Someone will ask: how is that? for the Lord is omnipresent, and He sees what we read. Yes, the Lord sees what we read, but He does not see that we are praying, because every word of prayer must pass through our hearts, every word must be our word, it must come from the depths of our souls and be combined with our desire. When we ask God for something, we should not ask for it in words, but truly desire it. If a person has been praying for thirty or forty years: "Give me humility, meekness, obedience, patience, prudence," and in the morning the Lord sends some situation where his humility should be manifested, but instead of humility, the person shows, on the contrary, pride, it means that what he says in the evening at prayer is self-deception, hypocrisy, an empty shaking of the air. Because each prayer must be completely sincere, sincere in its fullness.

Any sinner, no matter how deeply he falls, no matter what depths of sin he has climbed into, at any time, if he wants, can begin to pray to God, begin to work on his soul and embark on this path, along which the Mother of God will lead him to salvation. Salvation from sin, salvation from the pangs of conscience, if it still remains, because some people burn their conscience as one can burn out an eye. If a person has cataracts or nearsightedness, this can be corrected with glasses or surgery. But if you take and burn out the eye with a red-hot iron, then nothing can be done with it. This is how conscience is: it can be driven into a corner, it can not be used, it can sleep – but in this case it is still able to awaken. And if a person has burned his conscience completely, then he becomes a living embodiment of demonic forces, he does evil and seeks justification and the purpose of his life in evil. This shows that it is impossible to sin with impunity, every sinful word, every sinful thought, not to mention the deed, defiles and defiles our immortal soul. That is why the path of ascent is so long and difficult, when we nevertheless turn to God and we will become ashamed of the deeds that we do secretly from everyone.

No one knows about our sinful deeds and thoughts, not even the closest people, and we ourselves often do not realize the dirt that is swarming in our hearts and in our souls. But God sees this, and how sick He must be to look at us for all our vile deeds. And when we truly put ourselves before God, we will see all these deeds, because nothing is hidden before the eyes of God. And if we are horrified by our life, then from that moment our renewal can begin, because no matter how deeply a person falls, he can always come out on the bright road. And many saints at the beginning of their lives were the greatest sinners, but then, having been purified, they ascended to the heavenly heights.

The Lord only wants to purify us. Therefore, He leads us to church in different ways, connects us with the Church in different ways, but here too all kinds of temptations await us. Satan arranges so that we do not receive salvation, so that someone tears us away from the Church, someone says something wrong, someone pushes us to some sin, that is, there is a constant struggle for our soul, until death. And our salvation from all enemies is prayer. Every Christian, if he wishes, can always refrain from any sin. No matter how great the temptation, no matter how great the desire for sin, it is enough for a baptized person, even if he has not been to church for ten years, to put himself before God and say: "Lord, you see, my mind, my heart, my whole being is drawn to sin, but I believe in you, I know that this sin brings pain to you, he is an abomination to Thee, and I do not agree with this sin. If it is Thy holy will, help me to get rid of it." And he will see how all the demonic militia will disappear, and by the mercy of God he will protect himself from sin.

We must know that a person sins not because his mother did not teach him good, or because he grew up without a father, or because he fell into bad company, or because of the temptation is very great, or for some other reason – no, this is just an environment in which sin grows. Naturally, the home environment of pious parents is more favorable for the upbringing of a good child than that of parents who live, for example, in fornication or drunkenness. But the will to sin is always done in the heart of a person on its own, and it never happens that someone commits a sin and does not know that it is sinful. And therefore, when even a little person of five or six years old, imitating adults, wants to smoke, and he has never been scolded for this and his father and mother smoke, he always smokes secretly for the first time. Because he knows through his conscience that this is not good – the Lord, as it is said in the Holy Scriptures, desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

However, often not only a child, but also an adult cannot realize the entire abyss of sin. For example, many women do not realize that abortion is the gravest crime against God, against their own family, husband, child – and before the entire universe – but each understands that it is a sin. Only a person who has completely lost his human face can calmly kill babies. And there have been such cases, a person can reach such a state. But in order not to feel that it is sinful – just like to fornicate, and to lie drunk under the fence – a person cannot do it. Why does the husband, drunk, not want to go home, even if his wife will not scold him? He feels that he has done wrong, he has trampled the image of God in the mud, he has turned, if not completely into a pig, then at least halfway.

And so it is with any sin. We always know whether we have thought well or badly; Whether we have done well or badly, we always feel it through our conscience. But conscience has one property: it torments, and we do not like our soul to suffer, just as we do not like our body to suffer; We want to live without suffering. Therefore, every person, wherever he lives, no matter what color his skin is, does not like to be tormented by his conscience. And all people are trying to get rid of the pangs of conscience. Christians do this: they fight against sin and conquer it in themselves, so as not to experience the pangs of conscience. If a person does not sin, then his conscience will be clear and he will be able to calmly look into the eyes of his children, his wife, friends, his co-workers and everyone in general. I have not stolen from anyone, I have not offended anyone, I have not condemned anyone, I have never said anything bad about anything else, and I have not even thought about it, my conscience is clear.

But this path is very difficult. Try to overpower yourself, try not to scratch where it itches, or don't talk when you want, or don't buy yourself something that she already has and that you want with all your might, even even better and more expensive, so that she gasps. This is necessary to make a moral effort, so the majority follow a different path. A person gets rid of the pangs of conscience by persuading himself, begins to lull his conscience: well, you think, abortion, everyone does it, well, why breed poverty, it is better not to be born than to get sick later. This second path is the path of burning one's conscience, gradually, hour by hour, sin by sin. Not a single child is born a murderer, which means that while he has become a murderer, there are so many sins that need to be stringed together. And having considered the biography of any criminal, we see that it always began with small things: first he learned to swear, then he began to smoke, then, as a teenager, to drink, then to do all sorts of abominations of fornication, then, when the soul was already depraved, gradually, gradually he came to more terrible sins, then to even more terrible ones. There is a lot to learn before raising a hand against a person in order to kill him.

And gradually sin completely strangles the conscience, so that a person can even know the Holy Scriptures by heart, know many prayers, but burn his conscience within himself so much that he will no longer feel sin. He may even lose faith – he will appear to be a believer, pretending to be something, but there will be no faith left in his soul. Faith is a person's standing before the living God. And how can you sin and stand before God? No one can stand it. That is why people who love sin, live in sin, enjoy it, have invented for themselves the excuse that there is no God. After all, since there is no God, then everything is possible. He hit him on the head, buried it in the leaves and left. No one sees, and no one knows. I took a purse, there were two and a half hundred - well, well, we went for a walk. That is, a person, when he does not have God, is really capable of anything. He can also destroy the temple in which people have prayed for hundreds of years. He can sell his homeland. He can cheat on his wife, he can leave his wife with seven children.

Why did people come up with the idea that there is no afterlife? For thousands of years, everyone knew for sure that it existed. No, they say no one returned from there. In fact, tens, hundreds of thousands of people are coming back – you just have to read about it in a book. But no, everyone denies it. Why do they deny it? Why do they say: I believe in my heart, but I will not go to church? Or that fasting is not necessary? Why does a person constantly persuade himself? So that he can sin freely, so that he can lull his conscience, because conscience burns like fire.

And here we have two paths in front of us. There is a difficult path: deliverance from sin, separation of sin with meat, with the blood of the heart; let the whole soul strive for sin, but do not commit it – and then there will be a clear conscience. This is what Christ offers us, He came to earth to save us from sin. That is why we call Him the Saviour. And to each of us who turns to Christ with the prayer: "Lord, deliver me from sin" – and really wants to be delivered not in words (because many only hypocritically: "Lord, have mercy," and do not lift a finger themselves) – the Lord will help. And before us there lived hundreds of thousands of holy people who walked this path, and now live among us.

And the second way: to live like everyone else, to bathe in sin, to enjoy it, but this life, unfortunately, is temporary. No matter how much and what sin you enjoy, soon your health will decline, you will die, you will be buried, worms will eat your body, and your soul will go to hell, to eternal punishment, because only the one who, living here on earth, has seen God, will see Him there as well. Whoever has learned to communicate with God here will continue to communicate there.

In what does eternal torment consist? In the fact that a person who has lived by sin can no longer enjoy sin there, beyond the grave, because, firstly, his soul is separated from his body, and secondly, there are no sinful joys: no fornication, no drunkenness, no voluptuousness, no condemnation – nothing with which to satiate one's soul. Every sinner satisfies the soul with sin. A fornicator will go astray and be quiet for a while. And after death, fornication will continue to tear him to pieces, into shreds, but how can he fornicate? There is not even a body. Or one who is used to eating deliciously and eating a lot. Every day he only thinks about what he will buy, what he will cook, how he will put it on plates, how he will treat him. And such a person dies. He opens his eyes – and he is already in another world. And there is no market, no distributor, no acquaintances, no special, delicious sausage - there is nothing like that. How can he live? And then the suffering from unsatisfied lust begins. And this suffering is eternal, because there will never be any substitute for sin. This is where eternal torment consists. And it is quite obvious that it is not God who punishes man, but man who punishes himself. He has corrupted himself, and he reaps himself: what he sowed in his soul, that he also reaps.