And he thanked God when he settled accounts with his spirit. father, giving him a basket of moldy crackers for his work. We value our prayer rules, and if we sometimes pray beyond what is due, then this is already considered a podvig. But how small and insignificant it will be even in our eyes, if we remember the monks who stand in their conversation with God at night and do not notice the time. Let us remember St.

Seraphim of Sarov and his thousand-day standing on a stone in prayer. We have mastered one passion that annoys us, we have abandoned this or that sinful habit, and self-satisfaction is ready to swarm in our souls, but let us remember the saints – fighters who have conquered all passions. Having survived all the temptations and maintained in virtue, they retained the main thing - humility, the purity of love.

And with us, if we look at ourselves more attentively, virtue is imagined before the first temptation, before the first temptation. How can we not cry out to the Lord with the voice of the publican: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." And if we look above the assembly of saints, if the Cross with the Divine Sufferer on it and the Mother standing next to Him with compassion for Him are revealed to our eyes, then our heart and mind will know the path in the footsteps of Christ and His Most-Pure Mother, and the unceasing prayer "God, be merciful to me a sinner" will remain in our hearts forever.

The publican, a sinner, and the Pharisee, an imaginary righteous man, both of them edify us: "Do not rely on your own righteousness, but put all the hope of your salvation on the boundless mercy of God, crying out: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" And at the end of the earthly vale on the threshold of eternity, only one prayer will be important and necessary for a person: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Amen.   Sunday of the Prodigal Son.

This sermon was not published during Fr. John's lifetime. The Church offers us in the Gospel reading the parable of the Savior about the prodigal son. And it concerns all of us directly, since it sets forth the history of God's economy of salvation; the fall of man from God into the slavery of the passions, who by his own bitter experience comes to know the pernicious power of sin.

It also shows us the way to return to the embrace of the Father. "Open unto me the doors of repentance, O Giver of life!" - we beg. The Father's younger son, the beloved son, is torn from parental care. It would seem that good desires guided him, he wanted to know life, he wanted freedom for his strength, his mind. He was burning with the intention to build his own life. But in his heart he rejected his father's advice and love.

And this was the first sin which, having entered into a pure heart, darkened it, opening the way for many passions that guard the human soul. At that moment, thoughts about sin, about the dangers lurking on the roads of life in self-will, were not in the young heart. The Father's love, grieved itself, does not grieve the son with refusal, does not limit the freedom he desires.  The inheritance promised a comfortable, prosperous life.

"Having gathered everything, my son departed to a far country, and there squander his possessions, living in fornication." Soon, very soon, the father's beloved son became the prodigal son. For the first unconscious sin of lovelessness came many of his offspring, and in the frenzy of sins he came to fornication – a complete falling away from God – the Heavenly Father. Seeking freedom, he fell into captivity, rejecting obedience out of love, and by self-will became a slave to sin and mortal sin.

Every sinner walks the same path. This deplorable procession begins with a darkening of the mind, it is inevitably followed by a relaxation of the will, then there is a distortion of conscience, and as a consequence of all this, the enemy's work ends with a fall – the corruption of the body. For the fallen, a terrible, decisive moment in life comes. Hell is ready to devour its victim already in life, but the Lord does not want the death of the sinner and knocks at the darkened heart by the circumstances of life, and may God grant him to respond to this call of God.

"Take heed, brethren, lest any of us be hardened, being deceived by sin," the Lord warns sinners. Bitterness is a friend of despair. The misfortunes brought the prodigal son to his senses, and deprivation became for him the blessing that made him think about himself and his dissolute life. "And I came within myself" (Luke 15:17) he remembered his past life in his father's house, realized his fall, saw his soul in the darkness of sin, and on the verge of death cried out for mercy.

This is a call to repentance for us. In order to begin to repent, we must come to our senses, see our soul and heart, our deeds, because when we sin, we are beside ourselves, we become mad and do not realize what we are doing. How often we, like the young man of the Gospel, seek freedom for our desires, our own will, and do not immediately understand that this freedom turns into slavery for us.

Having fallen away from God, deprived of God's grace, we cannot but experience a spiritual hunger that is painful for the soul. Darkness surrounds the heart, the anguish of the soul is so great that a person cannot find a place for himself, and is close to despair. Like pigs in life, we also eat the food of pigs - horns, all kinds of fakes and substitutions, up to false spirituality. A mind darkened by sin cannot help a person in need.

And woe to the despairing if help does not come from outside. The prodigal son, starving in a foreign land, gave no place to despair before the impending death, heard the voice of God's love, and "came to himself." And the whole path of his fall was revealed to him, beginning with the willful abandonment of the path drawn by God's Providence to the moment of the fall - the abominable trampling on everything of God.

  He also remembered his former parental love for him. The feeling of repentance awakened in the soul of the sinner gave rise to a holy determination in his soul to fall at the feet of his stepfather with a confession. "Father, I have sinned in heaven and before thee, and thy son is already worthy to be called: make me as one of thy hired servants." A humble and contrite heart does not think about sonship, it slavishly asks for mercy to be only a hireling, and in this it sees forgiveness for itself.