Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
(Dmitry Aleksandrovich Brianchaninov; born February 5, 1807, Pokrovskoye village, Gryazovets district, Vologda province - died April 30, 1867, Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery, now in the Yaroslavl region) - bishop, theologian, scientist and preacher. Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) came from the nobility, a graduate of a military engineering school, and was closely acquainted with the royal family. However, with the abundance of everything, he renounced earthly glory and wealth, devoting himself entirely to the fulfillment of spiritual goals. Even though he had wealth, he renounced everything in order to carry out monastic service.
Brianchaninov spent a long time in a monastery near St. Petersburg. However, while acquiring the spirit in monastic monasteries, Brianchaninov discovered greed, self-interest, and the hypocrisy of monks and priests not only in the world, but also in the monasteries. In this regard, this did not break his spirit, devoting his entire life to the struggle, first of all, to restore the truth of God in churches and monasteries. Throughout his entire religious life, he relentlessly waged an active spiritual war against Pharisaism in churches and monastic monasteries.
Bishop Brianchaninov lived among arrogant religious people mired in Pharisaism, which led to the writing of many of his accusatory, warning and prophetic works: “To help the penitent”, “A Word about Death”, “A Word about Man”, “Letters about an Ascetic Life” , “Ascetic Sermon”, etc.
It is characteristic that having friendly relations with the royal family, state rulers often took to reading his literary works with interest. Which, of course, shows that members of the imperial family knew very well about the upcoming tragic events that would soon come to Russian soil for the crimes committed before Heaven. However, with all this, the imperial family and officials, with all understanding, did not consider it necessary to make attempts to correct the depressing, dying situation in Russian society.
Below are just a small part of the prophecies of Bishop Brianchaninov and his critical statements towards the Russian clergy and government. It is characteristic that all the literary works of Ignatius Brianchaninov (due to the content of impartial criticism of the disastrous state of religious Russian life and immoral government) were prohibited from publication due to synodal censorship. For the first time, Brianchaninov’s works in full were published only in 1915!
Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
“We live in a terrible time: on the eve of the denouement of everything.”
“Our time is a difficult time for true Christians due to the general cooling of the people towards faith and piety... The prophecy of Scripture about the retreat from Christianity of peoples who have switched to Christianity from paganism is being fulfilled. General immorality prepares for apostasy on a huge scale... Today's ascetics have been given the path of sorrows, both external and internal, as the most reliable...".
“The famine of the word of God has come! The scribes and Pharisees have the keys of understanding! “They don’t enter themselves and prohibit others from entering!” Christianity and monasticism are at their last gasp! The image of piety is somehow, most hypocritically, maintained; people have renounced the power of piety, they have rejected it! You have to cry and be silent. “I don’t bind you to anything external.” Do what you recognize as the best for your circumstances: whatever you undertake for a good purpose, receive God’s blessing!..”
“I traveled quite a distance, saw pious people in the middle of the world and in monasteries. These people are now extremely rare, and some with very little knowledge, and others with mixed concepts... True spiritual knowledge and spiritual mentors have become scarce. Others understand something no worse than our brother, but their teaching is somehow unenlightening, everyone walks around but doesn’t get through the door, it’s like they’re playing blind man’s buff.”
“The retreat began to take place for some time very quickly, freely and openly. The consequences must be the most sorrowful.”
“The building of the Church, which has been shaken for a long time, can shake suddenly and violently. There is no one to stop the fall. The vessels of the Spirit have completely dried up. It’s scary to think who is entrusted with the authority over souls.”
“The bureaucracy has destroyed the essential significance of the Hierarchy in the Church, the connection between the shepherds and the flock has been destroyed, and the love of peace, the insatiable desire for vain honors, for the accumulation of capital, has destroyed Christians in the shepherds, leaving in them only despicable, hated policemen due to their hatred of the people, abuses and immorality..."
“Humanity never wants to declare itself a follower of evil, even if it is drowned in evil: it constantly strives to show itself as virtuous. When it most allows itself to commit lawlessness, then it is most concerned to justify itself in the eyes of people; then he is most hypocritical; then, with shamelessness and audacity, he begins to proclaim his perfection and virtue.”
“Humanity will not see its plight in moral and spiritual terms; it, on the contrary, will trumpet its success, being blinded by success in material development for time and earth, rejecting Christian development for the spirit, for eternity, for God.”
“Our clergy is extremely easy to succumb to any false opinions... and mystics. The theological school, especially the academy, as well as spiritual magazines are completely amazed by the false teachings of the West.”
“There are so many nets for my heart! I see coarse networks and thin networks. Which of them are more dangerous, more terrible? I'm perplexed. The fisher is skillful, and whoever escapes from the rough nets, he catches in the fine nets. The end of the hunt is one: death. The networks are covered in every possible way, with excellent art.
The fall is clothed in all kinds of triumph; people-pleasing, hypocrisy, vanity - into all types of virtue. Deception, dark charm, wear the guise of the spiritual, the heavenly. Spiritual love, often vicious, is covered with the appearance of holy love; false, dreamy sweetness, passed off as spiritual sweetness.
The ruler of the world tries by all means to keep man in his fallen nature: and this is enough, without gross falls, to make man a stranger to God. Gross falls into sin will be completely replaced, according to the correct calculations of the hunter, by the proud opinion of a Christian about himself, content with the virtues of a fallen nature and falling into self-delusion, thereby alienating himself from Christ.
There are so many nets for the body! It itself - what a network! How the world ruler uses them! Through the body, condescending to its humiliating inclinations and desires, we approach the likeness of dumb animals. What an abyss! What a departure, what a fall from the Divine likeness! We fall into this deep abyss, terribly far from God, when we indulge in gross carnal pleasures, called falls due to their sinful severity.
But less coarse carnal pleasures are no less harmful. For their sake, care for the soul is abandoned, God, heaven, eternity, and the purpose of man are forgotten. The ruler of the world tries to keep us in constant entertainment, darkness, through bodily pleasures!
Through the senses, these doors to the soul, through which it communicates with the visible world, he constantly introduces into it sensual pleasure, sin and captivity inseparable from it. Music thunders in famous earthly concerts, expressing and exciting various passions; these passions are presented in earthly theaters, excited in earthly amusements: man is led by all possible means to enjoy the evil that killed him. In his intoxication, he forgets the Divine good that saves him and the blood of the God-man by which we have been redeemed.
This is a faint outline of the nets laid by the ruler of the world to ensnare Christians.”
The prophet Jeremiah spoke about such “nets” in his prophetic sayings (compare Jer. 5:25-31).
“The good of our fallen nature is mixed with evil, and therefore this good itself has become evil, just as tasty and healthy food becomes poison when it is mixed with poison. Be careful to do the good of fallen nature! By doing this good, you will develop your fall, you will develop conceit and pride, you will achieve the closest resemblance to demons.”
“The Lord commands the complete rejection of fallen nature, hatred of its motives, not only the obviously evil, but also everyone without exception, and the supposedly good. It is a great disaster to follow the truth of a fallen nature.”
“The Universal Church has always recognized heresy as a mortal sin, has always recognized that a person infected with the terrible disease of heresy is dead in soul, alien to grace and salvation, in communion with the devil and his destruction.”
“The same must be said about the light of fallen human nature. Following this light and developing it in oneself produces complete darkness in the soul and completely alienates it from Christ. He who is alien to Christianity is alien to God: everyone, cast aside the Son against the Father and Mother (John 11:43) is an atheist.”
“In our age, proud of their success, the majority of people, proclaiming themselves both Christians and doers of abundant good, rushed to perfect the truth of fallen nature, rejecting the truth of the Gospel with contempt. Let this majority hear the definition of the Lord: these people draw near to Me with their lips, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; but in vain they worship Me, teaching doctrines the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).
The worker of human truth is filled with doubt, arrogance, and self-delusion; he preaches, trumpets about himself, about his deeds, not paying any attention to the Lord’s prohibition (Matt. 6: 1-18.); He pays with hatred and vengeance those who would dare to open their mouths for the most thorough and well-intentioned contradiction of his truth; recognizes himself as worthy and worthy of earthly and heavenly rewards.”
“Exactly! I look at the world and see: the networks of the devil have multiplied, in comparison with the times of the primacy of the Church of Christ, they have multiplied to infinity. Books containing false teaching have multiplied; minds have multiplied, containing and communicating to others false teaching; the followers of the holy Truth have diminished, diminished to the extreme; respect for natural virtues, accessible to Jews and pagans, increased.
There appeared respect for virtues that were downright pagan, contrary to nature itself, which looked at them as evil; the concept of Christian virtues has diminished, not to mention how their actual fulfillment has diminished, almost been destroyed; material life developed; spiritual life disappears; bodily pleasures and worries consume all the time; there is no time to even remember God. And all this turns into a duty, into a law. Because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will dry up, even of those who would have maintained their love for God, if evil were not so universal, if the networks of the devil had not multiplied to such innumerability.”
“Those infected with an “opinion” about their own merits, especially about their holiness, are capable and ready for all executions, all hypocrisy, deceit and deception, all atrocities. They breathe irreconcilable enmity against the servants of truth, rushing at them with furious hatred when they do not recognize in the deceived the state attributed to them and exposed to shame by the blind world of “opinion.” “God is glorified to glorify himself, just as he was glorified by the Pharisee (Luke 18:11). Those obsessed with “opinion” are for the most part devoted to voluptuousness, despite the fact that they ascribe to themselves the most sublime spiritual states...”
“From this kind of delusion arose destructive heresies, schisms, atheism, and blasphemy. Its most unfortunate visible consequence is wrong, harmful activity for oneself and for one’s neighbors—evil, despite its clarity and vastness, is little noticed and little understood. Misfortunes happen to practitioners of prayer infected with “opinion,” which are obvious to everyone, but rarely, because “opinion,” leading the mind into the most terrible delusion, does not lead it to frenzy, as a disordered imagination does.”
“Fear hypocrisy, first in yourself, then in others: fear precisely because it is in the nature of the time...”
“A terrible disaster is the lack of true knowledge of God in man: it mistakes the works of the devil for the works of God.”
“Repentance for a hardened heart is impossible: the heart must soften, be filled with condolences and mercy for its disastrous state of sinfulness. When the heart is embraced and filled with mercy, then only does it become capable of repentance; then only, having abandoned the condemnation of others, can it turn to self-conception, and, having condemned itself salutarily, apply the medicine of repentance to its ulcers.”
“The information reaching us about the state... of faith in Russia is very sad. On the one hand, it is ruined by splits, and on the other, by freethinking. The fight for her is very difficult due to the terrible internal pain, which, like a worm, has drained all her strength. Let the will of God be done.”
“At the Judgment of Christ, mercy will be required for justification, as an active expression of love, and mercy alone will merit pardon, as an experimental proof of love. “I want mercy, not sacrifice,” announced the coming terrible and impartial Judge. Mercy will bring justification to those who love it, and condemnation to those who reject it.”
“We do not observe this all-holy testament at all: we do not see that our light, that is, our mind, does not become darkness, we throw all sorts of things into it; it becomes decidedly darkness and spreads darkness over all our behavior, throughout our entire lives. Why should thoughts be born in your soul that are hostile to God—thoughts of destructive unbelief and superstition? You have certainly read various empty foreign books, listened to various unfounded judgments about religion, with which our time is so rich, so poor in true religious knowledge.”
He wrote about the need for God to admonish the people, for their own correction: “We need sorrow so that we have the opportunity to forgive our neighbors and thereby receive remission of our own sins.”
However, unfortunately, God’s warning signs of tribulations that occurred before the revolution did not produce their positive result (Is. 1: 4-6).
“You, who wallow in the stinking and dirty swamp of sins, find pleasure in it! Raise your heads, look at the clear sky: there is your place! God gives you the dignity of gods; you, rejecting this dignity, choose for yourself another: the dignity of animals - and the most unclean ones. Come to your senses! Leave the stinking swamp; cleanse yourself by confessing your sins; wash yourself with tears of repentance; beautify yourself with tears of tenderness; rise up from the earth; ascend to heaven: the Gospel will take you there. Dondezhe light imate - the Gospel in which Christ is hidden - believe in the light, so that you will be sons of the Light - Christ (John 12:36).”
“The fathers rightly called earthly life deceptive, and happiness, which does not remain a person’s property for eternity, self-delusion. How many examples of contentment and greatness crumbling before our eyes!”
“The Fathers foretold that in the last times those who are being saved will hide from the eyes of men and will follow a humble path of action, being careful to condemn apostates, committing everything to the will of God and the judgment of God, reverent before the very permission of God.”
“We have a good appearance: we have preserved all the rituals and symbols of the primitive Church; but this is all a dead body, there is little life in it.”
“Insensibility is implanted into the soul by a world hostile to God and by fallen angels hostile to God... with the assistance of our will. It grows and is strengthened by life according to the principles of the world; it grows and strengthens from following the fallen mind and will, from abandoning the service of God and from carelessly serving God.”
“The fathers call the state of imaginary calm insensibility, mortification of the soul, death of the mind before the death of the body.”
“Insensibility is all the more terrible because the one who possesses it does not understand his distressed state: he is seduced and blinded by conceit and self-satisfaction.”
“Our destruction was accomplished through the destruction of our communication with God and through entering into communication with fallen and rejected spirits. Our salvation lies in breaking off fellowship with Satan and restoring fellowship with God.”
“Our condition is sad... It is eternal death, healed and destroyed by the Lord Jesus, Who is the Resurrection and Life.”
“A soul that does not bear fruit in Christ, that remains in its fallen nature, that bears the barren fruit of natural good and is content with it, does not attract Divine care for itself. It is cut off by death in due course.”
“May the merciful Lord cover the remnant of those who believe in Him! But this remainder is meager; It’s getting leaner and leaner.”
“At the present time, the main work of evil spirits is to drop all true ideas about God and everything Divine and to exalt the ideas about man in his fallen nature - thereby preparing the exaltation of that man who is exalted above God, according to the prophecy of the apostle. Pavel. The same idea that destroyed people in paradise! only it is now developing more extensively.”
“Let us rely on God, who foretold that temptations and apostasies would come (Matthew 18:7). When this is God’s permission, then we have nothing to say and should not be embarrassed. Let everything be done the way God allows everything to be done. We must revere His destinies.”
“The spirit of the time, like a whirlwind, howls loudly, and tears and breaks many things. This is predicted by the Holy Scriptures, which in the behavior and way of thinking of the three Youths, described by Daniel the Prophet, gave us instructions and an example for our way of thinking and behavior...”
“Everything that happens is accomplished either by the grace of God, or by the permission of God, that is, everything that happens is accomplished according to the destinies of God, incomprehensible to man. The three youths in the Babylonian furnace confessed to God, confessed that all the civil and spiritual disasters that were allowed to happen to them and to the people of Israel were allowed to happen according to the righteous judgment of God. Such a view attracts peace into the soul, does not allow one to get carried away by excitement, directs the vision of the mind to eternity, and brings patience in sorrows that seem short-lived, insignificant accidents and trifles.”
“The path of the wicked is hateful to God, so alien and abominable to Him that Scripture represents God as turning away from him, as if he did not know him... The path of the wicked has a boundary, has a woeful limit! This edge is on the edge of a deep, dark abyss, an eternal repository of eternal death. And he, the path of the wicked, will perish forever in this terrible abyss, leading ahead to it and destroying in it all those who walked by it.”
“The Holy Scripture testifies that Christians, like the Jews, will gradually begin to cool towards the Revealed teaching of God. They will begin to ignore the renewal of human nature by the God-Man, they will forget about eternity, they will turn all their attention to their earthly life...
The Redeemer, who redeemed man for a blessed eternity, is alien to this direction. This trend is characterized by a retreat from Christianity... Monasticism will participate in the weakening of Christianity: a member of the body cannot help but take part in the weakness that has struck the whole body... When Christianity is diminished to the extreme on earth, then the life of the world will end.”
“Abundant earthly prosperity and enormous enterprises, as obvious to everyone, are presented by the word of God as a sign of the last times and the mature sinfulness of mankind, mostly hidden and incomprehensible with a superficial and inexperienced look at humanity.”
“Temporary and eternal disasters befell the old Israel for rejecting the Redeemer; these disasters are a faint image of the terrible disasters that will be the punishment of the New Israel for its crime.”
“In the last days of the world, people, under the influence of the ruler of the world, are overcome by attachment to the earth and to everything material and carnal. They will indulge in earthly concerns and material development... as if the earth were their eternal home... They will forget eternity, as if it does not exist, they will forget God, they will retreat from Him.”
He pronounced a warning for the Russian people, blinded by distorted religious prophecies about a world Orthodox monarchy, in anticipation of the coming Orthodox Tsar: “Our people can and must become an instrument of the genius of geniuses (the Antichrist), who will finally realize the idea of a world monarchy.”
“They are coming, they are coming more terrible than the waves of the universal flood that destroyed the entire human race, waves of lies and darkness are coming, they surround on all sides, are ready to engulf the universe, they destroy faith in Christ, destroy His kingdom on earth, suppress His teaching, damage morals, dull, destroy conscience, establish the dominion of the all-evil world ruler"
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Creative heritage
Saint Ignatius left many works of various directions for the edification of believers. Among his published works there are sermons and serious treatises. In addition, many of his messages to private individuals have reached us (see: Selected Letters). He wrote about ascetic life (see: Ascetic experiences, part 1; Ascetic experiences, part 2), and about various issues of Orthodox Dogmatics (see: A Word about Man; A Word about Death. A Word about the sensory and spiritual vision of spirits; A Word about Angels), and against heresies and schisms, and on other topical topics.
