How do we understand the expression “Life in Christ”? Or is this a translation error?

My life in Christ

I do not preface my publication with a preface: let it speak for itself. Everything contained in it is nothing other than the grace-filled illumination of the soul, which I received from the all-enlightening Spirit of God in moments of deep attention and self-examination, especially during prayer. Whenever I could, I wrote down my blessed thoughts and feelings, and from these notes over many years a book has now been compiled. The contents of the book are quite varied, as readers will see if there are any. Let them judge the contents of my publication.

Archpriest
I. _ Sergeev
Everything is for Your pleasure, both
in thought and in action.
Prayer before the Gospel at the Liturgy

1. You have abundantly revealed to me, O Lord, Your truth and Your righteousness. Through educating me through the sciences, You revealed to me the wealth of faith and nature and human reason. I have known Your word - the word of love, which goes even to the division
soul and spirit
(Heb. 4:12);
studied the laws of the human mind and its philosophy, structure and beauty of speech; penetrated partly into the secrets of nature, into its laws, into the abyss of the universe and the laws of circulation; I know the population of the globe, I know about individual peoples, about famous persons, about their deeds that have taken their course in the world; I partially learned the great science of self-knowledge and approaching You - in a word, I learned a lot, a lot, so that the essence of the human mind
is shown
to
us (Sir. 3, 23);
and I still learn a lot. I have a lot of books with varied content, I read and re-read them, but I still haven’t gotten enough. My spirit still thirsts for knowledge; my whole heart is not satisfied, not full, and from all the knowledge acquired by the mind, it cannot receive complete bliss. When will it be satisfied? He will be satisfied, never having been revealed to Your glory
(Ps. 16:15).
Until then I won't get enough. He who drinks from the water of sowing (from worldly knowledge) will thirst again: but whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never thirst again;
but the water that I will give him will be in him a fountain of water flowing into an eternal belly, said the Savior (John 4:13-14).

2. How do the saints see us and our needs and hear our prayers? Let's make a comparison. May you be transported to the sun and united with the sun. The sun illuminates with its rays the whole earth, every grain of sand on the earth. In these rays you also see the earth; but you are so small in relation to the sun that you constitute only one ray, and these rays are in

there is an infinite amount of it. By its identity with the sun, this ray closely participates in the sun’s illumination of the entire world. So the holy soul, uniting with God, as with the spiritual sun, sees through the medium of its spiritual sun, illuminating the entire universe, all people and the needs of those who pray.

3. Have you learned to contemplate the Lord before you ?

as the omnipresent Mind, as the living and active Word, as the life-giving Spirit?
The Holy Scripture is the realm of the Mind, Word and Spirit, God of the Trinity, in it He manifests himself clearly: the words that I spoke to you are the spirit and the life,
said the Lord (John 6:63); the writings of the holy fathers - here again is the expression of the Thought, Word and Spirit of the hypostases, with a greater participation of the human spirit itself; the writings of ordinary secular people are a manifestation of the fallen human spirit, filled with sinful attachments, habits, and passions. In the Word of God we see face to face God and ourselves, as we are. Recognize yourself in it, people, and always walk in the presence of God.

4. Man, you see for yourself, does not die in his word; He is immortal in it and speaks after death. I will die, but even after death I will speak. There is so much of this immortal word among people, which was left behind by those who died a long time ago and which sometimes lives on the lips of an entire people! How tenacious is the word, even a human one! Moreover, the Word of God: it will survive all centuries and will always be alive and active.

5. Since God is a creative, living and life-giving Thought, those who, with the thoughts of their spirit, deviate from this hypostatic Thought and are concerned only with material, perishable objects, thereby materializing their spirit; Particularly sinful are those who, during divine services or home prayer, completely deviate in their thoughts and wander in different places outside the church. They extremely insult the Divinity, in Whom our thoughts should be fixed.

6. What does fasting and repentance lead to? What is the labor for? Leads to cleansing of sins, peace of mind, union with God, sonship, and boldness before the Lord. There is something to fast about and confess with all your heart. The reward will be invaluable for conscientious work. How many of us have a feeling of filial love for God? How many of us boldly and without condemnation dare to call on Heavenly God the Father and say: Our Father!..

Is it not, on the contrary, that such a filial voice is not heard in our hearts at all, muffled by the vanity of this world or attachment to its objects and pleasures? Is not the Heavenly Father far from our hearts? Shouldn’t we, who have moved away from Him to a land far away, imagine Him as God’s avenger? “Yes, for our sins we are all worthy of His righteous wrath and punishment, and it’s amazing how He is so patient with us, how He does not cut us down like the barren fig trees?” Let us hasten to appease Him with repentance and tears. Let us enter into ourselves, examine our unclean heart with all severity and see what a multitude of impurities block the access of Divine grace to it, we realize that we are spiritually dead.

7. The loving Lord is here: how can I allow even a shadow of malice into my heart? May all malice completely die within me, may my heart be anointed with the fragrance of kindness. May the love of God conquer you, evil Satan, who incites us, who are evil-minded, to evil. Anger is extremely deadly for the soul and body: it scorches, crushes, torments. Let no one bound by evil dare to approach the throne of the God of love.

8. When praying, we must certainly take control of our heart and turn it to the Lord. It must not be cold, crafty, untrue, or double-minded. Otherwise, what is the use of our prayer, of our fasting? Is it good to hear an angry voice from the Lord: these people draw near to Me
with their lips and with their lips they honor Me, but their heart is far from Me
(Matthew 15:8).
So, let us not stand in church with spiritual relaxation, but let each one burn in his spirit, working for the Lord. And people do not value very much the services that we do coldly, out of habit. And God wants our heart. Give Me, son, your heart
(Proverbs 23:26), because the heart is the most important thing in a person, his life; more than that, our heart is man himself. Therefore, whoever does not pray or does not serve God with his heart is the same as not praying at all, because then his body prays, which in itself, without a soul, is the same as the earth. Remember that when you stand in prayer, you stand before God, who has the mind of all. Therefore, your prayer should be, so to speak, the whole spirit, the whole mind.

9. The saints of God live even after death. I often hear in church how the Mother of God sings Her wonderful song, passing through the heart, which She composed in the house of Her aunt Elizabeth after the Annunciation of the Archangel. Here I hear the song of Moses, the song of Zechariah - the father of the Baptist, Anna - the mother of the prophet Samuel, the song of the three youths, the song of Mariam. And how many New Testament holy singers delight the ears of the entire Church of God to this day! What about worship? What about the Sacraments? What about the rituals? Whose spirit moves there and touches our hearts? The Lord God and the saints of God. Here is proof of the immortality of the human soul. How is it: people have died - and after death they control our lives; They died - and they still speak, teaching, edifying and touching us!

10. Just as breathing is necessary for the body and without breathing a person cannot live, so without the breath of the Spirit of God the soul cannot live true life. What air is to the body, the Spirit of God is to the soul. The air is somewhat like the Spirit of God. Wherever the Spirit
wills, it breathes...
(John 3:8).

11.When you are faced with a temptation to sin, then vividly imagine that sin greatly angers the Lord, Who hates lawlessness. For God does not want iniquity
(
Ps. 5:5). And in order for you to better understand this, imagine a truthful, strict father who loves his family, who tries by all means to make his children well-behaved and honest, in order to reward them for their good behavior with his great riches, which he prepared for them with great difficulty, and who between Thus he sees, to his regret, that the children do not love him because of their father’s love, do not pay attention to the legacy prepared by their father’s love, live dissolutely, and rush rapidly towards destruction. And every sin, mind you, is death for the soul (see James 1:15ff.), because it kills the soul, because it makes us slaves of the murderous devil, and the more we work for sin, the more difficult our conversion is, the more certain is our destruction. Fear all sin with all your heart.

12. When your heart wanders into the thoughts of evil and the evil one, as they say, begins to wash away your heart so that it is completely moved from the stone of faith, then say to yourself internally: I know my spiritual poverty, my insignificance without faith; say: I am so weak that I only live in the name of Christ, and I am at peace, and I am glad, I am expanding in my heart, but without Him I am dead spiritually, I am worried, I am embarrassed at heart; Without the Cross of the Lord, I would long ago have been a victim of the most severe sorrow and despair. Christ keeps me in life; The cross is my peace and consolation.

13. We can think because there is an infinite thought, just as we breathe because there is an infinity of air space. This is why bright thoughts about any subject are called inspiration. Our thought constantly flows precisely under the condition of the existence of the boundless thinking Spirit. That is why the apostles say: we are not content to think of ourselves as if of ourselves, but our contentment is from God.

(2 Cor. 3:5).
That is why the Savior says: do not worry about what you say or what you say, for fear that what you say will be given to you in the very hour
(Matthew 10:19).
You see, both the thought and even the word itself (inspiration) come to us from outside. This, however, is in a state of grace and in times of need. But even in our ordinary situation, all bright thoughts come from the Guardian Angel and from the Spirit of God, while, on the contrary, unclean, dark thoughts come from our damaged being and from the devil, who is always close to us. How should a Christian behave? God
Himself
is active in us
(Phil. 2:13). In general, everywhere in the world we see the kingdom of thought: both in the entire composition of the visible world, so, in particular, on earth, in the circulation and life of the globe - in the distribution of the elements of light, air, water, earth, fire (in secrecy), then how other elements are diffused in all animals - in birds, fish, reptiles, beasts and humans, in their wise and purposeful structure, in their abilities, morals or habits, in plants, in their structure, in nutrition, etc. - in a word, We see the kingdom of thought everywhere, even in soulless stone and grain of sand.

14. Priests of the Lord! Be able, with the consolation of faith, to turn the bed of sadness of a Christian sufferer into a bed of joy, be able to turn him from the most unhappy person, in his opinion, into the happiest man in the world, assure him that, having been punished in a small way, he will be greatly benefited (see Wisdom 3:5) after death - and you will be friends of humanity, comforting angels, organs of the Comforter Spirit.

15. If we do not kindle the warmth of faith in our hearts, then through negligence our faith may completely extinguish, and Christianity with all its Sacraments may, as it were, completely die out for us. The enemy is only trying to extinguish faith in the heart and bring all the truths of Christianity into oblivion. That is why we see people who are Christians in name only, but who are perfect pagans in deeds.

16. Do not think that our faith is not life-giving for us, shepherds, that we serve God hypocritically. No, we are the first to benefit most from the mercies of God and we know from experience that for us the Lord with His Sacraments, that His Most Pure Mother and His saints. For example, when we partook of the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord, we often, often experienced their life-giving nature, the heavenly gifts of peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; We know that the merciful royal gaze of the last of his subjects does not please as much as the gracious gaze of our heavenly Master, as His Mysteries do. And we would be extremely ungrateful before the Lord and hardened in heart if we did not tell about this glory of the life-giving Mysteries to all the beloved of God, if we did not glorify His miracles that take place in our hearts at every Divine Liturgy! We also often experience the invincible, incomprehensible, Divine power of the honest and life-giving Cross of the Lord, and by its power we drive away from our hearts passions, despondency, cowardice, fear and all the machinations of demons. He is our friend and benefactor. We say this sincerely, with the consciousness of all the truth and power of our words.

17. You want to comprehend the incomprehensible; But can you understand how internal, soul-killing sorrows befall you, and find means—outside the Lord—how to drive them away? Find out with your heart how to free yourself from sorrows, how to make your heart calm, and then, if necessary, philosophize about the incomprehensible. Even if you can’t even get a little peso, why
care about others?
(Yak. 12:26).

18. Think more often: whose wisdom is manifested in the structure of your body, constantly supports it in being and functioning? Who prescribed the laws of your thought, and does it still follow them among all people? Who inscribed the law of conscience on the hearts of all people, and to this day it rewards good and punishes evil in all people? God Almighty, All-Wise and All-Good! Your hand is constantly on me, a sinner, and there is not a moment when Your goodness leaves me. Grant me to always kiss Your right hand with living faith. Why should I go far to seek traces of Your goodness, Your wisdom and Your omnipotence? Ah, these traces are so clearly visible in me! I, I am a miracle of God's goodness, wisdom and omnipotence. I, in a small form, am the whole world; my soul is a representative of the invisible world, my body is a representative of the visible world.

19. Brothers! What is the purpose of our life on earth? So that, after our trial by earthly sorrows and disasters and after gradual improvement in virtue with the help of grace-filled gifts taught in the Sacraments, we may rest upon death in God—the peace of our spirit. That is why we sing about the dead: “Rest, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant.” We wish the deceased peace as the end of all desires and pray to God for this. Isn’t it therefore foolish to grieve a lot over the dead? Come to Me
, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,
says the Lord (Matthew 11:28). Here are our dead, who have fallen asleep through Christian death, come to this voice of the Lord and rest in peace. Why mourn?

20. People who try to lead a spiritual life experience the subtlest and most difficult war through their thoughts every moment of their life. —

spiritual warfare; You need to be a bright eye every moment in order to notice the thoughts flowing into the soul from the evil one and reflect them; Such people should always have their hearts burning with faith, humility, and love; otherwise, the wickedness of the devil will easily take up residence in him, behind the wickedness is lack of faith or unbelief, and then all kinds of evil, which you can’t soon wash away with even tears. Therefore, do not allow your heart to be cold, especially during prayer, avoid cold indifference in every possible way. It often happens that there is prayer on the lips, but in the heart there is crafty lack of faith or disbelief; with the lips it is as if a person is close to the Lord, but in the heart he is far away. And during prayer, the evil one uses all measures to cool and deceive our heart in the most imperceptible way for us. Pray and be strong, strengthen your heart.

THE BOOK “My Life in Christ” CAN BE BUYED IN THE ONLINE STORE “SRETENYE”

What is a sense of life?

In earthly life a person must learn to follow the commandments given to him as rules of life from the Higher Powers. But, in addition to this, he strives to understand his earthly purpose, which is specially hidden from him, like the correct answer to a problem in a mathematics textbook. If a person is not interested in the question of why he lives on earth, what tasks he actually faces, what the Higher Powers want from him, then this means that the person is living his life in vain. This means that a person lives thoughtlessly and has not reached the “first grade” of his development; he is still in the “preparatory group”. Such a person is like a first-grader who was brought to school to begin studying and mastering knowledge, but he sat down in the back desk, carefreely played with toys, and waited for the lesson to end so he could run outside to play.

Look at adults who are left not for the second year, as in school, but for the fortieth or sixtieth year in the preparatory group.

To the question “What is the purpose of your life?” these people begin to answer either with some nonsense, such as raising children, or even worse, building a house, or they generally say that it is a secret, or they honestly say that they do not know why they live. It’s strange... To live for many years on earth and not understand why you live?!

John of Kronstadt as the author of the book

John of Kronstadt spent his entire life with prayer on his lips.

Biography

In the fall of 1829, a son was born into the family of a sexton of a rural parish in the Arkhangelsk province, Ilia Sergiev, and his wife Theodora. The baby was very weak, and the parents hastened to baptize him. They named it Ioann in honor of John of Rylsky. Soon the baby began to recover. From childhood, his parents taught their son to pray; he went to church with his father and became imbued with a love of worship.

At the age of six, his father sent him to the Arkhangelsk parish school. Not everything worked out for the boy. Then he turned to God with a request to help him gain knowledge. One night, “it was as if the mind opened up in my head” - I remembered the previous school day, everything became clear. After this, John began to study well.

He graduated from college and the Arkhangelsk Theological Seminary among the best. At public expense he entered the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. While studying, his father dies, and John decides to leave as a deacon or psalm-reader in order to support his mother. But she insisted: her son must receive a higher education. He combined his studies with work as a clerical clerk on the board of the Academy. I sent all my earnings to my mother.

While studying at the Academy, John dreamed of becoming a missionary, bringing the word of God to the peoples of Siberia and North America. But after one of his solitary walks, he fell asleep and saw himself in the role of a cathedral priest. I considered this a sign from the Lord.

In 1855, candidate of theology John Sergiev married the daughter of the archpriest of the Kronstadt St. Andrew's Cathedral K. Nesvitsky, Elizaveta. Being married was a job requirement. Immediately, he invited his wife to live as brother and sister, devoting themselves to the service of the Lord.

Church service

On December 12, 1855, he was ordained to the priesthood. When John entered the Kronstadt St. Andrew's Cathedral, where he had never been before, he was very surprised: it was precisely this place that he imagined in his childhood visions. His entire future life will be connected with this temple. And he will become known under the name of John of Kronstadt.

Pastoral service turned out to be no less difficult than the missionary service he represented. Kronstadt was a place of exile for all sorts of undesirables. In the port, the laborers lived poorly, drunkenness and illness flourished. It was to them that the young priest drew attention. Every day he came to the “posad” and talked with people and helped.

As a miracle worker he became known throughout Russia and beyond. They asked for prayerful help for the sick man, the priest turned to the Lord, transferring the sick man into His hands. But then an old woman came and insistently demanded that the priest himself pray for recovery. The patient recovered, and Fr. John saw this as a new obedience - to pray for everyone who asks. Since that time, there have been many cases of miraculous healing of patients whom medicine abandoned. Thousands of pilgrims came to Kronstadt every day.

Father John's Day began at 3 a.m. and ended at midnight:

1. Preparation for serving the Divine Liturgy.
2. Morning service in the cathedral (started at 4 o'clock).
3. Canon, general confession. St. Andrew's Cathedral was always full, accommodating about five thousand people.
4. From lunch I headed to St. Petersburg to visit the sick.

He conducted services with a heartfelt appeal to God. So sincerely that even doubters joined the ranks of believers. The priest makes trips around Russia, in which he is accompanied by crowds of parishioners.

In recent years, the priest was very ill, but patiently endured all the pain. Doctors prescribed him fast food to relieve his suffering. Father refused, believing that suffering was sent down to save a sinful soul. On December 10, 1908, he also celebrated the Divine Liturgy in St. Andrew’s Cathedral. On the morning of December 20, the great righteous man departed to the Lord.

He was buried in the basement of the church-tomb of the Ioannovsky Monastery on Karpovka in St. Petersburg. On the day of the funeral, both Kronstadt and St. Petersburg were filled with thousands of parishioners who came to say goodbye to their priest.

On June 7 - 8, 1990, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the holy righteous John of Kronstadt.

Social and charitable activities

For more than 25 years, Father John taught the Law of God at the Kronstadt City School and Classical Gymnasium. The teacher-legislator won the love of many generations of students with his kind attitude towards his students and his work. He believed that the main thing in education is to give the fatherland a man and a Christian.

O. John received a lot of money annually for charity.

For these funds (the amount of one million rubles is called):

• fed the poor;
• established the “House of Industriousness” with a school, church, workshops, and shelter - first in Kronstadt, then in other cities of Russia;
• in his native village, Sura founded a convent and built a large stone temple;
• in St. Petersburg he built a convent on Karpovka;
• helped with prayer and pastoral guidance to Admiral S.O. Makarov during the creation of the first icebreaker for the Russian fleet;
• thanks to the efforts of Fr. Ioanna and S.O. Makarov, the Naval St. Nicholas Cathedral appeared in Kronstadt.

Father John was worried about Russia, seeing revolutionary sentiments in the country. He blessed the creation of the Union of the Russian People and became a member of this organization, considering it one of the possibilities for saving the Fatherland.

Gift of Prophecy

Father had the gift of foresight. Sometimes it manifested itself in small things. It is known that the priest did not take a significant amount of money from the lady: he felt that it had been acquired dishonestly. Which she later admitted.

The saint’s most important prophecies are about the consequences of the social unrest that gripped the country. Excessive freedom of society and the emergence of new media are dangerous, the far-sighted, intelligent shepherd warned.

In 1908, he complained that Russia was going through terrible times. Other states will take advantage of this situation, and war will come. For six years he warned about the First World War, the impending revolution. The cause of severe trials would be a retreat from faith in the Lord, the seer believed. Only by returning to God will Russia become a powerful power.