When the king wants to visit a city, even the most insignificant, the inhabitants of this city do their best to make the way to them convenient: they repair the road, where there is a swamp, build bridges, tear down hills, fill up potholes, and make rough paths smooth. And when the king is already approaching, they open the city gates to meet him, they greet him with joy, worship him, and bring gifts. "Our Lord, our God, our eternal King, is coming to us and is not far from us, — we must prepare His way. There are so many bumps in our way that prevent the Lord from coming to us! There is also strait on this path — the constraint of our conscience from our evil, accursed life; there are also hills — proud thoughts, words, and deeds; there is a thicket of despair, and what a swampy swamp of our sinful impurities! He is not the only one who complains with David: "I am in the darkness of the depths, I am mired in a deep swamp, and there is no constancy" – there is nothing to stand on (Psalm 68:3). All our paths are uneven, uncomfortable, and what is worse of all, our heart has no gates through which our Lord would enter it. Where these gates were, we erected a stone wall of hardness in sins, and thus closed the entrance to our Lord the Lord. Now His Forerunner commands to correct all this: prepare ye the way of the Lord. He also teaches how to prepare: "Every wilderness will be fulfilled, and every mountain and hill will be humbled: ... and the point is smooth in the way" (Luke 3:5), that is, let every inconvenience, every obstacle be removed. The Apostle advises the same: "Let all sorrow, and wrath, and wrath, and cry, and blasphemy, be taken away from you, with all malice" (Ephesians 4:31).

Our conscience is cramped, full of all deceit, there is no room for good thoughts in the sinful conscience, it is cramped there. From the heart, that is, from an evil conscience, come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, theft, perjury, blasphemy — all this comes from the heart of the sinner, all this is born there. It is too narrow for the good seed to be among thorns, for when the thorns grow, they will choke it. It is cramped for a sheep to be among wolves, for wolves will tear it to pieces. In the same way, it is cramped for every good to be where all evil is born and from whence all evil comes. How much more is it cramped for our King, Christ God, to dwell there. The Lamb of God cannot dwell in the midst of our bestial passions. The source of purity and chastity will not want to remain in us with our old sins. He will shake the dust from His holy feet and say: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate" (Matt. 23:38).

It is this strain of conscience that must spread. If there are thorns of sin there, then it is necessary to pluck it out through confession and burn it with repentance; if there are ravenous wolves there, then drive them away with the rod of the fear of God; if there are inveterate passions, then to mortify them by the feat of self-mortification, and then our God will come to us, and will not be cramped in us with all His Heavenly Powers. "The heart is a small vessel," says St. Macarius of Egypt, "but it can contain everything. There is God, there are Angels, there is life and the kingdom, there is the city of Heaven, there are the treasures of grace." Hills hinder Christ's coming to us – mountains of our proud thoughts, proud words and deeds. The humble Christ does not come where there is exalted pride, as the Scripture says: "Everyone who is high-hearted is unclean before God" (Proverbs 16:5).

And the Apostle says: "What fellowship is there between light and darkness? What is the agreement of Christ with the proud Belial" (2 Corinthians 6:15:16)? Belial, that is, the pride of demons that is found in a person, is the same Mount of Gilboa, mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, on which rain and dew do not descend from heaven. In the same way, rain and dew of God's grace do not descend on a proud person. Who hated Christ when He walked the earth in the flesh? The proud princes and teachers of Jerusalem: "Who is of the prince who believes in Him," they said (Jn. 7; 48). This is what they sought from Him, tried to catch something from His mouth in order to accuse Him. Who delivered Christ to death? — The proud synagogue of the Jews, which considered itself holy, and called Christ a sinner: "We know that this man is a sinner" (John 9:24). Who crucified Christ? Proud Pilate. And so, cursed is pride by God, as Mount Gilboa was cursed by David, let not the dew of God's grace and the rain of mercy descend upon it! Christ does not come there, where He sees the mountain of Belial's pride. Let this mountain of pride in our hearts be humiliated by humility, and it can only be lowered or dug up with the shovel with which the grave is dug, that is, with the memory of death, remember your last one!

Nothing humbles a person so much as the memory of death. St. John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, understood this well. He ordered his grave to be prepared, but not to finish it, and ordered the craftsmen to come to him every deliberate feast and say loudly in front of everyone: "Your grave, Lord, is not yet finished, order it to be finished, for death comes like a thief, and you do not know at what hour it will come." Thus Saint John always prepared for death. Now, when the mountains and hills of our pride are dug up by the shovel of mortal memory and are equalized with humility, then the path to our Lord will be convenient for us.

His coming to us is also hindered by the deep abyss of despair. When the wicked come to the depths of evil, he gives himself over to negligence, despairs of God's mercy and falls into an even greater abyss of iniquity. It is this abyss that must be filled with hope in God's mercy, knowing what great evil befell Judas for his despair — Judas sinned more when he despaired than when he betrayed Christ. Two fell away from the Lord during His voluntary sufferings: Judas and Peter. Peter is saved, but Judas is lost. Why were not both saved and not both perished? It will be said that Peter repented and therefore was saved. But the Holy Gospel says that Judas also repented, confessed his sin before everyone and said to the bishops: "I have sinned, betraying innocent blood" (Matt. 27:4). And yet his repentance is not accepted, but Peter's is accepted. Why? Because Peter repented with hope for God's mercy, and Judas with despair. The pernicious abyss is despair. It is necessary to fill this abyss with hope in God's mercy.

We read in the Patericon. There was a virtuous man who was tempted either by pride or by despair. Then he wrote all his sins in his solitary cell, inaccessible to anyone, on one wall, and immediately depicted the Dread Judgment of God; and on the other wall he wrote his good deeds, which he had done with repentance and tears, and immediately depicted the Merciful Father, Who accepts the prodigal son returning to Him, and Christ the Lord, Who forgives all the sins of the sinful woman weeping at His feet and opens paradise to the thief. And so, when a proud thought came to him, he went to the wall on which he had written his sins, and, re-reading them, looked at the image of the Last Judgment, reproached and condemned himself as a great sinner, worthy of the fiery Gehenna, and humbled himself in thought, and wept bitterly, striking his breast. And when the opposite thought came to him, the thought of despair, he turned to the wall on which his good deeds were written, and meditated on the great mercy of God, invincible by all human sins, and in this way he drove despair away from himself and was strengthened in hope in the Lord. The demons could not bear such prudence of his, they appeared to him with their own eyes and said: "We do not know how to fight with you. When we lift you up to heaven, you ascend to heaven." Do you see how this virtuous man humbled and lowered the mountain of pride, how he filled the wilds of despair?

The swamp of our sinful impurities also hinders the coming of the Lord to us. Let us try to drain it with abstinence, and let us build a bridge across it with almsgiving. And let us crush the wall of our insensibility and bitterness with tenderness, following the example of the publican, striking ourselves in the forehead. Let us open wide the gates of our hearts with our love and zeal to the Lord, and He will come, and the King of glory will come to us, and will reign in our spiritual city! Amen.

(From the works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov)

652. Homily to the Dissolute Son ("But his flesh hurts in him, and his soul suffers in him" (Job 14:22))

With these words of the ancient holy book I wish to begin my conversation with you. Don't look at me so disliked, so suspicious. Why is this look dissatisfied? Why does your heart tear you, and why do you look so proudly? (Job 15:12). You do not see an enemy, not a formidable accuser before you. No, before you stands the one whom you once loved to listen to, to whom you once caressed with all the childish credulity of your soul. Do not say in your heart: "I know that the sermon is beginning, they will offer advice and instruction, prescribe various boring rules, frighten with threats." What is left for me to advise you, which I would not already advise? What to preach that you don't already know? What should I threaten? Listen, listen to me, I will speak to you as you would speak to yourself if you wanted to enter into yourself even for one minute. Your body is weeping for you, and your soul is weeping for you. What were you? What are you? And what will happen to you?

Your body is toiling within you, and your soul is weeping for you, and you are not at all what you were before. My friend! You haven't lived long enough to completely forget your happy past. You have not lived so little that, remembering your past with sadness, with a sense of lost tranquility, you do not turn to the blissful days of your innocent childhood. Turn then, I beseech thee, and thy soul beseeches thee for it! Remember, for then, in these days of thy bliss, thy body did not toil in thee! It was fresh and healthy, like a beautiful flower from a noble seed, it was nourished and adorned by the hand of your good mother, it was protected and warmed by the love and tender breast of your father. Your brow was pure and clear, not a single foreign feature was visible on it, and now how unpleasantly these features strike on your face, expressing the haughtiness of your spirit! Your eyes were kind and peaceful, your hair itself was not so coarse and stubborn as it is now... Does this body remember yours? Oh remembers, of course, remembers that it was easy and calm, as a good man's conscience is calm! It did not strain then, because it was in agreement with you and with your soul. And your soul did not weep for you then. Whose soul better than yours could gladden the hearts of your parents, blood and friends? How many beautiful hopes were given by your happy abilities! How quickly and correctly they developed! Seeing how evenly and harmoniously your spiritual powers are revealed and act, I thought and said of you: "His soul is as harmonious as the Psalter of David." Does your soul remember the sacred delight with which you listened to the instructions of your friends? Do you remember those blissful moments that you devoted to the diligent reading of intelligent and pious books? And where did all this go?

Truly, my friend, the devil has come, the devil himself has come and stolen you from us, carried you away from the paradise of your innocence and bliss. What are you now? I will not depict the abyss into which you have plunged like an outcast spirit. But you will not forbid me to lament you along with your body and soul. Your body is strained, and your soul weeps for you. Thy body is strained, thou hast given it over to the corruption of lovely lusts. In spite of your imaginary health, the subtle sense of smell of a pious person already hears, already feels the smell of sinful decay from your flesh. Haughty, but at the same time gloomy is your brow. Your eyes are sad, despite your violent laughter... With what horror I now look at these once kind, gentle eyes, I see in them a gray color, a cloudy movement, a dim flame of passions! When you walk, your steps are like the flight of a desperate man who is more likely to rush into the abyss. When you speak, your voice is like a prisoner, barely audible from behind the walls of the prison. When you sleep, intoxicated by the drunkenness of your violent passions, your breath, unknown to yourself, turns into the painful moan of a sufferer. How often have I been plunged into deep and sad reverie, listening to this heavy breathing, quite like the groan of a man who has accidentally fallen into an abyss! What does all this mean, if not the groans of your body in you? Yes, it is he who is straining, he is complaining, although you do not hear, do not feel these moans, these complaints of his. And what shall I say about the weeping with which your soul weeps for you? All her beauty has been taken away from this beloved daughter of beloved Zion (Lamentations 1:6). Its godly appearance is darkened blacker than soot, so that you do not recognize it (Lamentations 4:8). "Thou hast killed her life in the pit of thy passions" (Lamentations 3:53). "Thou hast destroyed all that adorned it" (Lamentations 2:2). "She weeps in the night, and tears are on her cheeks" (Lamentations 1:10). Oh, why did you bring someone else's fire into this sanctuary of God?! Why did he set the abomination of desolation in the holy place? Why did He turn the temple of the Lord into an idolatrous temple, filled it with idols of depravity and impiety? As long as! What consolation hast thou found in the terrible rebellion of thy violent lusts, which thou hast voluntarily raised in thy soul and heart? Oh, do not deceive yourself, do not try to conceal from yourself the torments with which your spirit is tormented in the midst of your violent joys! You deeply feel, and your soul knows, that your gloomy present is no more like your blessed past, just as the life of a fallen spirit is not like the life of an Angel of God...

What will your future be like? You do not now want to direct your gaze into the gloomy distance of the days to come. But believe me, your body will be heavy, and your soul will weep for you. I will not threaten you with the righteous Judgment of God, your own conscience will condemn you and is already condemning you. I will not speak of the horrors of hell, which awaits all of us, accursed sinners, for it will soon be revealed in your soul and body. I will speak to you, listen to me; I will tell you what I saw, what the wise heard, and did not hide what they heard from their fathers (Job 15:17, 18). You have already experienced the disastrous pleasures of a stormy and dissolute life, you have given up your soul and body to ridicule, but you do not yet know those terrible powers that are hidden in your soul and body, and with which your soul and body will avenge your shame on that day, dark and terrible. You do not yet know the terrible mystery of iniquity, which is already in the bones of your body and in the thoughts of your soul. Your body is apparently healthy and fat, but its strength is exhausted. The very depravity will refine it, so that you, through its subtlety, may more clearly see and feel all the horrors of iniquity within yourself. Do you not notice that your sins become habitual, enter into your flesh and blood, infect your soul and body so that it is as if another evil creature lives in you, who persistently, incessantly demands for himself the usual food — the habitual sinful pleasures? Do you not feel how this evil creature forcibly draws you to these pleasures, even though you do not want them? But believe me, my friend, if you do not stop in time, if you do not enter into a struggle with this evil habit, then the time will soon come when you will no longer be able to cope with it. And you will cry, and you will still sin! The secret vices with which your bones are now filled will grow to these very bones and with them will lie down in the ground (Job 20:11). No power will be able to break the terrible bond between vice and your bones. Evil, which is now sweet in your mouth like honey, will turn into the gall of snakes in your belly, and your nerves will suck into themselves the poison of snakes (Job 20:12-16). You will see, and you will not be able not to see for a single minute, how your iniquities follow you, go ahead of you, mock you by day, terrify you by night. Then, my friend, the heavens will reveal your wickedness, and the earth will rise up against you (Job 20:27).