Part 2

As we are conscious through fleshly feelings of visible things—for example, our senses—so we are drawn in when meeting someone, absorbed by their faces, their gait, their clothes, and often succumb to them sinfully; in general, we use all our senses with attachment, and through every sense the enemy strives to turn our hearts from the Lord. Woe to us! Constant struggle is necessary, constant watchfulness, otherwise cursed sin will captivate us and make us its slaves. “Lord, help us for Your name’s sake. Lord of Hosts, be with us!”

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“Deliver me from demonic haste.” The devil hastens, hastens incredibly to capture man and destroy him forever, and people slumber, are idle, and sleep in their worldly concerns, in their attachments, greed, gluttony, carnal lust, gambling (theater and cards), fashions, literature, sleep, and every kind of vice, and perish by thousands like flies from poisoned toadstools. Hurry then, hurry, Christians, to save your souls while there is time, while the Lord waits and is patient, while the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven have not yet closed. “Then the foolish maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us’,” but the Master will say to them: “I do not know you.” (Mt 25:11-12). But how does the Lord hurry to save the faithful, attentive, and ready! Every hour, every minute He hurries and sends every aid. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; He refreshes my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” (Ps 22:1-3). O, hurry then, sinners, to salvation!

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The enemy of our salvation has now for about eight thousand years remained true to his cunning, destructive system in order to trap people in ruin through every kind of temptation and passion. And how many, how many he has destroyed and sent to hell—careless and unbelieving, proud, cunning, and evil people from every nation, language, state, gender, and age—how wide is his fiery mouth, which swallows the unbelieving!

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The enemy who beguiled Adam and through his delusion obtained dominion over him deprived him of power over nature and proclaimed himself prince of this age. At first, man was appointed by God to be prince of this age and lord of all visible creatures, so that fire could not burn him, nor water drown him, nor beast harm him, nor any poison damage him; but when he surrendered to the enemy’s deception, he also surrendered his dominion to the enemy. Therefore sorcerers and enchanters, by the action of the opposing force, by God’s permission, work certain miracles, controlling venomous beasts and entering fire and water without harm, as did Jannes and Jambres, who opposed Moses, and Simon the Magician, who rose up against the apostle Peter.

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You are defeated by the cunning enemy; overcome him yourself as well; you have been given the powers, every helping and cooperating grace for victory over the enemy: believe, do not sleep, do not weaken, but strain all your forces. “To the one who conquers, I will give a seat with Me on My throne” (Apok 3:21). O simplicity of heart! O faith not crafty in its scheming!

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Guard the purity and peace of your soul as the pupil of your eye; “do not let your foot slip” (Ps 120:3). Every earthly, worldly attachment is from the devil. Reject and despise it at once, that you may gain Christ in immortality.

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Through his fall, man veered to the left and went very far, withdrawing from God the Giver of Life, losing uprightness and life, inheriting the deception of the enemy, his vanity, passion for corruption, malice, pride, envy, and death; what was needed was a reversal of direction to set things right, but man could not do this of his own power without the particular, all-powerful will of God—without redemption by the Lamb of God, the righteous, sinless God-Man. It was necessary to restore lost righteousness, holiness, and truth, but the devil had so possessed his victim that without a ransom of corresponding value, completed by eternal and infinite truth, he would not and could not return his victim to God the Creator; and by God’s justice, mankind should have suffered for ages and millennia, until the Deliverer of the human race came to earth to fulfill all justice, to suffer for the unrighteous and die for them, to trample death and rise from the dead, giving all resurrection. See what a strong enemy held us in the bonds of death!

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Infinitely precious in us is the spiritual beginning—the immortal soul, created in the image and likeness of God, rational, loving, free, immortal, simple in its essence, without division, indivisible. But sin, contrived by the devil, has distorted and disfigured it, unnaturally split it, turned its thoughts and attachment and love toward creatures instead of the Creator, turned it away from love toward its First Source, its First Image, its First Life, drew it toward the First Principle of evil and darkness—the devil, sowed in it false, vain thoughts, passionate vain yearnings and feelings, attachments to creatures, turned its eyes away from incorruptibility and toward corruption, from heaven to earth, from paradise to the place of exile. Inevitably fallen man must rise again; the wandering must return to the true, first path; those who have fallen into darkness must return to light; those who have fallen into corruption must return to life; those who have fallen into slavery must return to their former freedom of spirit. All of this is accomplished in us by the Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Life-giver; all of this was accomplished in their earthly lives by the holy apostles and all the saints through faith, repentance, the word of God, contempt for the lustful, vain world, through spiritual wisdom, unceasing struggle with sin in all its forms, through self-control, prayer, almsgiving, mortification of the flesh with its passions and desires.

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“I give thanks to You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Mt 11:25). When the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, desired, in the infinity of His goodness, to fulfill in the end of ages the eternal counsel concerning the salvation of the human race perishing through sin, and to find the lost royal coin, to seek out the lost sheep of His rational flock, He took upon Himself human form and, clothed in the whole of man from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, chose as helpers in His great work simple disciples and apostles, fishermen by trade, and through them showed in deed that our salvation does not depend on worldly nobility, learning, or earthly vain wisdom, but that it is solely God’s work—the work of His goodness, wisdom, power, and mercy. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and so on.” (1Cor 1:27).

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Human nature is wonderfully, divinely organized, and to re-create it required such a supernatural means—the incarnation of the Son of God: His life on earth, countless miracles, divine teaching, sufferings, death, and resurrection. The fallen image of God, invaluable, which all the world cannot equal, was the reason for such supernatural providence of God. Do people understand this? Few understand and value it, and therefore many live unworthily, haphazardly, as if by chance, not thinking of the high purpose of Christian calling, living in the vanity of every attachment.

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The necessity of the incarnation and death of the Son of God in the flesh, and the manifestation of God’s justice in the salvation of the human race fallen into death, are expressed more clearly in the words of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews. “Since the children share flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death… for He is not concerned with angels, but with the descendants of Abraham.” (Hebr 2:14-17). This is a lesson for the Tolstoyans and all the senseless intellectuals who place too much importance on blind human reason.

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Man is great when he fulfills God’s commandments and is God’s friend, as the Lord said to His disciples: “You are My friends if you do what I command you” (Jn 15:14), and “Abraham was called God’s friend” (Jac 2:23); he is divine and deserving of the greatest honors from God and of an imperishable kingdom. But he is base and pitiable, senseless and foolish, subject to every misfortune and every absurd, meaningless passion, when he refuses to submit to God’s law and to fulfill the holy and blessed, life-giving and wise commandments of God. Man in his creation is honored by God with great honor, having been made in the image and likeness of God and as king over all earthly creatures, receiving the promise of immortality for keeping God’s commandments—such easy commandments! Yet inattention to himself and a thirst for pleasure and desire for divine honor with disobedience to the Creator’s commandment have turned human life upside down in righteous punishment. But wondrous is the eternal plan of the Creator for the salvation of fallen man: in the counsel of the all-good and supremely wise Trinity that created all things, it was resolved to redeem fallen man from sin, curse, and death through the incarnation and humanization of One of the Trinity—the Son of God; through His life on earth and the fulfilling of all God’s commandments to the cross and death, and the victorious resurrection with glorious ascension and the descent of fiery tongues. Glory to the Lord for this!

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I am continually amazed at the all-good and supremely wise arrangement of God concerning the salvation of human souls, created in the image and likeness of the all-good, supremely wise, eternal God, from the very beginning of the human race to this day and to the end of the age. Pay attention and reflect: what has been done and what is being done by God for this great, humanitarian work from the very beginning of the fall of the first people into sin, curse, and death, from their first separation from Him! What care for salvation, what promise about the Seed of the Woman who would crush the serpent’s head! What concern for the chosen line—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, all the patriarchs of the chosen people, and indeed the people themselves! What wonderful thought, how many wonders (at the exodus from Egypt) in the wilderness, under the judges, under the kings of the chosen people! What paternal punishments from the Lord God upon the stubborn, sinful people, how many terrible captivities; how many of the guilty perished before God! And the different idolatrous nations—how many were instruments of God’s wrath for punishing the Hebrews, and how they themselves were crushed by the righteous judgment of God! And in the New Testament—the appearance of the Archangel to Zechariah, the birth of the Forerunner, the Annunciation to the Ever-Virgin, and the birth of the Savior of the world!

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Through sin we lost the likeness of God in which we were created by the Creator, and became alien to Him, incompatible with Him. He Himself was pleased to become like us, to become man while remaining God, in order to make us like Him. He was born of a Mother, a pure Virgin, without a husband, and from the Holy Spirit. O wonder of wonders!

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What did the Lord do for us as our Savior? How did He empty Himself? What punishment did He endure for the sins of the world and personally for all of us? And what have we done?

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None of those not enlightened by the light of Christ’s Gospel could imagine or conceive that God so loved the fallen human race and gave us His only-begotten Son for our salvation—for teaching, working miracles, establishing the church and her mysteries, for voluntary sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, that He might send the Holy Spirit. Give thanks, tremble, O man!

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“I am the gate: whoever enters through Me will be saved” and so forth (Jn 10:9). Christ is the spiritual gate. Into what? Into paradise, into the Kingdom of Heaven, through faith in Christ the Redeemer and Savior, into His Church, the only one that saves, to which has been entrusted the true teaching of Christ, the saving mysteries, and the guidance of shepherds. Without Christ, without the Church there is no other gate into the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who have fallen away from faith in Christ, from the Church—they will perish if they do not turn and repent.

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Because of the redemptive death of the God-Man for the world, the whole world stands firm and stands unshaken through all the ages, for this hour of innocent, redemptive death; the Lord is patient with all lawbreakers, blasphemers, and those who betray the faith and the Church for this hour; hell has not yet opened its terrible mouth to swallow the unrepentant, as it is said: “Go away from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire… and they will go away into eternal punishment.” (Mt 25:41-46).

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“And the Word incarnate consumed all malignant sin” (from a canon). But here is a remarkable expression from the canon of the holy Forerunner: “In the river, O Baptizer, most wise, you plunged an abyss—the stream flowing with grace of all the transgression wrought” (of the human race), “but I pray, dry up the streams of my transgressions by Your divine intercession, O Forerunner.” An abyss of God’s justice, holiness, and mercy! Christ God, suffering and dying for us and rising again, drowned with His grace all the transgression of the human race that believes in Him. What a comforting thought for us sinners, what hope in the merits of Christ! He can by a word drown all our sins and cast them into the depths of the sea. Satan was and is the cause of the abyss of all human sins, though people themselves are guilty of them through their lack of repentance (repent). The Lord destroys all the corruption of sins. Glory to His justice and mercy!

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There is a beginningless, personal Being, to whom the name is Existence (I AM), and who cannot fail to be. It gave being and existence to every thing in the world, and the world itself received its being from it. It created all creatures with being by a word, a single word: “Let there be light, and there was light; let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, and the expanse appeared” (Gen 1:3,6); and so on and so on, until all that was intended by the Creator came into its place and firm existence. This personal, beginningless Being, whom we call God, as the all-good and all-powerful Being, could give man a secondary moral being when he had willfully lost it, and it called it “rebirth” in the holy Gospel (Mt 19:28). Yet the giving of rebirth to man was purchased at a very high price—the price of terrible sufferings of the God-Man Creator and the Blood shed on the cross and His death: “you were bought at a price,” do not become slaves of men. “For you know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1Cor 6:20; 1Pet 1:18-19). Do we value this? Do we cherish this sacrifice of Christ?

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O Lord, I am amazed at the greatness of Your works in the kingdom of grace and in the kingdom of created nature; I am amazed at Your boundless justice and wisdom, that You, having permitted the rational, dearly beloved creation of Yours (man) to fall deeply and be robbed, deceived, and mocked by the man-killing serpent, nevertheless graciously desired to redeem and restore him in a supernatural manner, incarnating Yourself and becoming man and choosing as the instrument of incarnation the good, most pure Virgin, whom You revealed to be the Protectress and Intercessor of all faithful Christians. The angels marvel at Your condescension, Your providence, Your goodness and wisdom.

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If the goodness of God abandoned me, I would remain an old man, full of sins begun in youth and continuing in part to this day, and I would be all darkness and gloom, uncleanness and stench. But now the goodness of God continually purifies me, sanctifies me, renews me, makes me fragrant, and adorns me. Glory to the Lord for this!

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O Lord, how wonderfully You arrange the salvation of the human race! How graciously, wisely, condescendingly, gently, patiently, and forbearingly, for You patiently await our correction and turning, enlightening us with the light of grace, compelling, moving to tenderness, testing our hearts and deepest thoughts. Yet we are so lazy, sluggish, callous, negligent, pleasure-seeking, greedy, impatient. Move us, O Lord, toward salvation in every way! “Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches.” (Ps 149:5).