Practical Advice for the Daily Life of a Christian

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October 11/24 – Council of the Venerable Optina Elders
“Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels...” A striking impression is made by the rhythmically and rhymmically organized sayings and sayings of our holy fathers, beloved by the entire Orthodox world. What’s amazing is that you don’t usually expect any “art” from them. What's in these verses? Special fun of the verbal mind? The only possible game for a monk? 1. Let's start with the most famous and, of course, providential example. In 1839, A.M. turned to Elder Hilarion Troekurovsky for spiritual advice. Grenkov (the future famous elder - St. Ambrose of Optina), then seeking monastic life. Father Hilarion told the young man: “Go to Optina and you will become experienced.” Then he added: “You could go to the Sarov Hermitage, but there are no such wise elders there as there were before, but in the Optina Hermitage the eldership is thriving.” (It should be noted that Elder Hilarion’s conversation with A.M. Grenkov took place 6 years after the blessed death of St. Seraphim of Sarov, and the spiritual situation in the Sarov Monastery in those days really changed, not for the better). Recently, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy ?? said this famous saying “about experience” in an expanded and modified version: “If you are harsh, go to Sarov, if you want experience, go to Optina, and if you are stubborn, go to Valaam!” (My friend Yuri Zaitsev, with whom I had the opportunity to make many trips in my life, and in recent years, was honored to visit Optina Pustyn, Diveevo, Valaam, Pochaev and other holy places with God’s help, added to this: “... if you are sad, go to Pochaev". I can’t resist my own version: “...and if you are desperate, go to Pochaev.” You can also combine both: “...and if you are desperate or sad, go to Pochaev.” That’s the same way, in the folklore tradition, they were written down for anonymous centuries many oral sayings.) But isn’t it from that phrase about. Hilarion went to the famous rhymes of Fr. Ambrose? about angels , and where it is sophisticated, there are not a single one. (When understanding the greatness of this judgment, one cannot help but recognize the clever maxim of our contemporary as congenial to it - semantically and stylistically: “Even if it is difficult, as long as it is not false.”) Or: He who concedes gains more. Or this remark from Ambrose, which seems to me both brilliant in the versification sense, and not very easy to understand (in terms of “bull custom”): What should I say to an eccentric man or what will I say to someone who does his own will? - So, brother, our custom is bovine, but the mind is that of a calf... It’s good, excuse me, “literary”, and this elder’s maxim: To live is not to bother, not to judge anyone, not to annoy anyone, and everyone is mine respect! Here the compositional surprise of the fourth line even evokes joy and a smile. In fact, in such an easy form, a behavioral formula of incredible spiritual height is presented, the implementation of which directly leads to salvation. However, try to fulfill it! It seems that the person who fulfilled this message, communicated to us as if through a smiling mustache, will undoubtedly acquire that grace that we on earth consider holiness. Continuation of the priest's sayings: We need to live unhypocritically and behave exemplarily, then our cause will be true, otherwise it will be bad. “What do you care what they say about you? - was talking about. Ambrose - If you listen to other people’s speeches, you will have to put the donkey on your shoulders.” Then he told a well-known parable about an old man, a boy and a donkey. He used to say to one nun, probably from Shamordin, warning against arrogance (and here it’s hard for us to hold back a smile): Look, Melitona, stick to your tone: if you take it high, it won’t be easy, if you take it low, it will be slimy; and you, Melitona, stick to the middle tone. These instructions are good: they are not deliberate, they are cheerful, they are remembered right away, they do not drive you crazy. It would be good for us to learn to strictly follow them. Listen, sister! Don't be excited, don't be colorful! But be constant and meek, And you will be peaceful! About boredom: Boredom is the grandson of despondency, and laziness is the daughter. To drive it away, work hard in business, don’t be lazy in prayer, then boredom will pass and zeal will come. And if you add patience and humility to this, you will save yourself from many evils. Here is the saint’s advice on spiritual life: Don’t be like a bothersome fly, which sometimes flies around uselessly, and sometimes bites, and bores both of them; and be like the wise bee, who began her work diligently and by autumn finished the honeycomb, which is as good as correctly written notes. To the question of one woman where she should live - in the world or in a monastery, Rev. Ambrose replied: You can live in peace, but not in the south, but live quietly. And also about monastic life: “To be a nun, you need not a cartload of patience, but a whole convoy.” And on the same topic: Moses endured, Elisha endured, Elijah endured, but I will also endure. When they used to tell the priest that they were not giving him peace, he answered: Peace will come to us then when they sing over us “Rest with the saints!” As if picking up the “piitic” baton, another of the brothers of the Optina monastery (Father F.) instructed those who sought his advice: Look within yourself, and it will be done for you.

Here, the ancient Greek “Know thyself!” is immediately combined into a rhymed pair of short lines. (with the subtextual continuation “... and you will know the whole world”), and the Lord’s edification that we do not discern the beam in our own eye, but judge the speck in the eye of our neighbor. “It will be from you” - that is, this knowledge is already a lot, in any case, enough for salvation; Do not presumptuously take on any more burdens. Without knowing yourself, how can you judge someone? And the trick is that once you know yourself, you won’t judge anyone. 2 . The following story is tied to the saint of God Hilarion Troekurovsky with a golden spiritual thread. When a certain monk John arrived at the cell of Hilarion, who had already “earned ascetic laurels,” he, having seen the Holy Spirit, humbly said: “It is not John who must serve me, but I, John...” With these words, Elder Hilarion sent John a glass of tea so that he could drink. (Here we see a certain symbol associated with the structure of monastic life, but more on this below.) We are talking about the monks who labored in the Lebedyansky district of the Tambov province (now the Lipetsk region) and who later became locally revered saints - the Venerable Hilarion of Troekurovsky and the Venerable John of Sezenovsky . This area was also the birthplace of the Monk Silouan of Athos, to whom in childhood the Lord revealed testimony about his two famous spiritual predecessors. He also had a revelation during the prayer struggle: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.” It is not surprising that it was from the Venerable Silouan of Athos already in the middle of the twentieth century that Fr. Sophrony (Sakharov) adopted the following saying: Stand on the brink of despair, and when you have no strength, then step away and sit down, drink a cup of tea. It’s as if the clicking of prayer beads “cha-cha” sounds here in the unusual rhyme of “despair - tea”. This phrase is also very famous among monastics, since tea plays a special role in monastic life. In general, having been distracted by “tea,” let us remember that B.K. wrote soulfully about tea drinking in the monastery on Valaam. Zaitsev in the famous essay “Valaam”. (However, we also note a striking detail that in some Valaam hermitages tea was not blessed - due to the severity of abstinence. It is especially shocking if you delve into the meaning, essence and significance of tea and tea drinking in monastic life.) It is impossible to ignore the testimony of M. Janson’s book “The Valaam Elders "(Berlin, 1938) about schema-abbot Theodore (Feodul Poshekhov, from the peasants of the Yaroslavl province), born in 1863 and who died on February 518, 1937, who spent 22 years alone in the desert on the Porfiryevsky island of the Valaam archipelago and accurately predicted the date of his death. “...After some time, Fr. Theodore felt worse again, but he still tried to go to the monastery every Monday. These visits stopped in mid-November. Concerned by this circumstance, Fr. Jerome, the monastery doctor, went by boat to Fr. Theodore again on December 17th. The elder greeted us with the liveliest joy, but greatly changed. “It was God Himself who sent you,” he said. It turned out that that night he woke up lying on the floor of his cell and for a long time was not able to get up and do anything. With great difficulty he managed to put on the samovar and warm himself with hot tea. On the advice of the doctor, the elder decided to immediately go to the monastery. But, with his characteristic love and rare cordiality, he wished to treat us to tea for the last time in his desert. It was an unforgettable tea party: Fr. Theodore spoke with joy about his imminent death and about the upcoming meeting with his dear fathers and brothers. This farewell conversation lasted for two whole hours, after which, having prayed to the Lord God in the house and in the chapel of St. Seraphim, on his island, we moved to the last one for Fr. Theodora's path, by boat along the monastery bays. We drove in deep, concentrated silence, and it seemed to us that Fr. Theodore says goodbye to all the places he loved so deeply. Arriving at the monastery, he went straight to the hospital, where he settled down awaiting the hour of death...” Two months later, on February 17, in the presence of Fr. Abbot Khariton, to the words of the abbot spoken to schemamonk Fr. Nicholas, who was near the dying man, that Fr. Theodore may still recover, the latter firmly and decisively said that he would not recover, but would leave in a day. And so it happened. 3. Father Gennady (Davydov) from the village of Pokrovka, Belgorod region, who died in 1997 as Schema-Archimandrite Gregory, in response to insincere, “automatic” repentance, used to say: God will forgive and make you sick! An entertaining verb was invented by Fr. Gennady! Will it make you sick - does it mean “will give you a twig”? Or will it “add more brushwood” to the fire on which you are burning? Or are we talking about sickness - a disease that is sent from above as punishment for sins? About one imaginary patient, the elder prophetically said: He has no cancer, but a fool. It is impossible not to notice that in many of the elders’ religious speeches, during a serious conversation about life, death, God, there is a special, lively humor - like a glow of the joy of being. As we see, smiling “verse words” often contain an edifying, enlightening and parting note. The Valaam abbot Nazarius (Kondratyev), who began his ascetic journey in the Sarov monastery and who died there on February 23, March 8, 1809 (by the way, one of the spiritual mentors of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov), admonished the brethren: To reason about yourself, to condemn yourself... And he continued the phrase “in prose ": "that is, your deeds, words and thoughts, put on your own will, like a shameful garment." He also stated: Humility is a barrier, patience is a confirmation, love is a cover, and where there is love, there is God... Since 1830, when the most famous later Valaam abbot, Fr. Damascene had been living in the desert for three years already; Fr. Varlaam. Later, while in the Optina Hermitage, where he was sent, having been demoted from abbot according to the verdict of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), Fr. Varlaam, when asked how to be saved from demonic insurance, answered: “You won’t escape from demons even in your cell if you go the wrong way... However, the paths of salvation are different: one is saved in person, but you, according to the word of Saint Isaac, enter the ascent of the spiritual by the common path.” feast." 4. And here are the words of Fr. Damascene, who served as rector of the Valaam monastery for 40 years and died in 1881: Love God, run away from the world, sit in your cell. The cell will teach you all the good things, and whoever sits in it for God’s sake will never get bored! The first part of the edification, most likely, goes back to the ancient one that came to us almost from the ancient deserts: “Love everyone, run from everyone.” And he had this saying: Whoever becomes addicted to the world will say goodbye to the desert. About Abbot Damascene, 14 years after his death, one Valaam monk said to the writer I. Shmelev: “He knew how to speak sermons well... as he expressed the holy verse. It starts so melodiously, you’ll hear it... I keep in my mind his poetic words, sweet....” We don’t dare ignore these simple (and therefore true) key criteria: “like holy verse,” “singing,” “sweet.” These are the signs by which it is determined what – always and exactly – the soul needs. The “verse words” phrase we borrowed for the subtitle is very good and accurate. Let's get acquainted with a completely unfolded canvas - from simple, seemingly artless sermons by Fr. Abbot Damascene. So, brethren, flee peace, love God, live with counsel, do not do your own will! Remove yourself from rumors and distractions and settle into the desert! Whoever loves God and the desert, God will love him too... And whoever is addicted to the world will say goodbye to the desert, and then God will move away from him! And man will remain, like an unfenced wind town, to be plundered by birds and beasts; and you yourself will be a trap for others. He is always ready to occupy everyone with his idle talk and take away prayer to God from us; He is bored talking about the salvation of the soul, he does not like to tax his body with fasting and bowing, and he does not want to say prayer, but tries in every possible way to waste his time in vain; He finds joy in this, how to make people laugh more... Creative verbosity ends with natural self-abasement, which is beneficial for all of us to learn: Today, brethren, I, a sinner, have spoken a lot, and I myself have done nothing good before the Lord; Woe to me, a sinner and a being who lacks good deeds, who speaks and does not do. Teach a friend, don’t teach yourself, alas, alas! my soul, woe to you! Here we see a technical versioning flaw: the pair “remove yourself - settle in” is not a successful rhyme even in the style of these works, where they are preceded by precise, full-voiced “love - run - live - create”, and below are followed by “loves - will love”, “occupy” – take away”, “speak – create”. The editor's corrosive eye will immediately notice that the shortcoming can be easily eliminated, since “remove yourself” is completely interchangeable with the adequate “go away”. It seems that this flaw is associated either with the nature of the composition - improvisational and oral, or the original text was subject to distortion in other people's retellings. 5. Let us give examples of a slightly different, not oral, but rather written genre, although here you can hear “speaking” motifs, also partly reminiscent of raeshnik verse. We are talking about the 1926 interrogation in Serdobol (Sortavala) of Valaam monks who were subsequently forcibly evicted from the island and did not want to switch to the new calendar. We present the text of Abbot Philemon’s narrative according to the publication of the Pochaev Brotherhood (“Sorrowful anniversary leaflet. 1926-1936”, Vladimirovo, Slovakia, 1937), where it is given in prose, but it clearly has a poetic, specially structured basis, which can be reproduced like this: with tears in their eyes, the monks revealed something new to them, and the interrogators sat in fear of that fatal answer; from the apostolic cathedral rules the Valaamites read aloud what the sinful world has now abandoned - it has become deaf to church discipline! Further text in the article is given in broken quotations, but the rhythmically organized phrases show signs of versification. “Your father the abbot is with us, you know, and the governor is our zealous friend!..” “The abbot will handle the rest, he will send them everywhere to the monasteries...” Archpriest Nikolai Alekseevich Guryanov (1909-2002), about whom they said: “The reverend was wounded by the love of Christ ", who labored on the island of Zalita on Lake Pskov, at the age of 82, spoke out, according to the testimony of priest Alexy Likhachev, with the following verses: My life has passed like yesterday, Like an instant my life has flown by, And the doors of death, terribly heavy, Are not far from me. Or: You forgive, you forgive, Rod and your neighbor. Remember me, a sinner: I am leaving you... “And then he added, smiling slyly, in response to our thoughts”: not yet forever. The style of these texts, of course, reminds us of the poets of the 19th century, as if they were “Pushkin’s style.” As we see, “general secular” influence, feedback from the world, also took place in the “verse words” of the monks. Let us not forget about the answer of Saint Philaret of Moscow to Alexander Pushkin to the famous poem “A gift in vain, a gift fortuitous...” The text of the saint - for obvious reasons - is in the same size as Pushkin’s: “Not in vain, not accidental...” 6 . It is noticeable that the poetic works of the elders were generally written (and more often, rather, spoken) in predominantly free conversational meter (by the way, very consonant with the searches of some wonderful poets, contemporary to us, it seems, almost physiologically feeling the rhythmic and intonation fatigue of Russian verse for the last two hundred years), nimbly following the phrase, as a rule, without strict foot regulations. These works are dominated by repetitions, verbal and single-root rhymes (not excluding occasionally complex ones), which are understood by modern poets as primitive. But we remember the words of St. Ambrose of Optina (1812-1891): “The Lord rests in simple hearts. Where there is no simplicity, there is only emptiness.” The same formula was given by the elder in the above form: “Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels, but where it is sophisticated, there are not a single one.” Note that this saying contains two rhymes: the rather sophisticated “simple - a hundred ” and the meager “sophisticated - not a single one.” Both are rooted in folklore tradition. Folklore and primitiveness are a characteristic feature of the poetic tradition of the elders, regardless of their origin and education. Rev. Ambrose, for example, graduated from theological seminary, and Fr. Damascene came from a simple peasant family who did not receive any education. There is an idiotic phrase: “I am a simple man, and I speak in verse...” There is a feeling that it can be applied to the case we are considering in full, seriously, without any irony or fear of missing the mark. A frequent feature of monastic poetry is the use of rhymed text as a fragment of a more extensive statement, like quotations in the general volume of thought. Therefore, the impression of quotation is really created, and it is impossible to judge the true authorship. It is clear that with such stylistic emphasis the speaker emphasized the special role of precisely this rhythmically and rhymically organized thought. Positively, our Holy Fathers gave the molded word a poetic form, imitating the Lord Jesus Christ in this: that prayer, which we know as “Our Father,” in its Aramaic basis was taught by the Savior in verse, which has been established with sufficient reliability. And it is obvious: the problem of authorship did not matter to the elders. “Self-expression”, that is, the desire to express “oneself” (what does this even mean?), the implementation of a “person of non-general expression” with a kind of “subtlety” - was completely absent from the works of the elders. Witnesses simply conveyed to us the phrases of the ascetics, recording what they heard firsthand. Giving preference to maxims, aphoristic statements from the “world of wise thoughts,” the elders still composed in a childish way, for joy, without caring about the “quality of rhyme,” without setting decorative, seductive, excuse the expression, “artistic” goals. It is clear that in terms of accuracy of regional agreement, phonetic coincidence, there is, of course, no better (and “uninteresting”) rhyme than a word rhyming with itself. However, usually the task of “secular” rhyming is not only to create meaningfully complete phrases, not to simply sound, but to enter new semantic spaces. Therefore, poets often have aspirations behind the echo of rhyme, and hence their multiple evidence that the author never knows how the poem he begins in his work will end. “The poet reaches far” and “the young, unfamiliar tribe”, who, out of their youthful stupidity, reveres the mind, the body of some knowledge, “education” - above the heart? That I myself thought something like this at his age? (The only difference is that in godless times we didn’t even know the names of our ascetics, and, living, for example, in Belgorod, several tens of kilometers from the village of Pokrovka, we had never heard of Father Gennady. And about Father Joseph (Golovatyuk ), our dear contemporary, who labored and healed in the Ukrainian village of Malaya Ilovitsa and died in 1970. But those who needed it, they knew, they knew. Today this earthly angel is revered as the Venerable Amphilochius of Pochaev, being healed from his relics preserved in the cave on Pochaevskaya Mountain.) What can we say today about secular poetry, which has moved away and fallen away from the spiritual in its time, just as the first humans Adam and Eve fell from grace? What was God's permission? So that we can be convinced of the dead end of our willful choice? Great is the Lord’s permissive love for us, do-it-yourselfers! But sophistication without foundation is the extreme limit to which modern art has come. In a daring attempt without an essential coherence to fill the gaping abyss of God’s absence, not to say God’s abandonment (Baroque, Empire, Rococo, Art Nouveau, and now a new type of pattern - postmodern - is not this a vector of flight from God, that is, movement to nowhere?), not Is it obvious that there is a clear increase in spiritual entropy, an effort to replace emptiness with an imitation of presence?
This is increasingly characteristic today not only of poetry, but also of art in general (in whose name the word “art” is inextricably “wired”), and even more so for the entire life of modern civilization, which should be pitied, but difficult to forgive. Reveling in one’s own miasma, when only a wretched ego is placed at the center of the universe - this is the new form of “inspiration” that the “artists” of the 20th and 21st centuries offered us. Let us ask ourselves the question: is not the complication of the language of art a new, repeated proud, and therefore vain, punishable attempt to build the Tower of Babel - within ourselves? The opposite pole to sophistication, namely a different, loving view of the world, is what the “verse words of the elders” show us, where there is no covering “embellishment”, but the simplicity and height of love are revealed, which fertilize everything and which to us, almost hopelessly soiled with civilizational dirt, and not dreamed about it.

Practical Advice for the Daily Life of a Christian

A born preacher, who went through the school of smart work, a brotherly shepherd, persistently seeking the zeal of his children, Fr. Ephraim has in his arsenal all the diversity of Orthodox spirituality; his sermons and instructions, imbued with warm care, are replete with references to the Holy Scriptures, examples from the lives of ancient ascetics of the Orthodox faith, and vivid judgments of the Fathers of the Church.

My dear children[1],
With all my heart I wish that the Goodness of God will grant us salvation!

Winter brings snow, it covers the green grass, but it does not dry under the snow, but remains until spring. In spring, the snow melts and the grass begins to turn green again. The same thing happens in spiritual life. The winter of temptations and worldly worries comes and cools jealousy. Any gathering together for the purpose of planting the Word of God - which we, His insignificant servants, do by His grace - revives spiritual growth, that is, zeal for the exploit for the sake of salvation, for the sake of acquiring the Kingdom of God.

A seed is sown, and as the soil that receives it is, so will the plant be, so will the fruit be. So the Word of God - depending on how our heart perceives It - is how It will bear the fruit of Grace, leading us into eternal life.

To achieve salvation, you need to subordinate your life to a certain order. After all, where there is order, there is peace, and where there is peace, there is God; but where there is disorder, there is confusion, and where there is confusion, there is the devil. In order for there to be order in life, it is necessary to follow the instructions of the spiritual father. Every sinful person who has received the great blessing of free healing in the Sacrament of Repentance must follow the instructions and advice of his confessor if his mental health is dear to him.

Just as a doctor examines a patient, makes a diagnosis and, based on this diagnosis, prescribes treatment, just as a patient, in order to receive healing, must carefully take all medications and strictly follow the doctor’s recommendations, and how the slightest deviation from the treatment regimen jeopardizes the entire recovery , - and when a spiritual doctor prescribes spiritual therapy, the believer is obliged to follow his advice and fulfill the rules given to him. What are these rules? Prayer, prostrations, reading the New Testament and all Holy Scripture (the New Testament is the new Grace of Christ, all the Grace of the Holy Trinity, and the Old is Its shadow). Then comes fasting and attention to thoughts. Thoughts should not be accepted, but immediately cut off at their very origin, since if they are neglected, they will produce many thorns, which are often very sharp, affect a person to the point of bleeding and often cause cancer.

By the grace of God we rise in the morning, some earlier, some later. The first thing we must do, out of our Christian duty and obligation, out of spiritual necessity for the sake of salvation, is to kneel down, raise our hands to God and pray. How beautiful church prayers are! What kind of words do they give life: “ Rising from sleep, we fall down to Ti, the Blesser, and cry out the angelic song to Ti, the Stronger.”

"[2]! Having woken up and fallen into the goodness of Christ, you need, firstly, to thank Him for a safely past night.

The dream is an image of death. We sleep and don’t know where we are at this time, we don’t feel time, and we rise again and return to conscious life. Having thanked God with all our hearts for deigning us to see the light of day again, let us ask Him to forgive us our sins.

Let us also pray for our enemies, for those who slander us, who condemn us, persecute us, and harm us. This is the first thing we must do, because if we do not forgive them, then God will not forgive us.

True love for one's neighbor is revealed when a person with all his heart - and not just because it is necessary, for God commands so - prays for enemies, forgives them and loves them, because, in essence, our enemies are our benefactors.
Whoever tempts us, who condemns us, creates all sorts of unpleasant situations - he, on the one hand, is an instrument of the devil, and on the other, an instrument of Jesus. The Holy Fathers say that enemies are red-hot iron with which the Lord burns out our selfishness and pride and heals us. Man acts out of malice, but we graft a wild olive into a good one and obtain a fruit useful for life. That is why the actions of our enemies are so beneficial for us! Those who praise us - if, of course, they do it out of love - are themselves worthy of praise, since they have the love of Christ within them. However, Christ says: “If you love those who love you, what grace is that to you? Sinners and publicans do the same...[3] I tell you, love your enemies, those who do you evil, who persecute you, who build feats for you[4].” After all, God, our Heavenly Father, illuminates with the sun and irrigates with rain the unrighteous and the righteous, the evil and the good. He is the same for everyone: He gives His benefits to those of the children who love Him with all their souls, and to those who blaspheme and remain in wickedness - everyone without exception, so that even sinners do not appear unrequited at the Judgment. So, by praying for these people, on the one hand, we justify ourselves before God, and, on the other, we contribute to their enlightenment. After all, perhaps these people don’t even think about God, don’t pray, don’t even make the sign of the cross! Who will help them? So they absolutely need our prayer. Let us pray to God for their forgiveness and sanctification and at the same time help them themselves to come to repentance. This is a great thing!

Do you want to take revenge on your enemy? The Holy Fathers say that you need to pray for him, and your prayer will force God to intervene. God will act in accordance with His truth, and you will be justified for your love.

Let wives pray for their husbands and children, and husbands for their wives and children, and children for their parents. Thus, mutually helping each other with prayers, we will move towards spiritual growth.

Let's pray in the morning, make bows (as determined by the confessor), and if health allows, then we'll add more to them.

What is a bow? This is worship of God. We worship God, but our enemy the devil does not do this, he does not bow his head or knees. He doesn't worship God. Those who worship God are enemies of the devil, and, therefore, people of God. Therefore, bowing is of great importance. Even one additional bow is already a work of asceticism, for which there will be a reward from God. The few bows that we make are slowly accumulating with God in Heaven, and when we go to Gornyaya, we will find them there in large quantities. And this will help us give a good answer in the terrible hour of Judgment.

So, we pray in the morning out of duty, because prayer gives us light, and this light shines throughout the day, and then we each go about our own business: some to work, some to school, some on a trip. But even then we need not to abandon the memory of God, because during morning prayer we receive Grace, strength, blessing from God; An Angel stands at our right hand, and we get to work. And wherever we find ourselves, we will not leave the remembrance of God.

What does remembering God mean? This is the prayer: “ Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!”

“With the remembrance of forgiveness, which we ask for whenever we remember God, the Lord will deign to return home calmly.

Let's be careful at work: there are a lot of people working nearby and saying all sorts of things.
Sometimes they say very bad words, because they are in a passionate state and do not think about anything, only about temporary, vain things, about earthly pleasures. If the person praying is attentive, he will not follow them; he feels sorry for such people and prays that God will enlighten them, that they will be freed from such a suffocating spiritual state and come out into the clean and free air. And in the evening before going to bed, we will again kneel and offer our prayers to God. And in the middle of the day or in the evening we will open the New Testament and read at least one chapter from it. After all, Saint Chrysostom says that the devil flees from a house where there is a Gospel. Days, years, centuries pass like a shadow and we are all approaching our end. Every person’s life is a book, and every day of life is one page of it. Every book has an end, and so does human life. On the pages of this book there is both good and bad, both light and dark deeds of man are recorded. And when life ends, then this book will open before God and, based on what is written in it, the person will give an answer.

Let us pray to the best of our ability so that when we leave this life we ​​will not have large, serious sins, and if we remain, they will be small and not serious. Of course, then the prayers of the Church during the Liturgy, memorial services, alms, prayers of loved ones will be of great help to us, so that even for the smallest sins - after all, who is without sin! - receive forgiveness from God. The greatest danger to salvation is mortal sins, and there are a lot of such sins.

However, if we lead a mindful life, we are free from such sins. So a person prone to illness, if he often visits a doctor and follows his recommendations, then maintains his health. But if he neglects visits, he will harm his health. Therefore, by frequently visiting a spiritual doctor, we maintain the health of our soul, which is more valuable than the whole world. After all, the whole world is not worth one immortal soul! The world passes, but the soul never dies.

One church troparion talks about sobriety. It is read every day during the Midnight Office, especially in monasteries: “ Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight and blessed is the servant, he will find him vigilantly, but the unworthy one will find him again...

“[5] Blessed, it says, is the man whom the Bridegroom, when he comes, finds awake, but the unworthy one is the one whom he finds despondent and careless.

A person is kept sober by being awake. Who avoids injury? Anyone who is awake, sober, who is attentive, who watches himself and the road, therefore falls less often. Who gets injured? One who is careless on the way and therefore easily falls. And often the reason for this is negligence. Negligence in the performance of our duties leads to dangerous consequences. Negligence brings about what diligence has temporarily pushed away from us. One of the ascetics says that prayers, rosaries, bows, fasts, etc. are needed not by God, but by us, since if all this is missing, then evil enters the soul. If a person does not take the medications prescribed by his doctor, then he again opens access to the disease, but in a more severe form. By not caring about fulfilling spiritual duties, we open access to demons in our lives, allowing them to hurt us, inflict wounds and plunge us into danger. Therefore, we definitely need zeal for salvation: we cannot help but rejoice, because we do not know whether we will be alive tomorrow. We have no power over even the smallest second of time. Everything is unstable, impermanent: our life, the lives of our parents, children, relatives, health, finances - everything we have is unreliable, and we can lose everything at any moment.

One thing is beyond any doubt—the coming death.
She follows on our heels. Not a single person on earth can avoid the bridge over which we will cross to the opposite bank, into another life. We need to think hard about this. We seriously care about many things: about health, about money, about children, about parents and much more. We are worried and worried. But we care much less about the inevitable - about death. But death will directly lead us to God! The Lord says: “ I departed from the Father and came into the world: and again I leave the world and go to the Father.”

"[6]. The human soul will follow the same path. It is known that in a person the soul and body are united into one hypostasis. The soul, created by God through the Son and the Holy Spirit, after death will temporarily separate from the body and go to God. After the Second Coming, the body will be resurrected, the soul will unite with it, and the whole person will appear before the Terrible Throne of Christ for Judgment.

Let us fight with all the strength of our souls in the heavenly light of the Gospel for the Kingdom of Heaven. We will fight so that in that terrible hour our “spiritual” state is as good as possible. We do not know from our own experience what death is; anyone who knows can confirm how serious this all is. We will all go through these narrow gates and cross that heavy bridge, and we will feel the seriousness of the issue. Therefore, we need purification: our soul needs to acquire virtues, characteristic signs of sonship, kinship to the Heavenly Father. Otherwise, if they are not there, then the soul will be imprinted with the signs of the devil. As far as possible, let us cleanse ourselves, put our thoughts in order, which are the cause of our falling away from the Grace of God.

The Lord said that one inattentive thought of an unclean desire makes us guilty[7]. Many people have lost the Kingdom of Heaven because of their thoughts. The Lord, knowing our weakness, shed light and a balm of healing on the very root of evil. And the root of evil is the five senses that feed the mind and heart. The eyes feed the imagination, and so the devil encourages the eyes of the soul to be directed to what he himself presents to them. Through this, he makes a person’s heart so unclean that Christ cannot come and dwell in it.

The Lord said in the beatitudes: “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God.”

"[8]. This means that an unclean heart cannot see Christ. The Lord does not manifest himself in something sensual, He manifests himself in His love, joy, silence, peace, “which surpasses all understanding”[9]. People think that the mind consists of the absence of thoughts. This state can also be called peace. But the Holy Fathers, when they talk about the spiritual world, mean the betrothal of the Heavenly Kingdom. A Christian who has tasted this Divine world becomes, as it were, beside himself. This peace is a foretaste, to the extent of human strength, of the Kingdom of Heaven, since, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, both the body and soul of man enjoy peace in the Kingdom of God.

With great heartache, I urge you to fight! Do not allow what you have now received to be scattered by the wind, do not lose it, keep it deep in your heart, put it into practice in order to benefit and taste the beauty of the Kingdom of God. When you gain mental health, the measure of your joy and gratitude to God will have no limits. Finally, I would like to ask you once again to preserve within yourself the little that the Grace of God has said here: to preserve the benefits that you have received for yourself in the sacred Sacrament of Repentance, to fight to increase it for yourself and to pass it on to others. So that when God deigns to gather together again, you will be in a better “spiritual” state. The seed we have sown is bad and poor, because we ourselves are worse and more insignificant than this seed. We wish you to increase what you have received and ask you to pray that we, the poor, will be preserved mentally and physically by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and worthy of salvation for the glory of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.