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.

Therefore, if we believe in God, we must cultivate the fear of God in ourselves. We must put ourselves before God more often. And this standing, in fact, is prayer. And when there is no standing before God, then this is not a prayer, but simply muttering or reading. Because of our sinfulness, we cannot stand before God for a long time, but let it be in our lives at least sometimes, for a brief moment. Then this moment will increase – until we reach unceasing prayer. Unceasing prayer does not at all mean constantly saying something about oneself. Unceasing prayer is a remembrance of God, a remembrance of the fact that every second the Lord looks at you, reads your every thought, watches your every action, and hears your every word.

When a person lives in such a state, he cannot sin, he is afraid, he is ashamed to insult the One Who shed His Blood for him. He keeps his conscience taut like a string and drives away all temptations. Because the devil constantly besieges a person with thoughts: one thought has come, then another. And you can savor them, look at them, revel in them, or you can reject them with anger: "Lord, help me; Lord, save me; Lord, drive this dirty stuff away from me" – and be in a constant struggle. It is with this struggle that unceasing prayer and spiritual life begin.

A certain monk was asked: "Father, who taught you unceasing prayer?" Constant temptation and constant reflection. The devil constantly wants to tempt a person to sin, and a person constantly turns to God: "Lord, save me from sin, I do not want it, my mind is indignant; although my heart is inclined to sin, I want to enjoy it, but my faith and my mind reject it. Lord, help me." And so it goes on unceasingly for a day, a month, a year, ten years, twenty years, and all one's life – until the soul is filled with the Holy Spirit; And then the devil will not be able to approach man.

Otherwise, many are surprised that they have scattered prayer or thoughts besiege them. St. Anthony the Great, the founder of monasticism, spent twenty years in a cave before clearing his head of thoughts, saw no one and prayed unceasingly to God. This is Anthony the Great! How much work do we need to do to achieve at least some purity? Therefore, we must begin this work while we still have the strength for it, the sooner the better, as long as we have some kind of bodily and mental energy, as long as we have the desire. Unfortunately, many people come to God in such a state that it is difficult to help them. That's how it happens that a person comes to the doctor – oh, he says, a year and a half earlier, it would have been possible to save him, but now that's it, now it is only possible to maintain it, to prolong life, but not to cure. So it is in the spiritual life. It is possible to corrupt oneself so much that it is no longer possible to save oneself, because every sin decomposes our mind, decomposes our heart, corrupts our conscience, decomposes our entire being. Therefore, we must hurry, not postpone it until tomorrow, but begin this spiritual work right now, so that we may have time and not be robbed. No wonder the Lord says: "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." There, as we say, in the next world, people will really weep and gnash their teeth in impotent anger, because they will not be able to get enough of sin.

And in order for us not to sin, we need to know God, to know prayer, to know standing before God. Then we will always be with God – both here and there. And it doesn't matter to us where we are, in Africa or in the tundra, fired from work or promoted, whether our leg hurts or not. For us, it will only matter whether we are before God and whether we are pure before Him. This will be our main concern. This is the goal and meaning of the Christian life: unceasing communion with God. And it can be attained only in purity, because only "the pure in heart, for they shall see God" are blessed.

Therefore, through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, let us try to cleanse our hearts of all sin – not only our lives from sinful actions, not only our tongues from sinful words, but also our very souls, hearts, and thoughts from sin. Amen.

Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,