Pdp. Isaac the Syrian

The Lord laid down the commandments out of His love for us, out of His ineffable mercy for our own benefit. Keeping these commandments is easy for us. The Lord Himself testifies to this in the Gospel of Matthew: "For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. "Why is it difficult for us to fulfill them?" you ask. From our egoism, narcissism and unaccustomed to denying ourselves anything. We are all in ourselves, we do not have the love for God that we should have, we forget that we are Christians, soldiers of Christ. Our apostasy from the Lord is terrible and all-round. We often go over to the enemy's camp without even noticing it, or rather, not wanting to notice it.

In the sacrament of baptism, we denied Satan and all his deeds and promised the Lord to fulfill only His will, promised to deny ourselves and perform every step, every deed in the Name of Christ, according to the canons and rules of the Holy Orthodox Church. In fact, this is not the case with us at all. There are prayers for the sanctification of any thing and just in case – we neglect them, there are the sacraments of the Church – we do not approach them, there are Divine services and prayer rules – we do not participate in them, there is fasting and abstinence – we do not observe this: we neglect ourselves to such an extent that all this becomes unpleasant for us; hostility to everything ecclesiastical is becoming the norm of our life. We reject Christ, but He does not reject us.

Where do we start? What will be our first step towards Christ? The fear of the Lord, the beginning of our wisdom, is the foundation of correction. We must finally understand that not only our every step, every deed is known to God, but every thought, every inclination of our heart is not hidden from Him. The Lord knows everything and sees, the angels of God, our guardians, have departed from us for our sins, the demons have recorded all our deeds and transgressions in their charters... What are we waiting for, why do we not hurry to the Lord with repentance, why do we not hurry to cleanse our souls in the sacrament of confession?

Confession, sincere repentance is our second step towards God, our second step. Without any justification, with contrition of heart, with tears, we must accept this wondrous Divine gift, this Divine miracle, which can resurrect us, regenerate and correct us.

Having cleansed the inner temple, let's quickly move on to the outer one.

And Jesus said to him, "For today is the salvation of this house...

(Luke 19:9)

"Repent, repent – and correct yourself," says a popular saying. It is the correction of what has been done that is the third step of our reconciliation with God. Of course, what can be corrected.

By dwelling we also mean our inner cell, the heart: it is the abode of the soul and mind when it enters there for prayer. A house or an apartment where we live alone or with a family, a village, a settlement or a city, a country and the whole land we also call our home in one case or another in conversation with our neighbors. Let's focus on a house or an apartment, because this is the topic of our conversation.

To begin with, I will give you two examples of how not to act.

One man and his family moved to live in the Leningrad region, having bought a former Finnish farm. He began to build without prayer and blessing, and even for the foundation of the house he took stones and slabs from the graves of the abandoned local cemetery. He built, lived a little and died, leaving the house to his children. They constantly complained to everyone that it was impossible to live in the house, it was difficult and uncomfortable. To top it off, the hooligans dug up the grave of the old man in search of front-line awards.

Another example. One family stood in the queue for an apartment at the place of work for a long time. Years passed, the queue moved very slowly. "One crook everywhere," the owner muttered. He grumbled, was indignant, and began to write complaints to various authorities. Two more years passed in this way. Embittered, exhausted by litigation, they finally received a three-room apartment. We moved in and had a noisy housewarming. "You can't fool me," said the drunken owner, "anyone will have a nose in the morning, I can always stand up for myself!" Only there was no happiness and silence in this apartment. The son began to drink and constantly fought with his wife. She went to her relatives, then reconciled and returned. And the old people began to get sick. "It's done for us. Everyone was jealous. It's definitely done, they jinxed it," the hostess said to her husband, "you need to go to your grandmother and remove the evil eye." "First the son must be coded," the old man objected, "then everything will work out." The son invited his friend for a consultation, because he seemed to know something about demonism. Zhora, that was his name, tied his son's wedding ring to a thread and began to check the apartment for "biofields". The ring swayed and swayed under the surprised glances of the inhabitants. "Look, there's definitely something," the old man wondered. "Done, done," the hostess insisted. Zhora also advised to go to an experienced grandmother, gave the address. Went. After standing in line, we got "to the reception", received instructions on what and where to sprinkle, where and how to sprinkle, as well as what to read at the same time, what spells. Everything was done carefully under the supervision of my grandfather: six months later, the owner died of cancer, followed by his wife. Lights began to fly in the apartment, objects began to move. The son and daughter-in-law exchanged her, because they broke up completely.

One can only be amazed at the behavior of such Orthodox Christians, their spiritual blindness, their complete lack of understanding of the meaning of life, of being on earth. Their behavior is completely contrary to the teaching of Christ, by all their deeds they show that they have become His enemies. A terrible obscuration!