Homily Fifteen, against the heresy of the Novgorod heretics, who say that if a heretic or apostate repents, then he should soon enter the holy church and commune of the Divine Mysteries. Here are also collected the testimonies of the holy books about which heretics and infidels, if they repent, should soon enter the holy church and partake of Christ's Mysteries, and which heretics and apostates, if they repent, should not enter the holy church and partake of the Divine Mysteries, until everything that the Divine canons command in this case has been done to them; and also that the Novgorod heretics and apostates who have now appeared are the worst and most vile of all the heretics and apostates who have lived under heaven.

The sixteenth word, against the heresy of the Novgorod heretics, who say that if heretics or apostates, convicted of their heresies and apostasy and condemned, begin to repent, then they should accept their repentance and vouchsafe them mercy. Here are also collected the testimonies of the holy books that if a heretic or apostate begins to repent not of his own free will, but only after being convicted and condemned, then such repentance cannot be accepted; for thieves, robbers, murderers, grave robbers, and other evildoers repent when they are rebuked and condemned, but their repentance is not accepted.

The     Monk Joseph of Volotsk (in the world John Sanin) was born on November 12, 1440 in the village of Yazvishche-Pokrovskoye near the city of Volok Lamsky (now Volokolamsk) into the family of pious parents John and Marina. As a seven-year-old youth, John was given to study the monk of the Volokolamsk Monastery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Arsenius.

At the age of twenty, despising worldly vanity, John chose the path of monastic life. With the blessing of the elder of Tver Savvin of the monastery Barsanuphius, he withdrew to Borovsk, to the monastery of the Monk Paphnutius († 1478, Comm. 1 May), who tonsured him into monasticism with the name Joseph. The tonsure and subsequent monastic exploits of the Monk Joseph yielded grace-filled fruits in the life of his entire family.

Soon after the departure of the monk from the world, his father, John, was stricken with a grave illness – paralyzed. The Monk Paphnutios immediately received him also into his monastery, tonsured him into monasticism with the name Ioannikii, and entrusted him to the care of his son, who rested him for 15 years, until his very death. To his mother the Monk Joseph wrote a letter of admonition, advising her to choose the monastic order; she took monastic vows at the Blaise Convent of Volok Lamsky (in schema Maria).

Following their parents, the brothers of the Monk Joseph also went into monasticism. Joseph spent eighteen years in obedience to the Monk Paphnutius, carrying out the heavy obediences entrusted to him in the kitchen, bakery, and hospital. After the repose of the Monk Paphnutius in 1478, the administration of the monastery passed to the Monk Joseph. Wishing to establish a perfect and complete communal life for the brethren, the Monk Joseph undertook a journey to other monasteries in search of a proper arrangement of monastic life.

The order which he wished to establish in his brotherhood, the monk found at the Kirillo-Belozersk monastery, where in fullness and strictness was carefully preserved the cenobitic rule commanded by the Monk Cyril. But many of the brethren of the Paphnutiev monastery refused to accept the strict order of communal life, and then the Monk Joseph conceived the idea of founding a new monastery in a desolate, untouched place.

With a few like-minded brethren, he withdrew to a forest wasteland near Volok Lamsky and there founded a monastery in the image of the monastery of Kirillov. The first church, in honor of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, was consecrated on August 15, 1479. Gradually, a multitude of brethren gathered around the spirit-bearing mentor. The monk established a strict and perfect communal life. The ustav of the monastery, later expounded by the Monk Joseph (

The Ustav is published in the book: Epistles of Joseph of Volotsk. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959. P. 296-321.), preserved for us the monastic rules. The basis of life in the monastery was the cutting off of one's will, complete non-acquisitiveness, unceasing work and prayer. Everything was common among the brethren: clothing, shoes, food, drink; without the blessing of the abbot, no one could take a single thing into the cell; no one was to drink or eat separately from others.

The food was the simplest, everyone wore thin clothes, there were no locks at the doors of the cells. In addition to the usual monastic rule, each monk made up to a thousand or more prostrations a day. The first good news was presented to the divine service, and each occupied a strictly defined place in the church; It was forbidden to move from place to place and talk during the service.

In their free time, the monks participated in common work or engaged in needlework in their cells. Among other works, the monastery paid great attention to the copying of liturgical and patristic books. After compline, all communication between the monks ceased, and everyone went to their cells. Confession was obligatory every evening with the revelation of thoughts to one's spiritual father.

Most of the night was spent in prayer, sleeping only for a short time, many sitting or standing. Women and children were strictly forbidden to enter the monastery, and the brethren were not even allowed to talk with them. Obeying this rule, the Monk Joseph himself refused to see his aged mother, a nun. In all things the Monk Joseph was an example for the brethren: he labored on an equal footing with everyone else, he spent the night at prayer, he dressed like a beggar.

For spiritual instruction to the God-bearing hegumen came both simple laymen and noble, dignitaries. In the years of famine, the monastery fed many sufferers. In a difficult time for the Russian Church, the Lord raised up the Monk Joseph as a zealous champion of Orthodoxy and a defender of church and state unity in the struggle against heresies and ecclesiastical disorders.

The Monk Joseph is one of the inspirers of the teaching about Holy Russia as the successor and guardian of ancient universal piety: "And just as in ancient times the Russian land surpassed all in its impiety, so now... it surpassed all in piety," he writes in the "Tale" that opens the "Enlightener". A follower of the Monk Joseph, the Saviour-Eleazar Elder Philotheus, explained the significance of Russia as the last stronghold of Orthodoxy on earth: "All the Christian kingdoms came to an end and were united in the one kingdom of our Sovereign.