During my journey from the Sergius Hermitage through Moscow to the Babaevsky Monastery, I visited many monastic monasteries and saw from experience what the Holy Fathers describe in their divinely inspired books. I saw that in every place, both in the solitary wilderness and in the midst of a noisy crowd, those Christians who delve into the Word of God and try to realize it with their lives, fill their muscles – their minds and hearts – with parting words to blessed eternity. On the contrary, those who neglect to exercise in the Word of God, to fulfill God's holy commandments, remain in the sorrowful darkness of sin, in captivity to sin, in complete barrenness, despite the fact that they live in a deep wilderness. Wilderness life, not combined with spiritual occupations, nourishes, fattens, and strengthens sinful passions [52]. This is how the Holy Fathers instruct us; This is how it really is. The Word of God is eternal life: he who feeds on it will live forever [53]. Wherever a person is nourished by the Word of God, whether in the desert or in the midst of many people, everywhere the Word of God preserves its holy attribute: the attribute of eternal life. And therefore no place prevents this eternal life from imparting spiritual life, the one true life, to those who partake of it. Being with you, I have always reminded you, exhorted you to study the Word of God: it can bestow upon our noisy monastery the dignity of a solitary monastery; it can build a spiritual fence around our monastery, which has no material fence. This spiritual fence will be stronger and higher than any fence erected of bricks and stones; no vice will penetrate into our monastery, no virtue will be lost from it. Being absent, I find nothing better than to repeat to you in writing what I have said with my lips. Fraternity! do not spend your life in vain occupations; Do not squander the earthly life, the short life given to us for eternal gains. She will run, rush and never return; the loss of it is irreparable; those who spend it in vanities and games deprive themselves of the blessed eternity prepared for us by God. Use it to study the will of God, good and perfect, set forth in the Holy and Holy Scriptures. For it is not slothful for me to write to you, said the holy Apostle, but it is firm for you [54].

When the merciful Lord, having granted me some improvement in my bodily health, returns me to your blessed company and vouchsafes me to behold your faces as the faces of holy angels, then my word to you will be the same as it was before. And before I exhorted you, that you, enduring the refuge given to us by God, seek spiritual peace in the Word of God, not being carried away by vain thoughts and dreams, which promise to give peace and take it away. "The part of a fool is small in his sight" [55], said the great Isaac. On the contrary, in the soul that accepts God's gifts with thanksgiving, the value of these gifts increases. Thus I speak of our refuge, the Sergius Hermitage. Thanks be to God for this harbor can make the harbor quieter and more pleasant; the confused looks of murmuring and discontent convey their murkiness, their gloom, and what in all fairness should be thanked, glorify God.

{p. 47}

A tree transplanted from place to place wastes its strength, even though it is strong by nature, and is deprived of the opportunity to bear fruit. In our patience our Divine Teacher commanded us to gain our souls [56]. He proclaimed that those who produce fruit produce it in patience [57]. He declared: "He who endures to the end, he shall be saved"[58]; but whoever wavers, He has finally declared, My soul is not well pleased.

I immerse myself in the contemplation of the field of Christ. How many seeds were sown on it, how many ears of wheat grew! How beautifully green they are, make a comforting and delightful noise, stirred by the wind. For these ears comes the time of maturity, the time of harvest; They leave the field in which they were born and raised, gather on the threshing floor, dry, thresh, winnow. That's exactly how our life is. How many different upheavals are needed for a person to see all the vanity of the world, all its insignificance, and finally reach, like a threshing floor, the bowels of the holy monastery. Heavy, fruitful grain, no matter how it is winnowed, always falls on the threshing floor, and the tares and grains, powerless, empty, light, are carried away from the threshing floor by the wind; at first they appear as a cloud, something significant; Then they thin out, thin, lose sight of them, disappear. The sorrows encountered in society cannot be an excuse for cowardice. A life and a place without sorrow on earth is an impossible dream, which is sought by minds and hearts that are alien to Divine enlightenment, deceived by demons. We are commanded to seek spiritual peace in the mutual bearing of infirmities. It is not by changes of place, born solely of the condemnation of one's neighbors, that the law of Christ is fulfilled. No! bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ [60]. He who flees from the fulfillment of the law of Christ madly seeks a place without sorrow. A place and life without sorrow are in heaven: from there all sorrow and sighing will flee away. The earth is a place of sighing, and blessed are they that sigh in it: they shall be comforted in heaven. A place and a life without sorrow, when the heart finds humility, and through humility enters into patience.

All this, everything that is good and salvific, is taught to us by the Word of God. And therefore the Lord Himself commands, {p. 48} all the Prophets and Apostles, all the Holy Fathers exhort, command, beseech to abide constantly in the Word of God, which is the source of all blessings, which is life, which is light on earth, in this vale of weeping, famine, darkness, death. And the light shines in darkness, and darkness does not envelop it. Led by the ray of this light, the earthly pilgrim goes out into the salvific and spiritual pasture, and from here he begins eternal life. Accept, brethren, my words, which are nothing but an echo of the teaching of all the saints. Thus the desert wild cave — the abode of reptiles and all kinds of impurity — echoes the inspired sounds of Divine hymns.

Asking for your holy prayers and entrusting himself to your holy prayers

Archimandrite Ignatius. 1847. Nikolaevsky Babaevsky Monastery.

Word

for the fear of God and for the love of God

Man's service to God, as lawful by God, is clear and simple. But we have become so complex and deceitful, so alien to the spiritual mind, that we need the most careful guidance and instruction for the correct and pleasing service of God. Very often we approach the service of God by means of a method that is contrary to the institution of God, forbidden by God, which brings our souls not benefit, but harm. Thus, some, having read in the Holy Scriptures that love is the most sublime of virtues,[62] that it is God,[63] immediately begin and intensify to develop in their hearts the feeling of love, to dissolve their prayers, their contemplation of God, and all their actions.

God turns away from this unclean sacrifice. He demands love from man, but true, spiritual, holy love, and not dreamy, carnal, defiled by pride and voluptuousness. It is impossible to love God otherwise than with a heart purified and sanctified by Divine grace. Love for God is a gift of God: it is poured out into the souls of the true servants of God by the action of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, that love, which belongs to the number of our natural qualities, is found in the sinful corruption that embraces the entire human race, the entire being of each person, all the properties of each person. In vain let us strive to serve God, to unite with God through this love! He is holy, and rests only in the saints. It is independent: man's efforts to receive God into himself are fruitless, when it is not yet God's pleasure to dwell in man, although man is a God-created temple, created for the purpose that God should dwell in him [65]. This temple is in sorrowful desolation: before consecration, it needs to be renovated.

A premature striving to develop in oneself a sense of love for God is already self-deception. It immediately removes one from the correct service of God, immediately leads one into various errors, and ends in damage and destruction of the soul. We will prove this by the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Holy Fathers; let us say that the procession to Christ begins and is accomplished under the guidance of the fear of God; finally, let us show that the love of God is that blessed rest in God into which those who have completed the invisible path to God enter.

The Old Testament, in which truth is depicted in shadows, and the events with the outer man serve as an image of what is done in the inner man in the New Testament, tells of the terrible punishment to which Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, the priests of the people of Israel, were subjected. "Every one of them," says the book of Leviticus, "took his censer, put incense into it, and brought before the Lord a strange fire, which the Lord had not commanded to be offered. Only the consecrated fire kept in the Tabernacle of the Witness could be used in the priesthood of the Israelites. And fire went forth from the Lord, and burned them, and they died before the Lord" [66]. The alien fire in the censer of the priest of Israel depicts the love of the fallen nature, alienated from God in all its properties. The execution of the impudent priest is depicted as the mortification of the soul, which recklessly and criminally sacrifices unclean lust to God. Such a soul is struck by death, perishes in its self-deception, in the flame of its passions. On the contrary, the sacred fire, which alone was used in the sacraments, signifies grace-filled love. The fire for Divine services is not taken from the fallen nature, but from the Tabernacle of God. "Fire, descending into the heart," says St. John of the Ladder, "restores prayer. When it rises and ascends to heaven, then the descent of fire into the upper room of the soul takes place" [67]. Ce! all of you, says the Prophet, who walk, that is, who are guided in your life by the light of your fire and the flame of your fallen nature, which you kindle, instead of extinguishing it, will all perish in the fire and the flames of hell. By a wrong and criminal action in yourselves, you kindle the fire and strengthen for yourselves the flame of hell [68].