are needed by the patient." It is all the more necessary to question the elders since there are no such definite rules according to which it would be clear who and when should be treated, and when not. Sex, the age of spiritual and physical life, circumstances, and so on, modify the answer, which, as we have seen above, can deviate both in the direction of curing the disease and vice versa. However, so it is in any other virtue.

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Those who wish to asceticize must nevertheless remember that for them the general inclination should be in the direction of abstaining from treatment, for often demons deceive us. It happens that when it is necessary to stand for prayer, it seems to a person as if death

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She came, and she overpowers herself, instantly removes everything like a hand. That is why the same Holy Father, who allowed in one case to be treated, in another, when he noticed in someone an excessive addiction to the body, taught: "Brother! I see that you are much concerned about the healing of bodily illnesses, and I think that the fathers did not care about it. Your second thought (to leave everything to God. — Bishop Barnabas) is better than the first, for the second contains complete faith in God, and the first (to go to the doctor. — Bishop Barnabas) is unbelief. One contains patience, from which comes art (experience), and from this is born hope that does not shame (Rom. 5:4-5); the other contains (spiritual) exhaustion — the sister of faint-heartedness, in whom lives lack of faith — the mother of doubt, alienating from God and bringing people down to perdition. One thought makes people friends of God, another – enemies of God. One is an intercessor for the Kingdom of Heaven, and the other is an intercessor for Gehenna... One (thought) is guided by the following reasoning: "He who sees the hidden infirmities can heal my illness also"; the other is full of foolishness about God, that He may or may not heal him."114

But since a person has decided to call a doctor at all costs, then, based on all the above, we must at least adhere to the following order:

1) to repent in one's soul of all previous sins, without any self-justification or self-defense;

2) to make a solemn promise to improve his life for the better;

3) to call a priest (and where possible, even better, a bishop) and to consolidate and sanctify these new spiritual dispositions in the sacraments of repentance, unction and Holy Communion.115

4) finally, in order not to force the Lord to perform an obvious miracle and not to give rise to the growth of vile vanity and pride in oneself ("God Himself will help me"), to humble oneself under the strong Hand of the Almighty and call an earthly physician to the bedside. At the same time, it does not prevent one from being blessed with the blessed oil from the holy relics and miraculous icons, the saint

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water, especially Epiphany water, consecrated on relics and shrines with cotton, pieces of stones (St. Seraphim of Sarov) and other objects from grace-filled places (again, if we are talking about a person of strong spirit, then grace-filled means can be limited). Through them, with tender prayer and faith, the saints to whom these things belong will help us. At least, medicines (powders, potions, etc.) should be diluted and diluted with holy water, sprinkled with it on the patient's bed, the corners of his room, the whole apartment. Let us not forget to burn incense, to serve prayers for health at home and in church, and so on. Then there is an undoubted hope for recovery, although everything is in God's hands.

With this I will end this paragraph. Many questions in it remained unexplained, but this, as I have already mentioned more than once, is an inevitable feature of my "Fundamentals". Ars longa, vita brevis (est)* (Art is vast and life is short (Latin))

— it will be appropriate to cite the aphorism of the famous ancient physician Hippocrates. If this should be said about the art of medicine and other sciences, then what can we say about the bottomless depth of the boundless sea of the "Art of Holiness"... 116