St. John of Kronstadt · 9 of 49

Part I · Part 9

Believe as undoubtingly that God sees you, as you believe that your father, or anyone else standing face to face with you, sees you, only with this difference, that the Heavenly Father sees everything that is in you, entirely what you are, and all creatures, the angels, the saints, us sinners, the animals--sees everything at once in the same way as the sun lights everything at once, besides which "The eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun." A lively sense of God's presence is a source of peace and joy for the soul. Doubt in His presence produces distress, affliction, and oppression. Heartfelt prayer is the source of peace of heart, whilst insincere, superficial, inattentive prayer wounds the heart.

Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, is an unfathomable abyss of love to men. In this abyss of mercy plenteousness of mercy for all will be found, only turn to God with faith, hope, and hearty contrition for your iniquities and your offences against the Lord, our Master and Benefactor.

God is nearer to us than any man at every time. He is nearer to me than my raiment, nearer than the air or light, nearer than my wife, father, mother, daughter, son, or friend. I live in Him, soul and body. I breathe in Him, think in Him, feel, consider, intend, speak, undertake, work in Him. "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."" For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." Therefore we must always see God before us at our right hand, we must be strong, and in order not to sin we must so place ourselves that nothing could thrust God from our thoughts and hearts, that nothing could hide Him from us--no undue partiality for food, drink, money, dress, house and its furniture, nor for any person--that no worldly distractions and pastimes could deprive us of our Most-sweet, Most-beloved Lord, but that we may every hour and every minute belong to Him, and perpetually be with Him, as He Himself is perpetually with us, as He constantly cares for us and guards us. But when I sin, or when I have any undue partiality for anything, then He is far from me, not in respect to space, for He at all times fills everything, but in respect to my own spiritual withdrawal from Him, to my own indifference towards Him, in respect to His actually depriving me of His grace and His presence in my heart, for then His enemy, the Devil, dwells in me.

As in a sea, lake, or river every particle of water is united to other particles and is surrounded by them, or as in the air every particle of it is surrounded by other particles and is united to them, so all of us earth-born creatures are surrounded by God on all sides, whilst those of us who are pure, or being purified, are united to Him and are everywhere with Him. All of us earth-born creatures--like water, like air, like a tree with many branches--form one whole, though often broken, by the envy of the enemy, by selfishness, irritability, animosity, disputes, pride, heresy and dissent, envy, avarice, unsociability, and other passions. On the other side, the Devil and his angels also form amongst themselves another whole, like dark, malignant, poisonous water or fiery, suffocating, deadly air. They surround us and endeavour to break into our souls when we are off our guard, or under the domination of various passions, in order to darken, disturb, oppress, inflame, and in every way torment us. Thus, for instance, you may sometimes chance to be walking in the pure sweet-scented air, when suddenly a foul odour from a cesspool strikes your sense of smell in an unpleasant manner, and you wish to pass quickly by this place, so as to breathe the wholesome air again: the stink of the Devil is like unto this. The Lord Himself likens the dark devilish hordes to air and water. He says: "The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house" (that is, upon the man, upon the human soul); "and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock."

We are in the habit of saying: "Had I not looked, I should not have been tempted;" "Had I not heard, my heart would not have ached;" "Had I not tasted, I should not have desired." You see how many temptations arise from our own sight, hearing, and taste. How many have suffered and still suffer because their hearts were not firm in their good inclinations, because they imprudently looked with impure eyes, because they heard with ears unaccustomed to discern between good and evil, because they greedily tasted! The senses of the sin-loving, greedy flesh, unrestrained by reason and by God's commandments, have drawn them into various worldly passions, have darkened their minds and hearts, deprived them of peace of heart, and taken away their free-will, making them the slaves of these senses. Thus you see how necessary it is to look, listen, taste, smell, and feel prudently; or, rather, how necessary it is to guard your heart so that through your outward senses, as through a window, no sin may steal in, and that the author himself of sin--the Devil--may not darken and wound that heavenly fledgeling, our soul, with his poisonous and deathly arrows.

The soul receives the Lord into it in the Life-giving Sacrament by the thought of faith and by the heart's acknowledgment that the Lord Himself is truly present in the sacrament, whilst our body receives the Lord through the mouth and belly. When the soul receives the Lord with firm faith, then the Lord fills in a single moment both the soul, as an incomplex being, and the whole of the body with all its joints--because the soul fills the entire body, and because of the all-filling property of the Godhead.

In the Christian life, temptations and tests or trials of our spiritual condition are necessary; and as our life, like the furniture of a house, becomes covered with various stains, it is necessary to cleanse it. As for testing objects made, for instance, of silver, instruments are required, so likewise for testing the state of the soul, men are required, like for like, who, willingly or unwillingly, intentionally or quite unthinkingly, show us by their conduct in relation to us, in a manner apparent both to ourselves and others, whether we are obedient to God's commands, declared to us in the Gospel, or not--whether we live according to the spirit, mortifying in ourselves the desires of the flesh, or according to the flesh, being obedient slaves to the will of the flesh and to carnal thoughts and passions; so that we, recognising that we are not living in accordance with the will of God, not in accordance with the commandments of our Sweetest Saviour, but in accordance with our own sinful and blind will, may speedily amend and zealously follow the commandments of the Divine Gospel.

Our body lives by means of those elements of which it is itself formed, constantly absorbing into itself air, water, and other organic bodies; our soul lives by means of the Divine Spirit, from Which it has its origin, and constantly absorbs into itself, for supporting its life, the life of God the Trinity, through the light of the intellect, through good inclinations and desires of the heart and will, and constancy in goodness. As the body, when it is not nourished by the elements natural to it, cannot live, and dies, so our soul, when not nourished by prayer or good thoughts, feelings, and works, also dies. As in our bodily nature the nourishment and growth of the body are satisfactorily accomplished for a time, but if accidentally, through food or drink or breathing, any poison or contagion enters the body, then suffering is at once occasioned, and even death, should not help be given in time; so in our spiritual nature everything goes on satisfactorily for a time, but if it is corrupted by the Devil, then it suffers grievously, becoming as if benumbed, and it requires the speedy help of the heavenly Physician, the God of spirits, which can only be received through the prayer of faith. (The artifices of the Devil in the soul of a man correspond to the action of poison upon the bodily nature; with the difference that the poison of material nature seldom enters into our body, while the artifices of the Devil are always with and about us.) As, for the nourishment and support of the life of our body, the means by which it lives are ever at hand, namely, light, air, water, and food—of which air, as the most necessary element for life, constantly surrounds us, and water also is always easily to be found, as well as vegetable and animal food—so also the forces for supporting the life of our soul are always ready in abundance—its spiritual food, drink, and raiment—in God the Trinity. Being wholly in every place, like air, or like mental light, the Lord is ready at every moment of our life—according to our faith, and on account of the constantly prayerful disposition of our soul—to support our spiritual forces by His all-active grace; to be the uninterrupted light of our mind and heart; the air by which our soul breathes; the food by which it is nourished and strengthened; the life-giving warmth by which it is warmed; and the garment with which it not only covers its sinful nakedness, but with which it also adorns itself as with royal purple—that is, the garment of Christ's justification. Man, every moment of his existence, is between two mediums—material and spiritual—from which he receives everything. The one supports his bodily, the other his spiritual nature; the one is visible nature, the other the Infinite Personal Spirit of God, Which, being wholly everywhere, is above all, and, containing everything, is Itself not limited by anything. Every man of himself is so insignificant and helpless that he receives everything necessary to support his existence, not from himself, but from without; he himself is nothing. And as his body is supported by air, food, and drink, so his soul is supported by prayer, by reading God's Word, and by the communion of the Holy Mysteries. On the other hand, as in the kingdom of the most merciful and Almighty God there is also a place for fallen evil spirits, and as their place of abode is the very air and earth inhabited by men, and as man from the very beginning was allured by them to evil, as they were always, still are, and will be together with the human race until the end of the world, they form, so to say, a medium by which we are surrounded, and in which we live. We, who are free, and at the same time fallen beings—although we were re-established by the Son of God, and have become free through this grace, by faith, love to God, and by good works--ought, by continual prayer to God, to guard ourselves from the antagonistic forces fighting against our soul, wishing to make us their prisoners, and similar to them in spirit. We must be watchful to the utmost so as not to become like unto the sub-celestial spirits of evil by our spirit and acts, lest they should become the breathing of our soul instead of God--lest the evil constituting their nature should become our evil. We must also ever bear in mind that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world, and that the Lord keeps them too in His full power, and only permits them--as much as His goodness, mercy, and omnipotence allow—to act in the world, to teach and correct men. But there are men who have the Devil for their garment, food and drink, in the same manner as true Christians clothe themselves in Christ, and feed upon His Body and Blood. Throughout the world everything is double—one against the other; the spirit and the flesh, good and evil. Satan has his agents and helpers to spread his dominion amongst men; God has the angels, whom He gives to every Christian to guard him and guide him into Christ's blessed kingdom.

Those who do not believe in God's omnipresence in their thoughts and hearts depreciate the power of God, do not ascribe to Him even that property which air possesses, for air is everywhere. Is not the Creator of the air everywhere? Unbelief in God's omnipresence—or, in general, any sin—serves itself as a strong proof that He is everywhere present. Thus at the time of unbelief my heart is straitened, experiences a kind of burning sensation; it is weary and tormented; my mind is darkened, and I am in a state of desolation. But when I believe, with lively faith, that God is everywhere, present in every place, and therefore that He is ever with me and within me, my heart expands; it is free, light, alive, and my mind is clear—I am in a joyful state. Thus the very thing which slays me serves as the most striking proof of the existence of that in which I was doubting. Unbelief torments me, because it is a calumny of my own heart or of the evil spirit against God, Who is my life. The mental denial by my free soul of life itself is naturally and rightly its death. Again, God is a thinking Being, and my soul is also a thinking being derived from the first thought; therefore my intercourse with God takes place through thought, through faith of the heart, which is nothing else but a lively and clear thought that God is in every place. When I have no such thought it signifies that I have the opposite negative one; when the principle that unites my soul to God is cut off, then there is no true life for me, and there only remains the phantom of an outward, false, animal life.

The degrees of beatitude and torment in the next world will be different. This is proved by the present state of the souls of different people or of the same man at different times under different conditions. The more simple, the better and more sociable the man is, the more blessed he inwardly is; the more deceitful, evil, and selfish he is, the more unhappy; the firmer his faith and the stronger his love are, the more blessed he is; the weaker his faith and love are, the weaker, the worse he feels. Thus those who have little or no faith, those who hate their fellow-creatures, are the most unhappy of men. By this we can understand what future torments will be.

Love every man in spite of his falling into sin. Never mind the sins, but remember that the foundation of the man is the same—the image of God. Other people's weaknesses strike us: they are malicious, proud, envious, avaricious, covetous, greedy; but you too are not without evil—perhaps even there is more in you than in others. At least in respect to sins men are equal. It is said: "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." All are guilty before God, and we all equally require His mercy. Therefore, besides loving each other, we must bear with each other and pardon—"forgive them that trespass against us"—in order that our heavenly Father may "forgive us our trespasses." Thus, with all your soul honour and love in every man the image of God, not regarding his sins, for God alone is Holy and without sin; and see how He loves us, how much He has created and still creates for us, punishing us mercifully and forgiving us bounteously and graciously. Honour the man also, in spite of his sins, for he can always amend.

Some men of progress look upon the Church as their enemy. But is there anyone more full of love, more desirous of our welfare, and wiser in his love to men (after God Himself) than the Church? Everything that is most conformable to our nature and most necessary for its good, all this is contained in the Church, as in a treasury, as the words of life are contained in the Gospel. The Church is the true mother of all those who rightly believe in Christ, the truest friend of Christians. She sympathises and answers to all the essential requirements of the soul and body of the Christian by active relief, or by affording help through the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, in Whom every soul lives.

Concerning praise. The soul involuntarily longs to praise when we gaze upon the starry sky; but still more when, in looking upon the sky and the stars, we represent to ourselves God's providence towards men, how infinitely He loves men, cares for their eternal beatitude, not having even spared His only-begotten Son for our salvation and our repose in the Heavenly Kingdom! It is impossible not to praise God when you remember that you were created from nothing, that you were predestined from the foundation of the world for eternal blessedness, quite without cause, not in accordance with your merits—when you remember what grace God has bestowed upon you for your salvation during all your life-time, what an innumerable multitude of sins are forgiven you, and this not once or twice but an incalculable number of times, what a multitude of natural gifts are bestowed upon you, beginning with health down to the current of air, down to the drop of water. We are involuntarily incited to praise when we see with wonder the infinite variety of things created on the earth, in the animal kingdom, in the vegetable kingdom, and in the mineral kingdom. What wise order in all, both in great and small! We involuntarily praise and exclaim: "O Lord! how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: Glory to Thee, Lord, Who hath created everything!"

If the Church has composed and transmitted for general use prayers and psalms to God the Trinity and to His saints, then this signifies that God hears our prayers and is always near those who pray. But people mostly pray as if there were no God with them, or as if He did not heed their prayers. Let us ascribe to the Lord at least the same amount of attention that good parents show to the requests of their children, at least that provident and attentive love which good parents have for their children. So the Lord Himself teaches: "If ye then," says He, "being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" Thus our requests or prayers will also be fulfilled if we pray with our whole heart. This is true. This is from daily experience.

When malice against anyone is roused in your heart, then believe with your whole heart that it is the work of the Devil working in your heart: hate him and his brood, and malice will leave you. (Do not acknowledge it as anything of your own, and do not sympathise with it.) This is from experience. Unfortunately, the Devil shelters himself behind us, and conceals himself, whilst we are blind, and, thinking we are doing everything of ourselves, begin to stand up for the Devil's works as if they were our own, as if for something just, although every idea of there being any justice in our passion is entirely false, impious, and hurtful. Guide yourself by the same rule also in regard to others. When you see that anybody bears malice against you, do not consider his malice as his own doing; no, he is only the passive instrument of the evil one; he has not yet recognised his flattery and is deceived by him. Pray to God that the enemy may leave him and that the Lord may enlighten the eyes of his heart, darkened by the poisonous, noxious breathing of the spirit of evil. We must pray fervently for all those subjected to passions, for the enemy works within them.

Passions are contagious owing to our spiritual organisation; for instance, malice, even when not yet expressed in words—not expressed by acts, but still concealed in the heart, and reflected slightly in the face and eyes—is already transmitted to the soul of the man against whom I bear malice, and is also perceptible to others; if I am disturbed by passion my disturbance communicates itself to the heart of another, like a kind of spiritual overflow of an impure current from one spiritual receptacle into another. If you eradicate in yourself your passion against your brother, you eradicate the same passion in him too; when you are pacified he will also become pacified. What a close connection there is between souls! How true are the words of the Apostle: "For we are members one of another; we, being many, are one bread and one body; and hath made of one blood all nations of men." Therefore the Lord's commandment requires that: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." It is upon the mutual feeling or understanding of our souls that the efficacy or inefficacy of the words of a preacher is founded; if the preacher does not speak from his heart, but hypocritically, the listeners, by their inward instinct, understand the discordance of the preacher's words with his heart, with his life, and they have not the power which they might have had if the preacher had spoken to them sincerely, and especially if he had himself in reality fulfilled his words. Indeed, between human souls there is too close a connection and communication. This is why good, pious, sincere dispositions, and especially good works, are communicated to the souls of others.

As the man consists of a soul and body, so, correspondingly, there are double means for supporting his life—spiritual and bodily ones. Those for supporting the bodily life are air, food, drink, light and warmth, and those for supporting the spiritual life, prayer (like air), reading the word of God, the life-giving Sacrament, and pious meditations.

You know by experience that neither walls nor the place where you live form any obstacles to the flight of thought; it can in a moment be borne from the house to beyond the clouds, or from one part of the world to another, from one kingdom unto another, from one town to another; but your soul, that thinking, reasoning element, is the image of God—a small image of the Infinite Spirit, God. If your thought is not restricted by four walls, and is not limited by space and time, then what can restrict the Lord, Who has created all things? Can He be restricted by walls—can He be limited by space and time, however infinite according to us they may be? O, His dominion is in every place! His eyes see all and everything. He sees, as upon the palms of His hands, even those who hide themselves in secret places, among the mountains, or in inaccessible castles. This is why the Lord sometimes hides His face from you and leaves you in the anguish of spiritual darkness, so that you may always remember by whose light your soul lives—that is, by the light of God—and that if God turns His face from you and takes His Holy Spirit from your heart, then you will be truly left in the darkness of hell, in infernal torments, and thus you will indeed, although only in part, understand what the future hell will be.

Believe steadfastly and always remember that you have a dual nature, that there are two men in you, the one carnal, diseased by passions, old, of the Devil, seeking carnal things and setting his life upon them; you must mortify the old man within you and not satisfy him in anything, not bend to his sinful, persistent, sickly lamentations; whilst the other man in you is spiritual, new, healthy, of Christ, everywhere seeking Christ, living by Christ (instead of by worldly desires), and finding peace and life in Christ, wishing for nothing in this world but Christ, and counting earthly blessings but dung, in order to win Christ. As we must despise in every way the requirements of the former man because their fulfillment destroys the soul, so we must fulfil in every way the requirements of the latter because they lead to true and eternal life. Let every Christian learn this, and labour to actually fulfil what he thus learns.

Do not be despondent when the clouds of hell, one darker than the other, descend upon your soul; when infernal malice, envy, doubt, obstinacy, and other passions, rise up in your soul; know surely that the gathering of these dark clouds upon your mental horizon is inevitable; but they are not always there and will not remain long; they are like the appearance of dark clouds on the sky in nature--they pass over and disappear, after which the mental atmosphere of the soul is cleared up again. In nature there must be clouds on the sky, and the darkening of the light of day; but these clouds are not constant, they soon pass away, and then the light of the sun shines again with renewed power.

What a wonderful creation is man! Look! that which was created from earth contains the breath of God--personal, independent, free--the image of God Himself. How much wisdom and beauty there are in the construction of man's bodily tabernacle, how much wisdom and love--in a word, how much likeness to God is shown in the life itself of the man who has dominion over the earth; as it is said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion . . . over all the earth." But in order that you should not grow proud, see what happens to you, man, when that which is according to God's image in you goes forth from your body as from its temple! You will be as though you had never been, you will disappear from this world; the temple of your spirit will lose all its goodness and beauty, it will become earth, and return unto the ground, from out of which it was taken, completely mingling with it as a part of it. What a wonderful creation of God is man! God has wonderfully placed in the dust His image, the immortal spirit. But marvel, Christian, still more at the wisdom, omnipotence and mercy of the Creator: He changes and transforms the bread and wine into His most-pure Body and into His most pure Blood, and takes up His abode in them Himself, by His most pure and Life-giving Spirit, so that His Body and Blood are together Spirit and Life. And wherefore is this? In order to cleanse you, a sinner, from your sins, to sanctify you and to unite you, thus sanctified to Himself, and thus united to give you blessedness and immortality. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

Have you seen how respectfully, humbly, and orderly subordinates of all classes and all stations behave in relation to their chiefs, and thus, in their mutual intercourse, fulfil their duty of subordination? Have you not seen with what veneration and strict etiquette those that surround a king behave? And all these are only examples of the behaviour of creatures in relation to the Creator; and it is in this right behaviour in respect to the Creator, in their obedience to His laws, that their welfare and the object of their life consist.

Sometimes a man seems to pray fervently, but yet his prayer does not bring into his heart the fruits of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Why is this? It is because in praying the appointed prayers he has not sincerely repented of those sins which he has committed during the day, by which he has defiled his heart, the temple of Christ, and by which he has angered the Lord. But had he remembered them, had he repented of them in all sincerity, and judged himself impartially, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," would immediately have entered into his heart. In the prayers of the Orthodox Church there is an enumeration of sins, but not of all; and often the very sins by which we have bound ourselves are not mentioned; therefore, we must absolutely enumerate them ourselves during our prayer, clearly recognising their gravity with a feeling of humility and heartfelt contrition. This is why, in the evening prayers at the enumeration of sins, it is said: "I have done wrong either in this or in that"—that is, it is left to our own will to make mention of these or those sins.

Our faith and Church is like a most honoured, holy, godly, firm, venerable woman, who never grows old, and in whom ever dwells a young, living spirit, giving life to her true children. As we always behave with great respect to old people, honouring their grey hair and wisdom—the fruits of experience—and highly value each of their words, and apply them to our own life, so ought we especially to honour the Church, venerate her holiness, antiquity, her unshaken firmness, her divinely enlightened wisdom and spiritual experience, her soul-saving commandments and ordinances, her divine services, sacraments and rites. How can we do otherwise than respect her, even if only for having saved in her bosom an innumerable multitude of people, transplanting them into the abode of eternal peace and joy, not forgetting them even after their death, but remembering them until now upon earth, eternally praising and glorifying their virtues as her true children? Where will you find a more grateful friend, a more tender mother? And therefore, may Christians attach themselves wholly and with all their hearts to the Church of Christ, that they may be firmly established unto the end of their temporal life! May they all be zealous of the fulfilment of all her commandments and ordinances, and may they obtain in her eternal salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord!