Part 2

How exalted, how rich, how bright, how divine is the soul in the holy people of God! What deeds it was capable of in them—in all the saints! What divine contemplations it could reach! What gift of speech, what works, what hymnic compositions in John Chrysostom, Theodore of Studium, John of Damascus, Joseph the Hymnographer, Cosmas of Maiuma, and countless other church hymnographers! And the people of today—how far they have fallen! To the level of dumb animals, and even worse!

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The human soul is wonderful, even though fallen. For what is it like in the saints who have served the Lord diligently in this temporal life! How devoted it becomes to God with love, with self-denial, with prayer, with temperance, with unceasing gaze toward God! How pure, how firm, how bright, how fragrant! Indeed, even the bodies of saints give off fragrance. And their death—how peaceful, how glorious, how bright, how holy!

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My God! What a sight, what heavenly consolation for the saints Sergius and Seraphim! The Lord Himself appears plainly and solemnly to the vision of saint Seraphim with the heavenly powers at the little entrance of the liturgy, and the most holy Mother of God appears to him many times! And to saint Sergius the Mother of God Herself came with the saints into his cell. O comfort! O dignity of man—Christian and ascetic! Glory to God who willed it so!

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The saints watched vigilantly over every movement of their hearts and noticed whether any hostility, ill-will, and malice or envy toward anyone, partiality for persons, greed were nesting there, and immediately uprooted these diabolical roots, cast out this hellish leaven—and also all other passions. Every root and rootlet they cut down immediately with zeal for God and did not allow them to spread, so that they would not choke them and separate them from God. Amen.

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Remember the sole wealth of Elijah the prophet—his mantle cast upon Elisha at the prophet’s taking up to heaven. O, how he loved God, how he was alien to every worldly attachment! He was wholly in God and even before his taking up to heaven lived in heart with God, in heaven. “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand,” he said (1King 18:15).

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Just as we with good sight can see things near and far, so it is easy for the holy angels and the holy saints of God to see in the Holy Spirit, in whom they dwell, in whom they rest—the hearts of people, their thoughts and desires, by God’s grace. These so-called seers saw with their heart’s eyes even on earth the hearts and deeds of people done in secret. Saint Andrew, the holy fool for Christ’s sake, rebuked a certain nobleman for a grave and secret sodomitic sin.

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God’s divine economy of human salvation is true in itself to the letter throughout all ages, and God’s promises to the faithful and those who labor truly are true to the letter. Not one who has walked truly and steadfastly on the Lord’s path was put to shame, was lost, but received for his labors an incorruptible reward—the kingdom of heaven. And the world—how does it regard the labors of believing and pious people and the ascetics themselves? As fools and madmen. It does not believe in the truth of God’s divine economy and therefore perishes in its disbelief. O wonderful truth of God’s divine economy of human salvation!

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“Let us sing of Mary, the Mother of God, who gave birth to the Lord and is exalted above the angels” (the hymn of the angels about the Mother of God and the Church). “She is truly heaven and the temple of God.” Thus the church’s hymnographer, the golden-stringed saint John of Damascus, glorifies the most holy Virgin Mother of God in his first dogmatikon on Her dormition, which we now remember and celebrate. Let us speak with joy and glorify this Virgin and Mother, glorified by all the world, who comes from mankind, whom the bodiless angels and faithful earthly people unceasingly glorify in joy, for She became heaven and the temple of God. The predestined end of Her earthly sorrowful life came, and She fell asleep for three days with death’s sleep, a life-giving sleep. Of Her it could be said at that time: “the maiden is not dead but sleeps” (Mt 9:24). Yes, She slept, died for three days, as Christ God, Her Son, and on the third day rose. She rose and was taken to heaven. O miracle! O blessed lot! O infinite joy! It is right and just! For it would seem that She, the all-pure, only should rejoice on earth as the all-righteous, yet She suffered all Her life for Her only-begotten Son, feared for Him all Her life because of the multitude of His enemies—both the kings of this world and the learned, the unbelieving, the hypocritical, the superstitious, the deceitful, the proud, the flatterers, the envious, the greedy. But now the earthly life of the God-man, full of suffering, has ended. The crucified has risen, His eternal glory has begun; He has sat down at the right hand of God according to His humanity on the throne of glory. She remains still to live on earth in the house of John the apostle, whom She adopted as a son. Already in old age She rested and soon passed over to the eternal, most radiant dwellings. And what was Her glorious dormition! With what light did Her most pure face shine! What wonderful, boundless, ineffable fragrance came from Her ever-virgin Body, as the holy Dionysius the Areopagite writes, he who was present at Her burial! What sweet angelic singing! With what honor, with what wonderful hymn-singing was She buried with the inspired singing of the holy martyr Hierotheus! The glorious end of a glorious beginning, of her earthly life!

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How beautiful is the assembly of angels, countless and harmonious! If the visible world—the starry sky, for instance—is so beautiful, and earthly nature with all its elements, fields, meadows, gardens, forests, rivers, seas, lakes, with all its plants and animal kingdom and other creatures is so great and beautiful, then how great and beautiful must the angelic world be—bright, sinless, intelligent, beautiful, strong, mighty! O beauty, O greatness, O blessedness, O praise to the Creator!

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“Let the saints rejoice in glory, let them sing for joy on their beds” (Ps 149:5). Let us remember the life of the venerable Xenia, her abandonment of her parents’ house, her scorning of wealth and nobility and her betrothed, her fiery love for Christ, her fasting, prayer, mortification of the flesh, her care for the salvation of the souls of virgins. Why this striving toward God in faithful, pious souls? Because like strives toward like; the soul, created in the image and likeness of God, strives toward Him who is like, the image strives toward the archetype, light toward Light, life toward Life, good strength toward good Strength, reason toward the Source of wisdom. And the unbelieving and senseless, sinful and evil people strive toward what is like them—toward evil and the all-wicked devil; evil toward evil, darkness toward darkness, uncleanness toward uncleanness, evil power toward evil power. Like the foolish virgins, unbelieving people sleep and slumber, and believing people but without good deeds, without mercy toward their neighbor. The foolish virgins had faith but no good deeds, so they were condemned. O how many Christians will be condemned!

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Reading church services to the saints with attention for each day of the year and contemplating their deeds in spirit, I cannot marvel enough at their self-denying love, the unspeakable condescension of God to them, and God’s love for them. How many spiritual gifts they received from God, what miracles they performed, what gift of prophecy they had! And both during their lives and after their repose God glorified them, dwelt in them, and honored them with glory and honor unspeakable. Some saints shone like the sun at their repose, and angels were their guides to heaven. This is what the human soul means—purified from sins and having loved its Creator with all its heart!

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How beautiful and varied in form, color, and fragrance are the countless flowers and plants in nature and in different climates of the earth! One cannot enjoy enough the sight and fragrance of them. If plants are so beautiful, then how fragrant in paradise are the saints, the righteous of God of every calling, rank, and dignity! “If God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, like that, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith” (Mt 6:30). Labor, O man, to attain inner beauty, faith, virtue, and do not grow lazy. How fragrant—better than any flowers—are the relics of the saints! God is wondrous in His saints, and He is wondrous even in me, in me a repentant sinner who receives continual mercy and judgment from the Lord.

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Christ’s transfiguration on Mount Tabor shows that if earthly sunlight is so beautiful and life-giving, how much more beautiful and life-giving will be the future eternal and never-ending light.

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The present elemental world is a faint shadow of future incorruptible, eternal, most sweet goods. Judge from present things concerning future incorruptible goods. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no heart of man has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1Cor 2:9). “How wondrous are Your deeds,” O Lord! (Ps 138:14).

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“Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). What do You say, Lord—“come, inherit”… Your words are entirely true and faithful. For us God has prepared in His boundless goodness an eternal, incorruptible kingdom where there is no need, sickness, sorrow, or sighing, no decay and death, but eternal enjoyment, eternal joy and righteousness. And we, unfaithful and vain, do not strive, do not care for this kingdom in which the righteous will reign eternally with God and in God. O, how blind we are, attached to the visible and temporal! How wretched and foolish, senseless we are! We renounce eternal blessedness, communion with God and the saints, and cling to dust, to a dream, to spiritual darkness and stench.

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Who is worthy of the kingdom of heaven from among mankind? One who strives with all his strength to become like God in holiness, goodness, mercy toward his neighbors, like the Father and Son and Holy Spirit; one who strives to become like the saints—in repentance, prayer, temperance, patience, gentleness, meekness, obedience, sincere love (for we are all prone to partiality for persons). In heaven there is room only for holiness, love, one mind, one holy and spotless will. “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).

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Daily I see the firm and orderly course of all the lights and planets of heaven and the firm standing of the earthly sphere with all that is on it, and I marvel and cannot marvel enough at the goodness, strength, and wisdom of the Creator, the One God in Trinity, and, moving my thought to the invisible, incorruptible, eternal world, surpassing beyond measure the visible world, I am struck even more with wonder at the Creator of all the worlds, visible and invisible. If the visible world is so beautiful, so varied, so full of life and beauty, then what is the invisible world? It was not in vain that it was said in God’s Word that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no heart of man has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1Cor 2:9). Love God now, therefore, all you sensible Christians, and strive toward perfection in love and eternal righteousness.

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“If you have not been faithful with worldly wealth, who will entrust you with true riches” (Lk 16:12). Worldly wealth is earthly riches, earthly positions, the earthly body and health, which we knew not how to use and did not wish to use according to God’s will as transitory and temporary. Our true wealth is our soul, rich with the image and likeness of God, with rational free will, with immortality, with the ability to love God and neighbor, to repent, to pray, to give thanks and glorify God. This is our wealth—the soul created in God’s image, which we have made alien to God through our worldly attachments. The holy saints of God were faithful to God even in worldly wealth, scattering it among the poor, and made proper use of their own wealth—their soul—cleansing it with prayers and tears of repentance, with the labors of vigil and fasting, with suffering as martyrs for Christ. So let us be faithful to God both in external and internal wealth, or in what is not our own and in what is our own. What is our own is the soul, given us by God for Christian education, for the restoration of God’s image, for becoming like God and endless blessedness.

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Man is terribly inconstant and changeable because of his original corruption in paradise: from the heights of heavenly contemplation and divine thoughts he can in an instant fall into abominable, foul, lustful, and blasphemous, evil and envious thoughts and feelings, so that after high spiritual joy he must secretly weep over his wretchedness. Blessed is the one whom God’s grace has firmly established in God and who has escaped the snares of Beliar, the blasphemer.

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Man is so deeply corrupted, decayed, and defiled by sin—so infinitely varied in its forms—that even when laboring long in contemplation and God-mindfulness, if for a moment he loosens the spiritual reins of his mind and heart, he can at once descend into low, fleshly, foul thoughts and feelings. For the roots of sin run deep and in all directions through the human heart, and often up to a man’s death these roots remain within him and paralyze his soul. They are uprooted only through endurance, temperance, unceasing prayer, illnesses, and sufferings. “I die daily,” said the holy martyr Ignatius, “so that I might become pure bread of God.”

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For the sake of the transitory, material things, do not neglect the eternal and spiritual, and do not lose love and peace with your neighbors for the sake of material losses, damages, and deprivations. Hold fast to peace and love. “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy, without which no one will see the Lord,” the apostle says (Hebr 12:14).