Don't look at this cloud! do not believe the deceit of your eyes! For them, empty dust, insignificant dust, falsely appears as a cloud. Close your eyes for a moment, and a cloud of dust will fly by, carried by the strong, instantaneous breath of the whirlwind, without damaging your eyesight. In a minute you will open your eyes, see where is the vast cloud? you look for its trace, and there is no cloud, there is no trace after it, there is no sign of its existence.

With a terrible song, with terrible sounds, David continues to pronounce a terrible, fatal definition against the wicked. For this reason the wicked will not rise to judgment, lower than the sinner to the council of the righteous [15]. There is no participation for the wicked in the first resurrection,[16] which St. John described in the Apocalypse, in the spiritual resurrection that takes place during earthly life, when the all-powerful one touches the soul. - Ed.] The Spirit will renew it into the-Being. The soul is resurrected, revived into the Divine life. Her mind and heart are enlightened, made partakers of the spiritual mind. Spiritual mind is the sensation of the immortal belly [17], according to the definition of the Spirit-bearers. This very mind is a sign of the resurrection. Thus, on the contrary, carnal wisdom is the invisible death of the soul [18]. Spiritual intelligence is the work of the Holy Spirit. He sees sin, sees the passions in himself and others, sees his own soul and the souls of others, sees the snares of the ruler of the world, destroys every thought that is exacted [rebellious]. - Ed.] to the mind of Christ, reflects sin from itself, in whatever form it may be approached: for the spiritual mind is the kingdom, the light of the Holy Spirit in the mind and heart. The wicked will not be resurrected for spiritual reasoning! This reasoning is the advice of the righteous alone, their inheritance. It is unapproachable, incomprehensible to the wicked and sinners. It is the vision of God, and only the pure in heart will see God [19].

The way of the wicked is hateful to God, so alien and abhorrent to Him, that the Scriptures represent God as turning away from him, as if he did not know him. On the contrary, the way of righteousness is so pleasing to God that the Scriptures say of it: "The message of the Lord is the way of the righteous." And indeed, He is the One Who is the message of this path! "Blessed way!" you bring to God! you are hidden in the infinite God! your beginning is God, and your end is God! You are infinite, as infinite is God.

The way of the wicked has a border, it has a sorrowful limit! This edge is on the edge of a deep, gloomy abyss, the eternal repository of eternal death. And he will perish - the path of the wicked forever in this terrible abyss, leading in advance to it and destroying in it all those who walked them.

The message of the Lord is the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked will perish [21]. Blessed is the man who does not go to the counsel of the wicked, who is not carried away by their way of thinking, their moral rules, their behavior, but in the law of the Lord is all his will.

Thus sings the heavenly, wondrous Singer; the hermit-dweller listened to his holy inspired song.

1847. Nikolaevsky Babaevsky Monastery.

A Sacred Tale Borrowed from the Book of Genesis (chs. 32-50)

In the midst of their misfortunes, the thought of thanksgiving to God miraculously comes to the righteous [23]. It tears their hearts out of sorrow and darkness, lifts them up to God, to the region of light and consolation. God always saves those who come to Him with simplicity and faith.

The holy Patriarch Jacob was returning from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan, to the land of his birth, to his inheritance predestined by God [24]. Suddenly the news came to him that the angry Esau, his brother, was coming to meet him, that he had four hundred armed men with him. Even in the years of his youth, Esau, agitated by envy, made an attempt on Jacob's life. In order to avoid a premature, violent death, Jacob withdrew to Mesopotamia. He stayed there for twenty years. Time could heal Esau's heart wounded by malice, no, he goes to meet his brother with an armed retinue. The large crowd and its belligerent appearance betrayed malicious intent. Time did not heal the hatred in Esau: he grew to manhood, and so did his hatred for his brother.

Jacob was afraid: he did not know what to do; he decided to divide his estate, which consisted of household members and numerous herds, into two regiments. "If the enraged Esau," he reasoned, "cuts down one regiment, perhaps his anger will be exhausted, and he will not touch another regiment." Behind the two regiments stood the wives and children of James; behind them all stood his second wife, Rachel, with her only son Joseph, the youngest of the sons of Jacob. They took the last place, as the youngest, but this place was also given to them by the special providential love of their husband and father, as the safest. The eye of love is quick-witted; the eye of jealousy is also quick-witted. Having made such an order, the righteous man hastens to the usual abode of the righteous, hastens to stand before God in reverent prayer. "I am oppressed," he confesses to God, "from all righteousness and from all truth, which Thou hast created for Thy servant: for with this rod this Jordan has crossed, and now it is in two regiments" [25]. Surrounded everywhere by misfortune, the righteous man pours out his heart before God, reconciles his calculations with fate, finds himself completely satisfied, finds that God, who commanded him to travel to Mesopotamia and return from it, has done everything according to His promise. "I am weighed down by all righteousness, by all truth, which Thou hast created for Thy servant." Deep, true humility! It alone is worthy to stand before God, it alone is worthy to converse with God: it is never abandoned by God. God listens to him mercifully, pouring out abundant bounties on the one who prays with humility. By a wave of God, Esau's heart changed: hitherto it had burned with enmity, now it suddenly burned with love for his brother. Esau throws down his sword, runs into his brother's arms, and the two brothers weep in each other's arms [26].

Here is Jacob long in the land of Canaan. His beloved wife, Rachel, had already died by giving birth to his second son, Benjamin. Jacob had already experienced many sorrows from his violent sons, who behaved in the promised land as in a land acquired by conquest [27]. In the vicinity of the tabernacle [tent. - Ed.] they grazed their numerous flocks, sometimes going quite far away, to other, more fat pastures. Jacob was constantly at home, where both his years and spiritual progress kept him. It attracted the mind and heart of the elder to God, and therefore he fell in love with solitude in a tabernacle. There is no time and it is unnatural for such a person to go into worldly cares. Always with him was his favorite son, beautiful in soul and body, Joseph. Service to the elder-father and attention to the deep, holy teaching of the God-seeing father constituted the entire occupation, all the pleasure of the youth. The word of piety fell into his soul, as seed falls on fat ground, and soon it bore fruit: holy purity shone in the soul of Joseph. God begins to be reflected in the purity of the heart, as the sun is reflected in the mirror of calm, transparent waters. Joseph's virtue aroused in his brothers not emulation, but envy: this, unfortunately, happens most often in human society. The brothers invented and raised a malicious slander against Joseph - what exactly, the Scriptures are silent. But the shrewd and gracious Jacob was not deceived by a cunningly woven invention, he continued to love - to love Joseph, and as a sign of special love he gave his son a motley garment. The brightness and variety of colors were especially respected and are still respected in the nomadic East. Was not this garment a symbol of the life that lay ahead of the young man, speckled with opposite circumstances? Inspiration inspired the clairvoyant elder to depict the prophecy not with a word, but with a symbol: with motley clothing. This is where Joseph's strange adventures begin. He serves as an education, a distant Biblical shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for an active life he is an example of a pious and virtuous person, subjected to various, strange disasters, during which he remains faithful to piety and virtue, is never and nowhere abandoned by God, is everywhere preserved, and, finally, is glorified wonderfully. Let us listen, let us listen to the curious tale of the wondrous and instructive adventures of the prophet-father clothed in motley garments.

Joseph's brothers,28 when they saw that their father loved him more than all the other sons, hated him: at every word they spoke to him, at every glance at him, a gloomy confusion boiled up in them. And he did not understand the illness that had seized them: his pure soul saw everyone pure and well-intentioned. With trust, he opened his heart to them. This gentle heart has already been chosen by God as a vessel of mysterious revelations. The grace of the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the youthful years of Joseph, began to manifest its presence and action in significant dreams. Strange dreams were vividly drawn by a mysterious hand in the virgin imagination. Joseph was seventeen years old when he had his first prophesied dream. With a frankness that does not suspect any evil, he recounts it to his brothers: apparently, the dream left an extraordinary impression in the soul of the young man, which needed to be explained. He wanted to summon, to hear this explanation from the lips of his elder brothers. "I dreamed," he said to them, "that we were all tying sheaves in the field; my sheaf suddenly rose up and stood upright, and your sheaves turned to my sheaf and bowed down to it." The brothers answered: "Will you really reign over us, or will you become our master?" And the brothers redoubled their hatred for him for the grace-filled sleep, for his holy frankness, which had wounded them, reinterpreted and distorted by them. Joseph has a new dream. With childlike innocence, as if to justify the first dream and to prove that significant dreams come to him involuntarily, independently of it, he tells the dream to his father and brothers: "I saw," he says, "that the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars worshipped me." The father, hearing his son's story, stopped the young man. "What is the dream you saw? he said to him. The experienced and spiritual father stopped his son, not because he recognized his dream as a vain dream, his own product of a soul suffering from arrogance, but in order to protect the young soul from falling into arrogance, and, at the same time, to extinguish envy and hatred in his brothers with a stern reprimand.

Thus, Christian ascetic teachers command not to pay special attention to all phenomena in general that appear to the spiritual and bodily senses: they command to observe prudent coldness and salutary caution in all manifestations in general [29]. There are dreams from God, of which Joseph's dreams serve as an example and proof, but the state of the dreamer and vision is dangerous, very close to self-deception. The sight of our shortcomings is a safe vision! The sight of our fall and redemption is the most necessary vision! The spirit is contrite and humble [30] - this is a state that is essentially useful, devoid of self-deception, a state about which God favors! Reasoning, capable of comprehending, evaluating and explaining visions, is characteristic of only those who succeed in spiritual struggle: it is acquired over a long period of time, it is a gift of God. Saint James had this gift of God: he stopped his son, who was telling a prophesied dream, and he himself, according to the Scriptures, kept in mind his words, which bore the anointing of the Spirit.