True, God-pleasing faith, in which there is no flattery or deception, consists in the fulfillment of the commandments of the Gospel, in the industrious and constant planting of them in one's soul, in the struggle with the mind, with God-defying sensations, movements of the heart and body. Both the mind, the heart, and the body of fallen man are hostile to the Law of God. Fallen reason does not accept the mind of God; the fallen heart resists the will of God; The body itself, having undergone corruption, acquired its own separate will, given to it by the Fall, which abundantly imparted to man a deadly knowledge of good and evil. Strait and sorrowful is our path to the wisdom of God! Holy faith leads us to it, trampling down, crushing the opposition of the mind, heart, and body of the fallen. Patience is needed here! Firmness, constancy, and long-suffering are needed here! In your patience gain your souls. Whoever wants to bring forth spiritual fruit, let him carry out with patience a long war against sin, full of various upheavals and misfortunes! Only he can see the fruit of the Spirit on the tree of his soul who cherishes this fruit, holy, tender, with much and courageous patience! Let us listen, let us listen to the Most Wise! Wisdom, he declares, walks obstinately with him, his disciple, in the first place, but fear and fear will bring him to him, and torment him in his punishment, until faith has his soul and tempts him in his justifications, and will return directly to him and rejoice him, and will reveal to him his mysteries [9].

Days, months, years pass, and their time comes, the time known to God, Who has placed the seasons and years in His power,[10] and the tree planted by the outflowing waters bears its fruit. This fruit is the manifest communion of the Holy Spirit, promised by the Son of God to all who truly believe in Him. Blessed and wondrous is the fruit of the Spirit! changes the whole person! The Holy Scriptures are transferred from the book to the soul; are inscribed with an invisible finger on its tablets, on the mind and heart, the word of God and the will of God, the Word and the Spirit. The promise of the Son of God is fulfilled for such a person: rivers will flow from his belly, living waters. And this is the speech of the Spirit, Whom the believer desires to receive in His name [11], His beloved disciple, the confidant of Wisdom and the Theology it gives, explains the word of the Saviour. The very leaf of such a tree will not fall away [12]. Leaf, according to the teaching of the Fathers, is bodily feats: and they receive their price, incorruption, and life after the renewal, regeneration of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The will of such a person merges with the will of God: he desires only that which is pleasing to God, fulfills only the will of God. For this reason he has God as a companion in all his undertakings, and everything that he does will succeed [13].

Not such a likeness for the wicked! the inspired David does not compare them with trees or with anything else that has the property of life! Another, different comparison for them! Not so impious, not so, does the royal Prophet sing, but like dust, which the wind sweeps away from the face of the earth! [14]. Wicked! You are lifeless dust, raised by a stormy whirlwind — the noisy vanity of the world — from the face of the earth, spinning in the air, carried by a thick cloud that obscures the sun, all nature.

Don't look at this cloud! do not believe the deceit of your eyes! For them, empty dust, insignificant dust, falsely appears as a cloud. Close your eyes for a moment, and a cloud of dust will fly by, carried by the strong, instantaneous breath of the whirlwind, without damaging your eyesight. In a minute you will open your eyes, see where is the vast cloud? you look for its trace, and there is no cloud, there is no trace after it, there is no sign of its existence.

With a terrible song, with terrible sounds, David continues to pronounce a terrible, fatal definition against the wicked. For this reason the wicked will not rise to judgment, lower than the sinner to the council of the righteous [15]. There is no participation for the wicked in the first resurrection [16], which St. John described in the Apocalypse, in the spiritual resurrection that takes place during earthly life, when the all-powerful Spirit touches the soul and renews it into existence. The soul is resurrected, revived into the Divine life. Her mind and heart are enlightened, made partakers of the spiritual mind. Spiritual reason is the sensation of the immortal belly [17], according to the definition of the Spirit-bearers. This very mind is a sign of the resurrection. Thus, on the contrary, carnal wisdom is the invisible death of the soul [18]. The spiritual mind is the work of the Holy Spirit. He sees sin, sees the passions in himself and others, sees his own soul and the souls of others, sees the snare of the ruler of the world, overthrows every thought that is levied on the mind of Christ, repels sin from himself, in whatever form it may approach: for the spiritual mind is the kingdom, the light of the Holy Spirit in the mind and heart. The wicked will not be resurrected for spiritual reasoning! This reasoning is the advice of the righteous alone, their inheritance. It is unapproachable, incomprehensible to the wicked and sinners. It is the vision of God, and only the pure in heart will see God [19].

The way of the wicked is hateful to God, so alien and abhorrent to Him, that the Scriptures represent God as turning away from him, as if he did not know him. On the contrary, the way of righteousness is so pleasing to God that the Scriptures say of it: "The message of the Lord is the way of the righteous." And indeed, He is the One Who is the message of this path! "Blessed way! you bring to God! you are hidden in the infinite God! your beginning is God, and your end is God! You are infinite, as infinite is God.

The way of the wicked has a border, it has a sorrowful limit! This edge is on the edge of a deep, gloomy abyss, the eternal repository of eternal death. And he, the path of the wicked, will perish forever in this terrible abyss, leading before it and destroying in it all those who passed through it.

The message of the Lord is the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked will perish [21]. Blessed is the man who does not go to the counsel of the wicked, who is not carried away by their way of thinking, their moral rules, their behavior, but in the law of the Lord is all his will.

Thus sings the heavenly, wondrous Singer; the hermit-dweller listened to his holy inspired song.

1847. Nikolaevsky Babaevsky Monastery.

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Joseph [22]