No, says the Lord God, you will not be saved, I will punish you and punish you for all your deeds. And in another place, in the forty-ninth Psalm, God says this: "The God of Gods, the Lord has spoken, and is calling the earth, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun. From Zion, which is the height of beauty, God appears, our God comes, and not in silence: before Him is a consuming fire, and around Him is a mighty storm.

He calls heaven and earth from above to judge His people: "Gather to Me My saints, who have entered into a covenant with Me at the sacrifice." And the heavens shall declare His righteousness, for God is the judge. "Hear, my people, I will speak; Israel! I will bear witness against you: I am God, your God. It is not for thy sacrifices that I will reproach thee; thy burnt offerings are always before me; I will not receive a bull out of your house, nor a goat out of your courts: for I am all the beasts in the forest, and the cattle in a thousand mountains, I know all the birds in the mountains, and the animals in the fields before me.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for My universe and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of oxen and drink the blood of goats? Offer praise to God, and render thy vows unto the Most High, and call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me." And God saith unto the sinner, Why dost thou preach my statutes, and take my covenant in thy mouth, and yet thou hatest my instruction, and cast my words for yourselves?

when you see a thief, you associate with him, and you associate with adulterers; Thou hast opened thy mouth to reproach, and thy tongue weaveth deceit; you sit and speak against your brother, you slander your mother's son; you did this, and I was silent; you thought I was just like you. I will expose thee, and set thee before thy eyes. Consider this, you who forget God, lest I rapture, and there shall be no one to deliver.

He that sacrificeth praise honours me, and he that watcheth his way to him will I shew the salvation of God" (Psalm 49:1-23). It is important to understand and remember that God can never be bribed. When we donate something to the poor, do good, light candles, we do not bribe God, we act according to the law of mercy in order to be like God. We sacrifice something to say that we recognize that everything we are given is God's. That we give Him to Him.

Who owns all the gold and silver in the world? Creator. And this is why we give alms, and not in order to bribe God. on the other hand, God is the source of all joy and silence. It is said: "His work is glory and beauty, and His righteousness endures forever. He made His miracles memorable; the Lord is merciful and bountiful" (Psalm 110:3-4). God said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30).

People are looking for happiness, everyone is looking for happiness, people are looking for peace, but where are they looking for it? They look for it in the family, they look for it in vodka, they look for it in drugs, they look for it in art, they look for it in books and... They do not find it. Is it possible to find it? Can joy be found anywhere outside of God? I mean real joy. Can there be that real joy that ends? "This is how any joy ends. "Except for one." "Which one?" — Except for the joy of God Himself.

And a person who strives for it receives eternal joy. This is the goal of the Christian life, this is salvation. It is not that a person will perform namaz like a Muslim and he will have one hundred and twenty-four concubines every day and three million money. And joy - from the mere sight of three million. This is not the salvation, you will agree.

Of course, salvation lies in living the life of God Himself, finding the source of joy in Him. For example, a person who prays, he already feels a participation in this peace. Why did the martyrs rejoice under torture? Not because they were fanatics, but because they rejoiced in the fact that the power of God was at work in them, which turned these tortures into nothing. Some did not even feel torture, can you imagine!

The life of God overwhelmed them so much that they became sources of grace. To this day, miracles are performed at their relics. People touch the relics of the saint and are healed of a serious illness. And the bodies of the saints themselves are not subject to decay for centuries, millennia. Why? Because the life of God overflowed even their bodies, not to mention their souls. This is precisely our hope, life in God Himself, in His source of strength. He is always a source of strength.

"For an ordinary person, this is unattainable. — It is achievable. It is attainable to all the baptized. It is unattainable for the unbaptized. "How so?" — Everyone can achieve it, if they want to. Through Communion, the main path is through Communion, a person who does not partake of the Body and Blood will never achieve this. "And all these miracles and healings, you can't check them, can you?" "How is that?"

Please, they are still happening, take it, check, the accounting is going on all the time. — And how to check whether a person really recovered, whether he was sick or is it a deception? — Well, there are certificates, examinations. I personally examined. There was a case, I saw a case before my eyes – the healing of an HIV-infected person. HIV, AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome – is an incurable disease.

I saw the certificates with my own eyes, the presence of the virus in the blood, there was undoubtedly a detailed examination later, and in several hospitals, independently of each other, and the fact of the absence of AIDS after communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. The girl Katya, a good friend of mine, confessed throughout her life: she was a drug addict and fell ill with AIDS. She repented of her deeds, communed of Christ's Holy Mysteries, and AIDS disappeared. "That is, she went to church?"

"She didn't just go, she changed her whole life, stopped being a drug addict, took communion. And I saw healing with my own eyes. And there are actually hundreds, hundreds, if not thousands of such examples in Moscow alone. In fact, the Orthodox Church has not lost the power of miracles to this day. But what is important for us? For us, it is not the miracle in itself that is important. Of course, a miracle is good. But communication with God is important for us.