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.

IV

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

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."

I

I see the land of the Gadarenes, where the Lord sailed with His disciples after a storm on the Lake of Galilee... The country is sparsely inhabited. Mountains, stone, sand. From the side of Tiberias and Magdala, it appears in a light haze - a mysterious and harsh country, even under a blue sky, on a clear sunny morning. He was met by a Gadarene demoniac known to the surrounding inhabitants; who did not dress in clothes, who lived In coffins - small caves in the rocks. Tormented inwardly, he was not far from the shore, probably drawn to the lake by the sudden silence that had come. A weak-willed tool of some inner force that lived in him, he could not live with people. And people could not force him to live according to human laws. He was constantly tormented by the suicidal spirit, and was powerless to get rid of it. These spiritual torments, observed everywhere in the world, are more terrible than all physical sufferings.Seeing the image of the Lord, the possessed person screams, but does not run away. He does not run away because the light force irresistibly draws him to itself. He screams, because an evil force torments him and compels him to flee, but is already powerless to put him to flight. It is already bound by the mere visible presence of the Lord Jesus. And the demoniac cried out: "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech You, do not torment me"... The demon hides himself and shouts in the name of man - as if the man himself does not want to see Jesus; the demon wants to imagine that Jesus is torturing a person. The demon tries to save himself, and finally destroy the suffering human soul, tearing it away from its only salvation.For a person who is shallow, inexperienced, or unbelieving, the voice of only one person is heard on the Gadarene shore; although even for this person it must be strange that an unconscious demoniac who has never seen the Lord and has not been taught by any of the people, suddenly, at first glance, recognizes the power of the Most High God in Man. None of the people knew this yet, but the demons already know it. For their dark, but spiritual world, it is already clear that the Lord is not only a man. But this is not a grace-filled enlightenment of the truth; it is only an experiential perception of the fire of the Divine, which burns the dark nature. With the tongue of an unfortunate demoniac man, the evil invisible spirit shouts, anticipating its defeat and already experiencing fiery suffering from the proximity of Jesus. But this is how people cry out, who expel the Lord from their homes, from their states, from their hearts. Darkness is killed by light... A thief does not like the Sun. This is the whole depth of the psychology of any unbelief, of any anti-religiosity. The Higher Divine Light binds, sets limits to self-will, burns impurity, with an unburning, inextinguishable fire... And if the heart is full of impurity, pride and lawlessness, if the will is directed towards darkness, then the soul is afraid to touch the Gospel Truth, it hides from Christ. And if she suddenly has to meet Christ, she is tormented by the Light that cuts her aching eyes, and scorched in her sinfulness, she cries: "What have you to do with me, Jesus?" ... "Don't torment me!" ... "I'm not a monk!" ... "I live in the world and must submit to the world"... "I wear the flesh and must follow its laws"... "Depart from me with Thy commandments of full truth, perfect purity, true love. Get behind me, Jesus... do not torment me with Your Light!" Isn't that how the world screams? Yes, that's how we, people, shout. Or we express this cry in a silent feeling.Evil is one and the same, in demons and in people. In demons it is sometimes more open, more direct, despite all the cunning of demons. But the law of the spirit is immutable: the Divine light of the Gospel does not illuminate the path of life for everyone; Not everyone is comforted by it in a cold world. Blessed for righteous and humble souls, the Fire of God's Love is the tormenting flame of the impenitent.Admitting the possessed in the world and making manifest the secret action of the dark forces, the Lord warns us and teaches us. And teaches us to know our Savior. We often do not know our Savior only because we do not know our adversary. We do not believe that there is a mortally terrible evil in the world, from which one can be saved by the power of the Saviour alone; The Gospel is given not only for heavenly consolation! It is also given to us to frighten us before our human sinfulness. Immersed in laziness and inertia, we, people, must be frightened, wounded by evil. Only when we feel the real pain of evil and its disadvantage for ourselves, we are able to heartily aspire to the good, to reach out to the good, as to the anchor of our salvation. And to know the Savior as the Source and Sun of Good.The Church on earth is also not given to people only for the consolation of their sorrowful souls with beautiful harmonies of images and sounds leading to heaven. Churches stand on the ground, and in order for a person to have a place where he, most deeply, could shudder over eternity, tremble over his soul. To shudder before God, seeing, even for a moment, that terrible eternity to which every person on earth is so incomprehensibly close.We live and we come to our church in order to see the Light of Christ, to reach out to it with all our soul and cry out to the Lord - not the demonic words: "What have you to do with me, Jesus?", but human words: "You have come for me, Jesus!" Not the demonic words, "I beseech Thee, torment me not," but the blessed words, "Lord, cleanse me; no matter how painful it may be for me, no matter how much my voluptuous and sin-loving soul is tormented, cleanse me, burn me with Thy saving and purifying fire!"

II

"Jesus commanded an unclean spirit to come out of this man." The evil spirit received the opposite of what he asked for. He wanted Jesus to depart from him; but he himself had to flee from the Face of Jesus.Before considering this painful event for him, but joyful for us, let us focus our attention on some of the characteristic features of the demoniac man. In what way was the action of the evil force expressed and manifested in him? - First of all, a great inner heaviness, some terrible anxiety, groundless anxiety possessed this man and forced him to run away from people, to fear them and hate them. Living in cave coffins was less painful for him than in houses with people. Great physical strength seemed to flow into the possessed, making him capable of fighting against several people and breaking strong chains. Like many of our contemporaneous demoniacs, the Gadarene sufferer possessed abnormal powers. The lack of spiritual power, God's, was compensated in him by the increased power of the flesh." A healthy mind is in a healthy body," say human sages, making people believe in this truth, who value their bodily health most of all... This is false wisdom! On the examples of demon-possessed and all unrepentant sinners, who are quite healthy physically, but spiritually almost in hell, it is clear that physical strength does not ensure the health of the human spirit. This truth is also confirmed by the fact that many saints who lived on earth almost like angels were in poor physical health and often spent their entire lives in illness and suffering. Physical health does not facilitate spiritual life, but it does not hinder it either, if it does not pass into the domination of the carnal nature over the spiritual. In the case of the possessed, there is no doubt that the absence of the spiritual nature made such an unnatural manifestation of the physical principle possible.Wishing to save a person from suicide, which is attempted by every possessed person, good people bound him with chains and shackles, thereby unwittingly increasing his suffering. But he broke all the fetters and fled into the desert. "He was driven by a demon into the wilderness."Evil spirits, wishing to destroy a person, draw him into loneliness. If loneliness can be salvific for a person, they will draw him to city squares, to amusements and amusements, to irrepressible verbosity with acquaintances; they will call for unrestrained activity among people, inspire them to "great deeds"... A person for whom it is precisely communication with people, giving them help or receiving help from them that is useful, is forced by spirits who oppose the will of God to flee into the desert, to hide in that "underground" about which one great Russian writer spoke so profoundly and correctly... Demonic solitude is not God's solitude, which does not free a person from his selfhood, but is the most manifestative of this sinful human selfhood.Solitude is not even useful for all monks, for it is more spiritually responsible and requires from a person a complete renunciation of his "I" and an unceasing presence in the heavenly world. who are in absolute need of at least temporary solitude and even if only in our own room, the evil force drives us into the vanity of idle meetings and conversations. And we cannot fulfill even such an easy commandment of the Savior as "pray to our Father in secret"... The hour of evening prayer is approaching, and we are all wandering in our hearts in the world, in its transient interests, and do not take advantage of the easy opportunity of even a short, but so precious prayerful solitude. Then we will better believe that his torments were not in vain.The evil spirit always rejoices in a vain society, where he can attract people with ambition and develop all passions in them; where you can lead the masses, giving them your ideas, instilling your spirit. But he is also amused by every isolation of man, by the ungrace-filled solitude of the human soul. It is more convenient for him to steal a sheep that has strayed from the flock. And feed your hunger for evil with this detached sheep. What could be worse than the ungrace-filled solitude of the human soul! In this solitude of the soul many crimes and absolutely all suicides are ripening. That is why confession is so hateful to the evil spirit, not only before God, but also before man, the priest, that this confession, if it is sincere, destroys in the soul of man the wall of the devil's proud or fearful solitude and brings it to the light of God. hatred, pride, contempt (the daughter of baseness), arrogance, timidity (the daughter of self-love), avarice, laziness, callousness and other similar passions lead a person to resettlement in the "underground", where the soul finally dies and decays, closed in on "itself", only in its own experiences. For this soul, the way out to God is also its exit into God's world, to human brothers, to receive help from them and to serve them. Only the Word of God penetrates into them.The evil spirit drove the Gadarene demoniac into the wilderness, thinking that the desert solitude would be the final death for him, as it became for many... But the Lord went out not only to the cities and villages to save the perishing; The Lord also went out into the wilderness. He is the Creator of all things, Omnipresent, by His Divinity, and everywhere He reveals His Humanity. For His humanity is His love for man.

III

Realizing the hopelessness of their situation, scorched by the Spirit of God, the demons lost all hope for the fulfillment of their request "not to torment" them. But their cunning has come up with a new way out: if it is impossible to destroy a person, it is necessary to try to destroy at least something in the world. Their "big herd" grazed right there. "And the demons asked Him to let them enter into them." A certain amount of truth is needed in every prayer to Christ. When the demons showed the highest cunning - they cried out in the name of a person, their request could not be fulfilled. As soon as they speak with their own voice, the Lord even has the opportunity to fulfill their request. And how much higher are these demons of those people who do not ask the Lord for anything, and even do not believe in Him at all, and even assert that He has never been on earth. The Almighty holds everything in His power. Mountains and hills, seas and abysses, angels and demons obey him. Angels with joyful awe and bliss; demons - with painful trembling and grinding. And only man on earth does not want to know God and His power, being in His power at every moment. If only they did not "go into the abyss"! The "abyss" is the depth of the self of the creature, separated from God, utterly withdrawn into itself, having no satisfaction for itself, tormented by insatiable spiritual torment. Such is the nature of all fornication, of all untrue satisfaction of one's self. The sinful passion of the soul (or body), forbidden by the Lord, conceals in itself an element of pleasure, unknown to the angels, but very familiar to the demons. The demons also experience its illusory pleasure, after which the "abyss" of life becomes even more painful and terrible for them.The ghostly possession of pigs seemed to the demons to be salvation from the abyss of suffering.The soul of a person who has departed from earth, which does not have heavenly peace in itself (the peace of which the Savior said: "My peace I give unto you"), is also inevitably tormented and tormented, having been deprived of the opportunity to satisfy itself through the body and to fill its emptiness. - attachment to the land, to the body, to the dream; to that which is not God and that which is not in God.The demons of the Gadarenes, when they lose a man, want to enjoy at least some creature vampirically. Pigs are the closest creature to them and perhaps the "easiest" for an unclean spirit, for the Holy Scriptures place pigs as an image of carnal inertia, forbidding them to throw spiritual truths before a person who strives for earthly food, like a pig. Naturally, the demons want to rush to the pigs. If only they would not be left without any sacrifice, without any food, that is, without the opportunity to torture and torment anyone in God's world. If only they do not remain in this terrible loneliness of their own malice, and not finding for themselves the object of lust - the ego, tormented by the torments of hell in itself... Truly terrible is this abyss, which has no way out of itself and does not want to open itself to God. All the evil that we do to others (that is, first of all, to ourselves) is evil that comes out of our emptiness, which is not filled with the light of God. Proud, being empty, we fill ourselves not with the Divine life, but with the phantoms of joy, so as not to feel our terrible loneliness without God. The abyss of hell is constantly open before us, and we, blindly fearing it, blindly bind ourselves to that which is not eternal itself, which is only a mist over the abyss... Like the Gadarene spirits, we, blind people living on earth, do not turn our faces to the Lord - the Sun of Truth and Life, but look for "pigs" for ourselves - so that our emptiness is not revealed to ourselves. It is, first of all, our own body, when it is separated, in our consciousness, from our spirit and from its grace-filled tasks on earth. This is our body, if we cling to it and serve it with the attention with which we should serve the Lord God alone, and incense this body with sensual pleasures immeasurable and lawless. Lust, captivity by the beauty or simply by the very corporeality of the body, innumerable sins and inclinations to the sin of fornication - all this is the search for and finding the "pig". an idol that eclipses the radiance of the Lord in our hearts. A "pig" is any filling of one's emptiness - not by the Lord.Not wanting, like the demons, to go into the abyss, we, people, often do not even ask the Lord for permission to enter our pig. We break into our pigs ourselves... We confess this before Thee, O Lord! Thou seest for Thyself that we have not even the fear of Thy demons and their obedience to Thy command. By Will we leave Thee, the Fountain of water flowing into Life, and cling to the ghosts of the desert; We drink water from the springs of mirages.That is why the life of a person in the world is so difficult and painful.Will we really not believe in Christ? If the demons, these terrible dark spirits, instead of their fruitless attempts to be saved from the abyss - by swine and their possession, were to fall down at the feet of the Merciful Lord and cry out, as some people who see the truth: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners!" - the Lord would forgive them, seeking His mercy to pour out on those who would accept this mercy - (and the demons would turn into angels; and they would go to heaven, But pride and evil will hinder them. They also prevent us, people, from falling down to the sandals of Jesus, to the love of God, which walks among us and for our sake on earth!

IV

The demons testified to the power of Jesus in the world, which so many people do not want to acknowledge.The power of Jesus disposed of the demons as an obediently trembling creature - and manifested them in the world. So that people do not consider the bodiless world to be non-existent; but they would know their enemies, invisible as visible.The greatest defeat of demons is when they are discovered, when they are torn off the mask with which they hide in the world.The fact that the demons have revealed themselves before the eyes of the whole world is an even greater defeat for them than the fact that they have been cast out.They do everything to remain hidden in the world... Suicides, before their suicide, do not know at all that a vile (inexpressible) evil spirit stands near them, forcing them to kill the body, to break the precious "earthen vessel" that preserves the soul until the time of God. And this spirit advises, and convinces, and insists, and compels, and frightens with all kinds of fears: only that a person pulls the trigger or jumps over the windowsill, fleeing from life, from his unbearable languor... A person does not even suspect that the "unbearable languor" is not from life, but from the one from whom all the thoughts that "substantiate" the killing of oneself come from. A person thinks that it is he who is reasoning himself, and comes to a suicidal conclusion. But it is not he at all, but his thoughts are spoken by the one whom the Lord called "a murderer from time immemorial." A person only weakly agrees, invisibly takes the sin of the devil upon himself, combines with sin and with the devil... One word of prayer of repentance, one mental outline of the saving Cross and a view of it with faith – and the web of evil is torn apart, man is saved by the power of God from his own destruction... Only a small spark of living faith and devotion to God - and a person is saved! But do all people who have been saved from killing themselves or from any other sin understand that there was (and perhaps still stands, or sometimes approaches) a hideous evil spirit, a creature that is revealed only by a certain spiritual sensitivity and heightened spiritual attention? Poisoned by constant skepticism, inexperienced in matters of the spirit - "children" (in spiritual age, but not in humility) - even gray-haired elders dispute the real existence of evil spirits. And there are such philistines who only joke and laugh when they are told about invisible evil forces... These people do not suspect that their very gross disbelief in what the Saviour spoke about and was empirically (quite experimentally and scientifically) affirmed by the apostles and all the saints in the world, this very unbelief is one of the manifestations of the influence of the spirit they deny. And a spiritually attentive person will always find something to notice in this respect, among the surrounding world and in the depths of his own human conscience. If he embarks on the path of a real, sober spiritual life, many mysteries will be revealed before his spiritual gaze.Why did the Lord, having expelled demons from man, "allowed" them to enter into swine? Why did He not drive them into the abyss? For the same reason, of course, why He allowed them to take possession of man. To find them in the world. To stir up all mankind against them; to draw people to Himself. Demons should most clearly reveal evil before the morally inert consciousness of mankind.If the demons, after their expulsion from man, were to completely depart from the earth into their abyss, people would have occasion to think that the demoniac was tormented not by demons, but by some simple physical illness. For example, "nerves", which in our age are very easy to refer to by learned and unlearned people. Of course, no one in the world knows how the physical threads in the human body can give rise to purely moral manifestations of good and evil: for example, to force people to bless the Name of God or to blaspheme this Blessed Name with terrible words. But the word "nerves" explains everything for some people. This good-natured and very modern "positivism" now has many supporters, despite all the events in the world and the rapid approach of the world to the last Day of the Lord.The Gadarene inhabitants, too, perhaps, would have explained the healing of the demoniac in their own way if they had not suffered from demons. The Lord teaches people: there are demons in the world! There is an invisible power, infinitely insidious and deceitful, but in everything subordinate to the Lord, except for its insidious will, which the Lord cannot compel to good. For the essence of true good excludes any compulsion to it. We need to fight them. We need vigilance in this struggle, we need attention and unshakable faith in the power of Christ, which destroys all the strongholds of the enemy. We need the protection of Christ... And we see how possessed animals, which have just been peacefully grazing here by the coastal rocks, suddenly seized by some invisible whirlwind, in clear weather, contrary to any instinct of self-preservation, throw themselves down the steep slope into the lake and drown. How many murders and suicides have been prevented, how many family hearths have been preserved, how many crimes have been avoided - from the mere view of man on the Word and on the Cross, which visibly and invisibly stops the human soul on the threshold of fall.