This word is cruel, even such people said about the teaching of the Saviour, who outwardly were His followers and were considered His disciples: who can listen to Him? [54] Thus does the wisdom of the flesh judge the word of God from its distressing mood. The Word of God is life,[55] eternal life, essential life. With this word the wisdom of the flesh is put to death,[56] which was born of eternal death, and which maintains eternal death in men: the word of God, for those who are destroyed by carnal wisdom and who willingly perish from it, is foolishness. It is the power of God for those who are being saved [57]

Sin has become so assimilated to us through the fall that all the qualities, all the movements of the soul are imbued with it. Such a rejection of the soul is necessary for the salvation of the soul. The rejection of the nature defiled by sin is necessary for the assimilation of the nature renewed by Christ. All food is thrown out of the vessel when it is poisoned; the vessel is thoroughly washed, then the food to be consumed is put into it. Food poisoned with poison is itself justly called poison.

In order to follow Christ, let us first renounce our reason and our will. Both the reason and the will of the fallen nature are completely damaged by sin; they will not be reconciled to the mind and will of God. He is made capable of assimilating the mind of God who rejects his own reason; he is made capable of fulfilling the will of God who renounces the fulfillment of his own will.

In order to follow Christ, let us take up our cross. Taking up one's cross is called voluntary, reverent submission to the judgment of God in all the sorrows sent and allowed by God's Providence. Murmuring and indignation in sorrows and misfortunes is a renunciation of the cross. Only he who has taken up his cross can follow Christ: he who is obedient to the will of God, who humbly recognizes himself as worthy of judgment, condemnation, and punishment.

The Lord, Who commanded us to deny ourselves, renounce the world and wear the cross, gives us the strength to fulfill His commandment. Whoever decides to fulfill this commandment and tries to fulfill it immediately sees the need for it. The teaching, which appeared cruel at a superficial and erroneous glance from carnal wisdom, is the most reasonable, full of goodness: it calls the dead to salvation, the killed to life, those buried in hell to heaven.

Those who do not dare to voluntarily renounce themselves and the world are forced to do both. When an inexorable and irresistible death comes, then they part with everything to which they were attached; self-denial is extended to the point that they throw off their very body, throw it down, leave it on the ground as food for worms and corruption.

Self-love and attachment to the temporal and vain are the fruits of self-deception, blindness, and spiritual death. Self-love is a perverted love for oneself. This love is insane and pernicious. The self-loving, addicted to vain and transitory things, to sinful pleasures, is an enemy to himself. He is a suicide: thinking to love himself and please himself, he hates and destroys himself, kills himself with eternal death.

Let us look around, distracted, befogged, deceived by vanity! Let us come to our senses, intoxicated with vanity, deprived of correct self-conception by it! let us cope with the experiments that are constantly being performed before our eyes. That which is done before us will certainly be done to us.

Did he who spent his whole life in earning honors, did he take them with him into eternity? Had he not left here the high-sounding titles, the insignia, all the splendor with which he surrounded himself? Did not only man go into eternity with his deeds, with the qualities he had acquired during his earthly life?

He who has used his life to acquire wealth, who has accumulated a great deal of money, who has acquired vast expanses of land for his possession, who has established various institutions that give him an abundant income, who has lived in palaces shining with gold and marble, who has ridden in magnificent chariots and horses, has he taken this into eternity? No! He left everything on earth, being satisfied for the last need of the body with the smallest piece of land, which is equally needed, with which all the dead are equally satisfied.

Whoever during his earthly life occupied himself with carnal amusements and pleasures, spent time with friends in games and other amusements, feasted at sumptuous meals, is finally removed by necessity from the usual way of life. The time of old age, sickness, and after them the hour of separation of the soul from the body. Then it is learned, but too late, that the service of whims and passions is self-deception, that life for the flesh and sin is a life without meaning.

The striving for earthly success is so strange, how monstrous! It searches with frenzy. As soon as he finds it, what he has found is deprived of its value, and the search is aroused with renewed force. It is not satisfied with anything present: it lives only in the future, it craves only what it does not have. Objects of desire attract the heart of the seeker with a dream and the hope of satisfaction: deceived, constantly deceived, he pursues them in the whole field of earthly life, until he is caught up in unexpected death. How and how to explain this seeking, which treats everyone like an inhuman traitor and possesses everyone, captivating everyone? "In our souls there is a desire for infinite blessings. But we have fallen, and the heart, blinded by the fall, seeks in time and on earth that which exists in eternity and in heaven.

The fate that befell my fathers and brethren will befall me also. They died; I will also die. I will leave my cell, I will leave in it my books, and my clothes, and my writing-table, at which I spent many hours; I will leave everything that I needed or thought to need during my earthly life. They will carry my body out of these cells, in which I live, as it were, on the threshold of another life and country; they will carry out my body and commit it to the earth, which was the beginning of the human body. Exactly the same thing will befall you, brethren, who read these lines. You also will die: you will leave all earthly things on earth; with your souls alone enter into eternity.