In many cases when we ask why certain Orthodox Christians live according to the customs of sin, rather than according to the law of God, we receive the answer that everyone lives that way now. However, being Christians, we should not consider ourselves in this world like 'everyone,' but like the 'Chosen People' to whom the Apostle Peter wrote that they are 'a people belonging to God, that [they] may declare the praises of Him Who called [them] out of darkness into His wonderful light' (1 Peter 2:9). Are we permitted to measure our responsibility before God with the same measure as the unbelieving and those who have no hope of Heaven?
The moral character and moral value of man's personality depends most of all on the direction and strength of the will. Of course, everyone understands that for a Christian it is necessary to have first, a strong and decisive will, and second, a will which is firmly directed toward the good of his neighbor, toward the side of good and not evil. How is one to develop a strong will? The answer is simple: above all through the exercise of the will. To do this, as with bodily exercise, it is necessary to begin slowly, little by little. However, having begun to exercise one's will in anything ( e.g., in a constant struggle with one's sinful habits or whims) this work on oneself must never cease. Moreover, a Christian who wishes to strengthen his will, his character, must from the very beginning avoid all dissipation, disorder and inconsistency of behavior. Otherwise, he will be a person without character, unreliable, a reed shaking in the wind, as we read in Holy Scripture.
Fasting is absolutely indispensable for man. From the external aspect, it is a struggle of filial obedience to God, Who has given us the rules of fasting through His Holy Spirit. From the inner aspect, fasting is a struggle of restraint and self-limitation. In this lies the great value and sense of fasting, since a strict observance of fasts tempers one's will and perfects the character of one who is firm in his religious convictions and actions. Let us not forget that Christ Himself fasted, and foretold that His apostles would also fast.
St. Gregory the Theologian once said that there are occasions 'when even by silence truth can be betrayed.' Should we not also be betraying the truth if, on noticing a deviation from pure Orthodoxy, we merely kept silence-always an easier and safer thing to do than speaking out?
If something pushes you to criticism about some business or other of a brother or of a monastery, you, rather, try to pray about the matter, without passing it under judgment of your reason.
How beautiful our Orthodox Faith is! With what a bright, unfading light it illuminates our lives, filled with sin and vanity! But all its power and light are in the Resurrection of Christ. If Christ the Savior had not risen but had remained in the tomb, life would have turned into a terrible, evil, and unbearable nightmare... But Christ's resurrection did take place-and the Church summons all its faithful children to rejoice and to celebrate Christ's Resurrection. For in it we 'celebrate the slaying of death, the destruction of Hades, and the beginning of a new, eternal life.'
'Why is the Mother of God weeping?...' people ask.... Are your eyes closed, or have you yourselves, according to the Lord’s prophet, closed your eyes and stopped your ears, so as not to see and not to hear what is taking place in the world?! It is enough that the Lord’s commandments are forgotten, and for the contemporary 'Christians' Christian moral conceptions of modesty and decency, of obedience to the Church, to her saving discipline and regulations, are in complete disregard; no, now we behold something even more horrifying and hideous, when the expansion of so-called 'ecumenism'-- a poisonous adulteration of Christianity and church-ness-- is being offered to people, and at the same time obvious anti-Christianity is being legalized, and a 'Christian' state, under the false understanding of the word 'freedom,' permits the open worship of God’s enemy, Satan, in one of its great cities, as a permissible and lawful form of religion... O Tempora - O Mores!
Be attentive, my child, that you not judge any soul. For God steps aside from the one who judges his neighbor, and he falls, in order to learn to have sympathy for his sick brother.
My children, avoid criticism -- a very great sin. God is grieved whenever we criticize and loathe people. Let us concern ourselves only with our own faults -- for these let us feel pain; let us criticize ourselves and then we will find mercy and grace from God.
We know that the fight against sin which surrounds us on all sides is not an easy matter. The path of salvation is made narrower in proportion to the intensification in the world of evil and apostasy. But the ancient pagan world which surrounded the handful of the first Christians was no less corrupt. These latter, however, did not accede to the temptations of the pagan modes, even as some now do not accede to contemporary temptations.
When our Lord Jesus Christ at the Mystical Supper conversed with His disciples, having warned them at the end of His talk with the words, In the world ye shall have tribulation, He then concluded with the words, But stand firm: I have overcome the world. The Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian in one of his epistles in a certain way continued the words expressed by his Divine Teacher by writing, This is the victory that overcometh the world - our faith. Therefore the Orthodox Church on the first Sunday of Great Lent celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the Church celebrates her victory, the victory of the Orthodox Faith over all false teachings, over persecutions and oppression, that great multitude of which she experienced in her bright but sorrowful path.
In these days of vacillation, confusion of thought and corruption, we confess the true teaching of the Church regardless of the opinions held by those who might hear us and disregarding the skepticism and faithlessness of our environment. If, for the sake of conforming to the errors of the times, we would suppress the truth or yet profess distorted doctrines to please the world, we would in fact be offering stones instead of bread. And the higher the position of one who would act in this way, the more profound the temptation and the more serious the consequences.
It's difficult to be saved in the world amidst the seductions and the customs of this world that go counter to the Holy Church. Evil communications corrupt good manners (I Cor. 15:33). It's difficult to be saved in the midst of dissolute society. In the Holy Scriptures it is said, With the holy man wilt thou be holy, and with the innocent man wilt thou be innocent. And with the elect man wilt thou be elect, and with the perverse wilt thou be perverse (Ps. 17:25-6).
Therefore silence, prayer, obedience; when you practice these virtues with the help of God, then you will know the light of Christ is within your soul.
