696. What is the root of drunkenness? 80

697. The World Glory of St. Nicholas. 82

698. Everything must and can be done for the glory of God. 84

699. The Singer of Repentance at the Manger of Christ. 85

651. "Prepare the way of the Lord!"

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths upright" (Mark 1; 3)

The voice that has cried out in the wilderness is heard in the cities, it is preached in the churches, it is heard throughout all the heavens, it sounds in the ears of people great and small, old and young, rich and poor, it frightens the souls of those who sit on thrones, it pierces the hearts of those who lie on pus... This voice crushes the cedars of Lebanon, shakes the Caddian oak groves, levels the high mountains with the thickets... He cries out menacingly: prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths right! And the Psalmist urges us to heed this voice: "Today if ye have been quickened by His voice, do not harden your hearts" (Psalm 94:7:8). Therefore, let us listen to this voice not only in order to hear it, but also in order to obey it, in order to actually fulfill what it commands us. And he commands us to prepare a straight path by which the Lord would come to us, and we could come to Him.

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?