They treat their spiritual fathers in the same way: they think that by confession with them they receive remission of their sins, but they themselves are considered devoid of any virtue, having no boldness before God, and they are placed on the same level with all other people. And so this is the state in which almost all of us are: they think that they also receive, or rather steal, all those spiritual gifts which God gave to the Apostles, but the Apostles passed on to those who believed in Christ through them, but do not give worthy honor and faith to those through whom these gifts are given to them: — which honor the Apostles gave to the Lord Christ in the beginning, To the apostles, then to their disciples, and to these those who were under them; but they cherish the audacious conviction that God does not require them to render it even now to their bishops, priests, abbots and spiritual fathers. Being baptized as infants, they therefore believe that they are not guilty when they do not afterwards give honor to the one who baptized them, and do not revere him as their spiritual father. They also dream that, having learned the rudiments of Christian dogmas in childhood, they know enough for piety, and that therefore God will not punish them for despising the teachers of piety and not wanting to learn anything more from them. It seems to them that they are quite pious and lead a more orderly life than many others; why they hope that they will be justified for the sake of this alone. Again, to speak in spirit of their sins, to confess them and to receive permission from their spiritual fathers, this seems to them sufficient for salvation, and then they need neither to have faith in these fathers, nor to give them honor, nor to show them the reverence that befits them, as the successors of the Apostles, mediators and intercessors for them before God.

In this way, the whole universe is now filled with this charm and this evil. The violation and contempt of this commandment alone turned everything upside down in the Church of God, threw it down to its very lot. The church has fallen into such disorder and confusion that nowhere is there almost no befitting order, and there is no sign that this body of the Lord is beautifully combined. As if we do not have the head of Christ the Lord, as if we are not brothers in spirit, bound together and united by the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we do not allow each of us to be ordained and well-built in his order by the first builders of the Church of God!? Because of this, we are divided and scattered, like soulless particles of some substance (like sand). So much have we been enslaved to our desires, so much have the lusts of voluptuousness prevailed over us! Being drawn away by them only to please ourselves, we were divided, and from mutual hostility and pride we turned away and distanced ourselves from one another, and thus lost the distinguishing mark and sign of our faith, that is, love, of which the Lord said: "Of this all men understand, that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). If we have lost it, then it is in vain that we are called Christians.

Tell me, I beseech thee, when we do not love our spiritual fathers, who have given us such great blessings, that through them God makes us his sons by grace, partakers of his glory, and heirs of eternal bliss, when, I say, we do not love them, and do not honor them, and do not glorify them as we ought to, as the man of God, sent to us from God, should be honored,  "Who can believe us that we have love for our other brothers, our neighbors?" And besides, if those whom we have as intercessors before God and men of prayer, who have received authority from God, to give us absolution for all our sins and to reconcile us to Him, if, I say, we do not receive them with full conviction and faith as saints, but look upon them as sinners, how can we hope that through them we have been granted complete remission of sins? For the Lord says: "According to faith be unto you" (Matt. 9:29). And exactly, according to the measure of our faith, to the extent that we believe in them, so shall we also receive the remission of our sins. Moreover, if the word spoken by the Lord is true: receive you, Me receives, and: "Reject you, Me is rejected; then I wonder how those who do not keep in mind the conviction that we must not only love all people, especially our brothers in spirit, but must also receive any of the present spiritual men as an Apostle of Christ, so that through him we may receive Christ Himself, and we must fulfill every word of Him, as if it came from the mouth of Christ Himself,  — how, I say, and in what other way can such receive Christ, or acquire Him within themselves? And yet many of us do not even know the priest who baptized them; but we, who know them, have turned away from them and despised them, as I said above; and some do not even know whether they have been baptized? "If we do not know this, then how can we admit that we have faith, or even consider us baptized?" I do not understand this: we have not come to know the spiritual father, and even if we have, we do not revere him as a father; a teacher who would teach us piety, they did not bother to acquire; And if we have acquired, we do nothing according to what He teaches us, but we walk and act as our will pleases. What can be said more than this, I do not know, and I do not find for what and for what virtue of yours I could call you Christians?

Poor and unfortunate man! Why do you not revere your spiritual father as an apostle of Christ? "I do not see, you say, that he fulfills the commandments of God, therefore I do not honor him. But this is an empty pretext. For, tell me, do you yourself fulfill them better than he, that you so boldly despise and condemn him? "But even if you have really fulfilled all the commandments, then you should not condemn him, and despise him, and turn away from him, reproaching him for his negligence about a good life, but on the contrary, you should still love him and revere him for the blessings which God has given you through him, and make him a partaker in your bodily life, so that in this way you may repay him at least a little for the spiritual good that he has brought you, so that not only you may preserve what God has given you through him, but also increase your actions in this way. Now, as you see for yourself, because of your unbelief, ingratitude, and abandonment of your spiritual father and teacher, you have not only destroyed all that you received through him, but you have blotted out the very thing that you are a Christian for, and you have lost Christ the Lord. For suppose in thy mind that the king of the earth has sent to thee one of his least servants, dressed poorly, in old rags, not on horseback, but on a bad ass, or even on foot, but who has brought thee a charter under the royal seal, written by the king in his own hand, and in this letter the king declares thee his brother and friend, and promises after a while to make thee a partaker with him in the reign; to crown thy head with a royal crown and clothe thee in royal garments, tell me, how would thou react to this servant? Would you have received him and honored him as a king's servant, and for the sake of such great and truly royal promises and such radiant glory that awaits you, rejoiced with him, did you favor him according to your strength, and promised to do good to him forever afterwards — or would you despise him and send him away empty-handed and dishonorable, for the sole reason that he was dressed in poor clothes and came on foot?! Supposing you to despise him in this way, and the king found out about it, would he praise you for it, or would he reproach and condemn you? If you yourself were this king, would you not consider it a reproach and dishonor to yourself such contempt shown to your servant? And would he not acknowledge this reproach as a reproach to himself? Of course, it would have been. Thou wouldst be so angry with him, as if he were to show thee contempt, as if reproaching thee in thy face that thou hast such servants, and would say, Who hath made him judge over my servants? He did not reproach my servant for wearing such poor and stained rags because of his negligence, but for myself, for being unmerciful, and keeping my servants in such rags. In this way you would repent that you had made such promises to this contempt of your servant for the sake of this very contempt, and would not have received him faithfully, when he came to you, because he, being impudent, had taken away your own judgment and condemned your servant, whom it was inappropriate for him to judge.

Discuss all this within yourself, my spiritual and beloved child, and having perfectly understood the present order of things, try to be a true Christian not only in word, but also in deed. Get yourself a spiritual father, get a teacher, a mediator and an intercessor before God. Cleave to him with love and faith, with fear and desire, and be with him as you were with Jesus Christ Himself, that through him you may be vouchsafed to be united with Christ and become a partaker and co-heir of His eternal glory and kingdom, so that you may sing and glorify Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the endless ages of ages. Amen.

TWELFTH HOMILY

1. He who repents of his sins will receive no benefit if he does not seek from Christ the Lord and the cure of his infirmity, because of which he sins. 2. Whatever a person does in this life, he does in vain, if it does not contribute to the health of his soul. 3. How does sin happen according to our will and without our will?

1. It is good to weep and grieve over one's sins and pray to God for their remission. But there will be no benefit from this, if our Lord Jesus Christ does not heal those infirmities of the penitent, because of which he sins, as if unwillingly: for if he is not healed of them, then he cannot refrain from sins. Wherefore every penitent must devote all his asceticism to this alone, in order to be healed by Christ the Lord, to be sanctified and to receive the power to fulfill the will of God and His commandments. For whoever is not healed by Christ the Lord sometimes commits sins, being carried away by his own weakness, and sometimes with great difficulty and constraint fulfills some commandment; But what is the use of such a person? He is like one who builds and again destroys what has been built. Why is it necessary that our infirmities be healed by Christ the Lord, Who alone is the true physician, Who came to earth to heal our infirmities, because of which we sin? He is the Lamb of God, take away the sin of the world, which is the weakness of our damaged nature. For after Adam transgressed the commandment of God and was expelled from paradise, every man became weak and sick. And these infirmities, since they are found both in nature and in our volition, are somehow strange: sometimes it seems that they are of nature, and sometimes of volition.

The infirmities of which I speak are as follows: every man is weak and cannot have pure love, cannot but envy, reproach, condemn, despise, ridicule, speak lies, be angry, lust after the good things of this world which he sees, be vain, covet. Whether he be the most prudent among the prudent, the wisest among the wise, the most courageous among the courageous, the most honest among the honest, be he better and more perfect than all others; but as soon as the weakness of our nature remains in him (unhealed), it is inevitable that he will not be able to preserve chastity, or will not overcome himself in order to forgive him who has sinned against him in something, or does not find good dispositions in himself – to give alms, and always to thank God, in general to abstain from all evil and to do every good. It cannot but be obvious to the observer that all such infirmities sometimes depend on autocratic arbitrariness, and sometimes on the violence of nature. However, not all people are equally weak; but some are greater, and some less.

Such infirmities must be healed in us. But first of all, it is necessary to seek a physician who would heal them. Why did the Holy Fathers bequeath to us, Christians, that we should always pray to God in this way, calling out to Him with a broken heart: "Look upon us, O Lord, according to Thy mercy, and heal our infirmities for the sake of Thy holy name." That is, look upon our infirmities and heal them by Thy grace, that Thy name may be glorified, that Thou art merciful and gracious, and that Thou art the only Physician, and let no one boast of himself when he is healed, but let him glory in his Physician, and let him thank Him day and night with all his heart, truly humble-minded. And so, in whom his infirmities will be healed in this way, he has become a Christian (real), and whoever has any of the other infirmities of which we have spoken, it is evident that he has not yet been healed. And this he suffers either from ignorance or from foolishness, as one who does not know what he is saying to God when he prays, and what infirmities he asks God to heal. And if he dies unhealed, he will forever weep over it in hell, not hoping ever to be freed from the fiery burning of it. For this reason we must weep bitterly over the miserable state into which we have come. Let Christian people cry out day and night: Look upon the Lord and heal our infirmities. But even the Lord cannot heal them if they do not know what these infirmities are for which they are asking, despite the fact that they are so many and so diverse. This is the cause of perdition, for which so many Christians, rich and poor, rulers and simple, young and old, monks and priests perish. The only cure for all these infirmities in general is communion of the divine nature or the reception of God's grace. If a Christian does not receive divine grace and power, according to the measure of his faith; even though he keeps vigils, though he sleeps on the bare ground, though he sings psalms day and night, though he prays and fasts, yet he remains unhealed and is outside the part of Christ, like the unbelievers.

2. No matter what good deeds every person does, no matter what feats he strives and troubles himself with in this life, wise or unwise, knowledgeable or ignorant, prudent or unreasonable, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, if this does not contribute to the healing of his soul from its infirmities, all this is vain and useless for him, and leaves his soul outside the kingdom of heaven: for only healthy souls are accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven, having no infirmity. And these infirmities, which we have previously indicated, these obscene strivings of carnal lusts, these addictions to earthly and worldly things, wealth and vain glory, no soul can heal in itself and become healthy either by itself or with the help of any other person. Only by our Lord Jesus Christ can they be healed, as it is written: "To this our infirmities have been received, and we have borne pain" (Matt. 8:17). For if the souls of men, I do not say the pagans and the ungodly, even the Jews themselves, who believed in the true God, could conveniently hate the lusts of the world and the inclinations of the flesh, and thus escape the ruler of the world, the devil (for by these passions he acquired for himself the power of death), then there would be no need for the good, gracious, and loving God to become man, to be crucified, and after death to descend into the pit of the earth, i.e., to hell. But the fact of the matter is that no one can hate the world and all worldly and carnal things, unless he becomes a partaker of divine grace and receives the power to do so from the Lord Jesus Christ. And whoever, strengthened by the divine power of Christ, does not first hate, with all his heart, all worldly and carnal things, can in no way fulfill the commandments of Christ, or, as it is written, always turn away from evil and do good.

For this reason, let everyone who believes in Christ, first of all, ask the merciful God for grace and strength to hate the world and all worldly things, all the passions and lusts of the flesh, and after he has hated them, let him labor with warm faith, so that he may attain their deadness, which is the deadness of Christ, as the Apostle Paul says, that he always bore the death of the Lord Jesus in his body (2 Corinthians 4:10). Such petitions are pleasing to God, and He listens to them with good pleasure, as St. John the Theologian assures: "If we ask according to His will, He will listen to us" (1 John 5:14). For this is the only thing that God desires that people seek from Him, that is, that which leads man to eternal salvation. Why should no man be concerned about anything else, and not depend on anything else for his labors in the present life, except that his soul at the last hour of death may be healthy and free from all worldly and carnal passions? Thus, it is necessary that the soul should become healthy from every infirmity, and then, as soon as it becomes healthy, it will be able to serve God worthily, fulfilling His divine commandments, and to appear unashamed when it stands before the dreadful judgment seat of Christ. But if she does not do this, that is, if she does not serve God and does not fulfill His commandments, although not to a great extent, then of course on the day of judgment she will be unhealthy from the passions, and for this she will be cast into the fire of Gehenna, which will swallow her up in its unquenchable furnace and will burn up eternal ages. For the fire of Gehenna cannot burn any others, but only those who have left their souls unhealed in the present life, and have thus passed unhealed into the next life.

3. Sin is committed both by our will and not by our will. For sin always appears to us only as a kind of deceptive bait.

Therefore–