Fundamentals of the art of holiness. Volume I

And Gabriel of the Savior, a confessor of the faith, one of those who are now called “new martyrs”, completed his monumental work “Fundamentals of the Art of Holiness. The experience of presenting Orthodox asceticism”, the first volume of which was published at the end of the 20th century.

The twenties, the years of the book's creation, are merciless Solovki, and extrajudicial executions, the barbaric destruction of churches, and at the same time elements of political and economic relaxation allowed by the Kremlin regime. Almost physically in society, the approach of an even greater catastrophe, hopeless darkness, was felt. And at this time, amidst the persecutions that have befallen Bishop Barnabas, he is writing a book addressed to the future - the future in which the Russian people will begin to build life on the basis of self-restraint and repentance.

The Fundamentals of the Art of Holiness contribute to the development of an Orthodox worldview, return to the spiritual realism of the holy fathers, and help to acquire the skills of inner culture. And therefore, right now, more than ever, this multifaceted polyphonic book is needed by the new, resurgent Russia.

In the 19th century, prominent ascetic writers, Saints Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) and Theophan the Recluse, worked in Russia, but their books were devoted to individual ascetic topics, without giving a systematic exposition of the principles of asceticism. Only at the beginning of the 20th century, the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky), created a course of lectures, which, in fact, were an introduction to Asceticism as a science of spiritual anthropology. The Fundamentals of the Art of Holiness is the exposition of this science itself.

At the origins of the published book is the blessing of the elder Alexei (Soloviev) (the same one who, by intuition from above, drew the lot of the patriarchate in the Seventeenth year, pointing to St. Tikhon).

The book could not have been published without the selfless help of those who kept it, hid it, rewrote it. A special merit in its preservation belongs to the nun Seraphim (Lovzanskaya). I express my gratitude for the many years of work in preparing the manuscript for publication by I. Z. Dyakova, as well as I. M. Chapkovsky for organizational assistance, and, of course, to the Nizhny Novgorod Orthodox Brotherhood in the name of the Holy Right-Believing Prince Alexander Nevsky, which took upon itself the work on its edition.

To the reader. On the Purpose of the Christian Life

Where to begin?

Before me is "an inexhaustible sea of ​​miracles," as they say in Akathist to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker... This is not the sea that I saw lapping with azure waves off the coast of his metropolis - the World of Lycia, and not the cold and gloomy one that spread under me like a lead tablecloth for almost hundreds of miles when I looked at it from the top of Sekirnaya Mountain on Solovki ...

It's not even that sea ​​of ​​life, who is a sinner in vain(seeing) raised by a storm of adversity, seeks to swim comfortably, for which he prays to the Savior with tender words:

Raise my belly from aphids, O Many-merciful One!

Or maybe it will, when, through the abundant tearful prayer of this sinner, he suddenly hears a terrible, almighty voice: Shut up, stop... and pretend the silence of Velia(). Clouds of passion then depart from smart the sky weeping for sins, and on the horizon of the heart for the first time appear the dazzling rays of the rising Sun-Truth, Christ. The ferocious sea of ​​sinful life turns into the fertile sea of ​​holy life...

But who is able to exhaust its bottomless depth? And an enchanted man stands in front of him, looks into the clear mirror of his crystal waters (), and now ..... it all becomes fiery, as if from melted gold, and one of its sprays would be enough for a person to admire it all his life.

I involuntarily surrender to the power of memories.

For a long time, from the days of adolescence, I have been fascinated by the miracles and marvels of God. Reverence and amazement at the mysteries of nature and life vaguely and joyfully agitated my heart, making it languish in sweet love for the Creator. I always wanted from Him, and not from anyone else, to draw an answer, in what my and someone else's life How the world is standing. But I, however, everywhere looked for clues.

I remember how, as a young schoolboy, I was alone - always alone, even among forced meetings and acquaintances - wandering through fields, meadows, forests, lakes. At every rustling grass and blade of grass, at a songbird and a chirping grasshopper, at a roaring spring and a quiet breeze, not excluding people, dusty cities and even boring living rooms, I asked everyone, like the bride in Solomon's Song of Songs:

Have you not seen the One whom my soul loves? .. ()

But none of them gave me the desired answer.

However, when I learned the latter—that by the grace of God it happened early—as a student I continued to leaf through countless dusty books from the best libraries in my homeland, and partly abroad as well. Ancient huge folios in heavy wooden bindings, three hundred years old unique Gothic prints finished in pigskin, ossified with time and turned into celluloid or ivory, as it were, were interspersed with modern Russian and foreign books in lurid, decorated with gold leaf, like a fair gingerbread. , covers and works of church literature and liturgical books in yellow and crimson leather bindings with copper clasps. Leafing through the half-decayed, yellowed sheets of ancient publications (I was especially interested in such ones) with roots eaten by larvae, I kept trying to unravel the spiritual nature of man, in particular their authors and those persons who, over the course of several centuries of the existence of these volumes, tried to remove from their pages the secret of the contradictory, deceitful, passionate human being and his mysterious inner life. The notes of these faces in the margins spoke loudly to me about how their owners once worried in their hearts, from the bones of which now there is not even dust left ...

In the course of time, the object did not disappear from my eyes, but the limits of the horizon moved apart more widely. From the narrow framework of the surrounding reality and the present time, thought often began to drift deep into the past times and tried to find the Divine traces of Providence on the first pages of world history. Raising high above my head my tiny, but lit from faith and knowledge based on Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, a meager lamp, I made my way, sometimes at the risk of breaking my head and injuring myself almost to death, through piles of broken bricks of scientific buildings and hypotheses in history cultures, through the swamps of the stagnant philosophical thought of peoples who had departed from the holy Gospel, through the forests of the impenetrable darkness of public opinions to the original origins of the universal family, then again returned back along the rapids and steeps of universal human passions to the new times, the times of Christianity, tried to see everything that was noteworthy - and in the end in the end, he came to the greatest amazement, bliss, admiration from the wondrous ways and deeds of the Creative right hand! .. They are visible and not visible - visible by faith and blessed by the mind and invisible to the blind and proud of this world, like letters inscribed on water. In relation to these proud people, the prophet David sang:

Into the sea are thy ways,

And your paths are in many waters,

And Your footprints will not be known.

And what did I see during these walks through the shards, fragments, sheets and fragments of the world history of mankind? I saw only one thing: people at all times and epochs, in every rank and state, are again looking for only one thing - the lost paradise of happiness, wealth, love, freedom, bliss, light, gods, God - it doesn’t matter how you call it a state that, he thinks (correctly or incorrectly - as anyone likes), returns to a person the integrity of nature lost during the fall and the favor of God, gives him peace and tranquility of spirit ...

Oh, how many sleepless nights people spent trying to approach with their feeble thoughts close to the edges of the Higher Reality inaccessible to them! How many active attempts were there to penetrate the secrets of this peace of the soul and to discern the image of the Indescribable, visible as if in a fog! ..

The prophets themselves spent sleepless nights praying and contemplating the meaning of life.

My hand is stretched out at night, - says David, - and does not fall ... You do not allow me to close my eyes ... I meditate on ancient days, on the years of past ages; I remember my songs in the night, I converse with my heart, and my spirit tries... ()

But there have always been few people who have found Door life (; ), and more, thousands, millions of times more there were those who went back from Her, back, into the bottomless abyss of darkness and death.

It's night, or rather early morning. Not that sacred, mysterious night on which the forefather's wish came true, but another, several millennia before the birth of Christ. Then Patriarch Jacob spent the night alone in the field by the stream of Jabbok. And “Someone”, איש, comes to him and fights with him until dawn. And Jacob asked the Struggler, when he found out who He was: "Tell me your name?" For his soul melted away in the sweetness of communion with God and love for Jehovah. But there was still no complete possession of the Beloved, and He was far away and unrelated another person...

But now - another night, and again early morning. The pagan Pilate, having lost the meaning of life and faith in everything, mockingly and blasphemously asks the same One: “What is truth - τι εστιν αληθεια ? ”- and, without waiting for an answer, he leaves. This one no longer lived by the faith of Jacob and did not see that the Truth itself stood before him, η αληθεια ().

In the mirror of the times of history, I also saw the sands of the Libyan, Nitrian and other deserts with a dark blue velvet dome of the sky above them, with stars like huge multi-colored lamps suspended from it, and among these sands the night choirs of ascetics, praising God and penetrating the essence with a spiritual eye surrounding creature. But on the other hand, I also mentally saw countless crowds of people worshiping Satan, stretching their hands to him in search of happiness, throwing their beloved children into the fire, as a sacrifice to him in order to achieve this happiness and earthly well-being, numerous initiates emerged from the fog of centuries mystery cults, representatives of black and white magic, priests and astrologers of Chaldea and Babylon, from their high towers - ziggurasp - trying to penetrate the secrets of heaven and closely connecting them with the secrets of human personal and social life ... And according to those tablets with cuneiform inscriptions, which are now kept in the museums of Europe, not understanding and not feeling them mystical And magical the strength of scientists, it is clear that these magicians penetrated deeply into the mysteries of life and owned such secret sciences, the key to which was now left only to the Indian yogis of the highest degrees and their brethren. But it was forbidden knowledge, knowledge communicated by demons, and therefore false in its essence.

I remember my observations on the surrounding people, on modern humanity. And here - everything is the same, the same, and how could it be otherwise?!. And here is the eternal insatiable thirst for "something", even if it is expressed simply in the base pleasures of the womb and underbelly. But looking closer, I noticed something worse. Ancient humanity in the mass sought its ideals outside of itself, had at least some faith and honored at least some gods. But today's humanity strives to expel all faith in everything miraculous, even demonic. But it is not ashamed to invite everyone to believe in man himself and in the "miracles" of science.

There are many great powers in the world,

But stronger than a man

There is nothing in the world

it repeats with pride the saying of Sophocles. Or, as in Gorky: "Man - it sounds proud." Without thinking at all about the meaning of life, people see it in the realization of the idea of ​​a “superman”, a great “cult treger”, “conqueror and ruler of the universe”, and so they will reach the Antichrist, thinking to find in him the solution of all the mysteries of life.

“But I despise,” I said to “civilized” people, “all your cultural marvels and “miracles.” Just as the ancient martyrs denounced their contemporary pagans because they revere perishable idols - stone, copper, wood, so I must point out to you your madness when you see the whole meaning of your life in the construction of machines and palaces of stone, copper, iron and trees collapsing from wind, lightning, floods... And most importantly, what kind of "gods" are they who deafen the ears with noise, but do not give peace to the spirit, pamper the eyes and body, but do not free the restless soul from the anguish? .. What me your culture, when nothing in the world, except for the mysteriously given grace of God, does not rejoice my soul? You tell me that there is no God, but I experience - although my measure is small - I feel, as the righteous Job expresses himself, His Spirit in my nostrils(). What kind of truth is this, which you offer me in scientific books on natural science, when my eyes go blind from it, my thought is darkened (from the contradictions of countless hypotheses), and my will weakens before the senselessness of human labor? When the "gods" are yours, I will again use the argument of St. martyrs - they cannot protect themselves from corruption and destruction, how can they help others? When your "Titanics" go down like shells, airships are carried by the wind like fluff, houses with dozens of floors, which you blasphemously called "heavenly brushes", collapse into a pile of rubble at the slightest vibration of the soil during earthquakes, how can you talk about some kind of "power" of a cultured person?!.

And I said to myself: “Pitiful, unfortunate, miserable, worthless man! Why is he calling me? And this at a time when, long before the vaunted “flourishing” of cultural genius, holy people crossed the seas and oceans on a stone (St. Anthony the Roman), crossed rivers as if on dry land (St. Mary of Egypt), resurrected the dead, enclosed the sky and the earth (prophet Elijah)..."

And I looked for people like them or like them, I looked everywhere: in cities and villages, in monasteries and in the world, in forests and deserts - for they are everywhere, but they must be found. And did not leave my labors in vain– I found them.

But in general, are my memories sad, reader? Yes, since people have sinned and moved away from God, they have fallen into a state worthy not only of sadness, but also of weeping; they began to be tormented by questions about what the forefathers saw and knew and what they only have to believe in. And these questions burned and burn the hearts and minds of people of all times, unless a person finally drowns out his conscience with passions and vices and extinguishes in himself that divine fire (), which the pagans knew about when they created their myth about Prometheus. These questions have become for sinful people, by their own definition, "damned". In vain did they want to forget them, to get rid of them, not to be "themselves"; their soul gravitated, attracted there, where it always was and is its place, to the One who created it. Mind and flesh were always drawn to the earth, to lust; the soul, weakened, exhausted, tormented, gravitated towards the heavenly, pure. And a man from pride, at best from his ignorance, did not understand and does not understand himself and continues to wrestle with questions that were once clear to him, but now incomprehensible. He sees them through the crystal of his soul sooty with passions - and does not see, he tries to resolve them - and does not guess. And moans in despair:

Who will allow me that the secret of the century,

What is the essence of man?

Who is he? Where? Where is he going?

Who lives up there, above the stars? ..

But not always and not everyone gets the answer:

Heads in hieroglyphic kidars,

Heads in black berets, turbans,

Heads in helmets and papal tiaras

Wrestled over this issue in tears.

(Heine)

However, they died without solving the "mysteries" of life... Now let me turn to the question in its scientific and theoretical formulation.

Revelation, and even science itself, which does not recognize it, agrees that questions about the existence of the world and man and their purpose and purpose, in whatever form they may be expressed, were historically inherent in every era and every people. Starting with the so-called "prehistoric" man and ending with the finely educated European of the 20th century, everyone, in one way or another, tried to resolve the issue of personal happiness or the meaning of life in general. But these questions were posed and experienced with different acuteness, and they were not solved with the same definiteness. The answer to them depended and depends, on the one hand, on the person himself, and on the other, on causes outside him.

In any case, while humanity was in the darkness of paganism, while it did not see the light of Christianity, it, oddly enough, was closer to resolving the “damned” questions than now, somehow more chastely, so to speak, treated them. At least it didn't spew such blasphemy against God as it does at the present time.

But the ancient world and the classical world could not come up with a direct true answer to all the "perplexed" questions of a higher order, despite all the sharpness and depth of mind of its best representatives. Even the Old Testament sage, who possessed perfect wisdom - I mean Solomon - could not say even at the end of his life, what is its true meaning. He only saw that “everything is vanity and vexation of the spirit and there is no benefit - יתרזן (itron) - under the sun” (). There is no absolute, true, constantly abiding good (itron) here on earth - that's all he came to in the end. This is understandable. At that time, the possibility of solving the question of the essence of all entities in the future was only foreseen.

With the advent of Christianity, everything became clear and understandable. The veils were removed from all mysteries. Christ sanctified everything by His coming and the appearance of His Cross. I am the light of the world, - He said the same words on two different occasions (). But, unfortunately, “people loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be convicted, because they are evil. But he who does what is right goes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifest, because they are done in God ”(). The Lord's words began to come true immediately, as they were spoken, and will come true to the end common to all. Some people, eager to see the true light, in spite of everything, renounced first of all their "I", from their own judgment, philosophizing, imputed themselves to nothing, to scum, hated everything that the world around is proud of, and received in return a vision of their sins and after that the mysteries of God. Others, who thought that they possessed some kind of deep and great knowledge, that they meant something in the eyes of their own or others, that they were able to manage without Divine help, perished, became fools, plunged into darkness and, dying, recognized that they didn't know anything. Turning to examples and to life itself, we see that the questions with which the salvation of man and his position in the world are connected were resolved equally diligently by the people of both sides indicated, but were resolved as they should only by representatives of the first. Not the sworn philosophers and sages of this world that has gone mad have known the truth and essence of Christianity, but the simpletons and workers of real "philosophy", the highest wisdom - ascetics, hermits, sanctified and cleansed themselves of all passions by the fulfillment of the gospel commandments?

How did it happen? But for this we must remember what a worldly philosophy is, which imagines that it deals with these questions.

Surprising as it may seem at first glance, but at the very beginning of the existence of this science, its representatives more definitely understood what it was, while at the present time, after more than two thousand years of the existence of philosophy, its adherents have been placed by the historical course of its development in such the position that he is not able, not only by individual forces, but also by his whole crowd, to give an exact definition of his science. “All attempts to give such a definition of the universally binding concept of philosophy, says Oswald Külpe, turn out to be unsuccessful when compared with the facts of the historical development of this science ... In view of this, there is nothing left but to abandon the general definition altogether ...” Here is the word. But if a person does not know precisely and definitely neither the boundaries of the work that he is doing, nor his tasks and goals, nor where else his “philosophizing” will lead in several decades or more, then, of course, he is not on a solid footing. way, but is in danger of wasting labor and time in vain. Such a wise man - to use a crude comparison - is in no better position than that simpleton who hopes to win two hundred thousand rubles on a ticket left over from a tram trip.

Of course, the whole trouble here is not that philosophers do not know where to seat their mistress at the common table of human knowledge, but that conversations with this lady are idle and very instructive; the development of a scientifically based worldview and the study of the premises of any science, that is, the regular forms that determine observation and experimental analysis - everything that philosophy wants to do is, in essence, a product of the fallen cognizing human spirit, left to itself. The psychic man, ψυχικος (), "psychic", cannot understand the Truth and Purpose of things that can only be perceived spiritually,πνευματικως , being the fruit of a long ascetic feat and living religious experience . But philosophy, until recently, did not like the dogmatic point of view, but pursued and intends, of course, to pursue the critical point of view with all straightforwardness - in other words, in the spirit of the patristic language, it has always been in the dark. But even this is not enough. Philosophy, always dealing with final causes, the true essence of which can only be revealed by theology, instead of going hand in hand with them (I'm afraid to express it, to be ancilla, "servant", of him), broke away from the latter and opposed him. Establishing itself on his mind alone, which cannot cross the boundaries set for him by the Creator without grace, a person who claims to cognize and comprehend concepts and things that are just beyond the line of what is permitted to him, inevitably falls either into blasphemous idle talk, or into despair, or into blasphemy, or into madness, which, however, is all one and the same in the sense of destruction. That is why the apostle warned the Colossian Christians: “Be careful, brethren, that no one captivate you with philosophy” - and further explains what kind of philosophy it is, about which he says: “... did not captivate ... with empty deceit, according to human tradition , according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ "(). And so, in fact, it has always been, both in ancient times and at the present time. The only difference is that in ancient times, as I said, it was as if things were more correct, more definite, more reasonable - because, of course, it was simpler. Correctness, however, must be understood here in the sense of the fruitfulness of practical results achieved by a “philosophizing” person. “To be wise means to be virtuous,” Socrates said quite correctly, but he was mistaken when he made the opposite conclusion that a moral scoundrel is only an ignoramus; because the theory still requires its practical-compulsory application in life.

This practical basis of ancient philosophy, when subsequently intertwined with the theoretical weft of Christian dogma, gave luxurious "carpets" (στρωματα) of early Christian wisdom. But the new, Kantian, Christianity has given nothing and cannot give anything.

So, what is left to do for a convinced Christian who wants to learn the truth and sees the inconsistency of worldly philosophy both at home and in those places where it deigns to show itself? There is nothing else, of course, than to abandon it and turn to the teaching that legitimately bears this name. This is what our first fathers and teachers of the Church did. Rejecting the foundations and tasks of the “old” wisdom, they instead “searched the depths of the spirit” of the new and “clarified the nature of beings,” as St. Gregory the Theologian and his friend St. Basil the Great.

For these and people like them, philosophy was not at all what it was for pagan and unbelieving modern sages, and the path to it was also completely different, and because of this, finally, the result also became new and unexpected - miraculous. Philosophy for the Christian Orthodox "gnostic" - I will use the expression of Clement of Alexandria - began to consist in a pure life, in purifying oneself with the help of the grace of God from passions and acquiring virtues - in a word, it became a feat.

“If you do not expect anything difficult for yourself when you think about starting philosophy,” says St. Gregory, - then your beginning is not at all philosophical, and I condemn such dreamers. If this philosophy is still only expected, and has not come about in practice, then a person is pleased; if she came to you, then either endure, suffering, or (otherwise) you will be deceived in expectation.

Through feats, internal and external, a person achieves the gift of knowing things, in the true sense he understands the nature of beings ( την φυσιν των οντων ) It was these “philosophers” who revealed to people what the meaning and purpose of life is. But, of course, not life in general, but Christian life, and not just Christian, but Orthodox, although many would like to smooth out or completely erase these distinctions. But the word of God does not fit().

So what is the meaning of this life?

Here we come, finally, to the main and most important issue of this chapter, this book, and salvation itself. We must answer it not with the fortune-telling inventions of people who pretend to be scientists, knowledgeable and wise, not with the conclusions of their mind, obscured by passions, but with the spirit-bearing words of men, who, by fasting and holy life, brought their thoughts into fragrant clarity and acquired illumination from the Holy Spirit. Only then will we be sure of our salvation.

And they say the following. I will cite the testimonies of two fathers.

“Every person born into this world is even more so a Christian,” says the theologian St. Churches of her last times, Rev. Simeon, - let him not think that he was born in order to enjoy this world and taste its joys, because if this were the end and this purpose of his birth, then he would not die. But let him keep in mind that he was born, firstly, in order to be (begin to exist) from the non-existent, as he was; secondly, in order to, like a gradual growth of the body, grow little by little and ascend with spiritual age and good deeds to that sacred and divine state, about which blessed Paul speaks: until we reach ecu... perfect in a man, according to the age of the fulfillment of Christ(); thirdly, in order to become worthy to dwell in heavenly villages and be enrolled in a host of holy angels and sing with them the song of victory to the Most Holy Trinity, which alone gives him being, and alone, by her grace, bestows well-being, i.e. that shown sacred divine state.

For these purposes, the only begotten Son of God, the Lord, came to earth. Here is how the same St. father, answering those who believe that these goals are incomprehensible for a person and it is impossible for him - at least now - to achieve them:

“...Let us cease to carelessly treat the matter of our salvation and deceive ourselves, inventing excuses for our sins and saying that it is in no way possible to be this, that is, to achieve the shown perfection in the present kind, and thus philosophizing to the detriment of our salvation and for the ruin of our souls. For, if we wish, it is possible, and so conveniently possible, that one of our wills is enough to call us to such a height. Where the will is ready, there is no longer any obstacle. "And what are you saying, man?"

God wants to make us gods out of people (arbitrarily, however, and not forcibly), but we put time as a pretext - and reject the good deed. Isn't this madness and extreme ignorance? - He wants this so much that he came down to earth and incarnated just for this. Why, if only we also ascend, then absolutely nothing can already prevent this - let us only resort to Him with warm repentance.

And in many places the reverend father argues in a similar way, carefully carrying out the idea that the goal of a person’s life is to become saints And god on earth although not in the sense in which the "human-worshippers" in the world, like Kant, Feuerbach and others, develop their teaching.

Here are a few more lines from his writings.

“Just as fire, as soon as it finds firewood, ignites them naturally, so the grace of the Holy and worshiped Spirit seeks to kindle in our souls in order to shine and enlighten those in the world .. let them live pleasingly All Christians and shine like gods..."

“What is the purpose of the incarnate Dispensation of God the Word, which is preached in all Divine Scripture, but which, while reading this Scripture, we do not know? Not any other than that, in order, by partaking of what is ours, to make us partakers of what is His. For this the Son of God became the Son of Man to make us humans sons of God, building up our race by grace in what He Himself is by nature giving birth to us from above by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

But especially simple, illustrative, soul-saving, fragrant is the famous conversation on the same issue by another bride-leader of saving souls, kindred to us by blood and almost a contemporary - the spirit-bearing Abba Seraphim, the miracle worker of Sarov.

These spiritual Margaritas passed to us as a legacy thanks to their recording by Nikolai Alexandrovich Motovilov, “Seraphim’s servant,” as he himself liked to call himself. Everything in them is precious, important, excellent, I would not like to omit anything. But, embarrassed by the brevity of the place and remembering the word of Scripture - honey has gained yazhd moderately, but not how satiated you vomit(), - I shorten the word and from a long conversation I will give only its beginning.

“It was on Thursday (at the end of November 1831 - Bishop Barnabas), - Motovilov begins his wonderful story. - It was a cloudy day. There was a quarter of snow on the ground, and rather thick snow groats were powdering from above, when Father Fr. Seraphim began a conversation with me in his close pazhinka, near the same close hermitage, opposite the Sarovka River, near a mountain that comes close to its banks.

He placed me on the stump of a tree he had just cut down, and he himself squatted against me.

And, as we see from the sequence of the sacred narrative, this “did the right thing” is so pleasing to God that the Angel of the Lord appeared to Cornelius the centurion, who feared God and did the right thing, during his prayer and said: Send to Joppa to Simon usmar, there you will find Peter , and that ty speaks the verbs of the eternal life, “in them you and your whole house will be saved” (). So, the Lord uses all His divine means to give such a person the opportunity for his good deeds not to lose the reward in the life of life. But for this we must begin to live by right faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into the world to save sinners(), and acquiring the grace of the Holy Spirit, who brings the Kingdom of God into our hearts and paves the way for us to acquire the bliss of the life of the future age. But this is the limit of this pleasantness to God of good deeds, not done for the sake of Christ: our Creator provides means for their implementation. It remains for a person to implement them or not. That is why the Lord said to the Jews: “If you did not see quickly, you would not have sin. Now you say, we see, and yours remains on you ”(). If a person, like Cornelius, takes advantage of the pleasing to God of his deed, not done for the sake of Christ, and believes in His Son, then such a deed will be imputed to him, as if done for the sake of Christ and only for faith in Him. Otherwise, a person has no right to complain that his good did not go into action. This never happens only when doing good for Christ's sake, for good done for Christ's sake, not only in the life of the future age, the crown of righteousness intercedes, but also in this life fills a person with the grace of the Holy Spirit, and even as it is said: "Out of measure for God gives the Holy Spirit. The Father loves the Son and all the giving is in His hand ”().

Yes, your love of God! Thus, the acquisition of this Spirit of God is the true goal of our Christian life, while vigil, fasting, almsgiving, and other virtues done for the sake of Christ are only means to the acquisition of the Spirit of God.

- How is the grip? I asked Father Seraphim. - I don't understand this.

“Acquisition is the same as acquisition,” he answered me.

“Do you understand what it means to acquire money?” So it is all the same with the acquisition of the Spirit of God. After all, you, your love of God, understand what acquisition is in the worldly sense? The purpose of the worldly life of ordinary people is the acquisition, or making money, and among the nobles, in addition, receiving honors, distinctions and other awards for state merits. The acquisition of the Spirit of God is also capital, but only grace-filled and eternal, and it, like monetary, bureaucratic and temporary capital, is acquired in almost the same ways, very similar to each other. God the Word, our Lord, the God-man, likens our life to a marketplace and calls our life’s work on earth a purchase and says to all of us: “I’ll buy it until I come” (), “redeeming time, as the days are evil” (), that is, guess time to receive heavenly goods through earthly goods. Earthly goods are virtues done for Christ's sake, bringing us the grace of the All-Holy Spirit. In the parable of the wise and holy fools, when the holy fools did not have enough oil, it is said: “Go, buy at the marketplace” (). But when they bought, the doors to the bridal chamber were already closed, and they could not enter it. Some say that the lack of oil among holy fools marks a lack of good deeds in their lifetime. Such an understanding is wrong... The marketplace is our life; the doors of the bridal chamber, closed and not allowed to the Bridegroom, are human; wise and foolish virgins are Christian souls; oil - not deeds, but the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God received through them into the interior of our nature, transforming it from this to this(), that is, from corruption to incorruption, from spiritual death to spiritual life, from darkness to light, from the den of our being, where passions are tied like cattle and beasts - to the temple of the Godhead, to the bright chamber of eternal joy in Christ Jesus the Lord our Creator and Redeemer and Eternal Bridegroom of our souls.

How great is God's compassion for our distress, that is, inattention to His care for us, when God says: “Behold, I stand at the door and use it! ..” - meaning under the door the course of our life, not yet closed (). Oh, how I wish, your love of God, that in this life you would always be in the Spirit of God! “In whatever I find, in that I judge” (), says the Lord.

Woe, great grief, if He finds us weighed down with the cares and sorrows of life, for whoever endures His wrath, who will stand against His face! (). That is why it is said: “Watch and pray, lest you enter into misfortune” (), that is, do not be deprived of the Spirit of God, for vigilance and prayer bring us His grace. Of course, every virtue done for the sake of Christ gives the grace of the Holy Spirit, but prayer gives it most of all, because it is, as it were, always in our hands, as an instrument for acquiring the grace of the Spirit. Would you like, for example, to go to church, but either there is no church, or the service has departed; they would want to give to the beggar, but there is no beggar, or there is nothing to give; you would want to keep virginity, but according to your constitution or due to the efforts of enemy machinations, which you cannot resist due to human weakness, you do not have the strength to fulfill this; they would want to do some other virtue for the sake of Christ, but they also don’t have the strength, or it’s impossible to find a chance. And this certainly does not apply to prayer: everyone always has an opportunity for it - both the rich, and the poor, and the noble, and the simple, and the weak, and the healthy, and the sick, and the righteous, and the sinner. How great is the power of prayer even for a sinful person, when she ascends with all her heart, judge by the following example from the Holy Scriptures: when, at the request of a desperate mother who has lost her only-begotten son, abducted by death, a harlot wife who has fallen in her way and even from only that the former sin was not cleansed, touched by the grief of her mother, she cried out to the Lord: “Not for me for the sake of a cursed sinner, but for tears for the sake of a mother who grieves for her son and is firmly confident in Your mercy and omnipotence, Christ God, resurrect, Lord, her son! and the Lord resurrected him. So, your love of God, the power of prayer is great, and it most of all brings the Spirit of God, and it is most convenient for anyone to correct it. Blessed are will be when will get us Lord God vigilant() in the fullness of the gifts of His Holy Spirit! Then we can boldly hope to be caught up in the clouds at the meeting of the Lord in the air(), coming with power and much glory() to judge the living and the dead and repay someone according to his deed().

Here, your love of God, consider it a great happiness to talk with the wretched Seraphim, being sure that he, too, is not deprived of the grace of the Lord.

What are we talking about the Lord Himself, the Source of ever-unfailing all goodness, both heavenly and earthly?! But by prayer we are worthy to converse with Him Himself, the All-good and Life-Giving God and our Savior...

– Well, what about other virtues, done for the sake of Christ, to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit? After all, you only want to talk to me about prayer, don’t you?

– Acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit and all other virtues of Christ for the sake of them, trade them spiritually, trade those of them that give you more profit. Collect the capital of the grace-filled excesses of God's goodness, put them in God's eternal pawnshop from immaterial percentages and not four or six per hundred, but one hundred per one spiritual ruble, but even that is innumerable times more. For example: gives you more of the grace of God and vigil, watch and pray; fasting gives a lot of the Spirit of God, fast; almsgiving gives more, do almsgiving, and thus judge every virtue done for Christ's sake.

So I'll tell you about myself, poor Seraphim. I come from Kursk merchants. So, when I was not yet in the monastery, we used to trade in goods that give us more profit. So do you, father, and, as in trading, the strength is not only to trade, but to get more profit, so in the Christian life, the strength is not only to pray or some other or do a good deed. Although the apostle says: "Pray without ceasing" (). If we judge correctly about the commandments of Christ and the apostles, then our Christian work consists not in increasing the number of good deeds that serve the goal of our Christian life only by means, but in deriving greater benefit from them, i.e. greater acquisition of the most abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit.

So I wish, your love of God, that you yourself would acquire this ever-failing source of God's grace and always reason with yourself whether you are found in the Spirit of God or not? And if in the Spirit, then blessed, there is nothing to grieve about - even now at the Last Judgment of Christ! If not, then we need to figure out why and for what reason the Lord God the Holy Spirit deigned to leave us, and again seek and seek Him and not lag behind until the searched for Lord God the Holy Spirit is found and will again be with us by His grace. Our enemies who drive us away from Him must be so attacked until their ashes are taken, as the prophet David said: mine" ().

That's right, daddy! So, if you please, trade in spiritual virtue. Distribute the gifts of the grace of the Holy Spirit to those who demand, following the example of a kindled candle, which itself shines, burning with earthly fire, and other candles, without belittling its own fire, kindles into illumination for everyone in other places. And if this is so with regard to earthly fire, then what shall we say about the fire of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God?! For, for example, earthly wealth, when it is distributed, becomes scarce, but the more the heavenly wealth of God's grace is distributed, the more it multiplies with the one who distributes it. So the Lord Himself deigned to say to the Samaritan woman: “Drink from this water he will thirst again, and drink from the water, south of Az I will give him, he will not thirst forever, but the water, south of Az I will give him, will be in him a source ever flowing into the eternal belly "() " .

So, the goal of our Christian life is to come to a state in which it would be possible for us to receive the Holy Spirit. The goal of a Christian's life is not to do virtue, to live piously and take comfort in this, but to receive the Holy Spirit. And if from our virtues we do not come to perfection, into a spiritual state, then what are they for?! Do not even the Gentiles do the same?(.)

This also dismisses St. The Gospels reproach those people who accuse the monks of fanaticism and useless "torment" of themselves with exploits, when he is kind and loving and all suffering is alien to Him ...

Obviously, these people either attribute to the monks their false understanding of Christianity and then begin to criticize it (it often happens that they suddenly begin to accuse it of something that it does not teach at all), or they mix church teaching with the personal opinion of some people they meet. who called themselves this glorious and honorable name and told them something absurd. And true monks not only do not value all their - and even superhuman - deeds, but they also do not see the virtues in themselves. And if worldly and unbelieving people thought of this simple truth that any torment does not constitute bliss, that is, the goal of life, then would monks, holy men and women who see the secret thoughts of the laity, really not have enough sense for this? think so – means to unite at the same time with the enemies of “Christ, heretics and antichrists. No, it is not for the sake of virtues that real monks strive, and even more so, not for the sake of the feat itself, they “torment” themselves, but perform these virtues and feats and “torment” themselves for the sake of receiving the Holy Spirit. This: and it is explained that although every virtue gives the grace of the Holy Spirit, the prudent, however, do one thing - at one time, another - into another, and another - and completely postponed. An unintelligent (in a spiritual sense), but very knowledgeable and educated, will probably reproach such a person - as they do when they see, for example, that a person has the talent to speak, and he suddenly imposes the feat of silence on himself; according to his gracious heart and wealth, he would do charity all his life, but he refuses and, being the only heir to his father, goes to the monastery. Sometimes we also see in the lives of the saints that they drove the poor away from their cells, but received the rich and sat with them for hours (not for human pleasing, of course, as a short-sighted, passionate mind might think), or sometimes they didn’t eat or drink anything for months, and then suddenly they went out to the market, to the porch (as if on purpose for temptation!), ate, when it was not necessary, sausage, etc. and so on. And the saints did so from a great mind, which for carnal people seems pure madness(κοινη, which at that time became widespread in the Roman Empire. See: Sobolevsky S.κοινη, "common" Greek (in connection with the Biblical) / Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia. T. 9. St. Petersburg, 1908. Stb. 615. The Greek expression thus conveys the literal words of Pilate, and for those who know this language the absence of a term at αληθεια will be very significant (the predicate does not play a role here. Cf.:). For truth and doubt in the quest of mankind, see: Florensky P., priest Pillar and ground of truth. Experience of the Orthodox Theodicy in 12 Letters. M., 1914.

An expression characteristic of the truly great ancient fathers of Egypt and Palestine (cf., for example, the answers of Barsanophius the Great). Well, therefore, Motovilov called Rev. Seraphim "Great".

Next comes the most interesting part of the conversation - how to find out if a person is in the Spirit, and the experimental proof of this, revealed to Motovilov through the prayer of St. Seraphim by the coming and descent upon them of the Holy Spirit Himself.

Nizhny Novgorod diocese

In the world Belyaev Nikolai Nikanorovich, was born on May 12 in the village. Ramenskoye Bronnitsky st. Moscow province. in the family of a weaving factory locksmith. Religious education is obliged to the mother - the daughter of the deacon of the churchyard Dorka Zagornovskaya vol. Bronnitsky U., in childhood and adolescence he loved to read books of spiritual content, especially the lives of the saints.

In early August of the same year he was appointed Bishop of Pechersk, Vicar of the same diocese.

“Not having sufficient spiritual experience at that time, Bishop Barnabas was poorly oriented in reality, judged it in many respects speculatively, guided by a momentary mood, not verified by worldly experience. This spiritual immaturity was, on the one hand, the cause of Bishop Barnabas’s confusion before Renovationists, caused by the inability to distinguish obedience from unscrupulousness, on the other hand, left a seal on the bishop's work. Subsequently, Bishop Barnabas intended to correct the text of the book, but this plan remained unfulfilled ".

Compositions

• St. Barsanuphius the Great. His life and teachings. Candidate essay, 1915;
• From seen and heard // Choice. M., 1990. No. 8;
• Life of St. Gregory of Acragast. Simferopol, 1992;
• Along the Volga... to the Kingdom of Heaven // The gift of apprenticeship. M., 1993. S. 25-137;
• One night // Ibid. pp. 235-385;
• Orthodoxy / Holy Trinity Novo-Golutvin Monastery. [Kolomna], 1995;
• Fundamentals of the art of holiness: the experience of presenting the Orthodox. ascetics. N. Novg., 1995-1998. 4 tons;
• The experience of Orthodox asceticism / Foreword. K. E. Skurata, priest. S. Yavitsa // BT. 1996. Sat. 32. S. 24-119;
• On a thorny path to heaven: About... the life of an old man... schiarchim. O. Gabriel. M., 1996;
• Rev. Synclitikia of Alexandria, or Lesser Asceticism. N. Novg., 1997.
• "Uncle Kolya is against ..." Notebooks of Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) 1950-1960 / Comp. enter. essay, commentary P.G. Protsenko. - Nizhny Novgorod: Publishing House "Christian Library", 2010. 864 p., ill. pp. 739-740.

Literature

• CA FSB RF. D. R-2718; Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Novosibirsk region F. 34. D. 15142.
• Damascus. Book. 1. S. 47-85;
• Protsenko P. G. Biography of Bishop. Barnabas (Belyaeva): To Heavenly Jerusalem: The Story of an Escape. N. Novg., 1999;
• Kirlezhev A. The second truth // RM. P., 2000. No. 4342, November 23.

Used materials

• Igum. Damascus (Orlovsky). "Barnabas (Belyaev)" // Orthodox Encyclopedia, vol. 6, p. 649-650

Varnava (Belyaev), Bishop of Pechersk, vicar of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese.

Born May 12, 1887. His father was a mechanic at a weaving factory. Ramensky Bronnitsky district, mother - the daughter of a village deacon.

In 1908 he graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal.

A spiritual upheaval prompts Nicholas to abandon his career as an engineer, after which he visits Optina Hermitage, where he becomes close to the famous elder, Archimandrite Barsanuphius.

In 1911 he entered and in 1915 graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy with a Ph.D. in theology. He was tonsured a monk by the rector of the academy, Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky).

On September 11, 1915, he was appointed teacher of the Nizhny Novgorod Theological Seminary in Homiletics.

He was elevated to the rank of archimandrite.

He was the rector of the Staro-Golutvinsky monastery of the Moscow diocese.

In 1922 he retired due to illness.

In the summer of 1922, shaken by the fact that the ruling hierarch of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, Archbishop Evdokim (Meshcheryakov), had joined the Renovation movement, he decided to go into seclusion to devote himself entirely to writing. 19 October Art. Art. 1922 he takes the feat of foolishness. From now on, he is a madman for the authorities, and, with the blessing of the elders, he writes books in his home solitude and looks for ways to preserve church culture in the face of growing persecution of religion.

From that time until 1928, he created his main work, Fundamentals of the Art of Holiness.

In 1933, the OGPU was arrested in Moscow and, under Art. 58 sentenced to three years in the camps.

He served his term in the Biysk camps in Altai, continuing to play the fool here. He was declared insane by camp doctors, transferred to the Mariinsky camps, from where, with permission from Moscow, he was released in 1936.

Until 1949 he lived in Tomsk, then moved to Kyiv. Until the last years of his life, he continued to work on new works.

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Immersion in pastoral work. "Feeding"

March 1921-1922 Nizhny Novgorod

Ep. Barnabas in the Caves Monastery.

Church Youth Club.

Acquaintance of Vera Lovzanskaya with Bishop Barnabas.

Young people who came to Vladyka for spiritual help.

Diveevskaya Blessed Maria Ivanovna.

The beginning of the records of the "chronicle" of Russian life.

The state of mind of "little" people.

Fire in Pechersk Sloboda. Divorce proceedings

In March 1921, Bishop Varnava, inspired by the blessing he had received, returned to the cathedra, to the Caves Monastery, to his flock. However, at the same time under the command of Archbishop Evdokim.

Outwardly, everything went on as before, Vladyka lived in the Caves Monastery, at the gatehouse church of St. Euphemia of Suzdal, on the second floor; his cell-attendants, nuns Matryosha and Sasha, who were placed downstairs, helped him with the housework. The monastery, which stood on the banks of the Volga, not far from the picturesque Pechersk Sloboda, in which "small proprietors" lived, a pious and stable people, was in ruins, there were a handful of monks. The bishop, tall and thin, prayed a lot and ate little, the cell attendants told the "girls" (spiritual children),

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that his food was cooked in microscopic pots (slightly larger than a child's saucepan). He served a lot and earnestly.

“When he entered the temple and put on a mantle and went to venerate the icons, the monks sang “Worthy”. He walked slowly, dragging his feet somewhat from weakness. On Sunday evenings, the Paraklisis of the Mother of God always served in the Assumption Cathedral (in Pechery). (Opposite the icon of the Mother of God of the Caves, there was a small pulpit, on which he climbed. A large pulpit stood in the middle of the temple.) At this service, which was sung by all the worshipers, their spiritual children gathered; only here he delivered great sermons. (At the liturgy, for the whole people, he spoke briefly.) At every divine service, morning and evening, and during the preparatory weeks of Great Lent, he gave a sermon, usually not long, in which he spoke about one or another spiritual rule that helps to live.

He explained, for example, what a correct confession is: “This is the second day you hear the canon of Andrew of Crete, in which sins are called by their proper names, as they are in life, not masked by anything. The whole work consists in that, that it is not enough to name a sin in confession by name, but it is necessary ... to describe its whole essence. There are enough good examples for us in the Bible, where sins are directly called by their proper names... So I appeal to you with an admonition, whoever wants to be saved and is looking for salvation, listen carefully to what confession is. What do we usually think of as confession? He came to the priest for three to five minutes, named a few sins and was clean. Sometimes some God-loving soul wants to say everything that bothers her, but the confessor does not want to listen, he has no time ... Choose a confessor according to your heart, arrange a time with him, prepare yourself, remember your whole life from childhood and when you come .. Tell me in detail... This should be done at least once in your life... I remember such a case: a young lady came to me for confession, uttered trifles and came out completely almost sinless, a righteous woman - just angelic purity. And I see that there is something, I began to look for if there is something else hidden in my soul, then she tells me, thinking: “That’s only it,” and an answer follows like “I live with my brother” or something else. something like that. This means that we have fallen to such an extent that we call sin “unless” .

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An experienced homilet, Vladyka once and for all decided for himself the following question: “Do you want to speak “stylish” sermons, but without the spiritual content that is necessary at the moment, or, having discarded any care for any beauty of external form and logic, speak only what grace puts into heart?" And chose the latter - direct inspiration. In principle, I never prepared for sermons, but “I wanted to speak by inspiration, so that, by mysterious suggestion, they would say what is needed at the moment for some listener, for the soul that came to receive something in its sorrow and spiritual need.. Therefore, “the most brilliant thoughts,” Vladyka wrote about a certain charismatic preacher, in whom it is easy to recognize him himself, “he considered the devil’s obsession, the desire to seduce him and catch him in beauty, if they did not come after he, having gone to the pulpit and crossing himself, he will say: "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!" He carefully took care that the field of his consciousness was clear of all thoughts, even if they were pious... Only prayer to the great preachers, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, he allowed himself before going on a sermon.

And then, crossing himself, he began a conversation, reading it as if from a book placed before his eyes, until he saw the mysterious letters ended and then again white pages. Then his thoughts immediately dried up, and he could no longer find a single word. Put: "Amen", wherever it was necessary, and went to his place.

And during the appearance of a huge influx of thoughts that came to him as if from somewhere outside, he tried only ... not to miss a single one and to give them some tolerable form that most accurately conveys them. From the desire to convey to the people as many of these thoughts as possible, he often choked on words, ran from one line of the mysterious book to another (for he could not say everything, he clearly saw, and therefore chose the best), not caring whether it came out logically. or not. He reasoned like this: God gave me handfuls of diamonds, which should be distributed to people in 5-10 minutes... And he distributed them, scattered them... And then do whatever you want out of them. Yes, and how else? Impossibly living thought, life-giving spirit

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nail into the coffin of logical circuits, damned patterns and literary stencils.

“When I spoke several sermons at the liturgy (once up to five!), - Vladyka recalled, - then these two: the apologetic, after the Gospel at the liturgy of the catechumens, and the mystical, before (or after) communion, for the "faithful", I considered them to be the main . Usually he went out to the pulpit with a small Gospel in Russian, used at prayer services, and using its text he explained the daytime conception.

Once, we read in the notes of his spiritual daughter, “during a sermon I saw the Light, and this sermon was of such power that I don’t know if anyone present will ever forget it; he spoke on the subject of "repentance"; this topic is his favorite, and often, having started a sermon about something else, he switched to his favorite topic about repentance, the suffering of Christ, weeping over his sins and contrition of the heart.

He attached great, even central, significance to inner weeping in the heart dispensation, of himself and his flock. “He always told me,” Dolganova V. I. testified, “Cry incessantly, be in society, laugh, and cry and cry with your soul.” And he literally put his words into practice: he speaks, and sometimes smiles, and his eyes are sad, kind, with his soul, which means he always cried.

For the third year, the Soviet government "successfully ruled unhappy Russia." Many intellectuals, people with a sharpened conscience, foresaw the end of the old world in advance and even wished for it, hoping that in this way the contradictions of modern civilization with its social injustice and spiritual narrowness would be resolved. Subtle and sensitive to the slightest vulgarity of nature hoped for the birth of a new - with an expanded cosmic consciousness - a person who would create a new science and culture, and on the new earth, life freed from vulgarity would turn into continuous creativity. Such aspirations were shared not only by the intelligentsia, but to one degree or another by many representatives of the clergy, and even of the most conservative direction, as we saw in the example of Bishop Macarius (Gnevushev). In the opinion of the majority of those who wish, historical changes should have begun as a result of the victory of Russia and its allies in the First World War. (Only liberal circles, for example, adherents of the People's Freedom Party, saw the glorious future of the fatherland

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in the light of the achievements of Western political thought: pluralism, protection of the social interests of the population, and so on, while the right hoped for the restoration of national principles in all spheres of life. But both believed that Russia would have to play the role of a world leader in the 20th century.) The hour of historical change has struck. The great empire not only lost the war, but also collapsed itself. However, the appearance of the builders of the new world caused a shock in society. The new world became the embodiment of the ancient hell, familiar from the images in the church vestibules.

Very soon it became clear to everyone that in order to survive, it is necessary to adapt to reality turned inside out. And the citizens were actively engaged in their own turnaround. If for some it was given easily and simply, then for others it meant almost complete self-destruction. It was especially hard for the younger generation from "good" families, the children of the educated classes. What was in store for these youth? Restrictions in the choice of professions and in obtaining an education, persecution for unreliability on the basis of an alien class origin, mockery of their old-time fragility, spoiled breed. What could conscientious young men and women brought up in Christian traditions oppose to the demands of revolutionary reality? It was possible, of course, to give up on the past, throw yourself into the whirlpool of emancipation and free love, turn into social activists and dance in the evenings in workers' clubs with energetic representatives of the new hegemon, but this was not acceptable to everyone. Soul grieved.

In those years, Christian youth circles, which arose for a brief historical moment in many large cities, were a saving outlet for some half-educated gymnasium and schoolgirls. These were the last shoots of the great circle tradition of the Russian intelligentsia.

After the dissolution in 1918 of the Brotherhood of the Transfiguration of the Savior and the execution of a number of its members, church and public life in Nizhny came to a standstill. Arriving in the city, Archbishop Evdokim tried to show himself from the best side, launched an active work, began to read a series of lectures in the Ascension Church under the general title "The Russian Church in America", arranged open pastoral

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Russian courses at the Diveevo Compound (as opposed to the theological courses organized by Bulgakov and Bishop Lavrenty). When famine began in the Volga region, he organized a fundraiser in the courtyard, in the Serafim Church, to help the victims, food (cereals, sugar) was brought here. In 1920, he organized a Christian circle, "closed", where for some reason they were accepted under his personal patronage. There were only girls and two of his subdeacons. This murky undertaking had unexpected and fruitful consequences.

Here is a description of the path that led one young girl through participation in the work of such a circle to a serious spiritual life.

The February revolution found the engineer's daughter Vera Lovzanskaya in Astrakhan, where she studied at the gymnasium. The headmistress called her and told the girl to urgently go home (she lived across the river, at the Outpost, and the headmistress was afraid of unrest in the city). Vera safely got home, not noticing any "revolution", the Cossacks stood in their side, and everything was calm. But when she later came to the gymnasium, her friends surprised her with a speech hitherto unheard of. “Now freedom, and you are brought up in the old way. Now everything is possible and you don’t have to obey your parents.” “But I listened to them and did not understand anything. What freedom? Shvoboda!

Returning home with her parents to Nizhny Novgorod, she continued her studies at the Institute of Noble Maidens. After the October Revolution, when secondary educational institutions turned into secondary schools, children were immediately forced to sing the Internationale before the start of classes (instead of praying and “God Save the Tsar”), which unpleasantly offended them. Her father, Vasily Nikolaevich, attended church once a year, her stepmother, burdened with a large family, somewhat more often. The daughter was not specifically involved in religious education, but she herself, out of an incomprehensible attraction of her heart, regularly ran to the “home” parish church of the Praise of the Most Holy Theotokos at the Pokhvalinsky Congress or to the convent of the Exaltation of the Cross.

She was sixteen years old when she learned that Evdokim organized pastoral courses for the people. “I also began to go to them,” she recalls, “to Serafimo-Di-

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Veevskoye metochion, and then began to visit here the church of St. Seraphim. Once we went there with Marusya Meteleva (a thin, pale, fashionably dressed, intelligent girl), we look - to the right of the entrance some girls are standing in rows, twenty years old. We learn; it turns out that this is a Christian circle organized by Evdokim and, moreover, “closed”. Only his two subdeacons and these refined, intelligent young ladies entered there. They keep close, gather somewhere at Evdokim's. Of course, we are envious that, they say, closed.

And then we learn that they were allowed to open a second circle of Christian youth. There were probably 200 people in it. They gave us a capacious church, Three Saints (on Kanatnaya Street), with a library; we established order in the church there: we looked after the children during the service, gathered there, read, organized a choir and sang the entire episcopal service. I was a performer, I sang in a second voice ... They arranged reports. I remember giving a report on the Sixth Ecumenical Council... The chairman of the circle was Kostya Nelidov, the future subdeacon of Bishop Barnabas. He was young, still in college uniform (with such red shoulder straps), and his deputy was a former officer. They were of a different spirit; Kostya is of a purely monastic and spiritual direction, but this one has this: do not miss here, and receive it there. Of course, the circle did not last long. Could such a circle be tolerated in such years? The ban soon followed. Shortly before its closing, Kostya suddenly comes to the meeting and says: “Dear brothers and sisters, Vladyka has arrived, whoever has any spiritual needs, please, the doors are always open, he lives in Pechery, Bishop Barnabas.”

When the circle ceased to exist, some of its members, who gravitated towards a more rigorous spiritual life, began to visit the Caves Monastery. Once Vera also made up her mind, went to the side door in the wall of the house church of St. Euphemia of Suzdalsky, called, having time to think: “It would be better if they didn’t open it.” They opened the matushkas and took them upstairs to the bishop's waiting room. She didn't remember much from her excitement. She talked about herself and her favorite books. Then I read Ep. Theophan the Recluse ("What is spiritual life"). Vladyka ordered that the book be left behind and that the Ladder and Abba Dorotheus be taken out. Set a date for confession.

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She came to her first confession (in the spring of 1921) “sinless.” For two days I didn’t eat anything without permission, I went to work, and at home, before Easter, I had to clean up. It turned out that she “forgot” all her sins and did not know what to confess. Noticing her condition, Vladyka said: “Go and write down all your sins on paper from the age of seven.” The next time she brought a sheet where not only sinful deeds were already recorded, but also thoughts (“it was supposed to be so on the conscience”). After what I wrote, I felt ashamed. Vladyka went out through his door, in a white cassock, read a prayer of permission and drew a cross on her forehead with his finger ... Thus appeared in his entourage the one who later helped the mentor survive in this world.

Confession took place infrequently (“Vladyka said that it was necessary to confess in such a way that the enemy would not leave anything anywhere in the corner, otherwise everything would start again”), at intervals they sent letters through the nuns with questions that arose in life and required resolution. (As in the speculative realm, so, for the most part, in the concrete everyday, practical one: “We personally went to Vladyka very rarely, in exceptional cases, when we found it necessary to call, and we wrote to him about our spiritual needs and temptations... ”) Then, in the church, the nuns returned them with his resolution. The responses were accepted.

Lidia Serebrovskaya, the daughter of a well-known Nizhny Novgorod barrister and member of the Savior-Preobrazhensky Brotherhood, also came to the bishop from the circle. Her father, an orphan and a graduate of the Nizhny Novgorod diocesan orphanage, was active in church and social activities, engaged in extensive charity work, was known as a man of strong convictions and a truth lover. In 1918, the communists shot him, and then mockingly apologized to his wife that they had shot him by mistake.

Elena Rozhina, a teacher, came (later she helped Bishop Bartholomew (Remov), got to Solovki), Valeria Umanova, Olga Patrusheva, the daughter of a forester, and others. Nelidov's friend from the noble institute Pyotr Skipsky nailed to Pechery, he was from a doctor's family and he managed to get into the university, to the physics and mathematics department. Back in May 2020, Vladyka suggested

Vladyka recalled that special state, “burning of the spirit,” with which the “girls” ran to Pechory. It seemed that a new life was beginning, a revival of the atmosphere of the ancient Christian community, serving the Creator with one heart, one mouth and one deed. The closest and indispensable assistant to the bishop (except for Nelidov) was Valentina Ivanovna Dolganova. Like her older sister Faina (also the spiritual daughter of Vladyka), she got a job as a clerk, and then as a statistician in the provincial Statistical Bureau. Having received the status of a Soviet employee, she could provide significant services to her confessor. He often needed to travel to Moscow on spiritual matters,

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but one could only get on the train with a reservation, and Valentina always got a ticket. He said: "My prayer, and your labors." A few years later, interrogating him at the OGPU, the Chekists were surprised: “We know that you have been to Moscow. But how did you get there, on horseback?” “Why on horseback,” Vladyka replied. - By train".

“Valentina was the closest spiritual daughter of Vladyka. She worked in a Soviet institution, lived with her parents and went to services in Pechery. She somehow immediately began to stand out from all of us. Dressed in an almost monastic dress (she sat like that at work), smart, energetic, strong-willed, with an interesting appearance - her superiority over all of us was felt. She was an indispensable novice for the lord. She never considered either her personal needs, or her family, or her work, and was always at his complete disposal.

Somehow the girls noticed that Valentina was the closest to Vladyka. Lydia Serebrovskaya confessed (he forced her to open her thoughts) that she was jealous of Valentina. "All right," Vladyka said. "You will be me instead of Valentina. Are you ready?" - "Yes". - "Well, well, I have to send someone to Sarov tomorrow. Or to Marya Ivanovna in Diveevo, I have questions for her. Will you go?" “But I have to ask how my mother will react to this.” - “Ah, mom! But Valentina doesn’t ask mom. What do I need, I entrust her, and how Valentina wants it, but she arranges it. And you have a mother.”

On the advice of the bishop, Valentina Dolganova wrote down stories heard from acquaintances at work, which revealed either the Providence of God, or the state of modern minds and hearts. She wrote down the history of Nizhny Novgorod monasteries and ascetics. She went with the questions of the bishop to Blessed Maria Ivanovna of Diveyevo and left notes of her conversations, the most valuable materials for understanding the phenomenon of Russian foolishness.

“The blessed holy fool Diveevskaya Maria Ivanovna was considered by Vladyka to be a great clairvoyant old woman. He always sent his spiritual children to her and he himself constantly addressed questions, sending faithful people to Diveevo especially for this. When I came to Vladyka, - recalls the nun Seraphim (V.V. Lovzanskaya), - he soon told me: "You should go to Sarov and go

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in Diveevo to Maria Ivanovna: what will she say?" In his humility, without taking the decision on himself, he concluded from her words which way it was necessary to lead the person. The blessed one loved the bishop very much. She always greeted those who came from him with joy and said: "They came from Barnabas from the servants." She called him her son, and also repeated: "Christ loves him very much, because he has a lot of humility" ... I personally went to Sarov very often and always stopped by the blessed one. Of course, clairvoyance she was exceptional, terrified me. She saw through all your sins, she constantly knew what was happening to a person for many miles and for a long time, and all her predictions always came true.

Vladyka blessed his novice for another important task. The All-Russian Local Council in 1918 called on the hierarchy to "collect information and notify the Orthodox population through printed publications and a living word about all cases of persecution of the Church and violence against confessors of the Orthodox faith." We know of only one case when, in the whirlwind of revolution in the territory occupied by the Bolsheviks, an interview was conducted with witnesses and their testimony was recorded shortly after the execution of the martyrs. With the blessing of Bishop Varnava, this was done by Valentina Dolganova, collecting evidence of the execution in the village of Puzo in August 1918 of the ascetic Evdokia Shikova with three cell attendants.

On October 4, 1921, during the Vespers, on the eve of the memory of the Saints of Moscow, Vladyka spoke about how the ancient Christians venerated their martyrs, collecting their blood “and every bit of their relics”, keeping what was collected in their homes as the greatest shrine. The memory of the new martyrs and ascetics was such a sacred thing for him.

Sometimes the rapists broke into the Pechersky Monastery. Once, at twelve o'clock in the morning, the commissar with the Red Army came with wine and demanded to drink with them, but a quarter burst in their hands - under the sign of the cross of the bishop.

Coming into contact with the religious life of the people, Vladyka saw a terrible moral decline and at the same time remarkable piety, the experience of living communion with God. Usually, speaking of a zealous shepherd and his labors, drawing

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They praise him as a heavenly messenger, speaking only truths and doing good deeds to the flock, but Vladyka looked at his ministry differently and tried to learn that otherworldly thing that was revealed in communion with the believing people: the innermost life of the Church. It is no coincidence that he wanted to give his notes a characteristic title - “The Ways of Divine Providence”, and prefaced the diary of 1921 with the following explanation: “With my acceptance of the episcopal rank, I fell into the sphere of such wonderful actions of Divine Revelation in relation to people and, in general, manifestations of the mysterious (even negative) aspects of the otherworldly spiritual world or the life of the human soul within our rough, stout, material, earthly reality, that leaving them unattended, giving time to crush the memory of them and erase traces of memories, would be extremely unreasonable, if not sinful" .

He felt like a chronicler, who was shown the state of the soul of a modern Russian person, given to hear the call of the Creator to specific people and see the response of their free will to this call. The picture opened instructive. “Unbelief is all around,” the bishop wrote, “people are mad, they don’t recognize the spiritual world, which is supposedly an “invention of the priests,” they say that there is no God, no angels, no demons, and at the same time these accursed, that is, demons , suggesting to some that they - demons - do not exist, others are tortured, come to them, host in their homes and souls with all insolence and cruelty ... "

In Gogol's artistic fantasies, the insignificant employee Akaki Akakievich was absorbed in the dream of an overcoat as the highest goal in this world, but in reality, the "little people" lived on the petty joys of a wretched economy, family worries, and the element of folk household superstitions. In the cycle of emotions, too many did not discern the Divine presence, and the Church was noticed only on holidays, by the names of temples, by the names of priests serving in a particular locality. Man was completely enslaved by carnal, psychic, class instincts. And often in the crowd that filled the churches, terrible cries of demoniacs were heard - these animated lumps of matter, lost in the endless expanses of being. The inner world of people made itself known to the

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pami constant melancholy and darkness, inescapably abiding in feelings and thoughts. The falling away from spiritual life occurred as a result of the oppression of the God-bearing people in the past - and even more so in the merciless present - by the burden of the historical mission, placed on the shoulders of these little ones by their leaders (purple-bearing and red-starred), as a result of the ruthless bureaucratic bridle thrown over the fate of man.

Here is Natalya, a peasant woman from the remote village of Lopatishchi, Vasilsur district, married, but from childhood given over to a common vice, who has not been at communion for more than twenty years. Marukh's neighbor ("spoiled") accused her of causing damage to Natalya. The village crowd leads the suspect to communion in order to test the accuracy of the accusation through the holy sacrament. In the church, Natalya screamed, so everyone recognized her as guilty and began to spit on the communicant (what the priest did during the wild scene remained unknown, as if he were not in this thick of people's life). From spiritual petrification, Natalya took upon herself slander and confessed to a sin that never happened. After such an incident, and even "from the constant attacks of ignorant village women and peasants," it is difficult to keep the mind intact. Natalya began to talk and live in hallucinations.

The intelligent Maria Fedorovna from Nizhny Novgorod was left by her husband during the “liberation” time, and decided, under the slogans of the Fifth Year, to throw off the fetters of the family. The only son, having graduated from a real school, and then from the Petrograd Institute, became an engineer and was already carefully registered by the Bolsheviks and soon sent to Saratov. In the year 1920, a telegram came from there announcing his death in one of the city infirmaries. Hatred of God flared up in the mother.

The son of “social security pensioner” M.F. drowned, and N. died at the front. Now both single women are being pursued, as it seems to them, by enemies, cold, ruthless neighbors in a communal apartment. And having found themselves beyond the bounds of despair, all these women remembered the Church, wandered to the temple.

From the Nizhny Novgorod hospital, "zealously protected from any "priestly spirit"", a letter came to the rector of the Caves Monastery from a dying twenty-two-year-old

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him Jacob. This young guy, apparently a Red Army soldier (similar to those who sometimes broke into the monastery, arranging shooting and ambush there), did not hope to be forgiven in a future life, but nevertheless asked the holy father to pray for his soul ruined by countless bloody crimes.

The “little” Russian people plunged into darkness, and only the most humble and miserable, holy fools and quiet souls kept human warmth and hope in their hearts. In one pious (but childless) family, the bishop met the blessed Ivan, thirty-five years old, who had an almost perfect spiritual mind. As a child, at Christmas time, he saw mummers in terrible costumes and was speechless. Living in truly Christian poverty, he acquired purity of heart and insight. “He has nothing,” Vladyka wrote down the impression of meeting him, “only what he is wearing: a shirt, trousers, a coat, in bast shoes. Gets up at dawn. Eats scant, simple, coarse food. He does not condemn anyone for how much, he has no passion for the world in anything. He constantly prays and goes after the icon of the Mother of God of Orange... He sees the thoughts, actions of people - present, past and future... For his purity and simplicity, God, by the grace of the Queen of Heaven, whom he so serves, gave him a strong gift of knowledge. For example, he spoke and revealed the true essence of such events in church life, which only I knew about (the rest took him at his word). He told us what we had before his arrival (by the way, he denounced me for having eaten butter - and it was a fast day; coffee, emphasizing that it is fasting now)... I will only say that everything is wonderful, worthy of surprise and gratitude to God, marvelous in His saints.

In Pechersk Sloboda, Vladyka acquired faithful parishioners; he kept manuscripts from one of them, his spiritual daughter (since the Chekists often conducted searches among the clergy). This pious and still young woman lived with her children and mother in her own house. Her father gave her in marriage against the will of her daughter (from childhood her heart yearned for a monastery); the husband soon, apparently, took to drink and left. She raised children, worked in a Soviet institution, and led a strict, monastic lifestyle. In a dream, the angels are

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they filled her with the Caves Monastery, a small procession with which Bishop Barnabas walked. And this woman from that hour constantly attended all the monastic services, often confessed and took communion.

The manager of the institution in which she worked began to look after a lonely attractive employee, accompany her home in the evenings, engage in conversations, offer money, help. His courtship turned into a real persecution. She prayed a lot (especially since her old mother became very ill), asking for help in her situation. And then one day, in heavy oblivion, I saw a summer monastery church. There was a liturgy, which Vladyka Barnabas served (he stood on the pulpit and seemed to be sleeping twice as high as usual). His spiritual daughter plunged into prayer and contemplation, "knowing that no one here will touch me under the protection of God." “My soul,” she described her dream in a letter to the bishop, “at that time experienced something extraordinary ... And so I raised my eyes up and see the Mother of God, as if standing on the clouds, but not the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, as it is written in the temple, but our Pechersk Queen of Heaven ... Only in Her hands is your omophorion, which She held over you. And on both sides of Her, the Monks Anthony and Theodosius were kneeling, their heads bowed and their arms folded on their chests. I looked with tenderness at this picture and thought to myself that there are people in the world whom the Mother of God Herself protects from everything with Her Protection.

This vision was not accidental and, as it were, two-pronged: it foreshadowed the miraculous help of God in the events that soon followed and, at the same time, pointed to the place where the last part of the life of the lord would pass. I reproduce what follows from the bishop's note on the pages of a letter from my spiritual daughter. “When she finished writing this and went to bed, after a while she feels that someone approached her, but she can’t wake up. Then they begin to drag the blanket off her. She begins to pull it with all her might. The same tear and drag. Then, as it were, they wanted to throw themselves at her (she had a holy cross given to her, with the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov) and said: “Look, if you go to Barnabas and tell him everything (i.e. confess thoughts. - Note. P. I.), we will ask you ... "

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When she opened her eyes, she saw that the new blanket with which she was covered, in the upper part, by which he was dragged, was torn, as if from claws, to shreds. Now she does not know how to hide the whole thing from her family. For all that, such a great fear attacked her that her legs were paralyzed for two days and she could not even go to church.

“1922, April 18. Not even three days have passed, no, exactly three days have passed, as it was with me (16. IV, and now it is eleven o'clock in the night of the eighteenth), and the demons have already fulfilled their threat. Across from me, her house is on fire. She has some of my manuscripts... May His will be done. They took revenge and take revenge not only on her, but also on me.

Now they came and said the characteristic cause of the fire. Out of revenge, it seems, they climbed in (and everyone was already asleep), the corridor and the porch were doused not only with kerosene, but also with gasoline, set on fire and left themselves. Everyone jumped out in the same underwear, one old woman burned to death. She left the house, but regretted things, returned, went to the bed, poked around and suffocated ... An old woman lies near the monastery wall, burned, without arms, without legs, half of the skull. This woman saved almost everything, they did not steal the manuscripts, but the whole house burned down. And here is the mercy of God.

Valentina Dolganova recorded an important detail about the same event: during the prayer, the bishop learned in advance about the impending arson and sent nuns to help the victims. (“There was a fire in Pechery, two houses burned down just opposite the monastery gates. Vladyka was the first to know about the fire, a demon came to him and told him about it. He knocked on the sisters, they ran and saw the fire that had begun. sleeping. The fire was on arson.")

The reality was so painful and hopeless that the feeling of joy disappeared from ordinary people, waves of obsessive desires constantly rolled over to discard outdated morality, to exist vegetatively: the easier and simpler, the better. The bishop opposed this spiritual illness with ascetic rules. Confession, necessarily with the revelation of thoughts (“He always said: you can not do any feats, just tell me everything, confess your thoughts and sinful desires cleanly and don’t worry about anything else. And really, it was impossible to hide anything from him: now conscience begins to convict, and

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such is the result of suffering that it is better to endure shame, but to say everything, and besides, it’s scary: you won’t tell him, which means you want to hide from God; all the same, everything will be revealed at the Last Judgment, and what reward will you receive then for unconfessed sins?"), prayer ("Wherever you are, - he demanded from his novice, - and whatever you do, repeat, know, prayer"), fasting , removal from all looseness and renunciation of free behavior (Dolganova said: “What can everyone else do - you should only allow a tenth, everyone around you laugh at something - you smile so as not to introduce great dissonance and thus not seduce the soul of your neighbor ”), all-round maintenance of the desire to act in everything out of love for God. Only in following the ascetic rules did he see an opportunity to fulfill the gospel commandments at the present time, which freezes every living heart. “There is no need to cool down,” the bishop liked to repeat. - How to become hot, and continue. “Abandon a bad acquaintance, stay away from an evil one, hold on to a good one, maintain a good mood in yourself until it becomes the main foundation of your life,” the bishop commanded his novice Valentina. Olga Patrusheva recalled the main principle of his then pedagogy: "The result of a strict ascetic life is love."

Self-will as one of the properties of the soul that interfere with life, Vladyka tried in every possible way to eradicate from the character of his spiritual children. Young Vera Lovzanskaya (she began her "work activity" at the age of fifteen) decided to go to work in a black headscarf, imitating the Dolganov sisters. This decision was also facilitated by the desire to move away from young colleagues in the service, who, at the “meeting, held her hand with an“ impure touch ”. "What was it like for me to take off my headscarf? - she recalls. - All young people understand this in such a way that I have changed and, therefore, it is permissible to take liberties." But I unquestioningly obeyed the mentor's decision. does not read romance novels. Finally, she herself was embarrassed by her ignorance in these matters and wrote a note to Vladyka: “Vladyka, I don’t understand anything

From the height of his life, looking back, he assessed his distant past (1921-1922): “What are Pechory? Youthful age. Boys... are not shown serious things.” It was a period of monastic romance, groping for a firm path among the abysses of modernity, strict asceticism and gaining experience in pastoral leadership. In striving for ascetic feats, he sometimes went too far. Upon his return to Nizhny from his “vacation,” he “soon began to sleep on the floor, right on the carpet, with his head to the bed, touching ... it. And immediately he began to feel fear and the presence of demons, just as they showed up for the first time in Makariev. Such a special feeling ... I hinted about this to the sisters. One of them began to sleep upstairs in the hallway (it is interesting that they themselves noticed that it was not entirely comfortable for me to be alone upstairs). At first I refused on the grounds that if there was a search at night (all the bishops already had it), they might invent some kind of dirty gossip ... But fear of demonic influences and unwillingness to be subjected to a proud feeling (that, they say, I can handle it alone, what about the ascetics, but God, etc.) forced me to agree to the proposal that one of the sisters should sleep in a few rooms. When the days of Easter and Pentecost began, and because of this I stopped sleeping on the floor, the demonic invasion also passed. Interesting,

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that even such trifles as sleeping on a carpet, which did not satisfy me in the least (I wanted to sleep right after on the floor - “dolling” is called by the ancient ascetic fathers), and then the demons do not like it ... "

Blessed Maria Ivanovna used to say: "Don't climb under the bed." And menacingly tapped her finger on the arm of the chair (but at the same time smiling cheerfully). After that, he always does not fail to ask: “Well, is he crawling under the bed? How does he sleep, on a soft bed or on the floor? No matter what... Still young hurts. It’s too early for him yet ... Tell him not to do this again. She was worried about Vladyka and once, singing the Paschal troparion, she said: “He should also read “Christ is Risen” more often, the demons are very afraid; Then you won't get under the bed. She added something completely incomprehensible: “Fr. Anatoly... your Barnabas will also die. Soon there will be another year.”

It so happened that his personal time for some brief historical moment flowed in a different plane than the general time. The calendar showed the fourth year from the day of the revolution. The bishop completely immersed himself in spiritual work, in prayerful work, in work on manuscripts, which also required special living conditions. He was in a paradoxical position: as a young monk, he had to evade the world and work in cell silence, as a bishop, he had to go towards people and events. (“It is a sin to refuse the bishopric,” said Maria Ivanovna, “it is necessary to accept people, but not all of them, I accepted half, a little, and it will be.”)

Of course, he did not fence himself off from social reality either. The city authorities made it clear that they would open the ancient cathedral in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, which they had taken away from the Church, but they did not fulfill the promises. The people got excited, and somehow a large crowd gathered on Annunciation Square, demanding the keys to the temple. We decided to go to the diocese. The archbishop was afraid to go out to the people and, knowing that the faithful were disposed towards Vladyka, he sent him to them. Bishop Varnava, together with those who came, went to the provincial executive committee for negotiations, which, of course, turned out to be fruitless, but he calmed the excitement, and everyone dispersed peacefully.

Evdokim also assigned him to another difficult obedience - to be in charge of divorce proceedings in the consistory.

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themselves. Having come to power, the communists took this matter into their own hands and put it on stream: it is enough for one of the parties to pay three rubles, "and the matter is over - a spilled sea of ​​debauchery." The commissars ensured that the clergy did not interfere with those wishing to get a divorce and, at the first request of one of the spouses, formalized a church divorce. Society, accustomed to exist in conditions of endless war, external and internal, decaying habitual foundations of life, accepted this innovation not without satisfaction. “The possibility of multiple civil marriages,” recalled Vladyka, “which appeared at first, was a cover for prostitution and fornication, which was regarded as such not even from a church point of view ... And the bishops who dealt with divorces found themselves in a hopeless situation. After all, after all, a bishop cannot breed according to civil documents. The flow of divorced people was significant, but the bishop, as a servant of Christ, could not be guided in his decision by the canons of the Church without getting into an unpleasant story, because few of those who came wanted to act according to the Gospel, but tried to calm their conscience to get the necessary piece of paper. A few years later, Vladyka wrote about this:

“The question of divorce, if it has always painfully touched the heart of a carnal person, is now perhaps the most painful one. Out of voluptuousness, people are trying in every possible way to expand their rights in this regard, even if only through stretching the gospel text. And one can already foresee that the further time passes, the further away from the specific and narrow commandment of Christ and the matter of divorces will go. How close, on duty, I stood at one time to the intimate side of the latter, and as far as I know the true causes of them - almost always an inconvenient property to convey in words - and not invented reasons, more or less "proper", like "dissimilarity of characters" , simple "unwillingness to live together", "leaving children and family" and so on, I conclude that in most cases the "guilty" side is not to blame, or not only it is to blame. And it is not often divorce that should serve as a healing for husband and wife, but patient in Christ, humble living, chaste, with the suppression of carnal lusts. A wife is not a street woman and not even a lover, but

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the family bedroom is not a "separate office". It is impossible to look for in them what a man is accustomed to and on what a man has often already wasted his youth ... Chaste abstinence in moderation is not canceled by marriage. If the laity are not monks, this does not mean that they can live unbridled. If all this were observed, that is, if sound and strict Christian views on the family and on marriage were put into practice in our society, then divorces would be halved. Let's also not forget how many people lived in more than one hundred of the past years who endured impotence, illness, and madness, and so on.! They endured, thanked God, accepting it from Him as a cross sent down for the healing of passions, and did not think of getting divorced! Was it possible then, but not now? And they also say that humanity is progressing and doing better. Isn't it the other way around? Doesn't he also lose those virtues, even if only one patience, that our ancestors had before?

Later, Vladyka said: “It is difficult not to violate the canons if the state breeds. What then is the Church to do? Don't breed? After all, the state has its own reasons for divorce, and the Church has its own view. The problem for the bishop was painfully acute: not to comply with the demands of the authorities means to be subjected to direct persecution, but to apply church criteria - not for this reason he was put here by the legitimate clergyman.

Behind Yevdokim's back it was possible to temporarily hide from the revolutionary blizzard, but it was impossible to learn how to lead the flock on the waters of history.

Passionate carnal love. Fornication in its own and broad sense

People usually do not limit themselves to mental-heart-verbal depravity. They also try to defile the body. This, in fact, is what the whole thing is about. All novels are filled with this love, it ends "platonic" relationships and "poetic" love of youth. People change their salvation for this love without hesitation and compare it blasphemously and blasphemously with that terrible and incomprehensible Divine Love for the sake of which the Lord sacrificed Himself for the sins of the world in order to cleanse it from filth (Jn 3:16). Compare with Lermontov:

What is the radiance of God's power to me
And holy heaven?
I endured earthly passions
Take it there...

("Dead Man's Love")

About the need for lust and fornication to create great masterpieces of art and for the "spiritual" progress of culture, the world itself says this: "The poet and the artist need a divine image ... Naturally, this ideal is embodied in female forms, since one sublime love can ignite all the best powerful forces of genius.What Beatrice was for Dante, the same was Laura for Petrarch, Victoria Colonna for Angelo Buonarotti, Clara Wicca for Robert Schumann, Mathilde Vassidon for Richard Wagner. which they awakened in the minds of artists "who were nurtured by the divine hand and created by love and friendship."

We can briefly speak about our century in the words of the most reverend Clement, the famous presbyter of the Alexandrian Church in antiquity: all sorts of immorality has spread throughout the cities and has already become commonplace.Women stand at brothels and sell their bodies before lust... Men unnaturally take on the role of women, women - men. There are women who marry, but there are those who marry. All paths to voluptuousness are open ... A pitiful sight! Oh, an outrageous way of life. Such beautiful fruits are produced by the social life of our big cities: abominations, lewdness, street women. Oh, lawless life! ".

How does the Holy Church look at all this? Already in the Old Testament it was said: "Do not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14; Deut 5:18). In the New, the Lord commands: "I tell you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28).

And if in the Old Testament the violation of the commandment of chastity caused terrible punishments and bitter consequences, then in the New Testament the execution is even more terrible.

The pillars and luminaries of the Church have always tried to find out the full severity of the spiritual and bodily fall and at the same time tried by all means - caress, persuasion, forgiveness, threats, excommunications - to avert their spiritual children from fornication.

Wordless, shameful lust, says St. Simeon the New Theologian, “is truly the most evil enemy of the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit. John Chrysostom, with his fiery word, so stung the conscience of young people of his time, who went to public women. (His words also apply, of course, to our so-called honest women, who satisfy their own and others' lust outside of a legal church marriage. For a "mistress" differs from a prostitute, even in strict human opinion, only in the degree of shame.)

“Of course, you will not agree to ever wear the clothes that a slave wears, abhorring them because of impurity, but you would rather agree to be naked than to use them, and the body is unclean and filthy,” the voice of the great teacher boldly thunders, “which is not used by only your servant, but also others without number, will you use for evil and will not disdain them? do you and your servant walk in the same way? And, oh, if only a slave, but then an executioner! You would not dare to take the executioner by the hand; meanwhile, you hug and kiss the one that was one body with him - and Are you not trembling, are you not afraid, are you not ashamed, are you not blushing, are you not embarrassed?

I told your fathers that you should get married soon. However, you are not exempt from punishment. If there were not many other young men who lived chastely both before and now, then perhaps some justification would be found for you; but since they exist, how can you say that we were not able to suppress the flame of lust? Those who could overcome will be your accusers, because they are of the same nature as you. Listen to what Paul says: Have peace and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14). Can't this threat frighten you?

You see that others keep chastity all their lives and live in purity; and you do not want to suffer until adolescence? You see that others have conquered lust a thousandfold; And you didn't resist once? If you want, I'll tell you the reason. Youth is not the reason for this, because then all young men would be intemperate; but we throw ourselves on the fire. In fact, when you enter the theater and sit there, delighting your gaze with the naked members of women, then, of course, at first you will feel pleasure, but then you will ignite a strong fever in yourself.

When you see women appearing as if in the form of a naked body; when both the spectacle and the songs express nothing more than one vile love, namely: such and such, they say, fell in love with such and such and was not successful and strangled herself; when they indulge even in criminal love for their mothers; when you take all this into yourself through hearing, and through women, and through images, and even through old men ... then how, tell me, can you be chaste after that, when such stories, such spectacles, such rumors your soul and then give way to the same dreams, because the soul is born to see in dreams the ghosts of many such things that it seeks and desires during the day?

So, if there you see shameful deeds, and you hear even more shameful speeches, if you receive wounds, but you do not take medicine, then how, in fact, rottenness does not increase? and therefore should be ashamed. It is easy to lead a life of chastity, if we want, if we keep away from what harms.” From all of the above, it necessarily follows that in the disciplinary and canonical sense, fornication should be regarded very strictly.

It is necessary to say a few words about the very term "fornication", which is usually understood in our community in a broad sense, namely in the meaning of offenses related in general to carnal passion. But in ecclesiastical legal language, fornication is not simply the satisfaction of lust with someone, but only such that occurs between a man and a woman free from marriage, that is, in which no offense or damage is caused to a third interested person. Thus, this makes an essential difference between fornication and adultery. In the latter case, an insult is applied to someone else's marriage union. Consequently, fornication contains one guilt, and adultery - two: hence the time of repentance and penance differ: for fornication, excommunication from the Holy Mysteries is due for one number of years, and for adultery - twice as much.

You should also talk about bestiality and sodomy. These vices constitute a form of adultery, and not fornication, for they also have a double guilt, namely: "... an offense is caused to an alien generation, and, moreover, contrary to nature." Penance for fornicators is prescribed, depending on the degree of repentance and the social status of the sinner and the very corpus delicti, is different, namely: excommunication from the Holy Mysteries for a period of three to ten years. In particular, molesting one's own wife before marriage carries a four-year penalty.

Monastics and those who have taken a vow of virginity are subject to a more severe punishment. They are judged as adulterers, that is, in double measure, for they have become engaged to Christ. A clergyman convicted of fornication, no matter what rank he is, is deprived of it.

Let us now find out the inner, psychological, basis and effect of fornication, regardless of who it is directed to: whether it is on itself, on surrounding objects, on people or animals ... "All demons attempt to darken our mind first, and then they inspire something whatever they want; for if the mind does not close its eyes, then our treasure will not be stolen.

But the prodigal demon uses this remedy much more than anyone else. Often, having darkened the mind, this master, he induces and forces us to do before people what only madmen do. When, after some time, the mind becomes sober, then we are ashamed not only of those who saw our disorderly actions, but also of ourselves for our obscene actions, conversations and movements, and we are horrified at our former blindness; why some, discussing this, often lagged behind this evil. "Some holy fathers assert, on the contrary, that shameful thoughts and lust are born from bodily feelings.

“Very often,” they say, “bad thoughts enter the heart from a pleasant look, or from the touch of a hand, or from the smell of incense, or from hearing a pleasant voice.”

Here is a testimony from the opposite side, from the side of a person who went through the "science of tender passion" under the guidance of the most prodigal demon. Ovid, who did not miss in his famous (“The Art of Loving”) not a single trifle that could not be put into action in one way or another in order to seduce and possess a woman, among other things, says that often “trifles affect a light mind. Many ( courtiers) it was useful only to straighten the pillow (on which the lady was sitting) with a deft hand" in order to move the lustful intention a good half closer to the desired goal.

But in general, it is better not to talk about the secret movements of passions, because, on the one hand, the appropriate order is not always observed among demons (Proverbs 14:6), and on the other hand, this subtlety of thoughts is not useful for many. It is much safer for them to remain in blissful simplicity, guarded by humility. It is more important to investigate the immediate and immediate causes of fornication.

“With novice bodily falls,” says St. John in his Ladder, “usually happen from the enjoyment of food; with average people they happen from arrogance and from the same reason as with novice; but with those approaching perfection, they happen only from condemnation of neighbors.

From the latter one can see where the attention of a person should be directed so as not to fall into the pit of dishonorable passions. First of all, especially the novice should not be given indulgence by voluptuous flesh. Let him remember that the holy saints of God, even in old age, did not allow themselves to indulge in gluttony, avoided a soft bed and slept on bare boards, dressed in thin vestments. And they have long been cleansed of passions and could afford less harsh living conditions. Only when necessary, in order not to tempt the weak, but those who want to save people from the upper class, they put on luxurious clothes instead of dirty, holey clothes (as, for example, John of Kronstadt and others).

But one thing must not be forgotten: just as chastity is higher than human nature, so the final victory over fornication does not depend on us, but is a gift from God. The gifts of God are contained only in the humble, therefore, without humility, it is impossible to get rid of fornication.

So, here are the main remedies against this demon in order of their ease, efficiency and power. “Whoever wrestles with this rival with bodily labors and sweats is like one who has bound his enemy with a weak rope. and hid it in the sand (Exodus 2:12). Under the name of sand, understand humility, because it does not grow pasture for passions, but is earth and ashes (Genesis 18:27)."

It is impossible not to mention that some people sometimes try to conquer passion in themselves by exhortations and reasoning. But, of course, this is a futile attempt. For whom do they want to convince that what they do is evil? Himself or demons? If demons, then you won’t get through them, and if yourself, then let them not forget that the forces in this mental struggle are too unequal. On our side is one weak naked mind, or reason, and on the opposite side are demons, that is, not just minds, but powerful minds, and then our own flesh, traitor and accomplice to demons.

Secular literature - a mirror of human vices and an inexhaustible treasury of human stupidity - provides abundant material at the disposal of the student of passions.

How the demon of fornication laughs at all the natural means of dealing with it and is not afraid of any logical arguments, can be seen from the diary of Robert Grelu (from the novel "The Apprentice" by P. Bourget). Here is the place with abbreviations.

“I used every effort,” he writes, “to have the philosopher kill the lover in me. I reasoned: “I know the laws of mental life. I can't apply them to Charlotte because she's not here. But I can apply them to myself..." I thought: "Are there any remedies against love?" And I answered: "Yes, there are; I will find them." I discussed the project of recovery, applying the method of mathematical analysis. I decomposed this problem into its constituent elements, in accordance with the methods of geometers. I asked: "What is love?" And answered rudely: "Love is a sexual need." How to kill her? "Physical fatigue, which will weaken the work of the imagination."

The following describes the "feats" of this philosopher, when he "began to walk a lot", when he was "woken up at two o'clock" in the morning and he walked "wherever his eyes look, stepping almost furiously, choosing the steepest paths, climbing almost inaccessible peaks" where he "risked breaking his neck". But all in vain. Physical fatigue was replaced by a breakdown, but the passion did not pass.

“I suffer from thinking about her,” I once said. “Let’s try to overcome thought with thought,” we read further in the diary.

And Grelu now "began to try to shift the center of his thinking." "I plunged into scientific studies and in less than 15 days I studied with a pen in my hand 200 pages of Boni's Physiology, and, moreover, the most difficult (for him), dealing with the chemistry of living bodies." But these activities only weakened his mind, making Grela even less able to resist obsessions. "I realized," he says, "that it was all for nothing." The mistake of today's people is that they think that they suffer only "from thoughts", but in fact also from demons. They feel the latter, but do not want to admit it. So, when they try to defeat a thought with a thought, they see that nasty thoughts are not just thoughts, but “obsessive” thoughts, that is, with which there is no sweetness and before which a person is powerless, which are not connected by any logic and are alien to him, extraneous and hateful. .

And what follows from here? Let me first look at it from a Christian point of view.

The body is powerless to overcome the thought inspired by the demon, for the thought does not depend on the body, although it acts on it. The mind cannot overcome the fornication by itself either, because, firstly, it is opposed by a stronger mind - demonic, and, secondly, the fornication is born, in fact, on the soil of the heart (Mt 15:19) and, therefore, is beyond the reach of the mind. And no matter how much the latter threatens, or tries by means of logic to convince the prodigal thought that it has no right to enter the heart without his permission, that one (that is, the demon that caused it) is not afraid. What is left for a person to do?

– One thing: to arm the very heart, to equip it with a weapon of struggle, invincible and impregnable for the enemy. What is this weaponry? - Virtues (Eph 6:13-18). Then the demon, not finding a place for itself in the heart of man and no soil to sow its tares on it, involuntarily will have to move away and, if it acts, then only externally, from the outside. That is why some of the saints for decades burned with the fire of fornication (St. John the Long-suffering, Pahon and others), but they were not defeated by him and were alien to his heart, they suffered, as it were, in someone else's body. But if a person does not recognize the Church, grace, the holy sacraments and precious virtues, then is there anything for him to defend himself? Of course not. And then, once the heart is empty from the virtue of humility and with it from all the others, demons come and do what they want with the mind and body of a person (Mt 12:43-45).

But just as in ordinary warfare it happens that if you buy something off the enemy, he stops the fight, so in spiritual warfare: if demons are given bribes and concessions, they retreat. However, this brings little consolation to the soul of a person, for even in an ordinary war, indemnity falls a heavy burden on the conquered people. On examples all this will be more visible.

I continue the extract from the diary of the same Grelu. "Won't the itch of desires be destroyed by their satisfaction?" he thought. And so, "under the pretext of family affairs," he says, "I went to Clermont for eight days with the firm resolve to indulge in the most frenzied debauchery." I will omit the cynical details, but I will say that the remedy, as we will see below, tested and appreciated by the civilized world, did not help much this time: "As a result (possessed by the demon of fornication) returned home filled with bitterness." The bribe was small and brought only an extra loss.

Such examples could be given endlessly. Let me also remind you how the same means as Grelu were used against love, for example, by the hero of O. Mirbeau's novel "Golgotha", already blasphemous by its title alone. As always with this author, fornication is depicted here extremely frankly and with details that are inconvenient to convey. The difference between the positions of the two heroes mentioned is that Mr. Mintier (in Mirbeau's) was shown by an outsider a completely correct way out of his deplorable state.

Advice is given by a simple village woman. "Mr. Mintier," she says, "why don't you pray to the Merciful Lord? That would make you feel better."

Short, clear and simple.

But such an effective remedy, offered to the master by a believing peasant woman, in practice is only used by peasant women. At least such a type as Liza from the "Noble Nest" is a single phenomenon. And usually the gentlemen in the "noble nests" used other means to calm and extinguish the emerging prodigal lusts: they followed the advice of Oscar Wilde and Grelu's practice. So, the landowner Zhadovsky (Orenburg province) established the so-called "right of the first night" on his estate, and sometimes he simply took girls for corruption if he wanted to.

In the same way, the landowner Strashinsky healed his passion, who in this respect went even further, since he had more refined and depraved tastes. The acts of Vetvitsky, manager of the estates of Prince Kochubey in the Saratov province, "Karla", manager of the estate of I.S. she herself helped him,” and many others of the same kind make a reasonable person think deeply about the mysterious essence of our soul, capable of rising to divine heights (with the saints) and descending to the depths of satanic (Rev. 2:24).

But if someone says that these are criminal, and not normal types, I can give similar examples from a highly cultured environment. After all, the normality of civilized people does not consist in avoiding certain things that are forbidden from a Christian point of view, but only in doing them in a more decent manner and under a plausible pretext.

So, from the notes of Count Leo Tolstoy, we learn that his father was already “about” sixteen years old by his parents connected “for health” with one of the yard girls. Many doctors and luminaries of modern medical science also adhere to the latter method of healing sexual excitability, and since there is no serfdom now, they preach emancipation and prostitution. But it must be admitted that these are still extreme and exceptional views. “I have not yet seen,” the well-known Zurich psychiatrist Forel argues with them, “that such treatment cured nervous patients; but I saw that those who used this treatment eventually also fell ill with venereal diseases.

“But, of course, even such scholars who offer remedies for prodigal warfare cannot rise above those external methods with which Grelu thought to help himself. And therefore, prodigal passion remains in the world untreatable. the view that it is impossible for young people to refrain from fornication, and monasticism is an unnatural state ... Where is a person to refrain from, when everything in the world around is aimed not at suppressing fornication, but at its development, and when the means revered as the most effective, on in fact, only auxiliary, and not the main ones?When the Church offers the world real medicines, he ridicules them ...

I will now tell about some of the subtle demonic wiles about which the holy fathers warn those who are being saved.

1. Before seducing a person, the invisible mentor of fornication usually inspires him that God is philanthropic and will forgive for passion, which is supposedly natural for a person. And when he plunges into the ditch of sin, this insidious one begins to whisper in our ears the exact opposite: "You are lost; God is an implacable Judge, you will die soon and will not have time to repent, and you do not have the strength to pray to God for your sins." They do this so that in the first case it would be easier to draw us into filth, and in the second - to lead us to despair. Any number of examples. The opinion that "as if a passion irresistibly attracted to sexual relations is something quite natural even for noble natures" is quite widespread in a civilized society, although it still finds opponents.

As for the custom of demons to lead a person who has succumbed to shameful passion to a loss of faith in a merciful God or (if the fallen one was not quite a believer anyway) into a depressed state with a hopeless view of the world in which there can be no happiness, but there are only suffering, the effect of this custom can be seen in the example of Schopenhauer. The pessimism of his philosophy is explained very simply. The hitherto cheerful philosopher indulged himself in natural needs so carelessly that he finally got syphilis. After that, the demons covered all his world outlook with a black veil and presented the world life in the form of terrible nonsense.

2. Although we do not sin in a state of sadness and despondency, the demon is pleased, because at this time we cannot repent properly, we cannot "neither curse ourselves nor reproach ourselves." And when we calm down a little and the sharpness of despair passes, then our tempter comes up and again inspires the thought of God's mercy, so that we fall again.

3. Sometimes the prodigal demon approaches us in church and at home, when he sees that we are especially disposed to pray fervently and receive grace-filled compunction, instead subtly tempting the soul to accept prodigal sweetness. The result of seduction is self-gratification and contentment with tears, with prayer itself, in a cruder form - with singing (compare our singing choirs). We forget - I'm not talking about those who never knew this - that tears, prayer, singing, and so on, are only means for salvation, and not the goal, not salvation itself.

With their help, we need to attract the grace of the Holy Spirit and build a wonderful building of the soul. And when it is built, the scaffolding (tears, prayer words, etc.) will be removed. And if we do not receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, then the house of the soul is not being built with us either; then, what is the use of these adaptations, and these things that are essentially good? You can cry while sitting over a bow, and a gramophone record can sing the "Cherubim" of Arkhangelsk... So, a Christian needs to be careful, doesn't he want to please himself more than to please God? Isn't he likened to a passionate nightingale or a capercaillie on the current when he sings or prays?..

4. What we see in a dream, that we should never try to remember, "for that is also in the intention of demons," so that through night dreams we disturb and defile the purity of our thoughts during the day.

5. Sometimes a person, being in a noisy society, does not experience any temptation, and when left alone, he feels a strong fornication. With particular ferocity, the demons of fornication attack the monks, and among them, the silent ones and hermits, suggesting to the first and second, and the last, that they do not receive any benefit from their solitude. When a person believes them and comes into contact with the world, they first, to prove the inspired thought, depart from the person, and then suddenly swoop down on him and plunge him into such a deep pit of dishonorable passions that he had never thought of before. So, where we endure attacks from enemies, there, no doubt, we ourselves strongly fight against them "and represent a value for them hated;" and whoever does not feel this battle, he finds himself in friendship with enemies "and is kind to them.

6. One more variety of demonic wiles should be mentioned. This misfortune usually happens with monks or with laity who are very jealous of salvation. In this case, the demon of fornication puts on a guise of chastity that is completely unusual for him and inspires the saved person to cry about his future terrible fate. He induces “extreme reverence” in the person he is tempting and produces in him springs of tears in prayer and, when talking with women, incites them to teach them the remembrance of death, the last judgment, and even the preservation of chastity ... And all this so that “these accursed, - says St. John of the Ladder, - seduced by his words and feigned reverence, they resorted to this wolf as to a shepherd; but - the most wretched one, having received boldness from close acquaintance, finally undergoes a fall.

7. Fornication demons do not always leave a person with the aim of later overthrowing him with fornication. They also have another intention - to leave with him the demon of pride, which alone replaces all the others. We must understand the latter well, and if we want to look for examples in the world, especially among talented and learned people, we will find them in more than sufficient numbers. It happens with those who are being saved that the Lord also protects them from fornication when they have to slow down in the world, in the midst of its vain surroundings. Perhaps the prayer of the spiritual fathers also saves them. But a certain numbness happens in a person also because he has already been fed up with what he has seen and heard, and therefore does not feel the sharpness of the battle.

8. In the carnal warfare between the spirits of malice, there is one demon, faster and more inconspicuous than which there is not one. The Holy Fathers call the thought moved by him "an incursion of thought." In conclusion, it must be said in the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov. “Up to thirty-five years, that is, before the end of earthly life, a great feat happens to a person in preserving himself, and many in these years do not get tired in virtue, but turn away from the right path to their own desires.”

“Many, having collected much in their youth,” St. Basil the Great also says, “when they reached the middle of life and temptations were erected on them by the spirits of malice, they did not endure the hardships of this bad weather ... and suffered damage in everything they collected.”

Especially this "dangerous age" of the middle of a man's life has a devastating effect on a woman. Life gives everyone clear examples of this. Secular literature also pays much attention to this topic. Suffice it to mention here, besides Elsa Lindner, the heroine of Michaelis's book, also the unfortunate Germinie Lasarte, whose nightmarish story was portrayed by the Goncourt brothers. Here is immersion in an unhealthy atmosphere of false religious mysticism, based on sexual attraction to a celibate priest, and hysterical fits, essentially on the same basis of unsatisfied desire, and its tragic end, when it falls "below nature itself."

You can also point to similar types in Mirbeau ("Flowers of Life"), Herzen ("Who is to blame?") and many others.

Science knows cases when prodigal passion did not cease to torment even the elderly, and not ordinary, but brilliant philosophers and artists. So, for example, Goethe, seventy-two years old, proposed to a nineteen-year-old girl!

But there is no need to despair. There, in the world and among secular authors in novels, the case is really hopeless. There, a person walks in the nights of ignorance and outside the light of Christ's Truth and the Church, and therefore will inevitably stumble, as if there is no light in him (Jn 11:10). And whoever walks in the days, that is, learns from the Holy Scriptures and patristic writings, and most importantly, partakes in the sacraments of the Church, and in particular the sacrament of St. communion, he will not stumble (Jn 11:9). And no matter how hard the enemy tries to obscure his mind and captivate him with worldly temptations, he will not succeed ... and the son of iniquity will not apply to embitter him (Ps 89:23). All you need is patience. They told about the great ascetic of the Ancient East, mother Sarah: for thirteen years she was in a strong struggle with the demon of fornication - and she never asked God to get rid of this struggle, but only cried out: "My God, help me!" And the Lord helped. For the last time, before leaving, the spirit of fornication, hoping to stump her at least with vanity and pride, appeared to her in a bodily form when she entered her secluded cell to pray, and said: "You defeated me, Sarah!" “It was not I who defeated you,” answered the humble ascetic, “but the Lord Christ.”

In the lives of the saints and patericons, many cases are cited showing that, no matter how low a person may fall, he should never despair not only of his general salvation, but also of the possibility of success in spiritual life. And the unbelieving and impudent, reading these stories and treating them lightly, are themselves the culprits of their death and the weapons that God gives them to fight with the enemy will bury themselves.

Unnatural vices
(masturbation, femininity, sodomy, bestiality)

As St. John Chrysostom says, the one who writes about these things finds himself in a very difficult, even impossible position: “If you speak decently, you cannot touch the listener; but in order to strike him more, you must present the matter more clearly in all its nakedness.”

I will speak here only about those types and forms of unnatural depravity, which the Holy Scripture itself speaks of, but I will keep silent about everything else according to the commandment (Eph 5:3.12). But it is also impossible to be completely silent, when God Himself and His mouth, the prophets and apostles, are not silent. Such a time has come, like the darkest and most hopeless eras of the ancient pagan world, when there are more vicious than chaste, when this is the color of society - young people die en masse, like flies in autumn, from these passions, so to rant about some kind of false shame, obscenity, scrupulousness or danger, it is not necessary to teach vice to the ignorant. Now not only every boy and girl knows "everything", but they themselves are often teachers of others, and even adults (it is worth remembering only child prostitution and seven-eight-year-old girls offering services).

I will rely on the Scriptures, the holy fathers and the decrees of the Church for the following reasons:

1. We are all obliged to know and fulfill their words as commandments, and if we do not do this, then at the Last Judgment we will receive eternal punishment along with the demons in hell.

2. In them, in these words of the divine prophets and apostles and of Christ Himself, our judgment for breaking the commandments is revealed. How to treat him indifferently?

3. But it is not enough just to know that this is the most heinous sin. After all, if a punishment is laid for him, then who will be so mad as not to cope, while the execution has not yet come, what is its measure? If people in the world are interested in this, first of all, and in case of its excessive severity, they submit it, as they say, for cassation, then all the more so it should be done in the spiritual realm. True, one cannot protest to God here, but one can and should humble oneself, cry, ask and beg Him for mercy for the sake of His love for people. And accordingly, with the magnitude of sin and punishment for it, we must measure the measure of our repentance, our tears, our penance.

4. Only from the Church should we ask for medicines to heal our passions, and only these means should be used as harmless and completely healing. To turn, bypassing the Church, to sorcerers, no matter how lofty nicknames they may bear - whether professors, scientists, doctors of medicine, and so on, for a Christian, especially at the present time, becomes downright harmful and in any case insufficient. After all, the point is not only not to commit sin in deed, but to destroy passion itself and blot out the future punishment for it. Of course, doctors cannot do this. So, you need to know the church means of healing vices.

5. Since it is the soul, and not the body, that suffers the greatest harm in all this, it usually happens that, after its turning from darkness to the light of repentance, it, horrified by what has been done, falls into despondency and despair. Therefore, it is necessary to show examples of how people who similarly fell into the pit of lawless passions through the wiles of the devil, not only emerged from it, but also received complete forgiveness and were settled in their former spiritual rank, sometimes very high.

6. Finally, it is necessary to know the very intrigues of demons, through which they tempt us with unnatural passions, and to know whether it is ever possible, even if we have achieved holiness, not to be afraid of them.

Malachi, masturbation
(masturbation, masturbation, palmistry, ipsation, etc.)

Do not flatter yourselves ... - says the apostle, - neither the defiler, nor the malakia - ... they will inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9).

Here is the verdict for the handicraftsmen. Their father, the Old Testament Onan, was punished by God with death for committing this sin (Genesis 38:9-10). What he did was evil in the eyes of the Lord, the Bible says about Onan, and He (God) killed him. And at the present time, the Church, according to the rule of John the Faster, appoints the person who committed the sin (men and women alike) dry food and up to 100 prostrations per day for 40 days.

"If he cannot be dry, let him refrain from taking communion (it mattered when people took communion, if not daily, then very often) one summer (that is, a year) and 50 prostrations every day." Mutual masturbation is punished twice, that is, eighty days of dry eating (or two years of excommunication from the Holy Mysteries) and fifty prostrations per day. Of course, even more severely is exacted from the clergy.

Flee from fornication, - repeats the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 6:18), - for every sin, if a man commits it, besides the body is; but a fornicator sins in his body - his own body shakes.

“For a long time, sexual excesses have been ascribed a very serious significance, in the sense of influencing the central nervous system,” says the famous psychiatrist Professor P. Kovalevsky. the influence of abuse is reflected both on the physical and on the moral and mental life of a person.On the physical side, it is weakness, weakness, exhaustion.In character - irritability, irascibility, secrecy, a tendency to alienation and solitude, suspicion, etc. - dulling of memory, limitation of ingenuity and, in general, mental retardation ...

Some authors describe cases of insanity that owe their origin to onanism and masturbation. Masturbatory madness occurs predominantly in men between 13-20 years of age. These patients are weak, anemic, with cold extremities... Very often, such patients have occipital pains... Of the extremely variable mental symptoms, one can point to a lack of attention, absent-mindedness, lack of endurance during any work, mental laziness and weakness , fear that they would not recognize the vice by the face - in general, all sorts of fears. In the further course is: childishness, collecting unnecessary things, writing stupid diaries, etc. Sometimes there is a suicidal tendency. In less pronounced cases, there is a decline and weakening of morality ...

With onanism, there is a tension in the activity of fantasy, disgust from the opposite sex, and so on.

The devil can bring a person to a fall in no other way than through a huge influx of fornication thoughts to complete intoxication and befogging them. The reason for the avoidance of female sex by masturbators is revealed below by Rev. John of the Ladder.

"Demons ... do not rejoice so much about anything else as about the evil stench of fornication, and do not love any passion as it defiles the body." And it is clear why: "Purity assimilates us to God and, as much as possible, makes us like Him."

But it is not enough for them to plunge into fornication in general. And the purer and holier a person wants to be, the more heinous passions he tempts. Thus, “the devil directs all his efforts, diligence, cunning, deceit, and all his intrigues,” says St. John of the Ladder, “so that those who go through the monastic life and strive in this field, full of temptations, would be fought by unnatural passions. Therefore, often, being in the same place with the female sex and not being overcome by carnal lust or thoughts, some indulge themselves; and the unfortunate do not understand this, that where there is great destruction, there is no need for less.

“I think that all-accursed murderers,” continues the holy father, “for two reasons usually overthrow us, the poor, into unnatural falls: because we everywhere have convenience for such sins and because they subject us to greater torment. "He commanded wild donkeys, and then he himself was mocked and enslaved by hellish donkeys. And having once eaten the bread of heaven, he later lost this blessing. All the more surprising is that even after his repentance, our mentor Anthony with bitter sorrow said: "The great pillar has fallen!" But the image The wise man hid the fall, for he knew that there is bodily fornication without the participation of another body.

The case referred to by St. John of the Ladder, next.

Abba Anthony the Great heard about a certain young monk that he performed such a miracle on the way: seeing some of the elders who traveled and were tired from the journey, he ordered wild donkeys to come up and carry the elders on themselves until they reached Anthony. The elders told Abba Anthony about this. And he answered them:

“This monk, it seems to me, is a ship full of cargo. But I do not know if he will go to the pier.

After some time, Abba Anthony suddenly began to cry, to tear his hair and sob. The students asked him:

“What are you crying about, abba?”

– Now the great pillar of the Church has fallen! The old man answered them. He was talking about the young monk. “But go to him yourself,” he continued, “and see what has happened!”

The disciples go and find the monk sitting on a mat and mourning the sin he has committed. Seeing Anthony's disciples, the monk says to them:

– Tell the old man to beg God to give me only ten days of life, and I hope to cleanse my sin.

But less than five days later, he died.

Seeing such malice and deceit of enemies and knowing that no one is immune from falling, we must be extremely careful.

"Laying down on the bed," St. John warns in his "Ladder," "we should be the most vigilant and sober, because then our mind alone without a body struggles with demons; and if it is voluptuary or full of voluptuous dreams, then it willingly becomes a traitor." ".

Therefore - "Let the memory of death fall asleep and rise with you, and with it the Jesus prayer of one mind; for nothing can give you such a strong intercession during sleep as these deeds."

In general, at the time when demons rise up against us, surrounding us with a cloud of bad thoughts and attracting us to sin, “they serve us as a great help: thin clothes, ashes, standing all night, hunger, thirst, scorching the tongue and cooling with a few drops, being at the graves, and above all, humility of heart and, if possible, a spiritual father or zealous brother, quick to help and old in mind. For I consider it a miracle that someone could save his ship from this abyss by himself."

So, let everyone remember well that the main thing is humility and prayer. “Present to the Lord the weakness of your nature, realizing your impotence in everything, and you will receive the gift of chastity in an imperceptible way.”

In conclusion, I will briefly mention one young monk of ancient times, who fell into sin with himself and, through repentance, was committed with the holy fathers.

“Ten years ago,” St. John, hegumen of the Raifa desert, told St. John, the writer of the Ladder, “I had a very zealous brother here and such an ascetic that, seeing him burning in spirit, I trembled and feared the devil’s envy for him, lest he somehow stumble his foot on a stone in the swift current, which often happens with those who walk hastily.

And so it happened. In the deep evening, he comes to me, shows me a naked ulcer, demands a plaster, asks for cauterization and shows great confusion of spirit. But seeing that the doctor wants to use not very cruel cutting (because he was worthy of mercy), he throws himself to the ground, grabs the doctor’s legs, irrigates them with copious tears, asks for imprisonment in the Dungeon that you saw. "It's impossible for me," he cried, "not to go there." Finally, he convinces the doctor to change mercy to cruelty, which is rare and surprising in ailing people.

He immediately hurries to those penitents and becomes their accomplice and sympathizer. From the love of God, wounded in his heart by sorrow, like a sword, on the eighth day he went to the Lord and asked that he not be buried; but I brought him here and laid him with the fathers, as worthy, because, after seven days of slavery, on the eighth he was released and received freedom. But one (of the saints) knew for certain that he did not get up before my thin and filthy feet, as if he had propitiated God. And no wonder: because, having perceived in his heart the faith of the gospel harlot, with the same hope as she, he wetted my humble feet with tears, and the Lord said that everything is possible to him who believes (Mt 9.23).

Philogyny
(tribadia, lesbian or sapphic love, phylogeny)

Passion analyzed above revealed a number of unnatural vices. Masturbation, such an "innocent", "modest" vice, as many people think, in comparison with open fornication with women, is, from the gospel point of view, not at all innocent, but, on the contrary, unnatural, monstrous. What about other perversions? - The whole cunning and intention of demons is to somehow turn a person away from the other sex and turn his lust and lust either to himself or to his own sex (such persons are called homosexuals, urkinds in special books), or, finally , on animals and on anything else, if only the commandment given by God Himself was violated (Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5-6).

“Look, what great confusion has occurred on both sides (in men and women), – says St. John Chrysostom. – People have become enemies to themselves and to each other. it was divided into four kinds, all vain and criminal. So, not two and three, but four kinds of warfare took place among them. Judge for yourself. Two, I mean wife and husband, were to be one, as it is said: you will be two in the flesh one (Gen 2:24). And this was produced by the inclination to live not one by one (not particularly apart), but both sexes were mutually conjugated. The devil, having destroyed this inclination and giving it a different direction, divided the sexes among himself and contrary to the law of God from one He made two parts of the whole. Although God said: You will be two into one flesh, but the devil divides the one into two. Here is the first battle! Again, each of these two parts began to fight, both with one another and with itself. we're talking about the classics here. whom, the pagan world - Rom. 1:26-27) a reproach not only to men, but also to women, and men rebelled against each other and against the female sex, as happens in military turmoil at night. Do you see the second and third battles, the fourth and fifth? But here's another scolding! Beyond what has been said, they rebelled against nature itself. The devil saw that lust itself most unites the sexes; therefore, he tried to break this knot, so as not only to stop the human race by illegal waste of seed, but to destroy it by arming people against each other.

So, these vices cry out to heaven and attract vengeance from above because they go stubbornly against the commandment of God. And womanly love is directed away from nature, which commands a woman to strive for a man, and not for a woman.

God betrayed them in a passion of dishonor, - says the Apostle Paul, - and their wives changed their natural likeness (use, use) - into an unnatural - (against nature, contrary to nature) - into an unnatural use (Rom 1.26).

Homosexual inclinations manifested themselves in women very early (I mean the historical formulation and dating of the issue); much earlier, of course, performances on the historical stage of the notorious Sappho. At least, a well-known place in the prophet Ezekiel (16:17-18) testifies to this. Tsalmei zakhar - "male images" made of gold or silver, which are discussed here, very clearly allude to the perverted inclinations of women of that time. As for the "wrapping" and "clothing" of these "calme zakhar" with "patterned dresses", this may refer to the ritual ceremonies of the phallic cult, when women reached such a degree of madness that they began to deify their idols and perform a whole worship service in front of them. .

But if the Jews encountered sexual perversions, then they were even more common among the Phoenicians, their teachers at that time.

In the latter, of course, they bloomed in a double color, because their cult, all saturated with unhealthy eroticism, inevitably led to this. And the Phoenicians were the first "cultural" teachers of the Greeks. And so we see that the Greek Miletus, in turn, receives the palm in antiquity for its inventions in this area. In modern terms, Miletus took out a patent for the manufacture of artificial mechanical devices to satisfy the perverted needs of women. Thus, this infection, according to the data given to us by history, is of ancient origin. Perhaps it originates from the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. At present, this vileness is rampant among women with no less force.

The Church strictly exacts for this vice. And if we bring here the relevant church rules, then women (I mean, of course, those who consider themselves Christians) may be at least a little afraid of the torment in hell that awaits them if they do not repent. It is quite legitimate and natural to equate this vice with sodomy; according to the rule of St. Basil the Great, the Church excommunicates those for 15 years from the sacrament of St. Basil. Communion, which for a true Christian is a betrayal of Satan and the same Gehenna.

Sodomy
(pederasty)

So also the husband, - says the divine apostle, - having left the natural likeness of the female sex, inflamed with his lust for one another, the husband strikes at the husbands, and retribution, which is like their charms, receives in himself (Rom 1:27).

For this reason - ... women of sex - will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; cf.: 1 Tim 1:10).

Such persons are Holy Scripture, or rather. God calls dogs (Mt 7:6; Rev 22:15).

With all certainty, this position was expressed by God in the Old Testament (Deut. 23:17-18). From the terminology of the Hebrew original, it is clear that we are not talking about dogs in the literal sense, but about men who have perverted their nature. The enormity of their sin is aggravated by the fact that they elevated their debauchery into worship (like our whips).

Although the latter has disappeared, because people do not believe in any God now, but at the present time we are seeing very strange things. Civilized scientists of the 20th century, along with the condemnation of "light" sins (due to the minimum morality inherent in every person), immediately try with all their might to whitewash and legitimize the most disgusting debauchery. It is understandable, of course, why - so that they would not be told: Physician, heal yourself (Lk 4:23).

- On one page - we read from them that, for example, Wagner's music "should be used with caution" (because it can arouse sensuality), and on the next: "The state has no right to inflict its punishments on sexually perverted subjects" .

Another example. The idealization of the well-known Platonic views on love, which some philosophers want to find at all costs even where it cannot be - I don’t want to say it more clearly - has already set the teeth on edge for everyone, various scientific books are full of laudatory songs to it . But in fact, the "king" of ancient Greek philosophy is "naked", in the words of Andersen's famous fairy tale. And we, Christians, have nothing to be afraid of assessing certain deeds as they are worth it, even if such luminaries of universal human thought as Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Aeschylus were guilty of them.

Dirt will always be dirt, and no cunning efforts of a philosophized mind will help here. And Bete was right, not afraid to say to the faces of scientists that the pillars of ancient philosophy and literature, indeed, are bare of any virtue, or even the most generally accessible morality, and that the most vile passion lies at the basis of all these "high" reasoning. Passion possessed even the elderly, and the "greatest" Pindar, already in his declining years, confesses that "at the sight of the youthfully beautiful bodies of boys, he melts like wax from a fire."

The Church, by canon 62 of St. Basil the Great, in the Third Canonical Epistle (to Amphilochius) on sodomites, decides: “Whoever has shown shamelessness on men, let the time of punishment be distributed to him, just as he who has fallen into the sin of adultery,” that is, he must be excommunicated from the sacrament of St. Communion for fifteen years.

Bestiality

In the Old Testament, God directly commanded that those guilty of this sin be put to death.

"Do not lie down with any cattle to pour out semen and be defiled by it; and a woman should not stand before cattle to copulate with him. This is vile" (Lev 18:23).

"Whoever mixes with cattle, put him to death, and kill the cattle. If a woman goes to any cattle to copulate with her, then kill the woman and the cattle; let them be put to death, their blood is on them" (Lev 20:15 -16).

In the New Testament, the holy chief apostles Peter and Paul threaten a worse and more formidable rebuke - eternal torment (1 Peter 4:3-5; 1 Tim 1:1).

Such severe punishment in the Old Testament was especially necessary because in the land of Canaan, where God sent the Jews, and indeed among the surrounding peoples, licentiousness reigned in appalling proportions. The Egyptians, for example, did not know how to restrain both in the named vice, and in general in fornication (Genesis 39:7).

But it cannot be said that our century is particularly pure in this respect. For, as we have seen, while the Church wants her members not to even suspect the existence of such vices, civilization relishes them, slowly provides the means to feed these passions and, moreover, has the audacity to declare aloud that prostitution must be abolished. How? - Make love “free”, marriage “liberate”, take a woman out of the home environment and place in the environment of single men, and so on. This means, I will use the comparison of St. John of the Ladder, to throw meat at a hungry dog ​​so that he lags behind: as if a person drives him away, but in fact attracts him to himself. So here.

At present, the Holy Church accepts cattle-keepers into communion after fifteen years of penance or more, and sometimes only at the end of life, depending on age and other circumstances.

On this one can end the description of unnatural passions. In conclusion, I will quote the words of the angels who accompanied the soul of blessed Theodora during her ordeals after her death. When they passed the fornication barriers without hindrance, the angels said to her:

– Know that a rare soul passes them freely: the whole world is immersed in the evil of temptations and filth, all people are voluptuous and fornicating... The authorities of prodigal ordeals boast that they alone, more than all other ordeals, fill the fiery kinship in hell. May God save us from all this!

Ep. Barnabas (Belyaev). - M .: "Trinity Book", January-March, 1998.

Original: Library of Old Russian Literature - Rus.ru Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) Unnatural Sins
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