And this law of the fatal self-destruction of evil, of violence, which perishes from its own violence, being fulfilled here on earth, clears the place for the triumph of meekness. Trust in the Lord, and hold fast to His way, and He will exalt you, that you may inherit the earth (Psalm 36:34).

V. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint, anise, and cumin, and have forsaken the most important things in the law: judgment, mercy, and faith; this had to be done, and not to be forsaken. Blind leaders, straining out a gnat, and devouring a camel" Matthew 23:23-24

Here is the answer to the question: how should we relate to the external and petty customs of the Church? Those who carry them out must always know that they are only partial and petty discoveries of the inner and most important, which have significance only if the latter is observed. If they do not fulfill the inner and most important of the Gospel and the commandments of the Church, then they are subject to condemnation, like the scribes and Pharisees, who hypocritically filtered out mosquitoes in order to discreetly and quietly devour the camel.

Those who do not observe the customs of the Church and even consider themselves entitled to be offended by them, must take into account the words of the Lord: "These things ought to have been done, and not to forsake them." The Lord does not say directly even to the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees: "You do not need to do this, not mint, anise, and cumin, but to observe judgment, mercy, and faith." He does not say so; He does not oppose one to the other; He only explains that this must be done and not abandoned; He accuses them only of eating out mosquitoes and devouring camels. But He does not say in any way that you should drink with mosquitoes: strain out mosquitoes, but, most importantly, do not eat camels.

In this way, He points out that the harmony between the main and the secondary has been destroyed, that the observance of petty customs serves only as a diversion of the eyes, only a hypocritical cover to violate the most important and essential. This is the only thing He has in mind when He gives due place to external customs.

The Lord subtly distinguishes between the degree of importance of observing the non-essential and the essential: the first should not be abandoned, should not be omitted, and the second, the main thing, should be done; one expression is in a negative form, the other in a positive form: this is an external decoration, a complement to the main thing; it is like a foundation, a foundation. Whoever throws dust in his eyes with outward manifestations of piety in order to imperceptibly lay a rotten or false foundation is a hypocrite. But whoever conscientiously builds a building for God, building it on a solid foundation, takes care both of the beauty of its forms and of the elegance of every detail, so that in every detail shines the same supreme idea and harmony of the whole. This is all the poetry of the customs of the Church; and whoever builds a building without them builds barracks, and not a temple, a government building, and not God's favorite dwelling...

VI. "Take heed that you do not your alms before men, that they may see you: otherwise you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you give alms, do not trumpet before yourself, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that people may glorify them. Verily I say unto you, they have already received their reward. But with you, when you give alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing: so that your alms may be in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly" Matt. 6:1-4

In the quoted words of the Gospel, the Lord establishes an exclusively religious meaning of almsgiving. It has to do only with God; it must be made only before Him, before His eyes, as a sacrifice for His glory. We now have the usual view that charity is a matter of humanity, that it should have an intrinsic relation only to man or to society. When we give alms, we look at it in such a way that we are doing good to a person, doing good to him. When we donate to some public cause, we think that we are doing good to society... At the same time, the thought of God, if we have one, occupies a secondary place. That is why it is natural that we look at how our good is reflected in the consciousness of those for whom we have done it. We put a coin in the hands of the beggar — and see if he is grateful to us; We have donated money to the Society – and we expect its gratitude. Talk about our generosity, articles in the newspapers about it — all this, quite understandably, is required by us, as a necessary consequence of our good deed, if we do it only for the sake of man. We have thrown grain into the field of people and, naturally, we are waiting for the sprout on it, which would show us that we did not abandon in vain, that the soil is favorable...

This is not how the Lord commands us to look at it. Me and God — that's just who should be at charity. I give alms – it's like I offer a sacrifice to God. The person to whom I give is only a living altar. I should be grateful to him that he exists, that he is near me, and I can express my love for God with a feasible sacrifice. His appreciation or ingratitude is an extraneous matter for me, like the quality of the material from which the altar is made. It must be made of good material, but the actual thought of it has nothing to do with my sacrifice. There is one consequence I must desire: that my sacrifice should be pleasing to God, that He should accept it. And this is all the more likely it to be, the purer it is, i.e., the fewer extraneous motives and thoughts about glory and human considerations of gratitude it has, the more ardently it aspires to God and Him alone. In sacred history, there are paintings depicting the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. In Cain, the smoke spreads and spreads on the earth, but in Abel, it rises straight to heaven. Perhaps this was indeed the sign by which they knew that God had rejected the sacrifice of the one and accepted the sacrifice of the other. In any case, among the ancient peoples it was a means of finding out whether a sacrifice was pleasing to God or not. The same can be applied to our benefactions. It is bad if the rumor about them spreads on the ground, carried by the wind of newspapers to all cities and villages. It is good if, like Abel's sacrifice, they ascend directly to God, in the pure, azure silence of our hearts.

If we look at alms and all charity in this way, then it goes without saying that we will not only not trumpet it in all directions, but, on the contrary, we will try to hide it from the eyes of people, as we hide everything that is most precious and inner, as we do this in relation to the prayer of the heart itself, as we generally avoid extraneous entertaining eyes of people. when we want to remain alone before God.

It is also understandable, then, that our left hand will not know what the right hand has done, i.e., that we will not stop complacently in thought at what we have done and attach to it an external meaning. Whatever we did, we offered only a sacrifice to God and gave Him praise at this moment.

Whatever the sacrifice is, it is insignificant before God and is only dear to Him to the extent of our faith in Him, our love for Him. You put a piece of incense in the censer, you lit a wax candle before the image: a moment passed, and everything burned down. Whether you put a large or small piece of incense, whether you light a candle with or without gold, is it not all the same for God, is not your faith valuable before Him, is not your love for Him alone? And will you stop in thought and boast to yourself that you have lit a large candle? Does it have any significance in itself for Him before Whom millions of suns shine? Wouldn't it burn just like the little one? The same is true of beneficence. Whoever offers sacrifice to God with them knows that whether he has offered much or little, it is equally insignificant for God: heaven and earth and all the riches of the universe belong to Him. And therefore such a philanthropist will never dwell on the thought of the importance of what he has done and will only thank God that at this moment he was able to express his love to Him and glorify Him... And the next moment he is already concerned about the new glorification of God and does not think about the old one, which has already passed, like the fragrance of incense, about which there is no point in thinking for a long time.

Whoever gives his benevolence only a human, personal or social character, who puts his good deeds into the circulation of human relations, advertising himself, seeking gratitude, seeking glory, boasting of his usefulness, must know that he is doing the work of man, and not of God, that he is acting, as perhaps a good pagan, but not as a Christian, that the fruits of his deeds will leave no trace in eternity and will perish with all the noise and vanity of this world. that they do not reach God and have nothing in common with the fulfillment of Christ's commandment... Various newspaper reports and reports of benefactions are as appropriate in the essence of the matter as an account of how fervently someone prays to God in church, how he sighed, and when he crossed himself. All this is a purely internal, intimate matter, a matter that should be kept away from prying eyes, and whoever climbs here with unbidden curiosity commits a moral crime. So it is with any good deed: it should be only a form of our prayer to God, our glorification of His name, our gratitude to Him.

VII. "And Jesus sat down against the treasury, and watched the people put money into the treasury. Many rich people put a lot. And when a poor widow came, she put in two mites, which constitutes a codrant. And Jesus called his disciples and said to them, "Verily I say unto you, that the poor widow hath put in more than all that put into the treasury. For all have put in out of their abundance; but she, out of her poverty, laid in all that she had, all her sustenance" Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4