm oneself only by bearing the Cross of struggle against any passion, even the smallest one, the Cross of its rejection into one's heart. This is the path of true, firm, true and - most importantly - eternal happiness. The one who rises above the fog sees the sun and the eternally blue sky. He who rises above the passions enters the sphere of the peace of Christ, indescribable bliss, which begins here on earth and is accessible to every person. The same as getting angry with someone, being proud of someone, painting your cheeks or your lips for people, stealing a small piece of sweetness - a small penny from the church dish of God's nature. There is no need to look for such happiness. Their direct, logical continuation: cocaine, a blow to a person's face or a shot at him, counterfeiting of value. Blessed is the man who, having found such happiness, pushes it away with righteous and holy wrath. This demonic happiness reigning in the world is a harlot who has invaded the marriage of the human soul with Christ, the God of Truth and pure blissful joy. The Comforter ~ only the Creative Spirit of the Truth of Christ.It is impossible to pray in the spirit while smoking a cigarette. It is impossible to preach while smoking a cigarette. In front of the entrance to the temple of God, the papyrosa leans back... Whoever wants to be the temple of God at any moment will throw away a cigarette, like every false thought, every impure feeling. One can imagine the following example of life: tobacco, like a plant, has no evil in it (just like golden sand, like cotton, from which a monetary banknote is made). Apricot is God's plant. Alcohol can be very useful to the human body at certain moments and in certain doses, in no way contradicting the spirit, like moderate tea or coffee. Wood, the matter from which furniture is made, everything is God's... But now let's take these components in the following combination: a man is lounging in an upholstered armchair and smoking a Havana cigar, sipping every minute from a glass of apricotine standing next to him... Can this person in such a state have a conversation about the Living God - pray to the Living God? Physically - yes, spiritually - no. Why? Because this man is now dissolute, his soul is drowned in an armchair, and in a Havana cigar, and in a glass of apricotin. At this moment he has almost no soul. He, like the prodigal son of the Gospel, wanders "in distant lands." This is how a person can lose his soul. A person loses it all the time. And it is good if he finds it again all the time, struggles not to lose it, trembles over his soul as over his beloved child. The soul is the infant of immortality, defenseless and pitiful in the conditions of the world around us. How one should press one's soul to one's breast, to one's heart, how one should love it, destined for eternal life. Oh, how it is necessary to clean even the slightest stain from it! An example of the impossibility of preserving one's soul by voluptuously distributing it among the surrounding objects: armchairs, cigars, liquor. The example taken is especially colorful, although there are even more colorful ones in life. But if we take not the colorful, but the gray, but of the same dissolute spirit, everything will remain the same atmosphere, in which it will be less of a sin to be silent about Christ than to speak about Him. This is the key to why the world is silent about Christ, why people do not talk about the Savior of the Universe, about the One Father of the world, despite the multitude of people who believe in Him, neither in the streets, nor in salons, nor in friendly conversations. sometimes it is shameful before God to speak about Him to people. The world instinctively understands that in the situation in which it finds itself all the time, it is less of a sin to be silent about Christ than to talk about Him. A terrible symptom. The world is flooded with legions of words, man's tongue is obsessed with these empty legions, and not a word, almost not a word about God, about the Beginning, the End, and the Center of everything. And if a word about God is nevertheless spoken, it is difficult to finish it - both before oneself and before the world.If a person does not have an aversion to his small sins, he is spiritually unhealthy. If there is disgust, but "there is no strength" to overcome a weakness, it means that it is abandoned until the time when a person shows his faith in the struggle with something more dangerous for him than this weakness, and it is left to him for humility. For there are not a few people who appear blameless, who do not drink or smoke, but who are like, in the words of Climacus, "a rotten apple," that is, filled with open or secret pride. And there is no way to humble their pride except by some kind of fall. But he will remain outside the Kingdom of God and His laws who, for one reason or another, "absolves" himself of minor sins. Such a person, who "lulls" his conscience, becomes incapable of transgressing the boundary of the true life of the spirit. He always remains like a young man who approaches Christ and immediately departs from Him with sorrow, or even sometimes without sorrow, but just to... Rigorism and puritanism are alien to the spirit of the Gospel. Pharisaic righteousness without love is darker in the eyes of God than any sin. But the lukewarmness of Christians in the fulfillment of the commandments is just as dark. Both the Pharisees and those who trade and smoke in the temple of God are equally expelled from the temple, for the will of God is "our sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:3). The Son of God and the Son of Man gave us one commandment for thirst: "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." In it, the Lord seems to say: People, I do not give you a measure - determine it yourself. Determine for yourselves the measure of your love for My purity and your obedience to that love." At confession, people often unwisely testify to the same thing, not understanding that they came not for self-justification, but for self-condemnation." ^

Fear is the agony of mankind... It is difficult to fully understand it and cannot be cured at all. It can only be healed by heaven or choked by earth, inhibited by vanity, covered with cares; only one can distract oneself from this torment by various aspirations, plans, hopes, brief joys of the earth or its other pain. What are people in the world not afraid of! Having departed from their trust in the Creator, they build their earthly life surrounded by anxiety, apprehension, fear and horror.Having ceased to dwell in the paradise of God's sweet trust and their trust in God, people began to be painfully afraid of everything and frighten the whole world with themselves. People have filled the earth with instability and misery, in which they live, constantly called to another, higher life, but almost not responding to it. A person who has drowned in the earth now sees only the blackness of the earth. And all nature feels this separation of man from the higher life and freedom, and torments him, and fears him... Thorns surrounded human life, and thistles grew up on its roads. Evil and fear began to sting man. They can only sting him "in the heel" (Gen. 2:10). III, 15), but in the heel, i.e. in the external, peripheral senses and thoughts, all earthly life was now concentrated, which had fallen from the height of the bright Mind. And, struck in his pitiful heel, man began to faint with all the depth of his being - so weak is he, deprived of Grace. Like a beast, he trembles and fears everything, "Fear and trembling have come upon me, and darkness has covered me." Thus began his history, which has not been outlived by mankind to this day. His eyes began to faint from danger, from the infidelity of his life and the life of another person. Evil forces began to torment him, attract him to themselves, give him their illusory pleasures, and then beat him, enjoying his defenselessness and delusion. And man has become accustomed to the power of dark forces over himself. And a new feeling began to visit him: the joy of being evil and terrible for others. And the more he lives in his malicious delight of hatred for another person, power and pride, the more he fears and fears another person. Terrible for man is the transition from the dark womb of the world to the mysterious eternity. Every minute of this life is terrible in its novelty and responsibility. But man has learned to deceive his fear, to hide it, even to laugh at it; to deceive him, even by submitting to him and making sacrifices to him, in order to obtain greater ease of existence under his power. Such is the essence of ancient and modern idolatry, the cultivation of an artificial garden of life and thought outside of God... The modern race of mankind, its interests, its imagination and civilization, the ever-accelerating rotation of people in space and time, grows not only from the social and cultural connection of people, but also from the terrible loneliness of man in the world, from the loneliness that man wants to hide from himself and from others. Striving to hide from himself and from others his insignificance and his metaphysical nakedness without God, man has built and is building the world. But even in this dark striving of man to hide from himself his weakness and smallness, there is a spark of his freedom in choosing his path.Who has not appreciated and does not value his high dignity and his freedom to be a son of God, man must now learn this freedom of faith in God, love for God and obedience to Him through all the pain of his dislike. his unbelief and disobedience. Remaining God's, to its last speck of dust and blade of grass, the earth became a harsh school for man. Fragrant with its proximity to the heavenly world, the earth became for man a harsh school of God's truth. The inner evil of man's dislike of God has become and everything is becoming the external, physical and historical situation of man. Arising in the abyss of the soul and not washed away by repentance, evil goes like wounds, ulcers and diseases through the body of the earth. The "thorns and thistles" of the Bible that surround our lives are our sicknesses, our fears, our confusions and horrors; they crawled in, ran in, flew into the outer world through the inner world of the human soul, which shuddered and shook from its betrayal of God.Historians of the ancient world (like Fustel de Coulange - "La Cite antique") testify to the inhuman, "totalitarian", dark fear by which the history of the ancient world moved and directed. The Creator heals people from the fears of the earth through the fear of His Law. Everything that is darkened and constantly feared at every step can be cured of dark fear only by a new fear, a higher, luminous one; no longer senseless trembling before the horror of life and fate, but fear of reverence for the law of the Creator and His Spirit, fear of moral responsibility for the given talents of truth and love. After the incarnation of the Logos and the coming of the fire of the Spirit into the world, the whole earth (for the higher consciousness of man) became holy, and human sin in the midst of the earth has become even more abominable, is even greater madness than in the times of the Law alone. The bright fear of the burning bush of God's great perfection is the beginning of man's final wisdom: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." With the Word of His Truth, the Creator tore out the deadly arrow from the life of mankind and struck evil with the same arrow. Having freed fear from its demonic poison, the Spirit of God began to strengthen and elevate the hearts of people with this fear. And, accustomed to fear as to their own life, people began to feed on a new, higher fear, and return to God, to the meaning of their lives, freeing themselves from their old fears. Fear turned out to be neutralized, transformed, raised to the sky... This fear of God is capable of infinite exaltation and refinement, and goes beyond the sphere of all fearfulness. That is why it was not abolished by the coming to earth of the God-Man, who brought the New Testament to the world, no longer fear, but fearlessness of love. Fear remained in the world, like a bright halo over the fiery human striving for God's Purity.Humanity began to live between two fears: pure, holy and dark, sinful, lit up with one or the other fear. Man is still capable, side by side with the sublime feelings of angelic reverence before the Name of the Lord of Hosts, of concealing within himself and revealing the dark demonic fear of superstition, selfishness, and egoism. It is impossible to destroy in one's experiences any sign of any fear. But you can raise your fear. In this the religious flowering of the human personality takes place.The first dark fear of man is the fear of seeing God. This is the worldwide constant hiding of Adam of humanity from the nearness of God. "I am naked and hidden." To this day, mankind hides itself from God in its deeds, feelings, and desires.The second dark fear of man is the fear of seeing man. The depth of anthropological truth is revealed already on the first pages of the Bible: "Behold... I will hide myself, and be an exile and a wanderer on the earth, and whosoever meets me shall slay me" (Gen. 2:10). V, 14). These are the words of Cain after the murder of his brother.Just as a person is afraid of not finding God, so he is afraid of finding God, of seeing his Savior within himself and inside another person. Sometimes a person is afraid to find the highest humanity in himself and in his brother." Where are you, man?" - the Spirit of God calls the same ancient biblical Adam, humanity. And every person, with a conscious or unconscious movement of his soul, answers God: "I heard Thy voice in Paradise, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself" (Gen. 2:10). III, 10). Running away from man is only the second stage of leaving God. Those who have left God, but have not yet left man, are close to returning to God. Metaphysically, the departure of a person who does not believe in God from another person is the last form of moral solipsism, a malignant tumor of humanity, which develops not in the direction of Divine truth, but in the direction of its own egoistic being. Man is afraid to recognize himself as poor and naked in spirit. Realizing that he is naked, he is afraid to turn his brow and his eternity (humanity) to God. And, fearing this, he is afraid to find God anywhere, in the world or in his life. Thus man expels himself from the presence of God into the "outer darkness," where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth," the hopeless suffering of humanity, which does not want to die for itself and be resurrected in God. "There is no God!" ... "There can be no God in a world where there is so much evil and suffering!" In unbelief there is a horror of the possibility of meeting God. Fear is pushed aside, the soul is calmed by unbelief... Thus, only the bird of the desert, the ostrich, running on the ground, hides its head in the sand, fleeing from pursuit. But we see in the fear of fallen man the heavenly answer of the first bashful chastity of creation: "Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man!" Here is revealed not the dark desire to flee from the Holy of Holies, but the angelic hiding of oneself from Him, out of love for Him, from shame for oneself, for one's weakness and unpreparedness for this meeting. which shows the paradisiacal nature of human repentance as finding the place of one's spiritual correspondence to God. The bright trembling of the prodigal son before the love of the Father, who realizes that he "has no right to be called a son" is the same fear as the fear of the Apostle Peter after the miraculous catch of fish on the Lake of Galilee. But we, people, are either insensitive and impudent to everything - to life and death, to good and to evil, or extremely fearful and timid, distrustful of life, of the elements, of animals and people. And even our fearlessness itself is often not a sign of Eternal Life, which has begun in us, but only one of the expressions of our insensitivity to the mysteries of life and its sacredness. Brave warriors turn pale at the word or look of a weak woman. Dark fear is always caused by passion. This fear is always a consequence of unfaithful love either for the world, or for another person, or for oneself. But there is also fear from spiritual emptiness, from a person's loss of himself. The Apostle Peter was frightened by this last fear in the courtyard of Caiaphas, in the presence of Christ the Savior Himself. Ready to give his life for Christ, he (such is the consequence of presumption) suddenly lost and frightened.In the midst of his dark fear, modern man resembles the most primitive. What are people not afraid of! The life of a modern person, like the life of an ancient one, is woven from fears that fly through his soul like birds, not always reflected on the screen of his consciousness. Modern man is not aware of all his fears. But if there is no complete peace in his heart, it can be said that fears, these children of his human passions, live in his spiritual home. Those who are not insensitive, let them be afraid of something, sometimes a lot. Rulers and subjects, bosses and subordinates, rich and poor, healthy and sick. Everyone is afraid in their own way... There is no doubt that, frightened on all sides by all kinds of personal, social and world apparitions, modern man is an even greater slave of demonic fears than the ancient pagan or naïve African of our days. Wasn't it a ghost fear? These childish-scientific conclusions of the last century have now disappeared before the light of new human knowledge, before the new word of science, which no longer opposes itself to God, but modestly realizes its limits. The human body has its own understanding of happiness and sorrow, joy and sorrow. Bodily emotions are a new source of suffering and fears for a person - fears of the body and fears of yielding to the body. The body is rigid, insistent, and coarse in relation to the spirit, it has its own psychology and will. It encroaches on the human spirit like a lion; bound in spirit, turns into a pitiful dog. It is "of this world," and does not recognize the higher demands of the human spirit; it has to be forced to good deeds, to prayer, to self-denial.The "natural" body (1 Cor. 15:44) fears many things. It often trembles, while the spirit of man remains peaceful and delivered into the hands of God (the experience of many believers during aerial bombardments). And man does not want to meet God. That is why a person is afraid of his great depth and runs away all his life from the slightest deepening into himself. The whole run of his life, all the hustle and bustle of the world, all the dynamics of his civilization, with its leveling and standardization of life, its amusements and hobbies, worries, plans and enthusiasm, seem to expel man from the Face of God and deprive him of a human face. But - "Where shall I go from Thy Spirit, O Lord, and from Thy presence shall I flee?" The impulse of unbelieving or little believing humanity is directed towards fleeing from its depths, from its silence, where paradise bliss is hidden, where God meets man. A person runs away from the spiritual world - where? In a vicious circle of external creativity, external tasks, external relations with people, transient successes, instantly arising joys that never satiate them. And man is more and more afraid to be left alone with himself. He no longer looks at the stars, no longer thinks about life in silence. The depth of his soul, which can contain the great love of the Creator Himself, is not a joyful vision for him, but a terrible vision.Man is afraid of the depth of his immortal self, of his absoluteness, of his "ability to do anything": the possible abyss of his crime and his ultimate self-surrender to God. He is afraid of his own fear itself, for fear is pain; and sometimes a man is even afraid of joy, for joy is unfaithful, and when it goes away, it brings pain; A person may be afraid of his joyful hopes. As deep as man is, so mysteriously boundless is the world of his spirit; it can truly be said that such a spirit as the human spirit could only be given to an immortal man.Scientific psychopathology and psychotherapy investigate the realm of the unconscious too abstractly (and therefore incorrectly, outside the criteria of good and evil); therefore, even in their most subtle analyses, they cannot touch upon the real mysteries of human life.

Bright fears are born from the fear of God. Reverence, trembling of faith and hope enter the heart of a person with acute pain and the bliss of bright fear.He who loves the will of God fears more than his life to do anything in the world "of himself" and not "according to God", to do anything in this way means for him to inflict torment on himself. And man walks cautiously and fills the world only with the fragrant honey of life. Man is afraid of sin, but not as an external, fatal force, but as something consonant with his weakness... "Do not lead us (our weakness!) for temptation" (for testing), "do not subject it to an examination", a humble person asks God... "Tread on the adder and the basilisk, and cross the lion and the serpent," God answers man. This truth of the 90th Psalm is known to a soul faithful to God and is not afraid of the darkness of the surrounding world, nor of its own. She is afraid of only one thing: it is terrible to upset her Beloved! This is the fear of Christ's disciples. A person then no longer fears the torment of his unfaithfulness to God, but the loss of these torments; fears peaceful and painless violations of the Divine will. This is the highest circle of fear, which leads into the heavenly harmony of the spirit and guards this harmony in man. Inspired by this fear of divine love, man gains freedom from sin and is freed from the lower torments of fear. Fear is always inspired by some spirit. Dark fears oppress, weaken, kill. Light fears gather the soul, purify, and bring the Holy Spirit into the world.Dark fear is a lack of love for God and for one's neighbor. The lover ceases to be afraid. ... Love conquers fear (1, John 4:18). As freedom of movement conquers constraints, so love conquers fear. A person's pure, filial devotion to God, or brotherly devotion of the heart to another person, conquers the fear of self-love, which chills the heart. But this applies only to true love. Unfaithful love, moved by passion or lust, knows no fearlessness; it does not conquer fear, but strengthens it, because it strengthens the self of a person. Complete liberation from natural and unnatural fears is achieved only through the "liberation of the son" - when the son, i.e. the man of God, is liberated in the very human soul, and this liberation is accomplished by the Son of God, the "liberation of the son" is accomplished through repression from; human soul of any passion and thus the fear associated with it. Sometimes all passions and all fears. Then all shadows leave the soul; and even the shadows of her shadows leave her. St. John Chrysostom said that it would be more terrible for him than eternal torment to see the meek face of the Lord Jesus Christ, turning away from him with sorrow... This is the psychology of true faith: the fear of grieving the beloved Lord, of not accepting His immeasurable love with immensity of spirit.Neither John Chrysostom nor other righteous men were, of course, free on earth from the fears of man, "who lives in the world and wears flesh." Paul's companion, Luke, says that the angel who appeared to Ap. To Paul on the ship, during a terrible storm, he said: "Do not be afraid, Paul, you must stand before Caesar"... Undoubtedly, the angel from his spiritual world saw that the apostle had a certain carnal fear at that time. We see further how, walking as a prisoner along the Appian Way to Rome, the aged Apostle was "cheered up" when he saw the brothers there. So humane is the description of this weakness of the Apostle. And more than once he felt anxious. "When we came into Macedonia," "our flesh had no rest, but we were pressed on every side: from without, attacks, and fears within" (11 Cor. VII, 5). The wind of the world rippled the surface of this God-given soul with fear. But he did not interfere with her apostolic work. In this is revealed the power of God, which acts in human weakness given over to God. The beauty of man is that nothing can keep him from the work of God in the world. The world is looking for the "strong" and scatters them like dust. The Creator brings the "weak" (in their own consciousness) closer to Him, because only a person who has truthfully recognized himself as weak, in need of God's power, can receive the power of God. But he should not be frightened by the imaginary greatness of his efforts and sacrifices on the paths to God, nor by his weaknesses or fears on these paths. Through all these abysses man is carried by the power of God, when it is necessary for the cause of God and man in the world. And if not, man again stands at his abyss, powerless and blissful in his fearless insignificance.A faithful soul that abides in the desire for faithfulness always remains in a bright alert, it is afraid not to know the will of God or, knowing it, to betray it in some way. "Lead us not into temptation" is the prayer of all who are truthfully aware of the possibility of their inattention, their absent-mindedness, their infatuation with the secondary, and their fall. But a Christian's sense of weakness never turns into an inferiority complex. On the contrary, this feeling is a wing of faith, courage and affirmation in God. Given his weakness, the weakness of all people in general, and the cobwebs of the whole world, man does not rely on himself or on anything "of the world"; In nothing earthly does it affirm its last hope, And in this it is never deceived.The power of the "fear of God" gives rise to repulsion from evil and an attraction to truth in the soul. He who lives in the light of the fear of God sees all the shadows in his heart. And the more the light of Christ contains within himself, the more clearly he sees his slightest unfaithfulness to God and ardently hates every approach of sin to his heart, rightly seeing even in the slightest sin the mediastinum between God and himself. This is constant attention to oneself, and the bright self-hatred born from the knowledge of the movements of one's will is not at all like the self-hatred that a person who loves only himself is capable of in relation to himself. There is evangelical self-hatred, and there is demonic hatred. A person who lives in evil is also sometimes capable of sincerely hating himself, despising and fearing himself for his insufficient perfection in evil. A murderer who is frightened, in his conscience, to kill the witnesses of his crime, is able to despise himself for such "cowardice" and even "repent" of it. Such morally inverted people, who walk morally "upside down", are bitten by the serpent of evil, of course, not "in the heel", but in the very head. We see people in the world who consciously accustom and even force themselves to be unfriendly, rude, stony and proud with other people (even sometimes especially with their own family); then a person is afraid to have, or even only to show, any sympathy for another person. The development of this feeling and its technical organization: the modern concentration camp.The moral state of man becomes especially difficult when his soul, as if infected with an apocalyptic "trichinae," is included in some collective evil of the world. Then people begin to hate each other and exterminate each other because of the outward signs of blood, race, class, origin, or because of various ideas that change in the world. In collective evil, moral perversity has more reasons for self-justification, although self-justification, psychologically, usually does not require any reasons. Life is hidden under the crust of hypocrisy, conventionality. Everything is made double and half-truthful. Infernal light spreads over the souls not from the Sun - Christ, but from the phosphorus of human brains and bones. A huge phosphoric desert of dead light, inhuman fires of hellish sounds, and at the same time some kind of silence, moonlit desolation... Whoever has seen something like this at least once will not forget this inanimate light from the "Christmas trees of death" shining over the doomed place of the earth, the glitter of cannon lightning in the glow of explosions and fires. Such is the light of the world that opposes Christ; it is at the same time a judgment over the world, an exteriorization of its untrue thoughts, desires, all the half-truths of its life.From many souls in the world, dark streams of soot of passions stretch to heaven - pride, greed, malice, envy, lust. This soot of daily existence merges above the ground into a huge black cloud. It extends over human life and history. From him comes the shadow of fear on the earth. This shadow is not seen only by insensitive people intoxicated by themselves, or by people embraced by divine love... Inferiority complex (Ed.). ^

III

The main suffering of a person who has left God is self-love. Love for one's unfaithful and insignificant glory in the world, love for unfaithful and transient values, love for bodily pleasures and external peace; These three human pre-loves, united in one circle, cast the Luciferian shadow of fear into the world." A proud soul is a slave of fear; being self-confident, she is afraid of any rustle and even shadows" (The Ladder, Verse 21, Ch. 4). "Timidity is a deviation from faith in anticipation of surprises" (ch. 2). - "Although all the fearful are vain," says St. John of the Ladder, "nevertheless, not all those who are not fearful are humble-minded", "both robbers and gravediggers are not afraid" (ch. 6). This is the fear of seeing inattention to oneself, to one's abilities, talents, perfections. In this state, like drunkards of wine, people seek approval for themselves and recognition from other people, even those to whom they are completely indifferent. An artist or politician who looks down on the "crowd" (distinguishes himself from it) at the same time greedily seeks recognition and worship from this crowd, fearing not to find it. A person often makes his life dependent on the opinion of other people. Here is one of the heavy chains of general slavery. Like idols, some people are constantly seeking recognition, honor, attention, and respect from other people. Those who do not care about the glory of God are keenly concerned about their own glory and honor. Different are the degrees and types of this universal, or rather, inhuman lust, and the fears associated with it. For rulers and politicians, they are expressed in one thing, for people of art in another. While true artists, writers and musicians are afraid only to lie in their art, not to express its ultimate truth (such is the fear of real scientists), superficial artists are afraid only of an unfavorable evaluation of their works, lack of praise and buyers. They are not afraid of superficial criticism, but of any criticism, perceiving it as a deliberate humiliation of their personality. Intoxicated with the passion of self-love and love of glory, he becomes the enemy of the most valuable and intelligent critic. Only a sublime, unselfish ("ascetic") attitude to art, its conversion to the service of God and His truth in the world, preserves and saves the artist's human personality from decay. The subtlest branches of the love of glory sink deep into the subconscious of a person, especially the one who is, by virtue of his distance, and the greatest dependence on the opinion of others. But the task and goal of man in the world is precisely to pass from the lower plane of dependence on people to the higher. Man is called to be dependent not on random views, moods and predilections of man, but on the true fate of each person, on the depth of his life path, which only begins on earth. On his path to eternity, every person can be supported and strengthened by another. Here is our true mutual responsibility, the chain of our luminous dependence on each other.Service to a person (not to his random thoughts, desires and weaknesses) is the noblest and highest form of dependence on this person. We are never independent in the world. Even the highest form of contempt for others, Nietzsche's story about the "superman", would not have appeared in the world if there had not been these "entourage" of the author and listeners... To depend on people, to serve them in all forms and in all paths of life, is the path of man's true glory, glory in God and eternity. "Not to us, not to us, but to Thy Name, O Lord, give glory!" - this is the path of true human glory. What will a person be afraid of then? Any disrespect for himself on the part of others, even dishonor, he will accept with a clear and meek conscience on the paths of his feasible and sincere service to all. Living in the world, this person is free from the first and main temptation - from the love of insignificant, untrue glory. People inspire themselves, for a short time of earthly life, with the anesthesia of this glory. "A dog that licks a saw delights in the taste of its own blood, not understanding all the harm it does to itself," St. John of the Ladder defines the harm that people bring to themselves by longing for untrue glory in this world, forgetting their true glory, which comes only from God. And in the spiritual, religious sphere, man is not freed from the temptation of this glory and the fears associated with it. Here, in the realm of the highest values, the spirit of love of glory can acquire a particularly subtle and unexpectedly dangerous expression. The constant warning from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ to the scribes and Pharisees to "sit low" shows that in the spiritual realm, no less than in the other, a person can easily find food for his vain self, and be afraid that the insatiable nature of this self will remain hungry and poor. "To trumpet before oneself", to rejoice in the glory invented by oneself or given by the world, is characteristic not only of emperors, marshals, politicians and artists. The most subtle glory, in its "rottenness", lies in wait for the servants of the Church, God's servants, on their paths... Salome, the mother of the Apostles James and John, was afraid that her sons would not receive in the Kingdom of God a sufficiently high (as she understood it on earth) glory. As she bowed down to the Savior, she asked Him to give her sons a place "on His right" and "on His left" when His kingdom came. "You do not know what you are asking," was the Savior's answer, not only to her and His disciples, but also to all people who are afraid not to be glorified before other people of this world. "The root of all evil is the love of money," in other words, the insatiable lust for material things. Here is born one of the most acute fears that torment humanity. Fear of losing or not gaining. They are born from feelings of avarice and greed that are fatal for the soul. The miserly fear losing what they have; that is why they are afraid to share their short-term possessions; the greedy are afraid of not taking advantage of the opportunity, opportunity, and time of enrichment. "Time is money" is the motto of the greedy, written on his face and on the wall of his office. He does not understand that time is not money, but money is condensed, crystallized time, multiplied in the hands of man, for his better dedication to God and neighbor. Through his almsgiving, the rich multiply the time of his prayers, his goodness, his faithfulness to God. Through love, material value also becomes spiritual value. Time is infinitely more valuable than money, and money has value only for those who know the spiritual mystery of time. Good would like to turn all money into love, to multiply through this time of love. And evil wants to turn all the earthly time given to people to grow in Christ's love into money. That is why Providence arranges the world in such a way that when there is too much money that people have not exchanged for good and love, it loses its value, and the so-called "devaluation" occurs, a reduction in money, and time is freed up for love. But people again rush to exchange time for money, again and again afraid of "missing time". Mankind is spinning, running, rushing about in pursuit of money, these "ghosts of existence", afraid not to be able to catch the largest number of ghosts in time... Wars in the world are waged because of profit, because of the fear of missing it or not acquiring it. Wars are a product of this fear. War is much more a matter of fear than of fearlessness and courage. The causes of wars are rooted in the metaphysical fear of peoples, from which they want to close themselves off with the courage of war. The fear of real or imaginary danger leads to the shedding of blood in the same way as the fear of despair before the hopelessness of history, devoid of the light of Eternity.The ancient "golden calf", which is taking on an increasingly "liquid", even now invisible "atomic" form, frightens countries and continents with its disfavor towards them and throws them against each other. The snake of the material devours its tail. The chronos of unfertile time, turned only into material values, destroys his children. Civilization, unbalanced and not cemented by the higher meaning of life, leads to the destruction of humanity, complicates and destroys its own world more and more. Unwilling to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, humanity devours its own flesh and drinks its own blood. People are afraid of true prophets who want to tear him away from this autoanthropophagy and call false prophets and leaders to them, giving them all power over themselves. The poor - to miss a convenient time to seize the property of the rich. If treasures are accumulated, a person is afraid, not knowing where to hide them - the house may burn down, the land may be taken away, shares will depreciate, the bank will go bankrupt, a fireproof box - to be broken. There is no certainty anywhere and in anything. Moreover, everywhere there is complete uncertainty or certain death... Like a wounded animal, humanity rushes to the roar of its bombings, in the glow of its fires..."Everything collapses and disappears. The material house and the spiritual house, built on the sand of disbelief in the Divine Life, turn into garbage..."Mine is only what I have given" (St. Maximus the Confessor) - this wisdom, which reveals immortality, is alien to the spirit of the world. Through the mouths of its "prophets" and "sages" the world keeps saying and saying: "Mine is only what I have not given," or "what I have taken from another." And in a new way, in each generation, people believe this "truth," which is constantly refuted by every death of man. A person convulsively hides his rubbish, his rubbish, but this rubbish, this rubbish is torn out of his hands and destroyed. Life comes out of ashes, moths, rust, decay, decay, explosions, orders of harsh authorities. Accustomed to the incessant loss of everything, they replace their former possessions with the hope of the future, and live in fear of parting with this hope, with the ghost of the ghost. The lover of money continues to be afraid of a "rainy day" in the world and is not afraid of black eternity." But the fearful and the unfaithful" (Rev. 21:8) - "a portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone." This prophecy, pronounced by the beloved disciple of Heavenly Love, is a revelation about the modern world and man. This world, with its annihilable values, wars and fires, is in essence a "lake burning with fire and brimstone." And the fate of the fearful and the unfaithful (the fearful because of their unfaithfulness to God, and the unfaithful because of their fearfulness) is not to have a way out of this lake. For the way out of its "fire and brimstone" is given only by Him Who said: "I am the Door"... Love for the flesh of another person and for one's own flesh, and placing its blind, natural and inferior natural commands as the center of one's interests, is a new ocean of human meaninglessness, from which flow new rivers of human fears. The measure of love for one's neighbor is man's love for himself. But man has lost the spirit of correct self-love. Few people truly love themselves as a temple of the Holy Spirit. The instinct to fight for one's existence and the highest good is inherent not only in the entire organism of the human body, but also in each of its senses. The organs of smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste - all the senses of the body seek pleasant bodily irritation and fear unpleasant irritations. If the "innermost man of the heart" (Peter III. 4) has not yet received Life into himself, has not been inflamed and warmed by its fire, he is always under the incessant influence of the commands and fears of his flesh and is imbued with the specific "carnal" wisdom of "this world", which does not have the spirit of truth. A person who does not agree to live by the faith of Christ, according to the laws of the Gospel, becomes a creature lower and less pure than any of the animals. The generic remedy given for the lofty purpose of multiplying the earthly (and heavenly) race of the "sons of God" turns into an insatiable hearth of false-sharp, but in fact dull, and never satiating the person's experiences, which leave in the depths of the human heart a sediment, a painful stiffness, fear and suffering. By refining his sensual carnal joy in life and art, man thinks that he is "refining his life." But a wave of new fears and sufferings destroys and weakens his illusory happiness, built on the flesh. A sensual person fears for his happiness, anticipating its transience, and his heart painfully catches carnal happiness, like air catches a fish thrown out on the sand. Innumerable diseases, weaknesses, imperfections, a long period of infancy, maturation, old age and dying, in comparison with animals, keeps a person constantly in the channel of carnal fears, inferiority and suffering. These fears, like beacons, are called upon to lead man to the truth that he is not only an inhabitant of the earth. In understanding this lies the whole sad science of humanity." Just as it is impossible to fill the belly once and for all, so it is impossible to overcome fear. As the weeping increases, it moves away, and as the weeping becomes scarce, we become fearful," says St. John of the Ladder, meaning, of course, not weeping out of fear, but grace-filled weeping out of love for God and prayerful weeping over one's unfaithfulness to Him. "He who has become a servant of the Lord will fear his Lord alone, and he who does not yet fear Him often comes to fear even from his shadow." According to this theory, primitive man, frightened by the mysterious phenomena of nature, began to deify them out of a sense of self-preservation and worship these phenomena as gods; From such savage fears a religion was supposedly born, which was later overgrown with a class of priests-priests, who began to exploit the religious feeling of mankind for the sake of their material gain... Not only does this argument not explain religion, but it does not explain fear either. It explains only one of the primitive experiences of man in connection with fear. This phenomenon of the metaphysical enslavement of primitive man to fear testifies not to what the atheistic theory wants to deduce from him, but to a much deeper phenomenon of the primitive life of man; We talked about it at the beginning of our study. In a person there is a whole series, a whole keyboard, of pneumatologically different, dissimilar fears. Beginning in the low, coarse, disharmonious sphere, the spiritual experience associated with fear dissolves in the highest and subtlest harmony of the heavenly world. It speaks of fear of the lowest and most primitive. Of course, it was not from this pitiful, dull, and dark fear that mankind's highest experiences, its pure, luminous religious contemplations, comprehensions, and deeds were created and emerged. Only false religion, like godlessness itself, comes out of dark fear, as well as out of gloomy, stupid fearlessness. The radiant religion, religio, the bond between man and the Creator, is born of the lofty, pure fear of God and leads man into a higher, radiant fearlessness. Yes, idolatry was moved by such fear. But it was not only dark fear that created even pagan religion. The fear of a mother who is afraid to wake up her child, the fear of a husband to disturb his sick wife, the fear of a man to betray his friend, to betray his word, to his marriage, to betray the secret of another, to be unfaithful to his own convictions - all these, although not religious, but already ethical fears, flow into religious consciousness. the subconscious and conscious revelation in man of the truth of his great insufficiency and incompleteness before the Divine Being. The essence and partial truth of all ancient, pagan religions, even very primitive and pneumatologically obscure, lies not in their incorrect philosophy, not in their naïve, partly childish and false, anthropocentric and demonocentric ideas about the higher being, and not in the cult experiences associated with these ideas. but in the discovery and affirmation in man of the feeling of religious metaphysical dependence on a higher, better and more powerful being.The development of religious consciousness in mankind can be likened to the gradual development of a child's relationship to the alphabet; At first, the child sees nothing in it except merging dark spots; then he begins to distinguish individual letters, comprehending their sound meaning; then he learns to read whole phrases, understanding them, and finally, in one act of cognition, he grasps the content of a whole book, many books. There is one truth in all religious experiences, without which there is no religion, or even pseudo-religion. This truth is the recognition of the higher world and one's dependence on it. In this primary humility of the human soul is the beginning of all religions. The perfection of religion depends only on whom and what people consider superior to themselves, before whom and what they bow down, before what truths they reverently humble their hearts. The worship of a crocodile, a cow, a bull, a snake or planets does not elevate a person to the Kingdom of God. And that is why there are religions that do not elevate, but metaphysically lower, degrade, spiritually kill a person... That is why the apostles and preachers of the Gospel are at war not only with unbelief, but also with false faith. And the equalization of all faiths and truths is a sign of the obscuration of human consciousness.In religions, as in people, there are different degrees of spiritual purity and height.Absolute Religion, the apotheosis of the truth of the spirit, is faith in God the Incarnate Christ Jesus, which sets no limits to perfection. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."The higher the religion, the higher the fear. And therefore the assertion that religion is born of the "fear of savages" is a savage understanding of both religion and fear.

A spiritually thinned soul is capable of acutely trembling as it approaches the higher world. The demonic world is already alien to it, and the angelic world is not yet akin to it, and the soul close to heaven is capable of being frightened by angels, although the difference between the approach of angels and the approach of demons is precisely in the absence of fears and the presence of peace, humility and love on a person." From the presence of an invisible spirit, the body becomes afraid; from the presence of the Angel the soul of the humble rejoices," says St. John of the Ladder. Angels evoke high awe, profoundly different in spirit and consequences from the fear caused by demons. It is this fear that can be called the fear of inadequacy. "Do not be afraid, Zachariah, for your prayer has been heard," said the angel of the Lord to the father of the Forerunner, when Zachariah, seeing him, "on the right side of the altar of incense," "was troubled, and fear fell upon him" (Luke 1)... "Do not be afraid, Mary," said the Angel to the Most-Pure Virgin, appearing before Her (Luke 1). The humble and pure-hearted shepherds "feared with great fear" when they saw the Angel, but heard from him: "Do not be afraid, for I bring you good news of joy, which shall be to all men" (Luke 2). "Do not be afraid, it is I," says the Resurrected Lord to His close disciples, in order to calm them down, fearing the immeasurable truth of the Resurrection.Approaching the last mystery – the sufferings and horrors of the God-Man, we must be silent. Our mind is too insignificant and too polluted with lower concepts that have grown out of ignorance, and our heart is narrow with love. We are powerless, even abstractly, to touch the abyss of horror into which the Lord Jesus Christ plunged Himself, His last hours of earthly life, redemptive for the world. The Gospel says that in the Garden of Gethsemane He "grieved and was terrified"... His horror was the horror of our falling away from the Heavenly Father and the horror of taking upon Himself our separation from the Father. Being united in all things with the will of the Father, the Lord came to take upon Himself and heal all human sufferings that came from man's falling away from God. He took all the sufferings of mankind from past and future ages. All the torment of separation from God – conscious and unconscious by people in the world – entered into His sinless nature, completely united with the Father in everything, the horror of Gethsemane and the Cross was not only His, Jesus' horror, but also the horror of falling away from God and the destruction of all people, peoples and centuries... It was the horror of taking upon Himself the horror of a world without God, and it ended in the last redemptive mortal moment of Golgotha tornness: "My God, my God, Thou hast forsaken Me forever.." And now in Christ every person takes upon himself a glimpse of this most terrible and brightest moment in the history of mankind – the excruciating pain of not his own sin... Fear is the agony of the soul that is excommunicated or separated from God. Fear is the agony of loneliness. And always He who dwells with the Father had to endure an incomprehensible separation from the Father for all of us who separated ourselves from God through sin. The sinless Jesus took the curse of sin, which weighed on all mankind, and destroyed it, carrying it through the narrow gates of His life and death. This curse of separation from the Father, the ultimate loneliness of all and all, was to descend upon the One Sinless One, evoking the unspeakable horror of His redemptive torment... The indivisible, inseparable God-manhood was inseparably torn apart and inseparably split in Him, redeeming, filling with Himself our separation from the Father... "With His stripes we are healed" (Isa.). That is why any fear is associated with the loneliness of the soul, with its orphanhood, homelessness and helplessness in the world. A person suffers from abandonment the most, and he is most painfully afraid of it. Fear is a negative expression of loneliness and abandonment. The positive expression of this state is faith in God and prayer.He who does not believe in God and does not turn to God does not feel his abandonment and does not understand his terrible loneliness in the world. He trusts too much the reality of all his material contacts with the world. It seems to him that he "needs nothing else"; he is satisfied with everything, and if he is dissatisfied, then it is petty, insignificant. The beginning of faith in God is the awakening of essential, metaphysical dissatisfaction with oneself, holy dissatisfaction with this life. "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world" (1 John 11:15) - this is a negatively expressed commandment to love already in this world "the new heaven and the new earth." But the loneliness of man must be saved and sanctified as communion. The fear of God is the path of salvation and loneliness.To deliver him "from the fear of the night" asked in his prayer the fearless conqueror of Goliath, and the even more fearless conqueror of his sin, David; and he heard the words which he had conveyed to all ages and generations of men: "Fear not the fear of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the days, nor the things that pass away in darkness." This "night terror" visits not only sleeping infants, but also ascetics awake at night in the wilderness, fearing nothing but unfaithfulness to God." Be of good cheer," the Savior encouraged His disciples. "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." Take courage, driving away your fear, not letting it into your heart; Be of good courage in your very fear, growing in patience, bravely bearing the suffering of your fear, as a metaphysical burn of the soul. This suffering can also be suffering for Christ.The apostles also felt fear; they all fled after the betrayal of the Lord. "Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled" (Matt. 28:56). The trust had only John with the Mother of the Lord. The human imagination, guided by the senses experienced only in earthly reality, often serves human fear. Up. Peter had already taken a few steps across the stormy sea to meet his Master, but he was overcome by his imagination, built on the old experience of the senses, and began to drown; but was restored in the experience of new feelings, in accordance with the almighty power of Him who called him." The "burn" of fear in the hearts of believers is a sign of their not yet fully attuned to the sounds of the heavenly world, a symptom of the discord that still exists in them between the "old" and the "new" man, a discord that sometimes ends only on the threshold of the new world." A thorn in the flesh was given to me... that I should not be exalted" (2 Cor. XII, 7). This "sting" in the lives of spiritually gifted people is also fear. It is excruciatingly ashamed for a Christian to realize that he fears something else on earth except his unfaithfulness to the Lord. But it is through this humbling, medicinal fear that he understands better that all the good in him is not of him. Joyful, for every person faithful to God, the Judgment of God is at the same time the Last Judgment. The bottomless, unspeakable weakness of man trembles at the nearness of the last ineffable Truth of God. This Truth rejoices and terrifies man; rejoices with the power of his saving love, terrifies with the power of his cross-bearing in this world, as well as with his perfection." Come to her, Lord Jesus!" exclaim the disciples of the Word. The thirst for the triumph of the ultimate Truth is stronger in them than the fear of their own weakness, the possibility of their incineration, from the encounter with this Truth. But other sounds also enter into the harmony of the last devotion to God: "Lord, I am not ready... sanctify, purify, strengthen." And this is the Apostle's word: "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"... There are lepers who stretch out their hands to Christ to be healed forever; and there are lepers who also hunger for Him, but turn away from His ways and only weep for joy that He is in the world. They are afraid to stain the sand under His feet with their pus. And this is love! Through joyful tears they look at how their Lord heals others and accepts into His Blessed Church those who are as exhausted by life as they are, but they are sweetly afraid to approach the Lord, to breathe on Him with their stinking breath. At the moment of leaving this world, a person is frightened, it is difficult to take off, to take off everything "here", bodily, seemingly internal, "psychological", all the earthly clothes of the soul. It's scary to be naked metaphysically - to the end. The spirit trembles, too accustomed to its wanderer's tent, to this body of its own, to carnal thoughts, feelings, and desires. Death is the lightning-fast ruin of the world and impoverishment. Did the person prepare for this? The wild horror of people who lived thoughtlessly and fearlessly, who stood petrified in this world before eternity and its Sun, "which did not set day or night" is kindled here. After all, this fall is not only predicted by God, but also verified by the experience of all earthly generations.We now live on earth, in all countries under the old regime. A "new regime" is coming, a new order, a new power, the power of God's absolute Laws. Far-sighted is he who believes this truth. A change can happen every moment - at night, in a dream, or during the day on the street... But the best death for man is, of course, after preparation, with a clear consciousness of the dying of all the values of this temporary existence and the birth of man into the world of spirit. It is necessary in advance for each person to make friends with those wise and good authorities that will come to replace the sinful egoistic authorities of this world, the passions of this temporary life. What happened before our eyes to the vanquished after the world war, and to their authorities, is only a parable of what will happen when this whole world of resistance to God loses the war to God. Everything dark and unclean must be stripped away by us like worthless clothing. Metaphysically naked, terribly poor, destroyed to the utmost limits, to the possibility of bliss only in God, we must stand before the truth of another world... "O Son of God, receive me a communicant of Thy mystery today." Their last minute is on Golgotha. After that comes Holy Saturday. Peace from all fears. And - the Resurrection, the unsetting Light.The incomparable bliss of freedom from fear is received by a person faithful to God on his deathbed.The prayers of the Church reveal great realities. In the rite "for the departure of the soul", from the person of the departing, the Church asks for consolation for him. The degrees of peace and spiritual peace of the departing people are different. Having received a real certificate from the other world of God's mercy to him, prepared by Repentance and Communion of the Holy Mysteries. To the departure from this world, sometimes already hearing the angels, in great silence, in infinite, sublime joy in the Lord, a dying man, for this earth, enters into a terrible and inexpressibly beautiful eternity. It is impossible to depict how sublime is the departure from this world, purified, justified, all the fears of a person who has passed on.A soul that has entered the threshold of the other world, prepared for its last journey, is not afraid of losing itself - and everything - in God. With solemn severity, and already angelic fearlessness, she puts aside from herself the inappropriate, at this solemn moment, carnal sorrow of relatives, the manifestation of their insufficient love for God and for her. She wants from those present, at her departure to the other world, only prayer, silence and reverence. Standing on the verge of a new, great world, it knows that nothing human should entertain or hold it back.The visible universe experiences what every human being experiences: death and resurrection into eternity.The Lord said: "Men will faint for fear"... To the extent that faith, hope in God and love for God become impoverished, people, societies, and nations will fear each other more and more, and because of this they will love each other less and less. "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 2:12). Free, adopted - "all who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God" - fearless in Christ, ready for the last, they will speak and are already telling the world the ultimate truth. "Love conquers fear." Fearless in their love, strong in the love of God, the disciples of the Word will shine to the world even in the hour when "the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light."

Seven Words about the Land of the Gadarenes