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   Title: My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and
   Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace
   in God
   Creator(s): Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch (1829-1909)
   Print Basis: Cassell and Company, Ltd; London, Paris & Melbourne, 1897,
   reprint by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY
   Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All;
   LC Call no: BV4839.R8 S42 1897
   LC Subjects:

   Practical theology

   Practical religion. The Christian life

   Works of meditation and devotion
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MY LIFE IN CHRIST

or

Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation,
of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment,
and of Peace in God:

EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF

ST. JOHN OF KRONSTADT

(ARCHPRIEST JOHN ILIYTCH SERGIEFF)

Translated, with the Author's sanction, from the Fourth and
Supplemented Edition

BY

E. E. GOULAEFF,

ST. PETERSBURG

   NOTE.

   I do not precede my book by any introduction: let it speak for itself.
   Everything contained in it is but a gracious enlightenment which was
   bestowed upon my soul by the all-enlightening Holy Ghost during moments of
   deep self-concentration and of self-examination, especially during prayer.
   When I had time, I noted down the edifying thoughts and feelings that came
   to me, and from these notes, continued for many years, this book has now
   been compiled; the contents are very varied, as will be seen by the readers.
   Let them judge of them for themselves.

   "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no
   man." (1 Corinthians ii. 15.)

   THE ARCHPRIEST, JOHN SERGIEFF.
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                               My Life in Christ

  Part I

   "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and
   Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."--St. John xvii. 3.

   Thou, O God, hast opened wide to me Thy truth and Thy verity. By instructing
   me in the sciences, Thou hast opened to me all the riches of faith, of
   nature, and of human understanding; I have learned Thy word--the Word of
   God--"piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." [1] I have
   studied the laws regulating the mind of man, its love of wisdom, the
   formation and the beauty of speech; I have penetrated in part into the
   mysteries of Nature, into her laws, into the abyss of the creation of worlds
   and their revolution; I know the population of the terrestrial globe; I have
   acquainted myself with its different peoples, with the celebrated persons,
   and their works, who have passed in turn through this world; I have in part
   studied the great science of self-knowledge and of how to draw nigh to Thee;
   in a word, I have become cognisant of many, many things--"for more things
   are shewed unto thee than men understand," [2] and hereafter I shall yet
   learn much. I have many books of very varied contents; I have read and
   re-read them, but still I am not yet satisfied. My spirit still thirsts for
   further knowledge and my heart is unsatisfied; it hungers, and from all the
   knowledge thus acquired by the intellect, it cannot gain full happiness.
   When will it be satisfied? It will be satisfied, when "I will behold Thy
   face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy
   likeness." [3] Until then I shall hunger. "Whosoever drinketh of this water
   (of worldly wisdom) shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water
   that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give
   him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life," [4]
   said the Lord.

   How is it that the saints see us and our needs and hear our prayers? Let us
   make the following comparison: Suppose that you were transplanted to the sun
   and were united to it. The sun lights the whole earth with its rays, it
   lights every particle of the earth. In these rays you also see the earth,
   but you are so small in proportion to the sun, that you would form, so to
   say, but one ray, and there are an infinite number of such rays. By its
   identity with the sun this ray takes an intimate part in lighting the whole
   world through the sun. So also the saintly soul, having become united to
   God, as to its spiritual sun, sees, through the medium of its spiritual sun,
   which lights the whole universe, all men and the needs of those that pray.

   Have you learned to see God and represent Him to yourself--as the
   omnipresent Wisdom, as the living, acting Word, as the vivifying Holy
   Spirit? The Holy Scripture is the domain of Wisdom, Word and Spirit, of God
   in the Trinity: in it He clearly manifests Himself: "The Words that I speak
   unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," [5] said the Lord. The
   writings of the Holy Fathers are again the expression of the Mind, Word and
   Spirit of the Holy Trinity, in which the spirit of the higher class
   (spiritually speaking) of mankind has largely participated; the writings of
   ordinary worldly men are the expression of the fallen spirit of men, with
   all their sinful attachments, habits and passions. In the Holy Scriptures we
   see God face to face, and ourselves as we are. Man, know thy self through
   them, and walk always as in the presence of God.

   As you are aware, man, in his words, does not die; he is immortal in them,
   and they will speak after his death. I shall die, but shall speak even after
   my death. How many immortal words are in use amongst the living, which were
   left by those who have died long ago, and which sometimes still live in the
   mouths of a whole people! How powerful is the word even of an ordinary man!
   Still more so is the Word of God: it will live throughout all ages, and will
   always be living and acting.

   As God is the creative, living and life-giving Wisdom, therefore those
   greatly sin who, by the thoughts of their spirit, turn aside from the Wisdom
   of the Trinity and occupy themselves with material, perishable things, thus
   materialising their spirit itself. Especially do those sin who, during
   Divine Service in church or during their prayers at home, entirely turn
   aside in their thoughts from God and allow their minds to wander in
   different places outside the church. By doing so they greatly offend God,
   upon Whom on such occasions our minds should be fixed.

   To what end do fasting and penitence lead? For what purpose is this trouble
   taken? They lead to the cleansing of the soul from sins, to peace of heart,
   to union with God; they fill us with devotion and sonship, and give us
   boldness before God. There are, indeed, very important reasons for fasting
   and for confession from the whole heart. There shall be an inestimable
   reward given for conscientious labour. Have many of us the feeling of
   sonlike love to God? Dare many of us, without condemnation and with boldness
   call upon the Father in Heaven and say: "Our Father!".... Is there not, on
   the contrary, no such sonlike voice to be heard in our hearts, which are
   deadened by the vanities of this world and attachments to its objects and
   pleasures? Is not our Heavenly Father far from our hearts? Is it not rather
   an avenging God that we should represent to ourselves, we who have withdrawn
   ourselves from Him into a far-away land? Yes, by our sins all of us are
   worthy of His righteous anger and punishment, and it is wonderful how
   long-suffering and forbearing He is to us--that He does not strike us like
   the barren fig trees. Let us hasten to propitiate Him by repentance and
   tears. Let us enter into ourselves; let us consider our unclean hearts in
   all strictness, and when we see what a multitude of impurities are keeping
   them from the reach of Divine grace, we shall ourselves acknowledge that we
   are spiritually dead.

   The loving Lord is here: how can I let even a shadow of evil enter into my
   heart? Let all evil completely die within me; let my heart be anointed with
   the sweet fragrance of goodness as with a balsam. Let God's love conquer
   thee, thou evil Satan, instigating us, who are evil by nature, to evil. Evil
   is most hurtful both to the mind and to the body. It burns, it crushes, and
   it tortures. No one bound by evil shall dare to approach the throne of the
   God of love.

   When praying, we must absolutely subject our heart to our will, and turn it
   towards God. It must be neither cold, crafty, untruthful, nor double-minded,
   otherwise what will be the use of our prayers, of our preparation for the
   Sacrament? It is good for us to hear God's voice of anger: "This people
   draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but
   their heart is far from me." [6]

   So do not let us stand in church in a state of spiritual prostration, but
   let the spirit of each one of us on such occasions burn in its working
   towards God. Even men do not much value the services which we render to them
   coldly, out of habit. And God requires our hearts. "My son, give Me thine
   heart." [7] Because the heart is the principal part of the man--his life.
   More than this, the heart is the man himself. Thus he who does not pray or
   does not serve God with his heart, does not pray at all, because in that
   case his body only prays, and the body without the mind is nothing more than
   earth. Remember, that when standing in prayer, you stand before God Himself,
   who has the wisdom of all. Therefore, your prayer ought to be, so to say,
   all spirit, all understanding.

   The saints of God live even after their death. Thus, I often hear in church
   the Mother of God singing her wonderful, heart-penetrating song which she
   said in the house of her cousin Elizabeth, after the Annunciation of the
   Archangel. At times, I hear the song of Moses; the song of Zacharias--the
   father of the Forerunner; that of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel;
   that of the three children; and that of Miriam. And how many holy singers of
   the New Testament delight until now the ear of the whole Church of God! And
   the Divine service itself--the sacraments, the rites? Whose spirit is there,
   moving and touching our hearts? That of God and of His saints. Here is a
   proof for you of the immortality of men's souls. How is it that all these
   men have died, and yet are governing our lives after their death--they are
   dead and they still speak, instruct and touch us?

   As the breath is necessary for the body, and as without breathing men cannot
   live, so likewise the soul cannot truly live without the breath of God's
   Spirit. As air is necessary for the body, so is the Holy Ghost for the soul.
   Air has some likeness to the Holy Ghost. As "the wind bloweth where it
   listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
   cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
   [8]

   When you are threatened with temptation to sin, then represent to yourself
   vividly that sin is exceedingly displeasing to God, Who hates iniquity.
   "Thou hatest all workers of iniquity." [9]

   And in order to understand this better, imagine a father, righteous and
   severe, who loves his family, and is trying by every means to make his
   children well-principled and upright, in order to reward them afterwards for
   their good behaviour by the great riches he has laboriously laid up for
   them, and, who nevertheless sees, to his grief, that the children,
   disregarding their father's love, do not love him, do not pay attention to
   the inheritance so lovingly prepared for them by their father, but live
   disorderly, and rush impetuously to destruction. Mark, that "sin, when it is
   finished, bringeth forth death," [10] because it kills the soul, because it
   makes us the slaves of the Devil--the destroyer of men; and the more we work
   for sin, the more difficult will be our return, and the more sure will be
   our ruin. Dread, therefore, every sin with the whole heart.

   When your heart inclines to evil, and the evil one begins to undermine your
   heart, so that it is completely removed from the rock of faith, then say to
   yourself inwardly: "I know of my spiritual poverty, my own nothingness
   without faith. I am so weak, that it is only by Christ's name that I live
   and obtain peace, that I rejoice and my heart expands, whilst without Him I
   am spiritually dead, I am troubled, and my heart is oppressed; without the
   Lord's Cross I should have been long since the victim of the most cruel
   distress and despair. Only Christ keeps me alive: and the Cross is my peace
   and my consolation."

   We are all able to think, because an unlimited Wisdom (Thought) exists, just
   as we are able to breathe because unlimited air-spaces exist. This is the
   reason why bright ideas upon any subject are called inspirations. Our
   thoughts are constantly flowing conditionally with the existence of the
   unlimited Spirit of Wisdom (Thought). This is why the Apostle says: "Not
   that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but
   our sufficiency is of God." [11]

   This is also why the Saviour Himself says:--"Take no thought how or what ye
   shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak."
   [12] Thus you see that the thought and even the word itself (the
   inspiration) come to us from without. This, of course, in a state of grace
   and in cases of need. But even in our ordinary state all our bright thoughts
   come from our Guardian Angel and from God's Spirit: whilst, on the contrary,
   impure, dark thoughts proceed from our corrupt nature and from the Devil,
   ever lying in wait for us. How then, should the Christian behave? "God
   Himself worketh in us." [13] In general, throughout the world we see the
   Kingdom of thought in the structure of the whole visible world, as also in
   particular in the earth, in the rotation and the life of the terrestrial
   globe; in the distribution of the elements--light, air, water, earth, fire
   (concealed), whilst other elements are diffused in all animals--in birds,
   fishes, reptiles, beasts, and men--in their wise and ingenious construction,
   in their faculties, nature and habits; in plants, in their construction,
   nourishment, etc.; in a word, we see everywhere the kingdom of thought, even
   down to the lifeless stone and sand.

   Priests of God! learn how to turn the bed of sorrow of the Christian
   sufferer into one of joy by the consolation of faith; learn how to make him,
   instead of--in his opinion--the most unfortunate, the happiest of men;
   assure him that having been "a little chastised he shall be greatly rewarded
   afterwards," [14] and you will be the friends of mankind, angels of
   consolation, instruments or ministers of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

   If the fervour of faith in the heart is not sometimes stirred up, then in
   time, through negligence, faith may become entirely extinguished in us; and
   Christianity with its Sacraments may entirely die for us. The enemy takes
   pains to attain this end, and tries to extinguish faith in our hearts and to
   bury in oblivion all the truths of Christianity. That is why we see men who,
   being Christians, are only such in name, while by their actions they are
   quite heathen.

   Do not think that our faith is not vivifying to us--pastors--that we serve
   God hypocritically. No; we before all, and more than all, avail ourselves of
   God's mercies, and we know by experience what the Lord Himself is to us, His
   Sacraments, His most pure Mother, and His Saints. For instance, in partaking
   of the life-giving mysteries of the Blood and Body of the Saviour, we often,
   often experience in ourselves their vivifying effect, the heavenly gifts of
   peace and joy in the Holy Ghost; we know that the gracious gaze of a king
   does not rejoice the heart of the least of his subjects as the merciful gaze
   of our heavenly Master, as His mysteries rejoice our hearts. And we should
   have been most unthankful to the Lord, and our hearts would indeed have been
   hardened, had we not tried to make known the glory of God's Life-giving
   Mysteries unto His beloved, had we not extolled His wonders, accomplished in
   our hearts during each celebration of the Divine Liturgy. We also experience
   the effect of the invincible, incomprehensible, divine power of the Lord's
   glorious and life-giving Cross, and by its power we drive away from our
   hearts evil passions, despondency, pusillanimity, fear, and other snares of
   the Devil. The Cross is our friend and benefactor. I say this sincerely,
   with full belief in the truth and power of these words.

   You wish to comprehend the incomprehensible; but can you understand how the
   inward sorrows with which your heart is overwhelmed overtake you, and can
   you find, except in the Lord, the means to drive them away? Learn at first,
   with your heart, how to free yourself from sorrows, how to ensure peace in
   your heart, and then, if necessary, philosophise on the incomprehensible,
   for "if ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye
   thought for the rest?" [15]

   Think oftener: Whose wisdom appears in the construction of your body? Who
   has ordered the laws of your thoughts, so that until now these laws are
   followed by all men? Who has engraved in the hearts of all men the law of
   conscience, so that until now it rewards the good and punishes the evil in
   all men? The Almighty, All-wise, and most gracious God! Thy hand is
   constantly upon me, a sinner, and there is no moment when Thy mercy leaves
   me. Grant me, then, always to kiss, with living faith, Thy gracious hand.
   Why should I go far to seek for the traces of Thy mercies, of Thy wisdom,
   and Thy omnipotence? O! how clearly these traces are visible to me! I, I
   myself am a miracle of God's goodness, wisdom and omnipotence. I myself--on
   a small scale--am a whole world; my soul is the representative of the
   invisible world; my body--of the invisible one.

   Brethren! what is the purpose of our earthly life? It is, that, after our
   trial by earthly affliction and misfortunes, and after our gradual
   advancement in virtue, by means of the divine gifts, given to us in the
   sacraments, we may rest, after our death, in the Lord, the peace of our
   souls. That is why we sing of the dead: "Grant rest, O Lord, to the soul of
   Thy departed servant." We wish him to rest in peace, as the limit of all
   wishes, and pray to God for this. Is it not, then, unwise to grieve much for
   the departed? "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
   will give you rest," [16] says the Lord. Thus our departed ones, who have
   fallen asleep in a Christian death, come to this voice of God and obtain
   rest. What is there, then, to grieve for?

   Those who are trying to lead a spiritual life have to carry on a most
   skilful and difficult warfare, through their thoughts, every moment of their
   life--that is, a spiritual warfare; it is necessary that our whole soul
   should be every moment a clear eye, able to watch and notice the thoughts
   entering our heart from the evil one and repel them; the hearts of such men
   should be always burning with faith, humility and love; otherwise the
   subtlety of the Devil finds an easy access to them, followed by a diminution
   of faith, or entire unbelief, and then by every possible evil, which it will
   be difficult to wash away even by tears. Do not, therefore, allow your heart
   to be cold, especially during prayer, and avoid in every way cold
   indifference. Very often it happens that prayer is on the lips, but in the
   heart cunning, incredulity or unbelief, so that by the lips the man seems
   near to God, whilst in his heart he is far from Him. And, during our
   prayers, the evil one makes use of every means to chill our hearts and fill
   them with deceit in a most imperceptible manner to us. Pray and fortify
   yourself, fortify your heart.

   If you wish to ask of God in prayer any blessing for yourself, then before
   praying prepare yourself for undoubting and firm faith, and take in good
   time means against doubt and unbelief. For it will go ill with you if during
   the prayer itself your heart wavers in its faith and does not stand firm in
   it; then do not even expect to obtain of the Lord what you have prayed for
   doubtingly, for in so doing you have offended the Lord, and God does not
   bestow His gifts upon a reviler. "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in
   prayer, believing, ye shall receive," [17] said the Lord. This means, that
   if you doubt and do not believe, you shall not receive. "If ye have faith
   and doubt not," said He also, "ye shall have power to move mountains." [18]
   Therefore, if you doubt and do not believe, you shall not have power to do
   so. "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavereth is like a
   wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed," says the Apostle James;
   "for let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord. A
   double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." [19] The heart that doubts
   that God can grant what it asks for is punished for this doubt: it is
   painfully oppressed and contracted by doubt. Do not anger Almighty God even
   by a shade of doubt--especially you, who have already experienced many and
   many times, the omnipotence of God. Doubt is a blasphemy against God, an
   insolent lie of the heart or of the lying spirit that nestles in the heart,
   against the spirit of truth. Fear it as you would fear a venomous serpent,
   or no--what I would rather say, is, despise it, do not take the slightest
   heed of it. Remember that God, during your prayer, is waiting for your
   affirmative answer to the question which He is inwardly asking you: "Believe
   ye that I am able to do this?" To which question you must from the depth of
   your heart reply, "Yea, Lord." [20] Let the following considerations also
   help you in your doubt or unbelief: I ask of God, firstly, that which
   already exists, and nothing merely imaginary not a fanciful good, and
   everything that exists receives its being from God: because "without Him was
   not anything made that was made," [21] and therefore, nothing that happens
   can happen without Him, and everything has either received its being from
   Him, or happens by His will or His permission, by means of powers and
   faculties given by Him to His creatures--and in everything that exists or is
   still happening, God is an all-powerful Master. Besides this, "He calleth
   those things which be not as though they were." [22] Therefore, had I even
   asked for that which does not exist, He could give it to me by creating it.
   Secondly, I ask of God what is possible, because what is impossible for us
   is possible for God; and there cannot be any difficulty even in this
   respect, because God can do for me even that which is impossible in my own
   opinion. It is our misfortune that our faith is hindered by the
   short-sightedness of our reason--that spider, that catches the truth in the
   web of its judgments, its arguments and analogies. Faith embraces and sees
   suddenly, whilst reason arrives at the truth by circuitous ways; faith is
   the means of communication between one spirit and another, whilst reason is
   the means of communication between the spiritually sensual and the
   spiritually sensual and even simply material: the first is the spirit and
   the latter the flesh.

   All the blessings of the soul, that is, all that constitutes the true life,
   the peace and the joy of the soul, come from God! This I have proved by
   experience. My heart tells me so. Thou, O Holy Ghost, art a treasury of
   blessings!

   Having Christ in your heart, fear that you may lose Him, and with Him the
   peace of your heart; it is hard to begin again; efforts to attach oneself
   afresh to Him after falling away will be very grievous, and will cost bitter
   tears to many. Cling to Christ with all your might, gain Him, and do not
   lose boldness in approaching Him.

   You gaze upon the icon of the Saviour and see that He looks at you from it
   with brightest eyes; this look is the image of how He actually looks upon
   you with His eyes, that are brighter than the sun, and sees all your
   thoughts, hears all your heartfelt distress and sighs. The image is an
   image, and represents in lines and signs that which cannot be delineated,
   cannot be given in signs, and can be comprehended by faith alone. Believe,
   then, that the Saviour always protects you and sees each one of you--with
   all your thoughts, sorrows and sighing, in all your circumstances, as upon
   the palm of the hand. "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My
   hands; thy walls are continually before Me," [23] says the Lord God. How
   much consolation and life are contained in these gracious words of the
   Almighty and Provident God! Therefore pray before the icon of the Saviour as
   before Himself. The Lover of men is present in it by His grace, and with the
   eyes depicted in it really looks at you: "The eyes of the Lord are in every
   place," [24] while with His ears as represented on the icon, He hears you.
   But remember that His eyes are the eyes of God, and His ears are the ears of
   the omnipresent God.

   In the well-intentioned works of men, esteem the light of Christ--"the true
   light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" [25] --and read
   them with love, thanking the Light-giving Christ, Who so richly bestows His
   light upon those who are zealous for the glory of His name.

   Wherever I am, as soon as I raise the eyes of my heart in my affliction to
   God, the Lover of men immediately answers my faith and prayer, and the
   sorrow immediately departs. He is at every time and every hour near me, only
   I do not see it, but I feel it vividly in my heart. Sorrow is the death of
   the heart, and it is a falling away from God. The expansion, the peace of
   heart through lively faith in Him, prove more clearly than the day, that God
   is constantly present near me, and that He dwells within me. What
   intercessor or angel can set us free from our sins or sorrows? None, but God
   alone. This is from experience.

   Let us measure the worth of our prayers by human measure or by the quality
   of our relation to other men. How do we behave to other people? Sometimes we
   express our requests, praises and gratitude to them coldly, heartlessly, out
   of duty or simply out of politeness, and it is the same when we do anything
   for them; whilst at other times we do so with warmth, heartily, and
   lovingly, often only feigning, often really sincerely. We are similarly
   unequal with God. But this should not be. We must always, from our whole
   hearts, sing and express to God our praises, our gratitude and our requests;
   every work must be done before Him with the whole heart. He must be loved
   and trusted with the whole heart.

   Faith in God's existence is closely connected with faith in the existence of
   our own souls, as a part of the spiritual world. God's existence is as
   evident to the pious mind as its own being, because every thought, good or
   bad, every desire, every intention, word or act of such a mind is followed
   by a corresponding change in the state of the heart, peace or trouble, joy
   or grief, and this is the result of the action upon it of the God of spirits
   and bodies, Who is reflected in the pious mind as the sun is reflected in a
   drop of water; the purer the drop is, the better, the clearer will be the
   reflection; the more turbid the drop, the dimmer will be the reflection; so
   that in the soul's state of extreme impurity or darkness, the reflection
   entirely ceases and the soul is left in a state of spiritual darkness, in a
   state of insensibility. In this state the man having eyes, sees not, and
   having ears, hears not. Again, in relation to our souls, God may be likened
   to the outer air in relation to the mercury of the thermometer--with this
   difference, that the expansion and rest, rise and fall of the mercury
   proceed from the change in the state of the atmosphere; whilst, in the first
   case, God remains unchangeable, everlasting and eternally good and just.
   Whilst the soul, changeable in its relation to God, suffers changes in
   itself, thus it unavoidably expands and obtains peace of heart when it draws
   nearer to God by faith and good works, and unavoidably contracts, becomes
   restless and wearied, when it withdraws itself from God by unlawful acts,
   want of faith, and unbelief in God's Truth.

   The evil spirit tries to scatter prayer as if it were a sand-heap, tries to
   turn the words into dry sand, without coherency or moisture--that is to say,
   without fervour of heart. Thus prayer may become either a house built on
   sand or a house built on a rock. Those build on sand who pray without faith,
   absently, coldly; such prayer is scattered of itself, and does not bring any
   profit to him who prays; those build on a rock who, during the whole time of
   their prayer, have their eyes fixed upon God, and pray to Him as to a living
   person, conversing face to face with them.

   Edifying words, the writings of the Holy Fathers, prayers, and especially
   the words of the Word Himself, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, are
   indeed living water; water runs, and the words flow like water; water
   refreshes and gives life to the body, and edifying words animate the soul,
   filling it with peace and joy, or with compunction and contrition for sin.

   Our hope of obtaining that which we ask for during prayer is founded upon
   faith in God's mercy and bountifulness, for He is the God of mercy and
   bountifulness, and the Lover of men; therefore at that time it is useful to
   remind ourselves of former innumerable experiences of mercy and grace
   bestowed upon men (in Holy Writ and in the lives of the Saints) and upon
   ourselves. Besides this, in order that prayer may be effectual it is also
   necessary that those who pray should have already obtained that which they
   formerly asked for, and firmly believe this with their whole heart. We often
   receive through prayer that which we have asked for, especially when we pray
   for that which relates to the salvation of our soul; it is necessary to
   ascribe this directly to God and His grace, and not to chance. How can there
   possibly be any chance in the Kingdom of the Almighty God? Nothing can
   really happen without His will, as "without Him was not anything made that
   hath been made." [26]

   Many do not pray because it seems to them that they did not receive any gift
   from God when they prayed before, or because they consider praying
   unnecessary; they say that God knows everything without our asking, and
   forget that it is said: "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye
   shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." [27] Our requests
   (prayers) are necessary expressly to strengthen our faith, through which
   alone can we be saved. "By grace are we saved through faith." [28] "O woman,
   great is thy faith." [29] For this reason the Lord made the woman pray
   earnestly, in order to awaken her faith and to strengthen it. Such men do
   not see that they have no faith--the Christian's most precious inheritance,
   which is as necessary as life itself--that they "make Him a liar" [30] by
   their unbelief, and that they are the children of the Devil, unworthy of any
   of God's mercies; that they are going to destruction. It is also necessary
   that our hearts should burn during prayer with a desire for spiritual
   blessings, with love to God, and that we should vividly represent to
   ourselves His extreme mercy to mankind, and His readiness to hear all our
   prayers with fatherly love. "If ye then, 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?" [31]

   God, being the eternal Truth, does not suffer in us even a moment of doubt
   in the truth. God, as the eternal Mercy, "will have all men to be saved, and
   to come into the knowledge of the truth." [32] And we, the children of the
   merciful God, also must wish with our whole hearts that all men, and even
   our enemies, should be saved, and must care for this.

   Watch your heart during all your life--examine it, listen to it, and see
   what prevents its union with the most blessed Lord. Let this be for you the
   science of all sciences, and with God's help you will easily observe what
   estranges you from God, and what draws you towards Him and unites you to
   Him. It is the evil spirit more than anything that stands between our hearts
   and God; he estranges God from us by various passions, or by the desires of
   the flesh, by the desires of the eyes, and by worldly pride.

   Why should it be wonderful if God Himself, the Creator of all things visible
   and invisible, transforms, transubstantiates bread and wine into His own
   most pure Body and His own most pure Blood? In these--in the bread and
   wine--the Son of God does not become again incarnate, for He was already
   once incarnate, and this is sufficient unto endless ages; but he is
   incarnate in the very same flesh in which he was before incarnate, in the
   same manner as He multiplied the five loaves and fed with these five loaves
   several thousands of people. There are a great many mysteries in nature
   which my mind cannot grasp, although they have concrete forms, yet they
   exist, with their mysteries. So also, in this Sacrament of the life-giving
   Body and Blood, it is a mystery for me, how the bread and wine are made into
   the Body and Blood of the Lord Himself--but the mystery of the Body and
   Blood really exists, although it is incomprehensible to me. My Creator (I am
   only His clay, for God formed me of flesh and blood and endued me with a
   spirit), as the Most Wise, the infinitely Almighty God, has innumerable
   mysteries: I myself am a mystery, as the work of His hands. For my soul
   there is the Spirit of the Lord, and for my soul and body there are His Body
   and Blood.

   In the same way as the soul carries its body, so God carries the whole
   universe, all the worlds, being Himself more vast than they are; the soul
   fills the whole body, and the "Spirit of the Lord filleth the world;" [33]
   only the soul is limited by the body, though not completely, as it may be
   borne everywhere; and the Spirit of the Lord is not limited by the universe,
   and is not contained in the world, as the soul is in the Body.

   Christ being led into the heart by faith, dwells in it with peace and joy.
   It is not without reason that it is said of God, "He is Holy, and rests in
   the saints." [34]

   Do not forget yourself in looking upon the beauty of the human face, but
   look upon the soul; do not look upon the man's garment (the body being his
   temporary garment), but look upon him who is clothed in it. Do not admire
   the magnificence of the mansion, but look upon the dweller who lives in it
   and what he is--otherwise, you will offend the image of God in the man, will
   dishonour the King by worshipping His servant and not rendering unto Him
   even the least of the honour due to Him. Also--do not look upon the beauty
   of the printing of a book, but look upon the spirit of the book; otherwise
   you will depreciate the spirit and exalt the flesh; for the letters are the
   flesh, and the contents of the book the spirit. Do not be allured by the
   melodious sounds of an instrument or of a voice, but by their effect upon
   the soul, or by the words of the song, consider what their spirit is: if the
   sounds produce upon your soul tranquil, chaste, holy feelings, then listen
   to them and feed your soul with them; whilst, if they give rise in your soul
   to passions, then leave off listening to them, and throw aside both the
   flesh and the spirit of the music.

   The inner man, amidst worldly vanity, amidst the darkness of his flesh, is
   not so bound by the temptations of the evil one, and looks out more freely
   early in the morning, just after waking up, like a fish, which sometimes
   throws itself up playfully on the surface of the water. All the remaining
   time he is enveloped in almost impenetrable darkness, his eyes are covered
   by a bandage, which conceals from him the true state of things spiritual and
   physical. Take advantage of these morning hours, which are the hours of a
   new life, or of a life renewed by temporary sleep. They show us in part that
   state in which we shall be when we shall rise up renewed on that great and
   universal morning of the nightless day of resurrection, or when we shall rid
   ourselves of this mortal body.

   Even during prayer, man is for the greater part not the son of freedom, but
   the slave of necessity and duty. Look at any man you like, even at a priest.
   Do many of them pray with a free expanded heart, with living faith and love?

   During prayer there sometimes occur moments of deadly darkness and spiritual
   anguish arising from unbelief of the heart (for unbelief is darkness). Do
   not let your heart fail you at such moments, but remember that if the divine
   light has been sent off in you, it always shines in all its splendour and
   greatness in God Himself, in God's Church, in heaven and on earth, and in
   the material world in which "His eternal power and Godhead are visible."
   [35] Do not think that truth has failed, because truth is God Himself, and
   everything that exists has its foundation and reason in Him. Only your own
   weak, sinful and darkened heart can fail in the truth, for it cannot always
   bear the strength of the light of truth, and is not always capable of
   containing its purity, but only it is being or has been purified from its
   sins, as the first cause of spiritual darkness. The proof of this you may
   find in yourself. When the light of faith or God's truth dwells in your
   heart, only then is it tranquil, firm, strong, and living; but when this is
   cut off, then your heart becomes uneasy, weak as a reed shaken by the wind,
   and lifeless. Do not pay any attention to this darkness of Satan. Drive it
   away from your heart by making the sign of the life-giving Cross!

   Do not spare yourself, but pray earnestly, even if you have been toiling all
   day. Do not be negligent in holy prayer; say it to God unto the end from
   your whole heart, for it is a duty you owe to God. Having put your hand to
   the plough, do not look back. [36]

   If you allow yourself to pray carelessly, and not from your heart, you will
   not fall asleep (if you pray at night) until you have wiped out by tears
   your sin before God. This is not so with everybody, however, but only with
   the more perfect. Take care, then, not to put your flesh before God, and
   disdain, for His sake, bodily repose. If you have made a rule to read so
   many prayers (whether they be long or short, fulfil the reading of all of
   them well), read the prayers with all conscientiousness, and do not do God's
   work with your heart divided in two, so that only one half belongs to Him
   and the remaining half to your own flesh. God is a jealous God, and will not
   suffer your duplicity, your self-pity. He will deliver you up to the Devil,
   and the Devil will not let your heart rest for your neglect of God, Who is
   the true peace of your heart, and Who will always do that which is for your
   own good, so as to keep your heart near Him; for every insincere prayer
   removes your heart from God and sets it in opposition to you yourself,
   whilst every earnest prayer draws your heart nearer to God and makes it
   perpetually godly. Thus, be assured, if you hurry over your prayers, to give
   rest to your body, you will lose both spiritual and bodily rest. Oh! by what
   labour, sweat, and tears is the approach of our heart to God gained! Is it
   possible that we should again make our very prayers (when careless) the
   means of our estrangement from God, and that God should not be jealous of
   this? For He pities us and our former labours, and He desires that we should
   again unfailingly turn to Him with our whole hearts. He wishes that we
   should always belong to Him.

   Without God (without His omnipresence) there cannot be any single motion of
   my thought or heart: if there is an action, there must be a reason; if there
   is a consequence, there must be an origin. This is why the Apostle says:
   "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves" (capable) "to think any thing as
   of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God." [37] God Himself lives, and
   that is why my soul also lives.

   If my life were prolonged only for a few moments--let us say ten--and five
   of these ten were moments of peace and quietness, and the remaining five
   moments of pain and torments, even then I ought undoubtedly to say, "Surely
   the Giver of Life is with me, and He will provide for me"; likewise, I
   undoubtedly ought to say, "There is a being in the world Who has the power
   of death, because the five unfavourable moments must proceed from the being
   that works against God, for the same cause cannot produce opposite actions.
   And in me, sinner as I am, at least seventy parts of my spiritual life
   belong to God, and only thirty parts to the Devil. How is it possible for
   me, then, not to see my Benefactor constantly before me, and how can I
   possibly waver mentally in my lively faith in Him?"

   Time passes without stopping, and my body, even during my lifetime,
   constantly changes and passes on, and the whole world as is seen in its
   motion, also passes on, as though it were hurrying to its appointed end,
   like a machine set in motion. Where, then, is constancy? Constancy is that
   which moves and directs all this to its purpose. The first Cause of all that
   is complex and created is constant, being Itself not complex, and therefore
   not passing, but eternal. The souls of angels and men, created after the
   image of the first Cause, are also constant. Everything else is like a soap
   bubble. I do not lower creation by these words, but only thus speak of it in
   comparison with the Creator and beatified souls.

   Value by its properties that greatest miracle of Jesus Christ, the Son of
   the living God, as manifested in the communion, with faith, of His divine
   mysteries. What is the miracle? The peace-giving and life-giving effect upon
   your heart, slain by sin, which is so apparent after the uneasiness of heart
   and the spiritual deadness that often precedes communion. Never consider it
   from habit as anything ordinary or unimportant: by such thoughts and such a
   disposition of heart you will incur the wrath of God, and you will not enjoy
   peace nor feel renewed life after communion. By the most lively and
   heartfelt gratitude for the holy life-giving Sacrament you will obtain life
   from the Lord and your faith will increase more and more. Fear and
   uneasiness proceed from unbelief. Consider their arising during communion as
   a true sign, that by unbelief you are removing yourself from the Life
   contained in the Cup and do not pay attention to them. O faith! faith! thou
   thyself art a miracle to us! It is thou that savest us! "Thy faith hath made
   thee whole." [38] And after lively faith in God's truth we always go from
   God in peace; whilst, on the contrary, after unbelief, always without peace.
   Ah! Satan often enters into us after we have unworthily communicated of the
   Divine Mysteries, and in every way tries to instil his lie into our
   hearts--that is, unbelief, for unbelief is the same thing as a lie. The
   destroyer of men now, as of old, tries in every way to destroy men by his
   lying, and by various thoughts and desires, and having stolen into the heart
   in the form of unbelief or any passion, he manifests himself in a manner
   worthy of him, mostly by impatience and malice, and you see that he is in
   you; but you will not often at once rid yourself of him, because he usually
   takes care to close every outlet in your heart by unbelief, obduracy, and
   others of his brood. "Thy labour is in vain, thou fallen angel, I am the
   servant of my Lord Jesus Christ. Thou that exaltest thyself in thine
   arrogance, lowerest thyself by thus violently struggling with me, weak as I
   am." Say thus mentally to the evil spirit, as he lays his heavy load on your
   heart and compels you to evil of various kinds. These words will be like
   fiery scourges to the proud spirit, and he, shamed by your firmness and
   spiritual wisdom, will flee from you. You at once will perceive, feel, and
   wonder at the marvellous change in you; the heavy, soul-destroying load in
   your heart will no longer be there; you will feel so relieved, and will be
   convinced by your feelings that there are spirits of evil hovering around us
   and constantly seeking our destruction, poisoning our hearts with the poison
   of dark and evil thoughts, and endeavouring to destroy our love to mankind
   and fellowship with them.

   As all my misfortunes arise in my invisible mind and my invisible heart,
   therefore I require the invisible Saviour, Who directs our hearts. O my
   strength, Jesus, Son of God! O Light of my mind! the peace, the joy of my
   heart--glory to Thee! Glory to Thee, Deliverer from my invisible enemies,
   that fight against my mind and my heart, slaying me in the very source of my
   life, in my most sensitive part!

   Keep a strict watch against every appearance of pride: it appears
   imperceptibly, particularly in time of vexation and irritability against
   others for quite unimportant causes.

   The miraculous effect of the life-giving Cross upon our souls, tortured by
   the poison of evil, proves to us most undoubtedly and clearly: (1) That we
   have indeed a soul, a spiritual being; (2) That there are evil spirits,
   harming our souls; (3) That God exists and our Lord Jesus Christ, and that
   He is always with us through His Divinity; and (4) That He has indeed
   accomplished our salvation by His sufferings and death on the Cross, and has
   destroyed the power of the Devil by means of the Cross. How many proofs of
   the advantage of our faith there are in the wonderful action upon us of the
   life-giving Cross alone! Glory be to the Christian faith!

   Men who are leading a spiritual life see by the eyes of their heart how the
   Devil lays his snares, how the angels guide us, and how the Lord, in His
   Sovereign power, allows the temptations, and how He comforts.

   The only means by which you can spend the day in perfect holiness, peace,
   and without sin, is the most sincere, fervent prayer as soon as you rise
   from sleep in the morning. It will bring Christ into your heart, with the
   Father and the Holy Ghost, and will thus strengthen and fortify your soul
   against any evil; but still it will be necessary for you carefully to guard
   your heart.

   Sometimes in the affliction of your soul you wish to die. It is easy to die,
   and does not take long; but are you prepared for death? Remember that after
   death the judgment of your whole life will follow.^l [39] You are not
   prepared for death, and if it were to come to you, you would shudder all
   over. Therefore do not waste words in vain. Do not say: "It is better for me
   to die," but say rather, "How can I prepare for death in a Christian
   manner?" By means of faith, by means of good works, and by bravely bearing
   the miseries and sorrows that happen to you, so as to be able to meet death
   fearlessly, peacefully, and without shame, not as a rigorous law of nature,
   but as a fatherly call of the eternal, heavenly, holy, and blessed Father
   unto the everlasting Kingdom. Remember the old man who, being weary of his
   heavy burden, called for death. When it came he did not wish to die, and
   preferred to go on carrying his heavy burden.

   With the mental eyes of my heart, I see how I mentally breathe Christ in my
   heart, how He enters into it, and suddenly tranquillises and rejoices it. O,
   do not leave me to dwell alone, without Thyself, the life-giver, my breath,
   my joy! It is hard for me to be left without Thee.

   Is it possible to pray rapidly without injuring the effect of the prayer? It
   is possible to those who have learned to pray inwardly with a pure heart.
   During prayer it is necessary that your heart should sincerely desire that
   which you ask for, should feel the truth of what you are saying, and this
   comes naturally to a pure heart. That is why it is capable of praying even
   rapidly, and at the same time agreeably, to God, as the rapidity in this
   case does not injure the truth (sincerity) of the prayer. But for those who
   have not attained the capability of praying sincerely it is necessary to
   pray slowly, waiting for a corresponding echo in the heart to each word of
   the prayer. And this is not always soon given to men unaccustomed to
   prayerful contemplation. Therefore, for such men, it must be laid down as an
   absolute rule to pronounce the words of the prayer slowly, and with pauses.
   Wait until every word gives back its corresponding echo in your heart.

   Sometimes in his heart a man draws near to God, sometimes he goes far from
   God, and therefore he experiences either peace and joy, or fear,
   disturbance, and oppression. The one is life, the other spiritual death. We
   draw near to God mostly in time of affliction, from which no one can save us
   but God, to Whom we then turn with our whole heart, and thus approach Him
   sincerely; whilst we go far from God in times of ease and abundance of
   earthly blessings, which make the old carnal man proud of himself,
   and--especially when he thirsts for riches, glory and distinction, and has
   attained all these--he loses faith from his heart and forgets God, his Judge
   and Recompenser, forgets the immortality of his soul, and his duty to love
   God with all his heart and his neighbour as himself.

   As an ill-natured man, coming with a request to one who is kind, gentle and
   meek, for the greater success of his request tries to resemble him, so the
   Christian, approaching God with a prayer to Him, or to His most pure Mother,
   or to the angels and saints, in order to insure the success of his prayer,
   ought to try to resemble as far as possible the Lord Himself, or His
   most-pure Mother, or the angels and saints. In this lies the secret of
   drawing near to God, and of His speedily hearing our prayers.

   The Holy Trinity sees and hears me; this is the most life-giving assurance
   for my heart, penetrating it with peace and joy. The benign Mother of God,
   the Word also sees me, and hears my prayers, and my sighing towards Her, and
   this is another comforting assurance, constantly realised. Thus will I walk,
   with the feeling of God's omnipresence and omniscience.

   The most striking proof that there is a devil in the world is that men do
   not feel, or feel very little (though some endeavour to do so),the mercies
   that God has bestowed upon them in the creation, guidance and redemption:
   the Devil is a powerful antagonist to everything good and righteous.

   The problem of our life is union with God, and sin completely prevents this;
   therefore flee from sin as from a terrible enemy, as from the destroyer of
   the soul, because to be without God is death and not life. Let us therefore
   understand our destination; let us always remember that our common Master
   calls us to union with Himself.

   It is especially necessary for Christians to have a pure heart, so that they
   may be able to see God with the eyes of the heart, as He is, with His love
   to us and with all His perfections, as well as to be able to contemplate the
   beauty of the angels, all the glory of the Holy Virgin, the beauty of Her
   soul and Her greatness, as the Mother of God, and the beauty of the souls of
   God's saints, and their love to us; we must see them as they are in
   themselves, we must contemplate the truths of the Christian faith, with all
   its sacraments, and feel their greatness; we must see the state of our own
   souls, and especially our sins. An impure heart--that is, a heart occupied
   with earthly passions--feeds itself on the carnal desires of the eyes and
   worldly pride; it cannot see any of the things we have indicated.

   Prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. [40] From this it is
   evident that it is quite impossible for anyone to pray whose mind and heart
   are attached to anything carnal--for instance, to money or to honours--or
   who has in his heart passions such as hatred or envy for others, because
   passions usually contract the heart, in the same way as God expands it and
   gives it true freedom.

   It is incomprehensible how Jesus Christ is united with the sign of the
   Cross, and gives it the wonderful power of driving away passions, demons,
   and to calm the troubled soul. It is likewise incomprehensible how the
   spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ is united with the bread and wine,
   transforming them into His own Flesh and Blood, and manifestly cleansing our
   soul from sins, bringing into it heavenly peace and tranquillity and making
   it good, gentle, humble, and full of hearty faith and hope. This is partly
   explained by the fact that the Almighty, creating spirit of our Lord Jesus
   Christ is everywhere, and that everywhere He "calleth those things which be
   not as though they were"; [41] and therefore much more can He make what
   exists other from what it was. And in order that the unbelieving heart
   should not think that both the sign of the Cross and the name of Christ act
   miraculously by themselves, apart from and independently of Christ Himself,
   this same Cross and name of Christ do not perform any miracles, until I see
   Jesus Christ with the eyes of my heart, or by faith, and until I believe
   with my whole heart all that which He has accomplished for our salvation.

   "I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." [42]

   So it is, Master: Thou art with us throughout all days; we are not a single
   day without Thee, and we cannot live without Thy presence near us! Thou art
   with us especially in the Sacrament of Thy Body and Blood. O, how truly and
   essentially art Thou present in the Holy Mysteries! Thou our Lord in every
   liturgy takest upon Thyself a vile body similar to ours in every respect
   save that of sin, and feedest us with Thy life-giving flesh. Through the
   Sacrament Thou art wholly with us, and Thy Flesh is united to our flesh,
   whilst Thy Spirit is united to our soul; and we feel this life-giving, most
   peaceful, most sweet union, we feel that by joining ourselves to Thee in the
   Holy Eucharist we become one spirit with Thee as it is said: "He that is
   joined unto the Lord is one spirit." [43] We become like Thee, good, meek
   and lowly, as Thou hast said of Thyself: "I am meek and lowly in heart."
   [44] True it is that often our evil and blind flesh, or the prince of this
   world, who dwells in our simple flesh, whispers to us that the Sacrament
   contains only bread and wine, and not the very Body and Blood of our Lord
   Himself, and sends sight, taste and feeling as his crafty witnesses to this.
   But we do not allow ourselves to listen to these calumnies and reason thus.
   To Thee, Lord, everything is possible: Thou createst the flesh of men,
   animals, fishes, birds, reptiles, of all creatures, Is it possible that for
   Thyself, Thou, "Who art everywhere, and fillest everything," wilt not create
   flesh? Not only this, Thou changest a dead substance into a living one--as,
   for instance, Moses' rod into the serpent--and there is nothing impossible
   for Thee. Canst Thou not, therefore, create flesh for Thyself out of bread
   and wine, which are so near to our flesh, being used for our food and drink,
   and thus being converted into our own flesh and blood? Thou dost not test
   our faith more than it can bear, for Thou dost not transubstantiate a lump
   of earth into Thy most-pure Body, but white bread, soft, clean, pleasant to
   the taste; and Thou dost not create Thy Blood from water, but from wine,
   called in Holy Scripture the blood of the grape, [45] corresponding in
   colour to that of blood, agreeable to the taste, and rejoicing the heart of
   man. Thou knowest our infirmity, the weakness of our faith, and therefore
   Thou condescendest to employ in the Sacrament of Thy Body and Blood the
   substances most suitable to them. Let us, therefore, firmly believe that
   under the form of bread and wine we communicate of the true Body and of the
   true Blood of our Lord; that in the mystery of the Holy Communion, Jesus
   Christ Himself will dwell with us "alway, even unto the end of the world."
   [46]

   Our soul is, so to say, a reflection of God's countenance, and the brighter
   this reflection is, the clearer and calmer is the soul; and the less bright
   this reflection is, the darker, the more disturbed is the soul. And as our
   soul is our heart it is necessary that every truth of God should be
   reflected in it through feeling, through gratitude, and that there should be
   no reflection in it of any lie. Feel God's love in the most pure mysteries,
   feel the truth of all prayers. Our heart is a mirror; as the objects of the
   outer world are reflected in an ordinary mirror, so ought the truth to be
   reflected with all exactitude in our hearts.

   It is good, very good indeed, to be virtuous; the virtuous man is at peace
   himself, is pleasing to God and agreeable to other people. The virtuous man
   involuntarily attracts everyone's attention. Why is it so? Because fragrance
   involuntarily attracts attention and makes everyone wish to breathe it. Look
   upon the very appearance of the virtuous man, upon his countenance. What
   sort of a countenance is it? It is the face of an angel. Meekness and
   humility overspread it, and involuntarily captivate everyone by their
   beauty. Pay attention to his speech; from it there comes still greater
   fragrance: here you are as if face to face with his soul, and are enraptured
   with his sweet converse.

   Love calms and agreeably expands the heart and it, whilst hatred painfully
   contracts and disturbs it. Those who hate others torture and tyrannise over
   themselves; therefore they are the most foolish of the foolish ones.

   When you see your body wasted through sickness, do not murmur against God,
   but say: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name
   of the Lord." [47]

   You are accustomed to look upon your body as upon your own inalienable
   property, but that is quite wrong, because your body is God's edifice.

   What a great personage a priest is! He is in constant converse with God, and
   God constantly replies to his speech, as whatever the ceremonies of the
   Church may be, whatever his prayers, he is speaking to God, and whatever the
   ceremonies of the Church may be and whatever his prayers, the Lord answers
   him. How, under these circumstances, when assaulted by passions, can the
   priest forget that such passions are base, impure, especially for him, and
   that it is impossible to let them enter into his heart, which Jesus Christ
   alone ought to fill entirely? A priest is an angel and not a man; everything
   worldly ought to be left far away behind him. O Lord, "let thy priests be
   clothed with righteousness" [48] ; let them always remember the greatness of
   their calling and do not let them be entangled in the nets of the world and
   the Devil; let them be saved from "the cares of this world, the
   deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering into their
   hearts." [49]

   There are innumerable and various ways by means of which the Devil enters
   into our soul and removes it from God, pressing upon it with all his being,
   dark, hateful, and destroying. Whatever the motion of passion may be, he
   finds a way, and does not neglect the least opportunity of entering the
   soul. Likewise there are innumerable and various ways for the Holy Ghost to
   enter it: the way of sincere faith, of true humility, of love to God and to
   our neighbour, and so on. But, to our misfortune, the destroyer of men from
   time immemorial makes every effort to obstruct, by all possible means, all
   these ways for the Holy Ghost to enter the soul. The most usual way to God
   for us sinners, who have strayed from Him into a far-away land, is the way
   of painful suffering and bitter tears. Both the Holy Scriptures and actual
   experience testify that, in order to draw near to God, it is necessary for
   the sinner to suffer, weep, shed tears, and to amend his deceitful heart:
   "Draw nigh to God .... be afflicted, and mourn, and weep." [50] Tears have
   power to cleanse the wickedness of our heart, and sufferings and affliction
   are necessary, because through suffering the sinful expansion of the heart
   is salutarily contracted, and when the heart is thus contracted, tears more
   easily flow.

   When the Devil is in our heart, then we feel an unusual, overwhelming load
   and fire in the breast and in the heart. The soul contracts extremely and
   darkens, everything irritates it, it feels an aversion to every good work;
   the words and acts of other persons in reference to ourselves we interpret
   falsely and see in them ill-will and designs against our honour, and
   therefore we feel a deep, deadly hatred towards them; we are infuriated and
   long for vengeance. "By their fruits ye shall know them." [51] There are
   days when the spirit of evil disturbs me.

   Men have fallen into unbelief because they have either completely lost the
   spirit of prayer, or never had it at all, nor have it now--in short, because
   they do not pray. The prince of this world has full scope for action in the
   hearts of such men; he becomes their master. They have not asked and do not
   ask God's grace in prayer (for God's gifts are only given to those who ask
   and seek), and thus their hearts, corrupt by nature, become dried up without
   the vivifying dew of the Holy Ghost, and at last from their extreme dryness
   they take fire, and blaze with the infernal flame of unbelief and various
   passions, and the Devil only knows how to inflame the passions that keep up
   this terrible fire, and triumphs at the sight of the ruin of the unfortunate
   souls that were redeemed by the blood of Him who has trampled the power of
   Satan under foot.

   A morning prayer. O, God! Creator and Master of the World! Mercifully
   protect Thy creature, adorned with Thy Godly image, in these morning hours:
   Let Thine eyes, millions and millions of times brighter than the rays of the
   sun, vivify and enlighten my soul, darkened and slain by sin. Deliver me
   from despondency and slothfulness, grant me joy and vigour of soul, so that
   with a glad heart I may praise Thy mercy, Thy holiness, Thy boundless
   greatness, and Thy infinite perfections, at every hour and in every place.
   For Thou, Lord, art my Creator and the Master of my life, and to Thee Thy
   reasonable creatures every hour ascribe glory and praise, both now and for
   ever and to ages of ages. Amen.

   From the time when man, by his own will, fell away from God, he, like an
   animal that was once domestic, but afterwards grew wild in a thick forest,
   reluctantly looks back upon the place of his former abode, preferring the
   darkness of the forest--that is, of this world--to the light of the former
   place--that is, of God's paradise. It is difficult for him to unite himself
   to God, and when so united, he often falls away again from Him. It is
   difficult for him to sincerely believe in God, and in all that He has opened
   to him, and he does not constantly strive to preserve in his heart the
   Heavenly gift of faith.

   If God does not leave a blade of grass, a flower, or a small leaf of a tree
   without His good providence, will He leave us? O, let every man be convinced
   with his whole heart that God is true to Himself in His providence for even
   the least of His creatures. Let him understand that the Creator invisibly
   dwells in all His creatures. In the words of our Saviour, God clothes the
   grass of the field, feeds the fowls of the air. [52]

   In how many ways does not God rejoice us, His creatures, even by flowers?
   Like a tender mother, in His eternal power and wisdom, He every summer
   creates for us, out of nothing, these most beautiful plants. Let us enjoy
   them, not forgetting to glorify the goodness of the Creator, our heavenly
   Father; let us on our part, too, reply to His love by loving hearts.

   He that does not believe in the God Who saves us in difficult circumstances,
   but is faint-hearted; he that does not wish to render glory to God, that
   represents Him as not vigilant, but sleeping, not all-powerful and not
   merciful, thinks falsely of the God of truth, and thus sins grievously.
   Especially inexcusable are faint-heartedness and unbelief in the man who has
   already been deemed worthy of often receiving marvellous help from God the
   Saviour. O, how great a sinner I am!

   The invisible, all-pervading God often and sensibly touches my invisible
   soul, which, from this touch, enjoys wonderful rest and heavenly joy. It is
   not the eyes which give me tidings of my God (ordinary feelings are destined
   for the lower objects of creation), not the hearing by means of words or
   sounds of the voice that carries to me the message of the Incomprehensible,
   but the soul itself becomes, so to say, dissolved in God.

   When you are disturbed and depressed by the wickedness of men, remember how
   boundlessly you are beloved by the Almighty and All-righteous God, Who
   suffers the evil until the time comes, and then will justly punish it. You
   cannot master yourself, your tongue, or one single member of your body.
   Judge by this what He must be, Who governs the whole world, Who keeps it in
   such wonderful order, Who governs the whole of mankind, evil, perverted as
   we are, ever ready as we are to destroy each other, and yet meanwhile more
   prosperous than needy under His sovereignty. How almighty and wise must He
   be to govern such heterogeneous multitudes! Trust in Him entirely.

   When the matter relates to God's Mysteries, do not inwardly ask: how can
   this be? You do not know how God created the whole world from nothing; you
   cannot and may not know here either how God mysteriously works. God's
   mystery must remain a mystery for you, because you are not God, and cannot
   know all that is known to the eternally Wise, Almighty God. You are the work
   of His hands: His most insignificant creature. Remember that there was a
   time when there was nothing and that afterwards all that now exists was
   created out of nothing by the Word of God. "Without Him was not anything
   made that was made." [53]

   You who pray, give God your heart, that loving true heart, with which you
   love your children, your father and mother, your benefactors and friends,
   and in which you feel the sweetness of pure unfeigned love.

   Sometimes during a long-continued prayer only a few minutes are really
   pleasing to God and constitute true prayer and true service to God. The
   chief thing in prayer is the nearness of the heart to God, as proved by the
   sweetness of God's presence in the soul.

   "Let it be as I will, and not as thou wilt." Such is the mighty voice of
   God, which our soul ever hears when it has fallen into sin and desires to
   emerge from a state of spiritual, sinful affliction. "Let it be as I will:
   either repent from the depths of your heart in proportion to the sin, and
   return to the road that leads to life, shown by Me; either bear the
   punishment, corresponding to the sin and determined by My justice, or your
   sin will torment you as a deviation from My laws." And only then will our
   soul enjoy peace when we truly repent from the depths of our heart in
   proportion to the sin, or bear the punishment due from God. O! Almighty and
   most just power of our God, invisibly governing our invisible souls, all
   glory to Thee, glory to Thee, God our Saviour! Thy will be done in us!

   How easily and speedily the Lord can save us!--instantaneously,
   unexpectedly, imperceptibly. Often during the day I have been a great
   sinner, and at night, after prayer, I have gone to rest, justified and
   whiter than snow by the grace of the Holy Ghost, with the deepest peace and
   joy in my heart! How easy it will be for the Lord to save us too in the
   evening of our life, at the decline of our days! O! save, save, save me,
   most gracious Lord; receive me in Thy heavenly Kingdom! Everything is
   possible to Thee." To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yes, he shall
   be holden up: for the Lord is able to make him stand." [54]

   That which is especially important and constitutes the life of the being the
   Creator has placed and concealed far away in the very depths within that
   being; we see this everywhere. Thus in the man the soul is in the very midst
   of his being--in the heart; and therefore the soul is often called the heart
   and the heart the soul. "Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me, my
   heart within me is desolate." [55]

   "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
   [56]

   Our God is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy."
   [57]

   He is not a God of torments and punishments. Our torments are the fruit of
   our sins and the work of the incorporeal fallen spirits. Therefore if you
   suffer grievously, only blame your sins and the Devil, but chiefly yourself,
   because the Devil would not do you any harm if he did not find anything in
   you that he could fasten on to.

   "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." [58]

   "My glory will I not give to another." [59] These words of the God of glory
   are fulfilled every time when in my heart I ascribe the glory of my God's
   works, accomplished in me by the Holy Gifts, to anything or anybody else and
   do not ascribe them with my whole heart to Him. He instantly becomes jealous
   of the glory of His righteous, ever-miraculous, vivifying Mysteries, and in
   His justice punishes my soul with His Fatherly rod! O then my soul clearly
   hears the voice of its God: "My glory will I not give to another. As you do
   not ascribe to Me the glory due to Me, so evident to you in my Mysteries, I
   strike you inwardly with the rod of My truth so that you may thus know and
   heartily believe that I never will give My glory to another. I cleanse your
   sins and make your soul whiter than snow by My blood; I visit your soul with
   peace and joy; I warm and cherish you as a mother cherishes her child, and I
   instil within you My meekness and humility; I pour love into your heart; I
   completely transform and change you--to your own wonder into a new man--and
   to whom else shall I give the glory of My works? I am eternally
   unchangeable. 'God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man,
   that He should repent.'" [60]

   The invisible God acts upon my soul as if He were visible, as if He were
   present here before me, knowing all my thoughts and feelings; every inward
   slothfulness, stubbornness, or other passion is always accompanied by a
   corresponding punishment. In general, if my inward disposition is unworthy
   of God, of His holiness, then I suffer punishment for it in my heart, a
   devouring fire; and if it is a worthy one, then I am joyful and at peace.

   No, whatever you may say, a man is sometimes too irritable and too evil to
   be so of himself, but he becomes so through the most zealous endeavours of
   the Devil. Only watch yourself or others at the time of irritation and
   wickedness, when you yourself or anyone else would wish to destroy the
   person who is inimical to you, really or in your imagination; compare this
   state with that which follows it (sometimes soon afterwards by the action of
   your Guardian Angel, tranquillity, meekness and kindness, either in yourself
   or in anyone whom you watch) with the former opposite condition, and you
   will say to yourself: "No, this seems quite a different man from him, who,
   not long ago, was so full of evil and rage; this man is the one' out of whom
   the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus [meek and humble],
   clothed and in his right mind.' [61] In him there is not even a shadow of
   the former wickedness and the former foolishness!" Some deny the existence
   of evil spirits; but such phenomena in the human life clearly prove their
   existence. If every phenomenon has its corresponding reason, and if the tree
   is to be judged by its fruits, then who will not see in the madly-infuriated
   man the presence of the evil spirit, who cannot show himself otherwise than
   in a manner worthy of him? Who will not see the chief of all evil in the
   outpouring of anger? Besides this, a man subjected to irritability and
   breathing malice clearly feels the presence of a hostile evil power in his
   breast; it produces in the soul quite the reverse of that which has been
   said by the Saviour of His own presence: "My yoke is easy and my burden is
   light." [62] By the presence of the former spirit one feels ill at ease and
   oppressed, both in body and soul.

   You hear in church oftener than anything the voices of the priests, deacons,
   readers, and singers praying God to have mercy upon us. What does this
   signify? It signifies that all of us who are in God's Temple are deserving,
   by our sins, of God's punishment, and that before everything--on our coming
   into the church--we must remember that we are sinners, and have come to the
   Lord of Heaven and Earth, to our Creator and Benefactor, Whom we have daily
   and hourly angered by our iniquities, to ask for mercy, each one for
   himself, and also, in accordance with Christian love, for others. The
   prayers asking for mercy are called in the Russian orthodox Church "great,"
   "small," and "redoubled." As there is not a single superfluous word in the
   church service, it is especially necessary at the time of the singing of the
   redoubled litany to pray to God most fervently, from the very depths of a
   most contrite heart, as we are reminded at the very beginning of the litany
   by the words: "Let us say with our whole souls and with our whole
   understanding." At this time we must lay aside even the slightest coldness,
   the slightest inattention of heart, and, burning with the spirit of
   humility, becoming all attention, offer up to the Creator our most fervent
   prayers to have mercy upon us sinners. But what do we see at the time of the
   exclamations of the priest and the singing by the singers of the great and
   redoubled litany? For the greater part, the usual inattention and
   indifference on the part of those praying.

   As after having unworthily communicated, so also after having prayed
   unworthily and coldly, our soul feels equally ill at ease. This means that
   God does not enter our heart, being offended at its unbelief and coldness,
   and allows the evil spirit to nestle in our hearts, in order to make us feel
   the difference between His own presence and its yoke.

   A terrible truth. Impenitent sinners after their death lose every
   possibility of changing for good, and therefore remain unalterably given up
   to everlasting torments (for sin cannot but torment). How is this proved? It
   is plainly proved by the actual state of some sinners and by the nature of
   sin itself--to keep the man its prisoner and to close every outlet to him.
   Who does not know how difficult it is, without God's special grace, for a
   sinner to turn from the way of sin that is so dear to him into the path of
   virtue? How deeply sin takes root in the heart of the sinner, and in all his
   being! how it gives the sinner its own way of looking at things, by means of
   which he sees them quite differently to what they are in reality, and shows
   him everything in a kind of alluring light! It is for this reason that we
   see that sinners very often do not even think of their conversion, and do
   not consider themselves to be great sinners, because their eyes are blinded
   by their self-love and pride. And if they do consider themselves sinners,
   then they give themselves up to the most terrible despair, which overwhelms
   their mind with thick darkness and greatly hardens their heart. But for the
   grace of God, what sinner would have returned to God? For it is the nature
   of sin to darken our souls, to bind us hand and foot. But the time and place
   for the action of grace is here alone: after death there remain only the
   prayers of the Church, and these prayers can be efficacious for penitent
   sinners alone--that is, only for those who have developed in their souls the
   capability of receiving God's mercy or of benefiting by the prayers of the
   Church--that is, the light of the good works which they have taken with them
   out of this life. Impenitent sinners are undoubtedly sons of perdition. What
   does my experience tell me when I am the prisoner of sin? I am tormented
   sometimes the whole day, and cannot turn to God with my whole heart, because
   sin hardens my heart, making God's mercy inaccessible to me. I burn in the
   fire, and willingly remain in it, because sin has bound my powers, and
   I--like one inwardly chained--am unable to turn to God until He, seeing my
   helplessness, my humility, and my tears, takes pity on me and bestows His
   grace upon me. It is not without reason that a man given over to sin is
   spoken of as "delivered into chains of darkness." [63]

   Your spiritual life is clearly divided into two states, differing acutely
   one from the other: into a state of peace, joy, expansion of heart, and into
   a state of suffering, fear and contraction of heart. The causes of the first
   state are the actions of your soul when in conformity with the Creator's
   laws; and the cause of the second state, the transgression of His holy laws.
   I always can and do notice the beginning of one or the other state; I have
   the consciousness of the one and the other state. Therefore it always
   happens that by doing away with the reasons from which the state of
   suffering and contraction of heart have proceeded, the consequences--that
   is, the suffering and the contraction of the soul--are also done away with.

   "Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be
   reprobates." [64] Truly, Christ dwells in me. Meanwhile, I have until now
   been a reprobate; I did not think and was not firmly convinced that the Lord
   is in me. It is He, the All-Holy, that is so sensitive in me to the
   slightest impurity of heart; it is He Who incites me to drive away from my
   soul the very germ of sin in the heart. But, alas! Satan is also there,
   ready to devour me at every step, and contest me from God.

   When you are struck by other people's suffering, and the contraction of
   their souls, so that you are induced to pray for them with a pitying and
   contrite heart, pray to God to have mercy upon them and to forgive them
   their sins, as you would pray for the forgiveness of your own sins--that is,
   implore God with tears to pardon them; likewise pray for the salvation of
   others as you would pray for your own salvation. If you attain to this and
   make it a habit, you will receive from God an abundance of spiritual gifts,
   the gifts of the Holy Ghost, Who loves the soul that cares for the salvation
   of others, because He Himself, the most Holy Spirit, wishes to save us all
   in every possible way, if only we do not oppose Him, and do not harden our
   hearts." The Spirit Itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which
   cannot be uttered." [65]

   We often hear from others, or sometimes read in the works of others, what
   God has placed in our mind and heart, what we ourselves have cherished--that
   is, we often meet our favourite thoughts in others, and it seems to us as
   though they had been taken away from us, as though they had been new ones
   and formed our own exclusive property. Presumptuous thoughts! What? Is there
   not only one God, the Lord of all intellects? Is not His Spirit in all who
   seek for truth? Have we not one sole Enlightener, "which lighteth every man
   that cometh into the world." [66]

   Glory to the one God, Glory to Him Who loves all and bountifully bestows
   upon all His spiritual and bodily gifts! Glory to Him who is no respecter of
   persons and Who reveals the mysteries of His love, omnipotence and wisdom
   unto babes! [67]

   God's saints are near to believing hearts and, like the truest and kindest
   of friends, are ready in a moment to help the faithful and pious who call
   upon them with faith and love. We have for the most part to send, and have
   sometimes to wait long for earthly helpers, whilst we have not to send for
   nor wait long for spiritual helpers: the faith of Him who prays can place
   them close to his very heart in a moment, and he will as speedily receive
   through faith full spiritual help. In saying this, I speak by experience; by
   this I mean the frequent deliverance from affliction of heart through the
   intercession and patronage of the saints, and especially through the
   intercession of Our Lady, the Holy Virgin Mary. Probably some would say that
   this is the action of simple and firm faith, and a determined assurance in
   our deliverance from affliction, and not the intercession of the saints for
   us before God. No, it is not so. How can this be proved? It can be proved by
   the fact that if I do not call upon the saints known to me in hearty prayer,
   without making any distinction, if I do not see them with my spiritual
   vision, then I shall obtain no help, however great assurance I may have felt
   of being saved without their help. I recognise, I feel clearly, that I
   receive help through the names of those saints upon whom I have called,
   because of my lively faith in them. This happens just as everything happens
   in the usual order of earthly things. First, I see my helpers by means of
   earnest faith; then, seeing them, I pray to them also with my whole heart,
   invisibly but intelligibly to myself; after this, having received invisible
   help in quite an imperceptible manner, but sensibly to my soul, I
   simultaneously receive a strong conviction that this help has been obtained
   from them, just as a sick man, cured by a doctor, is convinced that he has
   been cured precisely by that doctor, and not by anyone else; that his
   illness has passed away not by itself, but through the help of this
   particular doctor. All this comes to pass so simply that it is only
   necessary to have eyes in order to see.

   I am a man--and the grace, the truth and the righteousness of God are
   continually working within me. It is God Who at one time cherishes and
   comforts me, and at another punishes and afflicts me with sorrows for any
   inward motion of the soul adverse to Him. But the earth is full of men like
   me. Therefore, in them also God manifests His mercy, truth and
   righteousness, as in myself. "He worketh all in all." [68]

   Let no one think that sin is something unimportant--no, sin is a terrible
   evil, that destroys the soul, both now and in the future life. The sinner in
   the future life will be bound hand and foot (meaning the soul) and cast into
   outer darkness. As the Saviour said: "Bind him hand and foot and cast him
   into outer darkness;" [69] that is, he entirely loses the freedom of his
   spiritual powers, which, being created for free activity, suffer through
   this a kind of overwhelming inactivity for every good work: in his soul the
   sinner recognises his powers and at the same time he feels that these powers
   are bound by unbreakable chains--"he shall be holden with the cords of his
   sin." [70] To this must be added the terrible torment arising from the very
   sins themselves, from the consciousness of our own foolishness during the
   earthly life, and from the image of the angry Creator. Even in this present
   life sin binds and destroys the soul. What God-fearing man does not know
   what sorrow and oppression strike his soul, what torturing, burning fire
   rages in his breast when he has sinned? But besides binding and destroying
   the soul as it does temporarily, sin also destroys it eternally if we do not
   repent here of our sins and our iniquities from our whole heart. Here is
   also a proof by experience that sin destroys the soul temporarily and
   eternally. If it happens to any God-fearing person to go to sleep without
   having repented of the sin, or the sins, he has committed during the day,
   and which have tormented his soul, these torments will accompany him the
   whole night, until he has heartily repented of his sin, and washed his heart
   with tears (this is also from experience). The torments of sin will wake him
   up from sweet sleep, because his soul will be oppressed, bound a prisoner by
   sin. Now, suppose that the man who has gone to sleep in any sin and is
   tormented by it, is overtaken during the night by death: is it not clear
   that his soul will go into the other life in torment, and that as after
   death there is no place for repentance, he will be tormented there according
   to the measure of his sins? The Holy Scriptures also testify to this. [71]

   Watch yourselves--your passions especially--in your home life, where they
   appear freely, like moles in a safe place. Outside our own home, some of our
   passions are usually screened by other more decorous passions, whilst at
   home there is no possibility of driving away these black moles that
   undermine the integrity of our soul.

   For the soul of the pious, God-fearing man there is an invisible spiritual
   intercourse with God. Like a father or a stern teacher, the Lord at one time
   approves, at another condemns our thoughts, desires and intentions; at one
   time He says that this is good, and that bad. He rewards us for the good and
   punishes us for the evil; and all this is at once evident to the soul.

   Begin to fulfil the commandments relating to small things, and you will come
   to fulfil the commandments relating to great things: small things everywhere
   lead to great ones. Begin by fulfilling the commandment of fasting on
   Wednesdays and Fridays, or the tenth commandment relating to evil thoughts
   and desires, and you will eventually learn to fulfil all the commandments.
   "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." [72]

   A man that only dreams of this perishable life and does not think of the
   eternal, heavenly life! Consider--what is your transitory life? It is a
   constant laying in of fuel (meaning food) in order that the fire of our life
   may continue to burn and should not grow feeble, in order that our house
   (meaning the body) should keep warm, and that the continually changing life
   of our body should be restored by means of the nourishing parts of the
   organs of other living creatures, who are deprived of life in order to keep
   up the life of our body. Indeed, what an insignificant cobweb your life is,
   man! You are obliged twice daily to strengthen the interior of your body by
   means of supports to keep it sound (that is, you are obliged to fortify
   yourself twice every day by food and drink), and every night, daily, you
   must lock up your soul in your body, shutting up all the sensations of the
   body, like the shutters of a house, in order that the soul may not live
   outside the body, but within it, giving it warmth and life. What a cobweb
   your life is, and how easy it is to tear it asunder! Be humble and reverent
   before the Life eternal!

   Truth is the foundation of everything that has been created. Let truth be
   also the foundation of all your works (both inward and outward), and
   especially the foundation of your prayers. Let all your life, all your
   works, all your thoughts, and all your desires be founded upon truth.

   Take the trouble to spend only one single day according to God's
   commandments, and you will see yourself, you will feel by your own heart,
   how good it is to fulfil God's will (and God's will in relation to us is our
   life, our eternal blessedness). Love God with all your heart at least as
   much as you love your father, your mother, and your benefactors; value with
   all your strength His love and His benefits to you (go over them mentally in
   your heart, think how He gave you existence and with it all good things, how
   endlessly long He bears with your sins, how endlessly He forgives you them;
   for the sake of your hearty repentance, by virtue of the suffering and death
   upon the Cross of His only-begotten Son, what blessedness He has promised
   you in eternity, if you are faithful to Him); enumerate besides His mercies,
   which are endlessly great and manifold. Furthermore, love every man as
   yourself--that is, do not wish him anything that you would not wish for
   yourself; think, feel for him just as you would think and feel for your own
   self; do not wish to see in him anything that you do not wish to see in
   yourself; do not let your memory keep in it any evil caused to you by
   others, in the same way as you would wish that the evil done by yourself
   should be forgotten by others; do not intentionally imagine either in
   yourself or in another anything guilty or impure; believe others to be as
   well-intentioned as yourself, in general, if you do not see clearly that
   they are evilly disposed; do unto them as you would to yourself, or even do
   not do unto them as you would not do unto yourself, and then you will see
   what you will obtain in your heart--what peace, what blessedness! You will
   be in paradise before reaching it--that is, before the paradise in heaven
   you will be in the paradise on earth. "The kingdom of God is within you,"
   [73] says the Lord. "He that dwelleth in love," teaches the Apostle,
   "dwelleth in God and God in him." [74]

   "Worship God in spirit and in truth." In truth, for instance, when you say,
   "Hallowed be Thy Name." Do you really desire that God's name should be
   hallowed by the good works of others and by your own? When you say, "Thy
   Kingdom come," do you indeed desire the coming of God's Kingdom? Do you wish
   to be the abode of the Spirit of God, and not the abode of sin? Would you
   not more willingly live in sin? When you say, "Thy will be done," do you not
   rather seek your own will than that of God? Ay, it is so! When you say,
   "Give us this day our daily bread," do you not say otherwise in your heart,
   "I do not need to ask this of Thee--I have enough without asking; let the
   poor ask for this"? Or else, do we not greedily seek for more, and are not
   satisfied with the little, or with that which God has given us? We do not
   thank God for what we have as we ought to. In the prayer: "And forgive us
   our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us," do you not
   think in yourself: "God knows that I am not such a great sinner. It seems to
   me that I do not live any worse than others, and there is no need for me to
   ask that my trespasses or sins should be forgiven"? Or else when you thus
   pray is there not any displeasure or anger in your heart against
   anyone?--for if so, you lie shamelessly to God in your prayer. You say, "And
   lead us not into temptation," but do you not yourself rush impetuously into
   every sin, without even being tempted? You say, "Deliver us from evil," but
   do you not live in friendship with the Devil or with evil of every kind, of
   which the Devil is chief? Beware, then, that your tongue is not in
   discordance with your heart; see that you do not lie to God in your prayer.
   Always keep this in view when you say the Lord's Prayer, as well as when you
   say other prayers. Watch whether your heart agrees with, everything that
   your tongue pronounces.

   The purer the heart is, the larger it is, and the more able it is to find
   room within it for a greater number of beloved ones; whilst the more sinful
   it is, the more contracted it becomes, and the less number of beloved can it
   find room for, because it is limited by self-love, and that love is a false
   one; we love ourselves in objects unworthy of the immortal soul—in silver
   and gold, in adultery, in drunkenness, and such like.

   If God communicates an invincible, incomprehensible Divine power to the
   Life-giving Cross, then why should it be wonderful that He communicates a
   similar incomprehensible power, in order to regenerate our nature, to the
   most pure, terrible and Life-giving Sacrament of His Body and Blood? O, how
   great art Thou, Lord! and how wonderful are Thy works! How endless is Thy
   omnipotence! Whatever is touched by Thy power and Thy grace becomes
   life-giving.

   If you wish to correct anyone from his faults, do not think of correcting
   him solely by your own means: you would only do harm by your own passions,
   for instance, by pride and by the irritability arising from it; "but cast
   thy burden upon the Lord," [75] and pray to God "Who trieth the hearts and
   reins," [76] with all your heart, that He Himself may enlighten the mind and
   heart of that man. If He sees that your prayer breathes love, and that it
   really comes from the depth of your heart, He will infallibly fulfil the
   desire of your heart, and you yourself will soon tell, seeing the change
   that has taken place in him for whom you have prayed, that it is the work of
   "the right hand of God, the most High." [77]

   Who is it that so wisely, delicately and beautifully arranges and transforms
   the ugly--that is, the sightless, formless substance of the earth into
   flowers? Who gives them their wonderful forms? Creator, grant that we may
   salute in the flowers Thy wisdom, Thy goodness. Thine omnipotence.

   Our inward disposition, even when unexpressed by outward signs, strongly
   affects the inward disposition of others. This very often happens, though it
   is not everyone that notices it. Supposing that I am angry, or that I have
   unkind thoughts of another; he feels it, and begins likewise to have unkind
   thoughts about me. There is a certain communication between our souls,
   besides our bodily senses. As regards the action of our soul upon others
   through the senses, it would seem that one soul can act wonderfully upon
   another man through the sense of sight, even when he is at a distance from
   us, but as long as he is accessible to our sight, and is alone at the time
   when we direct our gaze upon him. Thus by the eye we can place another man
   in an awkward position, and confuse him. It has happened to me more than
   once to look fixedly out of the window of my house at the people passing by,
   and they, as if drawn by some power to the very window from which I was
   looking, looked round at the window, seeking to find a human face in it;
   whilst others became confused, suddenly quickened their pace, and set
   themselves to rights, readjusting their neckerchiefs, hats, etc.; there is
   some kind of mystery in this.

   Observe the difference between the presence of the life-giving spirit and
   the presence of the spirit that deadens and destroys your soul. When there
   are good thoughts in your soul you feel happy and at ease; when peace and
   joy are in your heart, then the spirit of good, the Holy Ghost, is within
   you; whilst when evil thoughts or evil motions of the heart arise within
   you, you feel ill at ease and oppressed; when you are inwardly troubled,
   then the spirit of evil, the crafty spirit, is within you. When the spirit
   of evil is in us, then, together with oppression of heart and disturbance,
   we generally feel a difficulty in drawing near to God in our heart, because
   the evil spirit binds our soul, and will not let it raise itself to God. The
   evil spirit is a spirit of doubt, unbelief--of passions, oppression, grief
   and disturbance; whilst the spirit of good is one of undoubting faith, of
   virtue, of spiritual freedom and breadth--a spirit of peace and joy. Know by
   these tokens when the Spirit of God is within you, and when the spirit of
   evil, and, as often as possible, raise your grateful heart to the most Holy
   Spirit that gives you life and light, and flee with all your power from
   doubt, unbelief, and the passions through which the evil serpent, the thief
   and destroyer of our souls, creeps in.

   Sometimes in the lives of pious Christians there are hours when God seems to
   have entirely abandoned them--hours of the power of darkness; and then the
   man from the depths of his heart cries unto God: "Why hast Thou turned Thy
   face from me, Thou everlasting Light? For a strange darkness has covered me,
   the darkness of the accursed evil Satan, and has obscured all my soul. It is
   very grievous for the soul to be in his torturing darkness, which gives a
   presentiment of the torments and darkness of hell. Turn me, O Saviour, to
   the light of Thy commandments and make straight my spiritual way, I
   fervently pray Thee."

   If you do not yourself experience the action of the wiles of the evil
   spirit, you will not know, and will not appreciate and value as you ought,
   the benefits bestowed upon you by the Holy Spirit: not knowing the spirit
   that destroys, you will not know the Spirit that gives life. Only by means
   of direct contrasts of good and evil, of life and death, can we clearly know
   the one and the other: if you are not subjected to distresses and dangers of
   bodily or spiritual death, you will not truly know the Saviour, the
   Life-Giver, who delivers us from these distresses and from spiritual death.
   Jesus Christ is the consolation, the joy, the life, the peace and the
   breadth of our hearts! Glory to God, the Most Wise and Most Gracious, that
   He allows the spirit of evil and death to tempt and torment us! Otherwise we
   should not have sufficiently appreciated and valued the comfort of grace,
   the comfort of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, the Life-Giving!

   The Lord God, as Life itself and the superabundance of Life, everlastingly
   the same, as has been said by St. Gregory the Theologian, moves and remains
   in the Three Persons--that is, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy
   Ghost. You ask how there can be Three Persons in God. I answer: I do not
   understand how; but I know that it must be so and cannot be otherwise. You
   further ask: why is the Third Person in God called the Spirit, and why is He
   a separate Person, when, without this, God is a Spirit? I answer: God's
   Spirit is called Spirit in relation to His creatures. God breathed through
   the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, and there appeared at His
   call an innumerable multitude of spirits. "All the host of them by the
   breathing of His mouth." [78]

   He breathed through His Spirit into the human structure, "and man became a
   living soul;" [79] and from this breath men were born and will yet be born
   until the end of the world, according to the commandment: "Be fruitful and
   multiply." [80] If by His Holy Spirit God has created such separate
   individual creatures, then how can the Holy Ghost be other than a separate
   Person or an individual creating Being Himself? "The wind bloweth where it
   listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
   cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit."
   [81] You see that the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit as one of the Persons
   of the Holy Trinity. If there are innumerable multitudes of created
   individual spirits, then why should God Himself remain without a spirit, as
   without One of the Persons of the Trinity, separate and independent? Is not
   the Son the Wisdom of the Father, personal and living, indispensable to God?
   Look upon yourself. You are a creature; and even in you there is such wisdom
   that many wonder at it; sometimes you even create wonderful things, and you
   are extolled as the creator of these things. And yet this is only you, an
   insignificant, infirm creature. Then consider how can there not be a
   personal Wisdom in God?—how can God be a Creator without His own Living,
   Independent Wisdom? Look upon everything in the world, how wise everything
   is!—how in the smallest things you may notice the amazing wisdom and the
   wonderful work of the All-Wise thought with its marvellous accuracy and
   irreproachable neatness! How can God be without a Personal Wisdom? Consider,
   how can God, Who has created a multitude of reasonable, individual, wise,
   living creatures, not engender for Himself a Personal Wisdom? Is it
   possible? Is it reasonable? Is it in accordance with all the other
   perfections of the Creator? Thus in God there must be a Personal Wisdom, or
   the Personal Word of the Father, as well as the Life-giving Holy Ghost, Who
   proceedeth from the Father and Who resteth in the Son. In you there is
   breath, material and impersonal, while in God, as the Life Itself, there is
   a Personal Spirit, not diffusible, but single and giving life to everything.

   The unnatural mastery of the flesh over the spirit is expressed, amongst
   other things, by the fact that the spirit is as though buried within the
   flesh, and is bound by it. This is especially visible when the matter
   relates to God's service; then the man mostly draws near to God with his
   lips only--that is, with his flesh, falsely, and not with his heart, not
   with his spirit, and thus does not worship Him truly. Indeed, we often so
   live as though we had no spirit in us, and the highest degree of human
   depravity is manifested by the fact that the spirit is completely stifled
   and the man becomes as though he were flesh alone. "My Spirit shall not
   always strive with man, for that he also is flesh." [82]

   Look more closely into the matter of men's reverence for God; you will see
   how in this respect the flesh endeavours to dominate over the spirit. In the
   saints we see the dominance of the spirit over the flesh, because they live
   by the spirit and see the spirit throughout the whole world, the Wisdom, the
   Omnipotence, and Goodness of God; they see in every phenomenon, in every
   work, the impress of the spirit. In sensual men the dominance of the flesh
   over the spirit is shown by their only seeing that which represents itself
   to their senses; in fact, as the saying is, they do not see beyond their
   nose. The carnal, sensual man looks at the world and sees it like an
   unreasoning animal: he does not marvel at the Wisdom, the everlasting Power
   and the Goodness of the Creator, as shown in it; when he reads a holy book,
   he sees in it only the letters; when he prays he says the prayers
   mechanically, without penetrating into their spirit: he does not know the
   art of worshipping in spirit and in truth. The flesh predominates also in
   men's education. (Look, are pupils in the schools taught that which concerns
   the Christian more than anything--Prayer? Are they taught to see God?) The
   flesh will prevail in the world until the end of ages. "When the Son of man
   cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" [83] And unbelief is the work of
   the flesh, as it was in the beginning of the world.

   It is pleasing to God when a man begins to notice His action in the heart,
   because He is the Light and the Truth, whilst the Devil especially fears
   this, being himself darkness and falsehood; and the darkness cannot come to
   the light for fear its doings shall be revealed. The Devil is powerful only
   through darkness, deceit, and falsehood; reveal his falsehood, place it
   before the light, and all will disappear. He induces men into every passion
   through deceit, and thus he lulls them to sleep and prevents their seeing
   things in their true light. The Devil's covering lies over many things.

   Why does not the sinful soul obtain remission of its sins before it feels
   all their foolishness, all their destructiveness, and all their falsity from
   the whole heart? Because the heart is our soul; as it committed the sins,
   finding them at the time pleasant and plausible, therefore it must now
   repent of them and recognise them as leading to destruction and entirely
   wrong. This repentance is accomplished painfully in the heart, as the desire
   to sin is also usually in the heart.

   Do not be disturbed when malice rages within you and strives to discharge
   itself in words of bitterness, but command it to be silent and to die within
   you. Otherwise, being accustomed to see your obedience and to flow from your
   lips, it will master you. As water standing behind an earth dam, and finding
   an aperture, washes it wider and wider and filters through it, if we do not
   strengthen the dam, or strengthen it insufficiently, at last, with growing
   weakness on our part and with repeated efforts, the water gets through with
   greater and greater force, so that at last it becomes very difficult, and
   even impossible to stop it; so also with malice hidden in the heart of man:
   if we let it pierce through once, twice, and thrice, it will pour out more
   and more powerfully, and may at last break through and overflow your dam.
   Learn that in the soul there are waters of evil; as has been said by the
   Psalmist: "The waters are come in unto my soul." [84]

   When you have sinned against God, and your sins torment, burn you, then seek
   quickly the only Sacrifice for sins, eternal and living, and lay your sins
   before the face of that Sacrifice. Do not think you can obtain salvation by
   your own means.

   The Lord might have made the whole world, heaven and earth, into His own
   body; or instead of creating the world, He might have created for Himself a
   temple for His body; and it is only on your account that He deigned to
   create to Himself a Body similar to your own, in order to save you, and
   having created the world from nothing, He has also created out of a small
   part of it His Body to give life to you, leaving the world to remain as He
   created it. O goodness and mercy of God! "We are members of His Body" [85]
   through the communion of His life-giving Mysteries!

   The world, as the work of the living, Most Wise God, is full of life. There
   are life and wisdom in everything, and we find everywhere the expression of
   thought in the whole, as also in every separate part. This is the true Book,
   from which, though not so clearly as from revelation, we may learn the
   knowledge of God. Before the world was, there was only the living infinite
   God. When the world was called into being from its non-existence, God, of
   course, did not become finite; all the fulness of life and of infinity have
   remained in Him. But this fulness of life and infinity are also expressed in
   creatures, living and organic, which are innumerable, and which are all
   endued with life.

   The world, and especially the man, are finite. The world is only a point of
   rest for corporeal creatures, in order that they should not disappear into
   infinity.

   The Holy Scriptures speak more truly and more clearly of the world than the
   world itself or the arrangement of the earthly strata; the scriptures of
   nature within it, being dead and voiceless, cannot express anything
   definite. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" [86]
   Were you with God when He created the universe? "Who hath directed the
   Spirit of the Lord, or being His counseller, hath taught Him?" [87] And yet
   you geologists boast that you have understood the mind of the Lord, in the
   arrangement of strata, and maintained it in spite of Holy Writ! You believe
   more in the dead letters of the earthly strata, in the soulless earth, than
   in the Divinely-inspired words of the great prophet Moses, who saw God.

   You do not understand how the saints in Heaven can hear us when we pray to
   them. But how do the rays of the sun bend down from Heaven to us, lighting
   everything throughout the earth? The saints in the spiritual world are like
   the rays of the sun in the material world. God is the eternal, life-giving
   Sun, and the saints are the rays of this wise Sun. As the eyes of the Lord
   are constantly looking upon the earth and upon terrestrial beings, so also
   the eyes of the saints cannot but turn towards the same direction as the
   provident gaze of the Lord of all creatures towards where their treasures
   (their bodies, their works, the holy places, and the persons devoted to
   them) are to be found. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be
   also." [88]

   You know how quickly, how far, and how clearly the heart can see (especially
   the objects of the spiritual world); you notice this in all the sciences,
   especially in the spiritual ones, where a great deal is adopted by faith
   only (the vision of the heart). The heart is the eye of the human being. The
   purer it is, the quicker, farther, and clearer it can see. But with God's
   saints this spiritual eye is refined, even during their lifetime, to the
   highest degree of purity possible for man, and after their death, when they
   have become united to God, through God's grace it becomes still clearer and
   wider in the limits of its vision. Therefore the saints see very clearly,
   widely, and far: they see our spiritual wants; they see and hear all those
   who call upon them with their whole hearts--that is, those whose mental eyes
   are fixed straight upon them, and are not darkened or dimmed when so fixed
   by unbelief and doubt; in other words, when the eyes of the heart of those
   who pray, so to say, meet the eyes of those they call upon. This is a
   mysterious vision. He who is experienced will understand what is meant.
   Therefore, how easy it is to communicate with the saints! It is only
   necessary to purify the eye of the heart, to fix it firmly upon a saint
   known to you, to pray to him for what you want, and you will obtain it. And
   what is God in reference to sight? He is all sight, all light, and all
   knowledge. He everlastingly fills both Heaven and earth, and sees everything
   in every place. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil
   and the good." [89]

   A hearty belief in the spiritual world, especially in the all-enlightening
   and all-life-giving Sun, rejoices and vivifies the soul that possesses a
   pure conscience. Faith ought to reach the eye of the heart; this means that
   the soul ought to stand as though it were higher than anything sensual,
   higher than anything carnal, higher than its dark nature, and ought to
   penetrate with as pure a vision of the heart as possible into the spiritual
   world. Here it will be happy, for here is its true life, its peace and its
   joy. This is from experience.

   Imagination and representation are the vision of the heart, or of the soul,
   creating or reproducing a certain object; therefore this vision is rapid,
   instantaneous, and bears a spiritual character. It is a photograph made by
   the soul of a certain object. The mind is an artist, taking a photograph
   from it.

   If the Lord were not long-suffering, if He were not the Lover of men, would
   He have borne with our great offences? would He have been incarnate? would
   He have suffered and died for you? would He have given you His most pure
   Body and Blood, upon which even the angels look with fear and trembling?
   would He have saved you from sin and spiritual death so many innumerable
   times? Had it been otherwise He would have said: "Be tormented, if you are
   so evil by nature; I will not deliver you again after having delivered you
   so often before." But now, during all our life-time He bears with our
   innumerable offences, and still waits for our conversion. Glorify, then, His
   love and long-suffering. Picture to yourself what it would have been without
   Him, without Him to save? Horror and trembling fill the soul at the idea of
   it. But impenitent sinners will indeed be overtaken at the last by God's
   wrath "in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."
   [90]

   When you are about to pray to Our Lady the Holy Virgin, be firmly assured,
   before praying, that you will not depart from Her without having received
   mercy. To think thus and to have confidence in Her is meet and right. She
   is, the All-merciful Mother of the All-merciful God, the Word, and Her
   mercies, incalculably great and innumerable, have been declared from all
   ages by all Christian Churches; She is, indeed, an abyss of mercies and
   bounties, as is said of Her in the canon of Odigitry. [91] Therefore to pray
   to Her without such assurance would be foolish and audacious, for doubt
   would offend Her goodness, just as God's goodness is offended when people
   pray to Him without hoping to receive what they pray for. How do people
   hurry for alms to any great and rich man whose kindness is well known, and
   has been proved on many occasions? Generally with the most perfect assurance
   and hope of receiving from Him that which they desire. Likewise, in praying
   we must neither doubt nor be faint-hearted.

   As a mother teaches her child to walk, so also God teaches us to have a
   living faith in Him. A mother will make the child stand, and leave it for a
   while by itself, then she will tell it to come to her. The child cries
   without its mother; it wants to go to her, but is afraid to attempt to move
   its feet; it tries to walk, makes a step, and falls down. God teaches the
   Christian faith in Him in a like manner (faith being the spiritual way); our
   faith is as weak, as elementary as the child beginning to walk. The Lord
   leaves the man without His help and gives him up to the Devil, or to various
   distresses and afflictions, and afterwards, when he is in extreme need of
   help of being delivered from them (for we are not ready to go to Him until
   we are in need of salvation), He bids us look on Him (we must absolutely
   look upon Him) and come to Him for that help. The Christian endeavours to do
   so; he opens the eyes of his heart (just as the child moves its feet) and
   tries to see the Lord by means of them, but his heart, not being taught how
   to see God, is afraid of its own boldness, and stumbles and falls. The enemy
   and inborn sinful corruptions close the newly-opened eyes of his heart and
   cut him off from God, so that he cannot approach Him, though God is near,
   ready to take him into His arms; only God must be approached with faith, and
   an effort must be made to see Him fully with the spiritual eyes of faith.
   Then He will Himself stretch out His helping hand, will take the man into
   His arms and drive away the enemies. Then the Christian feels that he has
   fallen into the arms of the Saviour Himself. Glory be to Thy goodness and
   wisdom, Lord! Thus during the efforts of the Devil against us, and in every
   affliction, we must see clearly with the eyes of the heart, as if He stood
   before us, the Saviour, the Lover of men; and look upon Him with boldness as
   upon our inexhaustible treasury of goodness and mercies, and pray to Him
   with all our hearts, that He may give us a portion of this inexhaustible
   fountain of blessings and of spiritual help; and we shall immediately obtain
   what we are praying for. The chief thing is faith, or the spiritual vision
   of the Lord and the hope of receiving everything from Him, as the
   Most-merciful, the Most-true. This is the truth! This is from experience! By
   these means God also teaches us to acknowledge our extreme moral infirmity
   without Him, to be contrite in heart, and constantly in a prayerful frame of
   mind!

   The Christian has no reason to have in his heart any ill-feeling whatever
   against anyone--such ill-feeling, like every other evil, is the work of the
   Devil; the Christian must only have love in his heart; and as love cannot
   think of evil, he cannot have any ill-feeling against others. For instance,
   I must not think that anyone else is evil or proud without having positive
   reasons to think so, or I must not think that it will make him proud if I
   show him respect, or that if I forgive him he will again offend me and will
   mock at me. We must not let evil in any form nestle in our heart; but evil
   generally appears in too many forms.

   The peace and plenteousness of life in the heart after communion is the
   greatest, the most inestimable gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, surpassing all
   the gifts relating to the body which are received at the same time. Without
   peace of the soul--when the heart is straitened and tormented--the man
   cannot avail himself of any blessings, either material or spiritual; at that
   time the delights that come from the feeling of truth, goodness, and beauty
   do not exist for him, because the very centre of his life--the heart, or the
   inner man himself--is crushed and slain.

   Unite your soul to God by means of hearty faith and you will be able to
   accomplish everything. Do powerful, invisible, ever-watchful enemies wage
   war against you? You will conquer them. Are these enemies visible, outward?
   You will conquer them also. Do passions rend you? You will overcome them.
   Are you crushed with sorrows? You will get over them. Have you fallen into
   despondency? You will obtain courage. With faith you will be able to conquer
   everything, and even the Kingdom of Heaven will be yours. Faith is the
   greatest blessing of the earthly life; it unites the man to God, and makes
   him strong and victorious through Him. "He that is joined unto the Lord is
   one Spirit." [92]

   God in His goodness has granted to us, undeserving as we are, to see the sun
   and its light, and allows us to enjoy it. He will grant to us also to enjoy
   His own inaccessible light. Let the light of the sun be a pledge to us of
   this, but especially the tranquil light of the holy glory of the Heavenly
   Father, His only Son, given to us, and the spirit of love bestowed upon our
   hearts.

   What do I see when I look upon God's world? I see everywhere the
   extraordinary breadth, the sportiveness of life; in the animal kingdom,
   amongst quadrupeds, reptiles, insects, birds, and fishes. Now, it may be
   asked, why should there be this narrowness and sorrowful way of life for
   man, especially for the man who is zealous and pious? God has everywhere
   plenteously diffused life, abundance, and gladness, and all creatures, with
   the exception of men, glorify the Creator by their abundance, their life,
   and sportive joy. Why, then, is there this discordance between me and the
   general life? Am I not the creature of the same Creator? The solution of
   this question is simple. Our life is poisoned, either through our own fault
   by sin, or by the incorporeal enemy, and especially and chiefly by him in
   regard to those who have given themselves up to a life of piety. The life of
   the man--of the true Christian--is in the future, in after ages; there every
   joy and full blessedness will be opened to him. But here he is only an
   exile, and is under punishment; here sometimes the whole of nature takes up
   arms against man for his sins, not to speak of the enemy from time
   immemorial, who "as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may
   devour." [93]

   Therefore I am not disturbed by the fact that there are joy and abundance
   everywhere throughout the world, while in myself alone there is often no
   gladness, so that I look morosely upon the gladness and freedom of God's
   creatures. I have within me an executioner for my sins--he is ever with me,
   and strikes me. But there will be joys for me also, only not here, but in
   the other world.

   Looking upon God's world, I see everywhere God's extraordinary bountifulness
   in the gifts of nature: the surface of the earth is like the richest table,
   prepared with abundance and variety by the most loving and generous of
   hosts. The depths of the waters also serve to feed the man. What shall be
   said of the animals, quadrupeds, and birds? And what bountifulness is
   manifested in providing food and clothes for man! The Lord's mercies are
   innumerable. Look at all the earth supplies in summer and in autumn! Every
   Christian, especially the priest, ought to imitate God's bountifulness. Let
   your table be open to everybody, like the table of the Lord. The avaricious
   is God's enemy.

   The tree firmly fixed in the earth by its roots grows and brings forth
   fruit. The soul of a man firmly fixed in God by faith and love, as by
   spiritual roots, also lives, grows spiritually, and brings forth the fruits
   of virtue pleasing to God, through which the soul lives now and shall live
   in the future world. The tree, when uprooted from the ground, ceases to live
   by the life which it received from the heart through the roots. Similarly,
   the soul of the man which has lost faith and love to God and does not dwell
   in God, in Whom alone it can live, spiritually dies. What the earth is to
   the plants God is to the soul.

   In order not to be in daily bondage to the passions and the Devil, you must
   set yourself an object to aim at, have this object constantly in view, and
   endeavour to attain it, conquering all obstacles by the name of the Lord.
   What is this object? The Kingdom of God, the Divine palace of glory,
   prepared for believers from the creation of the world. But as this object
   can only be attained by certain means, it also is necessary to have such
   means at one's disposal. And what are these means? Faith, hope, and love,
   especially the last. Believe, hope, and love, especially love, disregarding
   all obstacles; love God above everything and your neighbour as yourself. If
   you have not sufficient strength to preserve in your heart these inestimable
   treasures, fall down oftener at the feet of the God of Love. "Ask, and it
   shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened
   unto you" [94] --for He Who has promised is true. Walking, sitting, lying
   down, conversing, or working, at every time, pray with your whole heart that
   faith and love may be given to you. You have not yet asked for them as you
   should ask--fervently and instantly, with the firm purpose of obtaining
   them. Say now, "I will begin to do so henceforth."

   When on your way to God you meet obstacles raised up by the Devil: doubt and
   unbelief of heart, also a thorough ill-feeling, sometimes towards persons
   worthy of absolute respect and love, as well as other passions. Do not be
   disturbed by them, but know that it is but the smoke of the enemy, which
   will be dispersed at a sign from our Lord Jesus Christ.

   What should be our chief care in the education of the young? We must chiefly
   endeavour that the eyes of their understanding should be enlightened. [95]
   Do you not notice that our heart acts first in our life and in nearly all
   our knowledge? The heart sees certain truths (ideas) before the mind knows
   them. When knowledge is acquired, it happens thus: the heart sees at once,
   indivisibly, instantaneously; afterwards this single action of the sight of
   the heart is transmitted to the intellect and subdivided in the intellect
   into parts or sections, preceding and subsequent; the sight of the heart is
   analysed in the intellect. The idea belongs to the heart and not to the
   intellect; that is, to the inner man, and not to the outer one. Therefore,
   to have the eyes of their understanding enlightened [96] is a very important
   matter in acquiring all knowledge, but especially in that of the truths of
   faith and of the laws of morality.

   The future life is the perfect purity of the heart, which is now only
   gradually purified, and which is at present more often shut and darkened by
   sin and by the Devil's breathing into it, and only at times, under the
   influence of God's grace, brightens and sees God, being united to Him most
   truly during prayer and in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion.

   How should we keep the festivals? We must celebrate in them either the event
   (with a view of investigating the greatness of the event, its object, and
   the fruits it brought to those who believe) or the person; as, for instance,
   our Lord, the Mother of God, the angels and saints (with the view of
   investigating the relation of that person to God and to mankind and his
   beneficial influence upon God's Church in general). It is necessary to
   investigate the history of the event or of the person whose festival we
   solemnise, to approach it or him with, our whole heart, to absorb them, so
   to say, into ourselves; otherwise the festival will be incomplete, and not
   pleasing to God. The festivals ought to influence our life, to vivify and
   kindle our faith in future blessings, and maintain in us a pious and gentle
   disposition. Yet they are mostly spent in sin and folly and met with
   unbelieving, cold hearts, often wholly unprepared to feel the great mercies
   which God has vouchsafed to us through the particular event or person whose
   festival is celebrated.

   It may happen that there is much wickedness in your soul. But let it be
   known to God alone, Who knows everything that is secret and concealed, and
   do not show all your uncleanness to others; do not corrupt them by the
   breath of the wickedness concealed within you. Tell God your grief, that
   your soul is full of wickedness, and that your life is near to hell, but to
   other people show a bright and pleasant countenance. What have they to do
   with your madness? Or declare your soul's sickness to your confessor or to a
   true friend, so that they may teach you, guide you, and restrain you.

   Gazing upon heaven, contemplate in its heights the Lord Jesus, for it was
   from there that He appeared to the pro-martyr Stephen and to Saul, and pray
   to Him to save you. These appearances of His do not show that He only then
   opened the heavens and looked down upon these saints through the heavens
   thus opened, but they show that He is always looking down from the heavens
   upon us all and sees our actions, words, thoughts, and intentions, as you
   must have been convinced on many occasions from your own experience when you
   lifted up your eyes to the heavens and received miraculous and great help
   from Him; it only means that, in the above-mentioned cases, He revealed
   Himself and manifested Himself in the heavens.

   To sin is both detrimental and foolish; for the sinner despises himself and
   either turns away from human society or seeks the society of others like
   him, because his inner condition and the worm gnawing at his heart make any
   respectable society oppressive to him, as it does not correspond with the
   character of his own life. The sinner feels straitened in God's wide world,
   because the world is the work of the Most Holy and Righteous God; and the
   sinner who does not obey God's laws, the laws of love and peace, is an
   outcast from God's creation, for whom there is no place in the world. The
   reason why he feels so straitened is that he is pursued by God, by his own
   conscience, and by all creation.

   Who is it that suffers through doubting, unbelieving, blasphemous thoughts:
   the object of which the man doubts, in which he does not believe and which
   he blasphemes, or the man himself, who doubts, does not believe, and
   blasphemes? The latter. He grows afraid with that fear of which the Psalmist
   speaks: "There were they brought in great fear even where no fear was." [97]
   He is tortured by his doubt, unbelief, and blasphemy; whilst the object of
   his agony remains firm, immovable, and has evidently the better of him,
   because it makes him change his mind for the sake of his own tranquillity,
   and does not allow him to grow quite calm until he has repented of his
   former false opinions and has accepted more favourable and truer ones.
   Therefore it is foolish to waver and be disturbed, and still more so to
   become fainthearted and fall into despondency, when during prayer, or at any
   other time, doubting, unbelieving, blasphemous thoughts occur to you. The