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 honour them as we ought to, as we ought to honour the man of God, sent to us from God, - Who can believe us that we have love for other brothers, our neighbors? And besides, if those whom we have as intercessors before God and men of prayer, who have received from God the authority 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 a perfect remission of sins? For the Lord says: "According to your 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 Cast you away, Me is rejected

What more can be said than this, I do not know, and I do not find why 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 don't see, you say, that he fulfills the commandments of God, that's why I don't honor him." But this is an empty pretext.

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 have received through him, but you have blotted out the very reason why you are a Christian, and you have lost Christ the Lord. For suppose in your mind that the king of the earth has sent to you one of his least servants, poorly dressed, in old rags, not on horseback, but on a bad donkey, or even on foot, but who has brought you a charter under the royal seal, written by the king in his own hand, and in this letter the king declares you his brother and friend, and promises after a while to make you 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 receive him and honor him as a royal servant, and for the sake of such great and truly royal promises and such radiant glory that awaits you, rejoice with him, do him good according to your strength and promise 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 is 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 himself would show thee contempt, as if reproaching thee to 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 through his negligence, but against myself, that I was merciless and kept my servants in such rags. In this way you would repent that you had made such promises to this contemptuous of your servant for the sake of this very contempt, and you would not have accepted him 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. Acquire for yourself a spiritual father, acquire 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.

Homily Twelve. 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?

It is good to weep and grieve over one's sins and pray to God for their absolution. 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 the following: 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 not conceited, not covetous. 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 since 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 to forgive him who has sinned against him in any way, or does not find good dispositions in himself - to give alms and always thank God, in general, to abstain from all evil and to do all good. It cannot but be obvious to the observer that all such infirmities sometimes depend on autocratic volition, and sometimes on violence on the part of nature. However, not all people are equally weak, but some are more 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 (a real one), 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 its fiery burning. 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 they ask for are, despite the fact that there are so many of them and they are 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 the 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, then even though he keeps vigils, even though he sleeps on the bare ground, even though he sings psalms day and night, prays and fasts, he still remains unhealed and is outside the part of Christ, just like the unfaithful.

2.

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 you have received, and have borne your sorrows" (Matt. 8:17). For if human souls, I do not say pagans and atheists, even the Jews themselves, who believed in the true God, could conveniently hate worldly lusts and carnal inclinations, and thus escape the devil, the ruler of the world (for by means of 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, That is, to hell. But the point 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, everything worldly and carnal, can in no way fulfill the commandments of Christ, or, as it is written, always shun evil and do good.

Therefore, let everyone who believes in Christ, first of all, ask the merciful God for grace and strength to hate the world and all the things of the world, all the passions and lusts of the flesh, and after he has hated them, let him labor with warm faith, in order to 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 certifies: "If we ask according to His will, He will listen to us" (1 John 5:14). For this is the only thing God wants people to seek from Him, that is, that which leads man to eternal salvation. Why should no man care about anything else and depend on nothing 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 all its infirmities, 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 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.

Thus, the soul must try in every way not to allow demons to approach it, and it cannot achieve this in any other way than by not bowing to the lusts of sin, in Christ Jesus, to Whom be glory forever. Amen.