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spirit: while he is lonely and has not found God, he comprehends what surrounds him with his usual powers; but when he approaches the Fire of the Divinity and the Holy Spirit, he is completely captured by this Fire, he himself becomes light, burns in the flame of the Holy Spirit, enters into the Divine thought, and can no longer manifest his own thoughts and will."

Then Gregory asked: "My father, is there anything else similar, but which is a temptation?" The great Maximus answered: "Of course, there is, but each has its own signs: temptation is one, grace is another. When the evil spirit of temptation enters a person, it darkens him, makes him furious and excited, covers his heart with darkness, makes him doubtful and full of fear or, on the contrary, pride. His gaze is unsteady, his brain is restless; The whole body trembles. The devil shows him light, but the light is deceptive: it is not pure, but painted red, plunges his spirit into recklessness and causes his mouth to utter obscene words. Those who are overtaken by such a temptation become angry and angry, do not know meekness, are completely ignorant of true weeping and tears, but boast of their qualities, talk about them without any fear of God, and, finally, their spirit falls into complete darkness and goes to the grave and the earth. May the Lord preserve us through your prayer, Reverend Father, from such temptations.

The signs of grace are as follows. If a person has received the grace of the Holy Spirit, then his own spirit becomes collected and meek, he constantly remembers his sins and death and the future judgment and eternal torment, he is touched by his soul and weeps, and the closer grace becomes to a person, the more his soul is filled with peace and consolation through the holy sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ and His boundless love for people. The spirit leads a person to the highest vision: first, it is the contemplation of the ineffable power of God, how He created everything out of nothing by the Word; secondly, how by the same power He contains all things, governs all things, and determines all things; thirdly, man contemplates the incomprehensible Most Holy Trinity and the unfathomable depths of the Divine Being. At the same time, the human spirit is touched and enlightened by the Divine Light, the heart becomes calm, the Holy Spirit pours out all His gifts upon it: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control (cf. Gal. 5. 22)».

Shocked and full of amazement, St. Gregory remembered the words of St. Maximus and called him an earthly Angel.

Orthodox monks diligently copied the work of St. Gregory and translated it from Greek into Slavonic. Mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as Kallistos, Patriarch of Constantinople, and his friend Ignatius, both called Xanthopoulos, then Kallistos Katafigiotis, Simeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica, the monk Nicephorus, Philotheus, Patriarch of Constantinople, developed the mystical views of Gregory and attached special importance to spiritual prayer. But then came the time when Gregory and his supporters were forgotten.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a revival of hesychastic mysticism. 1 The 1st Greek monk of Athos – Nicodemus Sniatogorets (1748-1808) delved into the old writings of Akgthon and the mystic of Eastern Greece, which he

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carefully prepared for decades. The Igihagtas, including Gregory Snant, were particularly carefully worked out. 1ak poyaiiilgi 1782 Published in Venice in Greek folio "Philokalia".

/17??! 1!. 1|7O^'OVreMeNNO With Nicodemus RU' monk Archimandrite 11aisii U III 1 /U4) published the "Philokalia" in Church Slavonic in St. Petersburg (1793).

For Orthodox monks, the Philokalia to this day remains an important guide to asceticism and mysticism, a reference book on religious education and the formation of a mystical worldview, an inexhaustible storehouse and a reliable support on the path to Christian perfection. The wisdom of the heart of the Eastern elders does not cease to flow from this source, teaching everyone Christian humility.

CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT

The rich material on the history of the monasteries of Ancient Russia contains, unfortunately, too little of what we need to understand what are the main forms of eldership and the ways of ascetic education. Stories about saints and the statutes of monasteries do not allow us to shed light on this issue. Even in the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh (f 1392), who was the most significant personality of his time, does not directly indicate whether there was eldership in his monastery as a formed phenomenon. He had many students who formed his school. It is known that in the monastery of one of them, namely Paul of Obnorsk (1317-1429), there were some elders.

Pdp. Paul of Obnorsk spent 50 years in the monastery of St. Sergius, after which he went north into the impenetrable virgin forests of the Vologda land. For three years he lived in the hollow of a tall linden tree. In 1389, near the Obnora River, he founded a monastery in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. There he died at the age of 112.