He must also compel himself to meekness, even though his heart resists it, according to what the Lord said: Learn from me, that I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls (1140). In the same way, he must be merciful, forgiving, compassionate, good, forcing himself to do so, as the Lord said: Be merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful [1141]. And again: If ye love Me, keep My commandments [1142]. And again: Compel yourselves, because the needy (coercing, coercing themselves) delight in the Kingdom of Heaven [1143]. And: Strive through the strait gate [1144]. He must always have before his eyes the humility of the Lord, His life, His behavior, keep them constantly in memory, as if a model and example, not allowing them to be stolen by oblivion. He must, as much as he can, compel himself to abide unceasingly in prayer, constantly asking with constant faith that the Lord would come and make him His abode [1145], that He would instruct him in all His commandments, strengthen him in them, that his soul might become the house of Jesus Christ. When he acts in this way, forcing himself, in the face of the resistance of his heart, becoming accustomed to every good work, to the constant remembrance of the Lord, to the constant expectation of Him in much goodness and love, then the Lord, seeing such his disposition and such good care, how he always forces himself to the remembrance of the Lord and to every good work, to humility, meekness and love, as he bows down to the yoke (of Christ) his heart, which resists it, forcing his heart to do all that is good, then, I say, the Lord pours out His mercy upon him (at a certain time), delivers him from his enemies and from the sin that dwells in him, filling him with the Holy Spirit. In this way, without any labor or coercion on his part, he will truly fulfill the commandments of the Lord all and at all times. It would be more correct: the Lord Himself will fulfill His commandments in it and manifest spiritual fruits, and man will bear fruit in purity. But before that, everyone who comes to the Lord (as was said above) must force himself to do good, despite the resistance of the heart, in constant expectation with undoubted faith of God's mercy; one must force oneself in order to be merciful to all, in order to have a heart that loves mankind, in order to have humility before all, long-suffering towards all, not to grieve one's soul in exiles and dishonors, not to complain — according to what has been said: it is not one's own self-loving love to compel oneself to prayer, when one has not received its gift from the Holy Spirit. When God sees someone struggling in this way and forcibly forcing himself to do good, He gives him the true prayer of Christ, the womb of mercy, true love for mankind, in short: He gives him all spiritual fruits" [1146].

We see that many of the sinners, having repented, have attained the highest degree of Christian perfection. They have restored in themselves the Gift of Baptism not only to the extent to which it is given, but also to the extent to which it subsequently develops from living according to the Gospel commandments. Having acquired, having regained spiritual freedom, they did not stop there, they were not satisfied with it, they did not cease from repentance and weeping, which restored their freedom. The weakness and habituality of man, which they had learned from experience, his ability to change quickly [1147], constantly stirred them up to weeping. Do not know what the coming day will bring forth,[1148] they said daily to themselves through the mouth of the Scriptures; because of their purity, it was revealed to them that the commandment of the Lord was wide [1149]. Comparing their fulfillment of the commandment with the incomprehensibly vast commandment of the Lord, they recognized this fulfillment as completely insufficient. They called and recognized their fulfillment of the Gospel commandments as a desecration of the commandments [1150]. They washed away their virtues, as if they were sins, with streams of tears. Thus the blinded sinner never weeps for his most terrible sins, as the servants of Christ weep for their virtues. But heaven is unclean before Him (before God),[1151] that is, the pure holy Angels, as having limited purity, are unclean before the all-perfect purity of God, and holy men are also unclean before Him, whose life, though on earth, is also in heaven [1152]. That is why they weep, and when they bring repentance, they sink more and more into repentance. I know nothing about myself, said the holy Apostle Paul, but I am not justified by this: the Lord is my judge [1153]. In spite of his great spiritual gifts, in spite of the abundant grace of God that dwelt in the Apostle, he said: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first" (1154).

The development of the sacred, spiritual Gift conferred by Baptism is as immense as the Gift bestowed by God from His Divine nature [1155]; this development is as boundless and incomprehensible as God Himself, Who dwells in our hearts through Baptism, is immense and incomprehensible. This development embraces the whole being of the Christian. When we look closely at this development in the chosen vessels of God, then the depiction in the parables of the Gospel of the action in man produced by holy Baptism becomes quite clear. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, said the Saviour, is a grain of peas, when a man takes all the grain in his village, if there is the least of all the seeds: and when it grows, there is a tree more than (all) potions, and there is a tree, so that the birds of the air will come and soar on its branches [1156]. Likeness, Filled with Divine Humility [1157]. The Son of God humbled Himself, took the form of a servant, being in the likeness of a man, and was found in the likeness of a man [1158]. In this image He deigned to be numbered not among the strong, glorious and rich of the world, but among the host of the poor and suffering. His appearance is dishonorable, says the Prophet, belittled more than all the sons of men [1159]. His soul was given over to death, and He was reckoned with the wicked [1160], taking His place between the two thieves, as it were the chief and most dangerous of the criminals. He called His all-holy, life-giving, Divine commandments small [1161], according to the simplest, artless form in which they were proposed, adding, however, that the violation of one such commandment can be the cause of eternal calamity for the transgressor [1162]. In the same way, He likened the grace of Baptism to the smallest of the seeds of the earth. And indeed, what could be simpler and more ordinary, outwardly, than Holy Baptism? People usually wash themselves in water, immersing themselves in it — this commonly used action is associated with the Sacrament, in which both soul and body are washed from sinful impurity [1163]. The death and burial of a person are replaced by his instantaneous immersion in water. Imperceptibly to the eyes of the flesh, the Holy Spirit descends and recreates fallen man. The circumstances of temporal life remain for the baptized person, outwardly, the same as they were before Baptism. Outwardly, the Gift communicated by Baptism is so inconspicuous that it must be likened with all precision and justice to the smallest mustard seed [1164]. This gift is an immeasurable price. He grows, being developed by the fulfillment of the commandments: then in his greatness he will surpass all other gifts with which the generous hand of the Creator has abundantly endowed man, and will make him a temple of heavenly thoughts, sensations, revelations, and states peculiar only to the celestials.

Likewise, said the Saviour, the Kingdom of Heaven is leaven (in Russian translation: leaven), which the woman hid in three flours, until all was boiled [1165]. How humbly and how faithfully the spiritual Gift imparted by Holy Baptism is called leaven! Everyone who accepts Holy Baptism is unfaithful to Christ, is united with Christ, and therefore with all justice is called a woman. This woman hides, that is, preserves and grows the grace-filled Gift, through living according to the Gospel, in her mind, heart and body [1166], until the Gift penetrates, fills, and embraces the whole person. Do you want to see not only the soul, but also the human body, watered and imbued with the grace-filled Gift given at Baptism? Pay attention to Paul, whose garments worked miracles [1167], whom the bite of an echidna did not harm [1168]; behold Mary of Egypt, who rose from the earth in her prayer, who walked on the streams of the Jordan as on dry land, who made a thirty-day journey in one hour [1169]; look at Mark of Thrace, at whose voice the mountain rose from its foundations and moved into the sea [1170]; Look at Ioannicius the Great, who, like a spirit, was invisible by those whom he did not wish to be seen, although he was in their presence [1171]; behold the bodies of the saints of God, resting in sacred incorruptibility for many centuries, not submitting to the law of decay common to all mankind, exuding streams of healing, streams of fragrance, streams of life.

The Monk Sisos the Great, who especially abounded in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, said: "To him (man) in whom God dwelt by the grace of Holy Baptism and the fulfillment of the commandments, the (spiritual) Gifts are natural" [1172]. This was pronounced by the holy desert-dweller from his own experience. Is not the same thing attested to by the Holy Scriptures? Those who were baptized into Christ, it says, put on Christ [1173]. To those who are clothed in Christ, who have Christ in them, the gifts of the Spirit are natural: where Christ is, there is the Father and the Spirit.

7. On the Relation of the Renewed Nature to Evil

Here the question arises by itself: what does the renewed man have to do with evil? he cannot but have an accurate knowledge of evil. But we have seen that the innocent nature of man, in its state after creation, hardly received such knowledge than it perished from it. It is all the more necessary to know the relation of the renewed nature to the knowledge of evil. We answer: purity of heart is the spiritual state of a renewed nature, called in the Gospel blessedness, which brings to man the vision of God [1174], appears in the soul after the blessedness of mercy, stems from this blessedness. It is known that the Gospel Beatitudes are spiritual states that are revealed in a Christian from the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments, that the Beatitudes are revealed one after another, being born one from the other [1175]. After the rejection of one's truth, as defiled by evil, from the midst of weeping over one's state of fallenness, from the midst of meekness — this reconciliation to all sorrows, visible and invisible — hunger and thirst for God's Truth begin to be felt in the soul. The truth of God is found in mercy, where the Gospel commands us to seek it. Love your enemies, it says, bless you who bite, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who do you harm and drive you out, that you may be the sons of your Father, Who is in heaven: for His sun shines on the evil and the good, and rains on the just and the unjust. For if ye love those who love you, what is the reward? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you kiss only your friends, what else do you do? Do not the pagans do the same? Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect [1176]. The perfection of Christian, and therefore human, virtue in a renewed nature is the grace-filled God-imitating mercy produced in the Christian by the development of Divine grace, given to him in Baptism and cultivated by the commandments. From such mercy comes spiritual purity: it is nourished by it, it lives by it. He answered: "Purity is a heart full of mercy for every creature." To the question: What is a merciful heart? This great teacher of monastics said: "This is the burning of the heart for every creature, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons – in a word, for every creature. From the remembrance of them and the sight of them, the eyes of the merciful one shed tears for the reason of the abundant and strong mercy that took possession of the heart. From constant patience his heart has become the heart of a child, and he cannot be indifferent when he hears or sees any harm, or even a small sorrow, to which the creature has been subjected. And therefore he offers prayer every hour, accompanied by tears for the dumb, and for the enemies of the truth, and for those who slander him, that they may be preserved and purified; even he does this about the nature of creeping things, from a great mercy that moves excessively in his heart in the likeness of God" [1177]. From the great mercy that the great Isaac felt in himself, he exclaims: "On the day in which you suffer for someone who suffers in any way, bodily or mentally, good or evil, consider yourself a martyr and look upon yourself as one who suffered for Christ, as one who has been vouchsafed to confess. Remember that Christ died for sinners, not for the righteous. See how great it is to grieve for the wicked and to do good to sinners! it is greater than doing both with regard to the righteous. The Apostle remembers this as worthy of wonder" [1178]. St. Isaac, comparing the truth of fallen human nature with the Divine truth, which consists in grace-filled, spiritual mercy, calls the latter service to God, and the former service to idols [1179]. The Apostle speaks of the acquisition of this mercy when he bequeaths to those who believe in Christ: "Clothe yourselves as the election of God, holy and beloved, in the wombs of generosity, kindness, humility, meekness, and longsuffering: accepting one another, and forgiving oneself, if anyone has reproach against anyone: as Christ also has forgiven you, so are you also" [1180]. St. Macarius the Great says: "Grace acts and pacifies all the forces and the heart in such a way that the soul, out of great joy (mercy), is likened to a gentle infant, and man no longer condemns either Greek, or Jew, or sinner, or layman, but the inner man looks upon all with a pure eye and rejoices in the whole world, and in every way desires to honor and love the Greeks, and the Jews" [1181]. "Purity of heart," said the above-mentioned Saint Isaac, "sees God; it shines and blossoms in the soul not as a result of human teaching, but from not seeing human malice" [1182]. Then a person does not see malice in his neighbors, when all his relations with his neighbors will be absorbed in mercy towards them. Is it possible that such a failure to see the shortcomings of one's neighbors is a blindness of the mind, is it the recognition of evil as good? On the contrary: blindness of the mind, not seeing sin and evil, recognizing evil as good belong to unrepentant sinners who justify their sin. The saints of God, enlightened by the Spirit of God, understand evil in all its details, know its intrigues and its poisonousness; they, with the help of this knowledge provided by the Spirit, with special care guard themselves from the experiential knowledge of sins, which is brought about by the actual fulfillment of sin. He who is born of God, says St. John the Theologian, does not sin: but he who is born of God watches over himself, and the evil one does not touch him [1183]. Through the grace-filled mercy that true Christians breathe to their neighbors, they remain alien to the sinfulness of their neighbors, which communicates through condemnation to the condemner, violating his own, calm, joyful, holy order. The peace of Christ, which surpasses every mind that dwells in the saints of God, immediately convicts every approaching thought of the opposite, no matter what mask of righteousness this thought may be concealed by [1184]. St. John Climacus, in his Homily [1185] on spiritual reasoning and on thoughts, passions, and virtues, says that it comes from an immaculate conscience and purity of heart; that in those who are new in success, it is the knowledge of their fall and sinfulness; that in the middle (according to success) it separates true good from natural and from evil, both revealed and disguised good; finally, that in the perfect it is the spiritual mind, shining forth from the Holy Spirit, and seeing the mode of evil in other people. Thus the holy Apostle Peter said to Simon the Sorcerer: "For in the gall of sorrow and the union of iniquity I see thee being" [1186]. In the preface to the Sermon on Sacred Silence, St. John says that the Saints of God have an accurate and detailed knowledge of sin by the revelation of the Holy Spirit [1187]. The beginning of the enlightenment of the soul and the sign of its health lies in the fact that the mind begins to see its sins, like its multitude of sea sand, said St. Peter of Damascus [1188]. This Father calls the sight of his fall and the sight of his sins the spiritual vision revealed by the action of grace in the doer of Christ's commandments [1189]. The Holy Church has ordained for her children to ask God for a great gift by fervent prayer – the sight of their sins [1190]. Fallen nature is stricken with blindness of mind. It does not see its fall, it does not see its sins, it does not see its pilgrimage on earth, and it disposes of itself on it as if it were immortal, as if it existed only for the earth. It not only judges and condemns the sins of its neighbor with cruelty, but also, out of its own miserable disposition, invents sins for its neighbor that are not in it; it is seduced by the most exalted Christian virtues, distorting their meaning in accordance with its falsely named reason out of its heart's malice. On the contrary, the renewed nature has the grace-filled knowledge and sight of evil, granted by God, the knowledge and sight of evil, which not only does not violate the integrity of the good in man, but also serves to protect man from the experiential knowledge of evil, which is fatal to man. The renewed nature sees and knows evil in itself, in men and in demons, but remains undefiled from evil, because this vision and knowledge of the renewed nature does not belong to man proper, not acquired by man's own effort, but given to him by God. It is possible to liken the knowledge of evil, acquired by men through the fall, to the knowledge of the sick of the diseases with which they suffer, and the knowledge of evil by renewed men to the knowledge of diseases by physicians. The sick know the disease from experience, but they do not know either its causes or the means to cure it; physicians, not knowing the disease from experience, know it incomparably more definitely than the sick, they know its causes and the means of using it.

8. Conclusion

Having set forth, to the extent of my meager strength, the state of human nature in relation to good and evil after creation, after the fall, and after its redemption, to whom shall I turn with the conclusion of this wretched Word? The Word serves as a rebuke of my own shortcomings, and therefore I address the exhortation with which every Word usually ends to myself. I borrow my exhortation from the Father of the Church. If any of my neighbors deems it appropriate for himself, let him receive it with love. "Thou hast remembered," says the Father whom I have mentioned, "that nobility which thou didst receive in Baptism from grace, which thou didst reject arbitrarily by the passions of the world, thou didst desire to restore (this nobility) by good will; You proved this desire by your deeds by coming to the holy school, putting on the honorable garments of repentance, and vowing to remain in the monastery good-naturedly until your death. You have bequeathed a second covenant with God. The first was made at the entrance into the present life; the second was made when you began to lean towards the end of the present life. Then you were received by Christ for the sake of piety, now you are joined to Christ through repentance. Then you received grace, now you have confessed your duty. Then, as a child, you did not feel the dignity given to you, although later, when you came of age, you knew the greatness of the gift, and your mouth was barred (to self-justification); now, with sufficient development of knowledge, you comprehend the meaning of the vow. See to it that you do not neglect this promise (of repentance); see to it that you are not rejected and cast down, like some vessel completely broken, into utter darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth [1191]. Except for the path of repentance, there is no other path that leads back to salvation" [1192]. Saith the Holy Spirit: "This day, if ye hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in wrath, in the days of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted Me, they tempted Me, and saw My works for forty years." For this reason the indignation of that generation is the same: they are ever deceived in their hearts, but they do not know My ways: for they have sworn in My wrath, if they enter into My rest. Take heed, brethren, lest there be a deceitful heart in any of you, (filled) with unbelief, in which he departs from God. But console yourselves every day until this day he is named, lest any one of you be hardened by sinful flattery: for you are partakers of Christ, if the beginnings of the composition [1193] are even known to the end [1194]. For the Bishop is great, having passed through heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to confession. For it is not the imams of the bishop who are unable to suffer from our infirmity, but are tempted in every way, according to the likeness of sin. Let us approach boldly to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and grace for timely help [1195]. Amen.

Application

Saint