The Lord sees everything, and if we constantly remember Him, we will be ashamed to sin, we will constantly humble ourselves, we will constantly be vigilant over our souls, we will be afraid that something impure will enter it. Of course, through weakness, through negligence, through lack of faith, through hardness of heart, we constantly deviate from God. But all the time, constantly and invariably, we need to return to the thought of God, because the Lord sees everything, the Lord knows everything, and the Lord loves us – what pain we bring to Him when we sin in word, deed and thought.

That's when our life will begin to change, our conscience will begin, as they say in Russian, to wake up, because constant remembrance of God is conscience. "Message" means "knowledge", and "co-news" is the One Who knows everything about us together with us, this is the Lord. And if He is always close to us, if we do not lose the memory of Him, then we will always stand at the judgment of God and simply will not be able to sin. Well, how can one sin in the face of God? It's scary! Of course, due to weakness we are constantly distracted, passions darken our minds, and we again forget about God, but again we can cross ourselves, come to our senses, say: "Lord, enlighten me, stop me."

The Holy Fathers invented a way to constantly remember God: for this one must constantly repeat the prayer, not with words, but with the heart. But not everyone can pray with the heart, so they begin, of course, with a verbal prayer, then they make a prayer of the mind, and then it becomes a prayer of the heart, when a person prays not with the mind, but with the heart itself. And then the heart constantly remembers God, a person is in constant connection with God and can no longer sin - that is, he is saved, because the grace of God comes to him. But for this you need to constantly try to pray: in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, at lunchtime - always. The mind should not be idle. Vladimir Monomakh wrote to his children: if you ride a horse and pray, repeat: "Lord, have mercy" - it will be of great benefit to your mind. It was nine hundred years ago that he taught his children in this way. What wisdom he had!

In the same way, we must always, in every deed, in every place, try to occupy our minds with prayer, to come to our senses all the time, if our mind is idle. Then we will not have the thoughts of strangers in our heads. We will have God in our souls, we will have constant prayer in our souls. The Apostle gave the commandment: "Pray without ceasing," which means that when we do not pray, we sin, even if we are engaged in some noblest deed. Because any deed without prayer, the most beautiful one, is a sin, and no one needs this deed. God does not need the works of our hands, because what we do with our hands, with our feet, it will all burn up, it is all not eternal, only that which relates to our spirit, to our soul, is eternal, the works of faith. And the main work of faith is prayer. That is why we must try to pray all the time, and this, of course, is difficult.

To pray means to shed blood, but this is the only way to do it. The Holy Fathers said: "Give blood and receive the Spirit." Without this, it is impossible. Therefore, one must strive all the time, one must force oneself all the time, one must force oneself all the time, one must wake up. We sleep all the time, or there is a wonderful word: "have fun". We are constantly "crazy", because there is something in our head all the time: you look there, read it - and the whole day passes in such a "bald". And in the evening, when we get up to pray, is this prayer? Again, it's just a mess. It's good if four words have come to mind. And what about dreams? And in a dream it is the same: now I dream, then that. In the morning I got up - and again again. And so we must try to get out of this demonic turmoil, out of these dreams, thoughts, plans that we make, all kinds of insane condemnations, insults that are constantly boiling in our heads, we must go out into the fresh air of God's grace. And this is possible only through prayer.

But many of us, having gone to church for many years, have not understood what it means to pray. They are looking for some good prayers or some special ones, completely not understanding that prayer does not consist of words, it is not magic. Praying is the same as; you can repeat: "Have mercy on me, God," or you can simply say: "Lord" - and this is enough. Or you can pray to some saint, or you can pray to the Mother of God. It doesn't matter at all, because when we pray, for example, to Seraphim of Sarov, we pray in him to God Himself, because God is also in Seraphim. When we turn to the Mother of God, we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, because Christ is in the arms of the Mother of God. And where Christ is, there is the whole Holy Trinity, because Christ, and the Father, and the Spirit are one. It doesn't matter how we pray, as long as we practice it constantly. And there is no need for any special art here. We must pray simply: as we talk to each other, so we must constantly strive in prayer to God.

And why don't we have such a constant desire to turn to God? Because we don't know Him. If we knew God, we would appreciate it, we would be afraid to fall asleep, because if you doze off for an hour, God will leave you. That is why the saints did not sleep - they were afraid of losing prayer, because prayer is an inexpressible sweetness, this is the Kingdom of Heaven. And as soon as he stopped praying, the Kingdom of Heaven ended, it left, because God also left with prayer. And he only said: "Lord!" - and He is here again. Therefore, if the saints slept, it was reluctantly, out of weakness: after all, they are a person, after all, some kind of rest is needed. That's why we rested, some standing, some sitting. Seraphim, for example, only slept for two hours a day, and it was enough for him, because it was not the main thing for him.

Of course, we cannot achieve such faith, but everyone should strive to their own extent. And this aspiration is asceticism, this aspiration is a Christian podvig. And only to the one who aspires, the Lord comes out to meet him. And if we just have fun: do this, do this, go there, see this, read this, we will not achieve anything, we will all beat around the bush. And the Lord is very close, He is ready to come into our hearts, if only we have zeal for this. And where does diligence begin? Again, with faith. Here it is written in the Gospel. Do you believe? Come on. Don't you believe? Well, sleep. If you die, then it will be too late, then you will not wake up. If a person has not met God in this life, then he will not meet God beyond the grave, he will pass by, there, to hell.

Here we are gathered in the church - and here is the fullness of the Divinity. Such communion with God as in the church cannot be achieved in any way. Here we have the opportunity to partake of Christ's Holy Mysteries, to receive the Body of God Himself into ourselves. We can unite with God not only in soul and spirit, but even in our body, we can deify ourselves with the help of the Mysteries of Christ. That's what we've been given! And for nothing, we are not asked: worthy, not worthy. You are baptized - and here you are, the Kingdom of Heaven is open to you. And a person has some ideas: either he has no time, or he has some kind of concern, then he thinks about what his grandparents will say. Here the Kingdom of Heaven is given, and he has some ideas. It is immediately clear that a person does not understand at all what it is about, because the attitude to the Eucharist, the attitude to the Divine Liturgy is an attitude to Christ Himself.

If a person strives for God, for the Kingdom of Heaven, he also strives for communion. And if he does not strive for Communion, then even though he will read ninety thousand akathists, we can firmly say that he is going past Christ, he is going in the wrong direction, because the source of all spirituality is the Eucharist, the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Therefore, that which leads us away from Communion is only the enemy, although this enemy may be in a cassock, he may be in a mitre, he may also be in the guise of an elder. The Eucharist is the cornerstone on which everything is tested, it is the standard by which everything is measured. Because this, in fact, is the Church, this is what Christ came for. If a person has assimilated this spiritually, with his heart, then he is on the right path; If he does not understand this, then he is not a Christian at all, he is still, one might say, a Muslim, a Jew.

If a person does not understand the mysticism of the sacramental life of the Church, then what can we talk about? Because only by becoming a partaker of God's nature, as the Apostle Peter writes, can one be a Christian, and everything else is just a cultural superstructure. You can love and respect all this very much, you can read about it and think about it, but this is still a philosophy. And the Kingdom of Heaven is the mysterious bond between the soul of man and God, which is realized here on earth, and its beginning and source is the communion of Christ's Holy Mysteries. It is here, in communion, that a person unites with God in such a fullness that is simply unimaginable to the mind. No angel can be so united with God as the last sinner in communion. You just need to be aware of it, you need to believe in it, you need to see it with your heart. And if this is not the case, if the heart is cold, if there are any extraneous considerations, then the person is still asleep.

Therefore, our entire life must be Eucharistic, our life must be filled with the Divine Liturgy, our whole life must become a divine service, a preparation for Communion – we must live from Communion to Communion. One saint said: one must live in such a way that every day one is ready either to die or to take communion, one must always be ready, one must always strive for this. In the same way the Lord says: "You do not know when the Lord will come." Maybe tomorrow? And I am ready, I am always in prayer, I will always be directed to God, I will always fulfill God's commandments.

This, of course, is ideal. We cannot do this because of our weakness, and the Lord knows this, and He will never hold us accountable, as He did with Bessarion of Egypt. He knows what century we live in. He knows what kind of environment we live in. He knows that we all fell from the moon, that we were not brought up by the Church from childhood, and that our parents did not invest anything spiritual in us. The Lord knows all this, and condescends to us, and is ready to forgive everything, but the aspiration must be from us. Then the Lord will forgive everything in the same way as the Lord forgave Abraham, just as the Lord forgave Paul, Peter. After all, Peter also denied the Lord, but the Lord forgave him, because how did he love the Lord? Then he sailed up to the shore in a boat and saw a man standing on the shore. One disciple says: "This is the Lord" - and Peter no longer needs anything else, he does not even have the patience to swim, he rushes and swims, although it is faster on a boat, there are oars. But he can't wait. This is the feeling it gets: you ride a tram and are late, but it barely stretches, and you want to get off and run, although it is clear that the tram is still faster. But my heart breaks out of my chest, I want it faster. Such was Peter, and such was his faith and thirst to be with God. Therefore, he became the chief apostle.

And if we have even a little bit of this, then for this little bit we will be vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord will give us only what we ourselves want. Paradoxical as it may sound, the Kingdom of Heaven is received by all comers. Whoever on earth from Adam to the present day desires the Kingdom of Heaven, all this desire will be fulfilled. And to the extent that a person desires the Kingdom of Heaven, to that extent he receives it. Only this desire should come from the very depths of the soul. And here everything is fair, because God cannot be deceived. Love cannot be depicted in any way. And the more you love God, the closer you will be to Him. Amen.