Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Asceticism & Spirituality; John of Kronstadt; Orthodox repentance; preparation for Holy Communion; the Divine Liturgy; confession and contrition; transubstantiation; Russian Orthodox spirituality; Religion & Spirituality; Christianity / Orthodox; Christian Living / Spiritual Growth
Description: A manual for the penitent, built in two movements. First the descent into self-knowledge — pride, malice, the sins of the flesh, and the searching labour of confession; then the ascent to the Chalice. Saint John of Kronstadt sets the anatomy of repentance beside an unflinching account of the Divine Liturgy, where the bread and wine are truly changed into the Body and Blood and the one who communes receives a coal of fire upon the heart.

Thoughts of a Christian on Repentance and Communion

John of Kronstadt

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Мысли христианина о покаянии и причащении (azbyka.ru; from the pre-revolutionary Russian edition of St John of Kronstadt)

Cover: The Last Supper (1863) by Nikolai Ge (Russian, 1831–1894), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:mysli-hristianina-o-pokajanii-i-prichashenii:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Saint John of Kronstadt was born Ivan Ilyich Sergiev on the nineteenth of October, 1829, in the village of Sura, in the far northern reaches of the Arkhangelsk province of Russia. His people were poor and rooted in the service of the Church: his father was a village sexton, and the family’s means were so slender that the boy’s early schooling was a struggle he seems to have won less by aptitude than by prayer. From those beginnings he made his way to the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1855. In that same year he was ordained to the priesthood and assigned to Saint Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, the fortified naval port set on an island in the Gulf of Finland that guarded the approach to the capital. He would serve there, in a single parish, for more than half a century, until his death in 1908.

The choice of that post shaped everything that followed. Kronstadt was a garrison town and also a place to which the state exiled criminals, vagrants, and the destitute; its slums, its dugouts and cellars, held a population that respectable clergy tended to keep at arm’s length. Father John did the opposite. He went down into those basements and stayed for hours—talking, weeping, and rejoicing with people whom society had written off, treating each one, in his own understanding, as a priceless soul entrusted to him. Out of that pastoral compassion grew, in 1882, his celebrated House of Industry, a sprawling complex that in time comprised a church, schools, an orphanage, a free clinic, workshops where the poor could earn a wage, a public canteen, and a night shelter that took in tens of thousands of the homeless each year. He gave away his own income continually, and money pressed upon him by admirers passed through his hands almost as fast as it arrived.

His personal life was ordered to the same end. He had married Elizabeth, the daughter of a priest connected to his cathedral, but the marriage was, by his own resolve, celibate—a life shared as brother and sister rather than as husband and wife, that he might give himself wholly to his people and to the altar. He was, above all, a eucharistic priest. He served the Divine Liturgy daily, and the fervor of his celebration and the reputation of his prayers drew crowds so vast that Kronstadt became a place of pilgrimage; he corresponded and prayed at a distance for petitioners across the empire, and reports of healings gathered around his name in his own lifetime. Alongside his charitable and liturgical labor he kept a spiritual diary, jotting down the thoughts that came to him in prayer, and the fruit of that discipline became one of the enduring classics of Russian devotion, My Life in Christ.

He died on the twentieth of December, 1908, at Kronstadt. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia glorified him as a saint on the first of November, 1964; the Moscow Patriarchate followed on the eighth of June, 1990. He is commemorated on the day of his repose in December and on the day of his birth in October, and since his glorification churches and altars beyond number have been dedicated to him in Russia and around the world.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

Thoughts of a Christian on Repentance and Communion belongs to the same wellspring as My Life in Christ. It is a gathering of reflections drawn from the priest’s diary—the same daily record of insights received in prayer, never a treatise composed at a desk—arranged here around two joined themes: turning from sin, and approaching the Chalice. Part of the material overlaps with his larger diary-book; all of it carries the marks of its origin in the confessional and at the altar. This is the distilled counsel of a man who heard confessions and communed the faithful, day after day, for over fifty years.

The occasion of the book is inseparable from the pastoral cause with which Father John’s name is bound: the revival of frequent Communion. For most Russians of his era, confession and Communion had shrunk to a once-a-year obligation, a customary duty discharged and forgotten. He regarded that reduction as a catastrophe—the theandric life of the Church lowered to the level of a habit—and he set himself against it. He served the Liturgy daily and urged his people to prepare themselves, amend their lives, and come to the Mysteries often. The sheer scale of the response created a practical crisis: no priest could hear, one by one, the confessions of the thousands who now sought to commune. His response was the bold and controversial expedient of general confession, in which he led the whole assembly through the preparatory prayers and the people cried out their sins aloud together—an overwhelming spectacle of collective repentance that no other priest dared to imitate, but which cleared the way for the eucharistic revival he longed for.

This little book is the interior counterpart of that public work. If frequent Communion was to be a genuine renewal rather than a new formality, the faithful needed to understand what repentance actually requires and what the Eucharist actually is. The book supplies both. Its purpose is intensely practical: to take the ordinary Christian who intends to receive the Holy Mysteries and walk him, step by step, from the first honest look into his own heart down to the moment of receiving—and then to open before him the meaning of what he receives.

Argument & Structure

The book is built in two movements, and the ordering is itself the argument: the second cannot begin until the first has done its work. Repentance is the emptying that makes room; Communion is the filling.

The first part, On Repentance, proceeds through eight short chapters that trace the anatomy of a soul turning back to God. It opens with Self-Knowledge — the labor, under the eye of the omnipresent God from whom nothing is hidden, of watching one’s own heart and discerning what separates it from God. From there it names the great obstacles in turn: Pride, Malice, and the Sins of the Flesh. Then it turns from diagnosis to cure. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin dwells on the gift of tears, the melting of a hardened heart under the Lord’s searching gaze, and the danger of a despair that doubts God’s mercy. Confession presses the necessity of a sincere, free, and complete opening of the soul to the priest as spiritual physician—the wound hidden festers; the wound revealed is healed. Correction of Life insists that repentance must bear fruit in an amended life, and gives an unforgettable account of the will’s weakness, the self forever anticipated by its own sin like the paralytic at the pool. The movement closes with Fasting, the mortification of the old self that clears the ground for the new.

The second part, On Holy Communion, gathers three chapters that rise from the altar. The Divine Liturgy is a sustained meditation on the service itself as heaven on earth, in which God is the invisible Celebrant, both the one who offers and the one offered. Preparation for Holy Communion returns the reader to the disposition of the heart—the certainty of faith, the warmth of repentance, the readiness that matters more than the sheer recitation of prayers. The Fruits of Worthy Communion closes the book with thanksgiving: the renewal of nature, the healing of soul and body, the union with Christ that makes the communicant a dwelling of the Holy Trinity, ending in a doxology and an Amen.

Two features of the writing deserve notice. The first is its texture. These are diary entries, and they keep the pulse of a spoken voice—direct, exclamatory, quick to cry woe over sin and to marvel at mercy, moving without transition from sharp counsel to sudden prayer. The reader should not expect the joints of a treatise; each paragraph is a self-contained thought, and the book advances by accumulation rather than by argument. The second is the way Scripture saturates every page. The Psalter above all, but also the Gospels and Saint Paul, are woven so thickly into the prose that the author’s own words and the words of Scripture become a single fabric—the natural idiom of a priest whose whole life was lived inside the Church’s prayer.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

The lasting importance of this book lies in the unbroken line it draws between repentance and the Eucharist. In Father John’s vision the two form a single motion rather than two separate disciplines. Sin, as he describes it, is a burden that lies on the heart, a tangle of serpents, a mountain on the shoulders; repentance is the shedding of that weight so that the heart, emptied and softened, can receive the Life offered in the Chalice. He states the connection with unnerving directness: to commune without sincere repentance is to come to the Holy Chalice like Judas with his kiss, and Satan enters the unrepentant communicant. Preparation is therefore the very condition of the gift, never a bureaucratic prerequisite.

At the center of the second part stands his eucharistic realism, which he states without the slightest softening and holds as his own settled conviction. He teaches that at the words of institution and the invocation of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine are truly changed—he uses the strong word, that God the Word “transubstantiates” them—into the true Body and true Blood of Christ; that Christ is present whole and entire in every particle and every drop, and so, since Orthodox altars stand across the whole earth, present bodily everywhere the Mysteries are offered; and that the communicant who approaches in faith receives, as he puts it, a life-giving coal laid upon the heart, an image that carries the memory of the seraph’s coal from the prophet Isaiah. Against the whisper that the elements are only bread and wine, he sets a chain of confident reasoning from the omnipotence of the Creator who forms flesh for every creature and can surely form it for Himself. This conviction—that the Eucharist is no mere symbol but the true and life-giving Body and Blood—is a form of eucharistic realism long shared across the historic Christian traditions, and Father John gives it here in the plain, experiential register of a priest testifying to what he has known at the altar rather than in the language of controversy.

For the reader, the book’s second great contribution is its interior register. It is finally a phenomenology of the praying heart. Father John describes, from the inside, the movements of contrition and consolation, the coldness that comes from the enemy and the warmth that comes from the Spirit, the flow of tears in which the soul feels the Lord’s gaze fall on it, the peace that follows a believing Communion and the disquiet that follows a faithless one. He writes constantly “from experience,” and this is what has kept the book alive: it instructs the reader in what to do and then shows him what the doing feels like, and so serves as a mirror in which the ordinary Christian can recognize his own struggle.

Reception & Influence

Father John’s eucharistic teaching did not remain a private devotion. His insistence on frequent Communion, at a time when annual reception was the settled norm, set in motion a liturgical and eucharistic renewal in the Russian Church whose effects outlived him. His experiment in general confession remained his own—no other priest ventured to repeat it—but the deeper cause it served, the recovery of the Liturgy and the Chalice at the center of the Christian life, took root and spread. The immense popular veneration he attracted in his lifetime carried over into his glorification as a saint in the twentieth century, first among the Russian emigration and then in the homeland, and books drawn from his diaries, this one among them, have circulated widely as manuals of preparation for Communion. That devotional afterlife is the natural extension of the pastoral aim with which the book was first assembled.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents a fresh, modern English translation of Thoughts of a Christian on Repentance and Communion, rendered from the public-domain Russian text of the pre-revolutionary edition as preserved at azbyka.ru. The underlying work is itself a compilation—a thematic gathering of reflections from Saint John’s spiritual diary, part of it overlapping with his larger diary-book My Life in Christ — arranged under the two headings On Repentance and On Holy Communion. This translation is English only; it is not a parallel or bilingual edition.

The translation aims at readable modern English while keeping the pulse of the author’s voice—its directness, its exclamations, its swift turns into prayer. In keeping with the conventions of this series, the author is named as the Church receives him, Saint John of Kronstadt; translators are credited as translators and never as authors. Scriptural citations are set in the modern style, with Arabic numerals for book, chapter, and verse. One point of fidelity deserves mention: the many quotations of Scripture follow the wording Saint John actually quotes—his Church-Slavonic Psalter and Gospel text—rather than being conformed to any standard English printed Bible, so that the reader hears the verses as he heard and used them.

Particular care was taken with the passages on the Eucharist, where the precise theological wording carries the whole weight of his teaching. The central loci were collated against the Russian and confirmed faithful: the statement that the Creator “transubstantiates the bread and wine into His most pure Body and most pure Blood”; the confession that Christ is “truly and essentially” present in the Mysteries; the rebuttal of the merely symbolic view, affirming the true Body and true Blood under the forms of bread and wine; and the words of the invocation of the Holy Spirit, quoted in full. Where the author quotes only a fragment of a verse, the translation follows him and does not supply the remainder. The result is a text meant to be trustworthy in exactly the places where trust matters most.

Suggestions for Reading

Read this book as it was written—slowly, and a little at a time. It moves by distilled thoughts, one at a time, and it rewards the reader who pauses over a single paragraph rather than pressing through many. Newcomers may find the register unfamiliar at first: the tears, the cries of woe, the fervor. These are the honest record of a particular kind of prayer, never rhetorical excess, and they become intelligible as the book’s inner logic—repentance emptying the heart, Communion filling it—comes into view. Read the first part before the second, and let its order stand; the descent into self-knowledge is what gives the ascent to the Chalice its meaning. Above all, read it as the author kept it: as notes made in prayer, meant to be turned back into prayer by the one who reads them.

On Repentance

Self-Knowledge

“O Lord the King, grant me to see my transgressions!” Prayer of Saint Ephraim of Syria.

“Try me, O God, and know my heart: examine me, and understand my paths: and see if there is any way of iniquity in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Ps 138:23-24.

Since the first human sinned, people have been so darkened by sin in the very center of their being (in the heart) that they often have no awareness or sense of God’s omnipresence, and they imagine that four walls and a ceiling can hide them from Him who fills all things, who sees all, and who perceives what is hidden in secret places. If anyone hides in secret places, shall I not see him? Do not I fill heaven and earth? (Jer 23:24) I am naked and hidden! (Gen 3:10) But no.

Watch over your heart throughout your life and observe, listen to it—what hinders it from union with God the all-blessed? Let this be the science of sciences, and with God’s help you can easily discern what separates you from God and what draws you near to Him, unites you with Him. The heart itself testifies to this, now uniting itself with God, now torn away from Him. Above all, the deceiver stands between our heart and God—he it is who separates us from God through various passions, or through the lust of the flesh, or through the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

Examine yourself often: where are the eyes of your heart turned—toward God and the life of the age to come, toward the glorious, blessed, and radiant heavenly powers and the saints dwelling in heaven, or toward the world, toward earthly goods: food, drink, clothing, dwelling, toward sinful people and their vain occupations? Oh, if only our eyes were always turned toward God! But we only turn our eyes to the Lord in need and sorrow, while in times of plenty our eyes are turned toward the world and its vain affairs. And what will it bring you, you say, this gazing toward the Lord? Deep peace and tranquility to your heart, light to your mind, holy zeal to your will, and deliverance from the snares of the enemy. My eyes are ever toward the Lord, says David, and he gives the reason: for He will pluck my feet from the snare (Ps 24:15). The Lord speaks peace to those who turn their hearts to Him (Ps 84:9).

Sin closes the eyes of the heart: the thief thinks God does not see; the fornicator, given over to filthy deeds, thinks God does not see him; the lover of money, the glutton, the drunkard think themselves hidden with their vices. But God sees and judges. I am naked and hidden (Gen 3:10). Thus every sinner speaks through his deeds, hiding from the omnipresent God.

The greatest and constant delusion of our heart, with which we must struggle continuously throughout our whole life, is the secret thought that we can somehow exist without God and apart from God, for even a single moment. We must continually establish our heart in God, from whom it constantly turns away in thought, and great success in Christian life belongs to him who can sincerely cry out with Hannah, the mother of Samuel: my heart is established in the Lord, my horn is exalted in my God, my mouth is enlarged over my enemies, I rejoice in Your salvation (1Sam 2:1).

We must wash ourselves from filth, and prayer is washing from spiritual filth, that is, from sins, especially tears of repentance.

We sin in thought, word, and deed. To become pure images of the Holy Trinity, we must strive for holiness in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Thought corresponds in God to the Father, word to the Son, deed to the Holy Spirit—the all-perfecting One. Sins of thought in a Christian are no trivial matter, because, according to the testimony of Saint Macarius of Egypt, all our pleasing God is contained in our thoughts: for thoughts are the beginning, and from them come words and actions—words, because they either give grace to those who hear them or are rotten words that become a stumbling block to others, corrupting the thoughts and hearts of others; actions even more so, because examples work more powerfully on people than anything else, drawing them to imitation.

Conscience in people is nothing other than the voice of the omnipresent God walking in the hearts of humans. As the Creator of all things and the One Being, the Lord knows everyone as Himself—all the thoughts, desires, intentions, words and deeds of people, present, past, and future. No matter how far my thoughts and imagination carry me forward, He is there before me, and I always, inevitably in Him, make my journey, always having Him as the witness of my paths. His eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men (Jer 32:19). Where shall I go from Your Spirit? And where shall I flee from Your presence? (Ps 138:7).

Oh, if only we would pay attention to the consequences of our sins or of our good deeds! How careful we would then be in fleeing from sin, and how zealous for good; for we would clearly see that every sin, if not torn out in time, when established by habit, sends its roots deep into a person’s heart and sometimes troubles, wounds, and torments him unto death, awakening, as it were, and coming to life in him at every opportunity that recalls the sin once committed, and thus defiles his thought, feeling, and conscience. Torrents of tears are needed to wash away the accumulated filth of sin: so sticky and caustic is it! On the other hand, every good deed, once performed sincerely and unselfishly, or through repetition transformed into habit, gladdens our heart and becomes a solace in our life, when we recognize that we did not live our sin-filled life entirely in vain, that we are like people and not beasts, that we too were created in the image of God, and in us there is a spark of divine light and love, that although some of our good deeds will be a counterweight to our bad deeds on the scales of God’s unbribable justice.

A clean heart makes the whole person clean; an unclean heart makes the whole person unclean: out of the heart come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy… (Mt 15:19). But all the saints acquired a pure heart through fasting, wakefulness, prayer, meditation on God, reading God’s word, martyrdom, labor and sweat, and the Holy Spirit dwelt in them, purified them from all uncleanness, and sanctified them with eternal sanctification. Strive yourself above all for the cleansing of your heart. Create in me a clean heart, O God (Ps 50:12).

How damaged I am by sin! Anything bad, evil, unclean is immediately thought and felt in the heart, but what is good, right, pure, and holy is often only thought and spoken, not felt. Woe is me! Evil is still closer to my heart than good. Moreover, as soon as I think or feel something evil, I am immediately ready to do it, and do it quickly and easily, if I lack the fear of God—but good, to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find (Rom 7:18) strength in myself, and the good deed I planned is often postponed to a long, long time.

Pride

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 1Pet 5:5.

The manifestation of satanic pride in people.

Pride most commonly manifests itself in that the one infected with it regards everyone, or at least many of those superior to him in age, authority, or ability, as his equals, and will not tolerate being beneath them. If a proud person is a subordinate, he does not respect his superior as he should, does not wish to bow to him, disdains his orders, carries them out reluctantly and out of fear; he regards himself as equal to all educated people and gives preference to none, or very, very few; if he is learned, or even unlearned, a son or daughter, he does not give proper respect to his parents and benefactors, especially if they are simple and crude, considering them his equals or even his inferiors. One must be extremely cautious about comparing oneself to others in any way whatsoever, and instead regard oneself as lower than all, even if you are indeed better than many in some way or equal to many. All good in us is from God, not ours. This is not from you—it is God’s gift; not from works, that no one may boast (Eph 2:8-9). All these are distributed by one and the same Spirit (1Cor 12:4-11). How can I be proud of another’s good and regard myself as equal to those whom God Himself and public trust have placed above me? Therefore, do not take the first place: perhaps someone more honored than you will be there. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 14:8,18:14).

Our self-love and pride manifest themselves especially in impatience and irritability, when any of us cannot bear even the slightest unpleasantness caused by others deliberately or even unintentionally, or an obstacle, lawful or unlawful, intentional or unintentional, placed before us by people or surrounding things. Our self-love and pride wish to have our own way in everything, to surround ourselves with all honors and comforts of temporal life, wish that all people would obey our slightest gesture silently and swiftly, and even—to what lengths pride does not go!—that all nature would obey; whereas—alas!—we ourselves are so sluggish in faith and in every good deed, in pleasing the one Lord of all! Christian! you must without fail be humble, meek, and patient, remembering that you are clay, dust, nothing, that you are unclean, that all good in you is God’s, that God’s gifts are your life, your breath, and all things; that because of the sin of disobedience and intemperance you must now atone for your future blessedness in paradise through patience, which is necessary in this world of imperfection and countless falls of fallen people living together with us and making up the many members of one humanity, infected by sins. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). Whoever is impatient and irritable has not known himself and humanity and is unworthy to be called a Christian! In saying this, I pronounce judgment on myself, for I am the first to suffer from impatience and irritability.

The proud person, when others speak of the virtues of someone, cunningly fears lest that person be his superior in virtues and outshine him, for the proud man regards himself as above all and does not imagine he could find the same virtues or better ones in other people. For him, the existence of rivals is a calamity.

What is most desired by man? The avoidance of sin, the remission and forgiveness of sins, and the attainment of holiness. Why? Because sins, such as proud and evil dealings with neighbors, evil suspicion, avarice, stinginess, envy, and the like, separate us from God, the Source of life, remove us from communion with people, and plunge us into spiritual death, while meek, humble, and non-malicious dealings with all, even with our enemies, simplicity of heart, freedom from greed, contentment with what is necessary, generosity to all, benevolence, and other virtuous deeds unite us with God, the Source of life, and make us beloved to people. Grant, therefore, O Lord, that I may completely avoid sin and acquire every virtue according to Your grace. Yes, O Master, O Lord, without You we cannot do anything good, for we are evil (Mt 12:34).

Sometimes the enemy deceives us in this: when we see some sin or vice in a brother or in society, he strikes our heart with indifference and coldness, with unwillingness, or rather with shameful cowardice to speak a firm, reproof-giving word against falsehood, to break the power of the sinner. Christ the King! Grant me apostolic zeal and the fire of the Holy Spirit in my heart, that I may boldly always rise up against the arrogant, especially that vice which has infected many, and may not spare anyone for their sake and that of Your other people, lest they be scandalized seeing the spreading of vice and fall themselves. If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Mt 18:6,11).

Flatterers are great enemies of ours: they blind our eyes, do not let us see our great faults, and thus block our path to perfection, especially if we are self-loving and lack foresight. Therefore, we must always stop flatterers who speak flattering words to us, or avoid them. Woe to the one surrounded by flatterers; blessed is the one surrounded by simple people who do not hide the truth, even though it is unpleasant—for example, those who reprove our weaknesses, failings, passions, and mistakes.

When a foolish thought comes to your head to count up some good deeds of yours, immediately correct yourself in this error and rather count your sins, your continuous, countless offenses against the all-good and righteous Lord, and you will find that they are like the sand of the sea, while your virtues compared to them are as nothing.

Malice

“Love is patient, love is kind.” 1Cor 13:4.

Fear malice as you would fire; under no seeming good pretext, and least of all for anything disagreeable to you, allow it into your heart: malice is always malice, always the child of the devil. Malice comes sometimes into the heart under the pretext of zeal for God’s glory or for the good of neighbors; do not trust your zeal in this case: it is a lie or zeal without understanding; be zealous instead that malice not dwell in you. God is never glorified as He is by love that bears all things, and never disgraced and offended as by malice, whatever fair appearance it wears. Under the mask of concern for the poor, Judas, hiding his malice toward his Lord, betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Remember that the enemy tirelessly seeks your destruction and attacks you when you least expect him. His malice is infinite. Do not bind yourself with self-love and pleasure-seeking, lest they easily take you captive.

When malice flares up in your heart against someone, then believe with all your heart that it is the work of the devil acting in your heart: hate him and his offspring, and it will leave you. (Do not recognize it as something of your own, do not sympathize with it.) This has been tested. The trouble is that the devil covers himself with us, hides his head and tail, lurks, and we, blind, think that we alone do all this, that we stand up for the devil’s work as if it were our own, as if it were righteous, though every thought about the justice of our own passion is purely false, contrary to God, and destructive. Be guided by the same with regard to others; when you see that someone is malicious toward you, do not consider his malice to be his own direct work; no, he is only a passive instrument of the wholly malicious enemy, has not yet fully known his deception and is deceived by him. Pray that the enemy may leave him and that the Lord may enlighten the eyes of his heart, darkened by the pernicious breath of the spirit of malice. We must sincerely pray to God for all people subject to passions: in them the enemy works.

You become malicious toward your neighbor, despise him, do not wish to speak with him peacefully and lovingly because he has something rough, abrupt, careless, disagreeable to you in his character, his speech, his manners—because he is aware of his own worth, perhaps more than he should be, or because he is somewhat proud and disrespectful; but you are more guilty than he, physician and teacher of your neighbor: physician, heal yourself (Lk 4:23); teacher, teach yourself. Your malice is a worse evil than any evil; can malice correct evil? If you have a plank in your eye, can you remove a splinter from another’s eye? Evil and faults are corrected by good, by love, by gentleness, by meekness, by humility, by patience. Acknowledge yourself as the first of sinners among those who seem to you sinners, or who truly are sinners; consider yourself worse and lower than all; tear out all pride and malice toward your neighbor, impatience and fury, and then heal others. Otherwise cover the sins of others with merciful love. If we note all transgressions in our neighbor, what will result? Eternal enmity and disorder, for who is without sin? That is why we are commanded to forgive our debtors, for if the Lord were to note all our transgressions, who of us would stand (Ps 129:3) before His justice? For if you forgive people their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you (Mt 6:14). At the table of love we partake with Love Incarnate Himself, and yet we do not have love for one another. What a strange thing! And there is no concern about this. But love itself will not come without our zeal, suffering, and action.

A Christian has no foundation whatsoever for harboring any malice toward anyone in his heart; malice, being malice, is the work of the devil; a Christian should have only love in his heart; and since love does not think evil, we should not think any evil of others—for example, I should not think without obvious reason that another is evil, proud, and so on, or that if I forgive an offense he will offend me again and mock me. We must ensure that evil does not nest in us in any form; and malice is usually manifested in too many ways.

Do not yield to dark, malicious dispositions of the heart toward your neighbor, but master them and root them out through the power of faith, in the light of right reason—and you will be of good cheer. I go about in my non-malice (Ps 25:1). Such dispositions often manifest themselves in the depths of the heart. Whoever has not learned to master them will often be gloomy, pensive, a burden to himself and others. When they come, force yourself toward good cheer, cheerfulness, innocent jokes: and like smoke they will disperse. This has been proven through experience.

Grant me, O Lord, to love every neighbor of mine as myself, always, and never to become malicious toward him and serve the devil. Grant me to crucify my self-love, pride, greed, little faith, and other passions. Let our name be: mutual love; let us believe and trust that the Lord is all things for all of us; let us not be anxious or worried about anything; let You, our God, be the only God of our heart, and besides You nothing. Let us be united in love among ourselves, as it is fitting, and let everything that divides us from one another and separates us from love be despised by us, like dust trampled underfoot. So be it! So be it!

If God has given Himself to us, if He dwells in us and we in Him, according to His true word, then what will He not give me, what will He spare, what will He withhold, what will He abandon? The Lord tends me, and I will lack nothing (Ps 22:1). With Him, how does He not grant us all things (Rom 8:32). Therefore, be greatly at peace, my soul, and know nothing save love. This I command you, that you love one another (Jn 15:17).

Sins of the Flesh

“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident… And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Gal 5:19-24.

Spirit is strong, mighty, and therefore easily bears heavy matter; but flesh is sluggish, weak, and therefore is easily subdued by matter akin to it. Therefore God, as if nothing, bears the whole world by the mighty word of His power (Hebr 1:3), and likewise the spirit of a man graced by God easily, with God’s help, subdues his own flesh, even the flesh of others to their spirit (as we see in the saints), easily in prayer dealing with the letter of the word, transforming it entirely into spirit; but the fleshly man at every step subjects himself to his flesh and is burdened by the letter of prayer, which he has not the power to turn into spirit, being himself flesh, or to penetrate with his unclean, fleshly spirit into the pure, holy spirit of it.

Oh, our nature fallen so deeply through poison! Oh, thrice-cursed Satan, who through poison cast us down and is now casting us into thousands of evils! Oh poison, oh food and drink, so mightily deceiving us now! How long will we be deceived by you and place our life in you? How long will we not engrave deeply in our hearts the words of the Savior: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt 4:4) and not put them into our life and action? How long greed, gluttony, excess, and drunkenness? How long shameful stinginess? How long love of money? How long pride, enmity, and malice toward our neighbor over money, over clothing, dwelling, food, and drink? Thousands of deceptions of Satan through food, drink, clothing, money reveal themselves before our heart’s eyes, yet we continue to be drawn to his deceptions as though they were real, beneficial to us, and we are zealous for what is nothing less than a pernicious dream and extreme harm to our own soul and body. Do not believe, brothers, the seductions of the enemy for even a moment when it comes to food and drink, however seemingly reasonable it may appear. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you (Mt 6:33).

Pay no attention to bread, but beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which is hypocrisy (Mt 16:11; Lk 12:1) in matters of faith and piety. Direct your most intense attention to faith and piety: do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you (Jn 6:27). Give even your last possessions if necessity demands it, remembering the words of the Savior: if someone wants to sue you and take your outer garment, let him have your inner one as well (Mt 5:40), that is, give even the last of what you have.

As long as we lead a fleshly life and do not draw near to God with sincerity of heart, demons hide in us, concealing themselves under various passions: greed for food and drink, burning lust, pride and arrogant presumption about faith, the Church, and the dogmas of faith, malice, envy, stinginess, love of money, so that we live by their will; but when we sincerely begin to serve the Lord and touch the living nerve of the demons of our passions that nest in us, then they arm themselves against us with all their infernal malice, with all their fiery terrors and diverse, strong, burning attachments to earthly goods, until we drive them out of ourselves through fervent prayer or communion with the holy Mysteries. Thus the demonically possessed are quiet until the time they are brought to a holy place, but when they are brought, an extraordinary power appears—a revulsion from what is holy, blasphemy, spitting on what is holy, a piercing scream. Here is the explanation and resolution of the puzzle—why the demonically possessed, or the so-called screamers, cry out in the church during the liturgy or when they are brought to holy relics; it is because the demons encounter a good power that is hateful and more mighty than them, a power that burns, constricts, smites them justly, drives them out from their beloved dwelling.

Sometimes there settles on the soul such a hardened insensibility that you do not see and do not feel your sins; you fear neither death nor the Judge nor the terrible judgment, and all spiritual things become as it were trifling. Oh cunning, proud, malicious flesh! And not without reason do the saints lament: I am weighed down by slothful sleep and sinful sleep weighs upon my heart. Having time for repentance, O soul, shake off sleep’s heaviest weight and hasten to be watchful. Sometimes there settles on the soul such a terrible sloth and insensibility that complete despair seizes you about driving out this sloth and insensibility. It seems better to suffer illness than to feel sloth.

One of the most powerful deceptions of the devil is the weakening of the heart through sloth, and with it all spiritual and physical powers: faith, hope, and love dry up in the heart, you become faithless, despondent, insensible to God and to people—salt that has lost its savor.

Most people willingly carry in their heart a weight that is satanic, but they have grown so accustomed to it that they often do not feel it and even increase it imperceptibly. Sometimes, however, the malicious enemy tenfolds this weight in them, and then they become terribly despondent, lose heart, complain, and blaspheme God’s name. The ordinary means by which people of this age dispel melancholy is: parties, cards, dancing, theaters. But these means afterward only increase the tedium and anguish of the heart. Yet if by good fortune they turn to God, then the weight falls from their heart, and they clearly see that before their heart was weighed down by the greatest heaviness, though they often did not feel it. Oh, how many people have abandoned the Lord, the Source of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer 2:13). Very many of these broken cisterns are in people—almost everyone has his own. Broken cisterns are our hearts, our passions.

Here is our modern idolatry in Christianity: self-love, love of honor, earthly pleasure, gluttony, and greed, fornication; this is what has completely turned our eyes and hearts away from God and the heavenly homeland and nailed us to the earth; this is what has eradicated love of neighbor and armed us against one another. Woe, woe to us!

God’s word says: do not get drunk with wine (Eph 5:18), but you, tavern keepers, say: get drunk with wine, and have built countless taverns to the scandal of your brothers. And yet you still go to church, sing, and pray at home, flattering with your tongues. Judge them, O God; let them fall from their schemes; by the multitude of their wickedness cast them out, for they have grieved You greatly, O Lord (Ps 5:10-11).

O Lord! Grant me always a meek heart, a clear, straight, gentle gaze. So be it! Glory to You, O Lord, for the change that Your right hand has wrought in me, I thank You that You have taken from me the burning thorns of my passions and my distress, my shame, and my weakness, but have given me peace, quiet, freedom, strength, and boldness. Confirm what You have done in me. Glory to the power of faith, glory to the power of prayer: for whatever I ask You in prayer, believing, I receive according to Your word (Mk 11:24). I thank You, O Lord, that so many times You have raised me from the dead (2Cor 1:9) and are destroying the death-dealing, sinful kingdom within me.

Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin

“A broken spirit is a sacrifice to God.” Ps 50:19.

Jesus looked at Peter, and he, going out (Peter) wept bitterly (Lk 22:61-62; Mt 26:75). And now, when Jesus looks upon us, we weep bitterly over our sins. Yes, our tears in prayer mean that the Lord has looked upon us with His life-giving, heart-and-soul-searching gaze. Ah, how sometimes our soul becomes entangled in various sins like a bird in nets! Sometimes you see no way out from your sins, and they torment you: sometimes your heart is seized with terrible anguish from them; but Jesus will look – and streams of tears will flow, and with the tears all the tangle of evil in the soul will come to nothing: and you weep and rejoice that such mercy has come to you suddenly and unexpectedly; and what warmth comes to the heart, and how light it becomes: as if you would fly away to the Lord God Himself! I thank the Lord with all my heart, who freely cleanses all my iniquities! (Ps 102:3)

Fleshly indulgence, hardened insensibility to all that is spiritual and sacred, is a strait of the enemy, though the carnal person does not count it as such, because he is pleased with it; but those who wish to live spiritually count it as such, because it does not allow God into our heart, does not let the grace of God pour into the heart that gives life and illuminates our soul, makes our soul barren of works of faith, hope, and love. You become a certain carnal being without spirit. Oh, how varied are persecutions! How you grieve from the heart over this hardened insensibility, how you weep before the Lord: and it will pass; and your heart will grow warm and soften, and become capable of spiritual contemplation and holy feelings.

When you stand for prayer burdened with many sins and seized by despair, begin to pray with trust, with a burning spirit, and then remember that the Spirit of God Himself helps us in our weaknesses, interceding for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom 8:26). When you remember in faith this action of God’s Spirit in us, then tears of compunction will flow from your eyes, and in your heart you will feel peace, sweetness, justification and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17), and you will cry out with the words of your heart: Abba, Father!

When you pray for forgiveness of your sins, always strengthen yourself with faith and trust in God’s mercy, which is always ready to forgive our sins when we pray sincerely, and fear in every way lest despair enter your heart, expressing itself in heavy despondency and forced tears. What are your sins compared to God’s mercy, whatever they may be, as long as you sincerely repent of them! But it often happens that a person prays and inwardly does not hope that his sins will be forgiven, thinking them, as it were, greater than God’s mercy. For this reason he truly does not receive forgiveness, though he will shed fountains of involuntary tears and depart from generous God with a sorrowful, constricted heart—that is what he deserves: Believe that you receive, the Lord says, and you will have it (Mk 11:24). Doubt in receiving what you ask of God is blasphemy against God.

If you sin in anything against God (and we sin much every day), immediately say in your heart, with faith in the Lord who hears the cry of your heart, with humble consciousness and feeling of your sins, the psalm “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy”, and read the whole psalm heartfully; if it does not work the first time, try again, only read more heartfully, more feelingly, and then at once salvation from the Lord and peace to your soul will shine forth. Always be contrite thus: this is a true, tested remedy against sins. But if you do not obtain relief, blame yourself; it means you prayed without contrition, without humility of heart, without firm desire to receive forgiveness of sins from God; it means the sin has wounded you deeply.

Some seem to pray to the Lord, yet themselves serve the devil nesting in their heart, because they pray only with their lips, while their heart is cold, does not feel and does not desire what their lips ask for and speak, and is far removed (Is 29:13) from the Lord. Also there are many communicants who receive the Body and Blood of Christ insincerely, not with great love, but only with their lips and belly, with little faith, coldness, with a heart attached to food and drink, to money, or inclined toward pride, malice, envy, sloth, and in heart are far removed from Him who is all love, holiness, perfection, incomprehensible wisdom and goodness. Such people must enter more deeply into themselves, repent more deeply, and think more profoundly about what prayer is and what Communion is. Coldness of heart toward God, toward prayer—this is from the devil; he is the cold of Tartarus, while we, as God’s children, should love the Lord with the hottest love. Grant this, O Lord, for without You we can do nothing (Jn 15:5). For You are everything to us, and we are nothing. From non-being into being You brought us and supplied us with all things.

Fervent, tearful prayer not only cleanses sins but also heals bodily infirmities and diseases, renews our entire being, and, as it were, regenerates it (I speak from experience). Oh, what an incalculable gift—prayer! Glory to You, Father of mercies and God of all consolation! Glory to You, Son of God, the only-begotten, who has won for us infinite forgiveness of our sins! Glory to You, Most Holy Spirit, interceding for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom 8:26), giving us fervent prayer with sighs and tears, warming the cold soul, giving compunction and sorrow for sins, cleansing, sanctifying, pacifying, strengthening, and renewing us! Glory to You, Holy Trinity, without beginning, the source of life, blessed forever by all intelligent creation!

Confession

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1Jn 1:8-9.

You told your sins to the Lord with a contrite heart—and they melted away; you sighed, pitied your sins—and they are gone. Declare your iniquities that you may be justified (Is 43:26). As they came, so they go. A phantasm is a phantasm. You recognized that they are a phantasm, an absurdity, madness, you resolved to conduct yourself properly from now on—and God has cleansed them through His servant and the holy Mysteries.

Concerning repentance. Repentance must be sincere and completely free, never forced by time and custom or by the person hearing the confession. Otherwise it will not be repentance. Repent, it is said, for the kingdom of heaven has come near (Mt 4:17), come near, that is, it has come itself, there is no need to search for it long, it seeks you, your free disposition, that is: repent yourselves with heartfelt contrition. They were baptized (it is said of those baptized by John), confessing their sins (Mt 3:6), that is, they themselves acknowledged their sins. And since our prayer is essentially repentance and petition for forgiveness of sins, it too must always be sincere and completely free, never reluctant, forced by custom and habit. Prayer should not be such either when it is thanksgiving and glorification. Thanksgiving presupposes in the soul of the one benefited a fullness of free, living feeling, freely overflowing from the lips: out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Mt 12:34). Glorification presupposes a rapture of wonder in a person contemplating the deeds of infinite goodness, wisdom, and omnipotence of God in the moral and material world, and therefore must also naturally be an act completely free and reasonable. In general, prayer should be the free and fully conscious pouring out of the human soul before God. Before the Lord I pour out my soul (Prayer of Hannah, mother of Samuel; 1Sam 1:15).

Repentance is aided by consciousness, memory, imagination, feeling, and will. As we sin with all the powers of the soul, so repentance must be a whole-souled repentance. Repentance in words alone, without intention of amendment and without feeling of contrition, is called hypocrisy. The consciousness of sins is darkened, it must be clarified; feeling is suppressed, dulled, it must be awakened; the will is blunted, weakened for amendment, it must be forced: the kingdom of heaven is taken by force (Mt 11:12). Confession must be heartfelt, deep, complete.

The carnal person considers Christian freedom to be bondage—for instance, going to church services, fasts, fasting season preparation, confession, Communion, all the Mysteries—and does not know that all this is a requirement of his nature, a necessity for his spirit.

Whoever becomes accustomed to giving an account of his life at confession here will not fear giving an answer at the fearful judgment of Christ. And for that reason a gentle tribunal of repentance has been established here, so that we, purified and amended through repentance here, may give an unashamed answer at the fearful judgment of Christ. This is the first motivation for sincere repentance, and moreover necessarily annual. The longer we do not repent, the worse for us, the more entangled the bonds of sin become, the more difficult, therefore, is it to give an account. The second motivation is peace: the more sincere the confession, the more peace will be in the soul. Sins are secret serpents gnawing at a person’s heart and his whole being; they give him no rest, continually suck his heart; sins are pricking thorns, ever biting the soul; sins are spiritual darkness. Those who repent must bring forth fruits of repentance.

Where do fasting and repentance lead? What is the labor for? They lead to cleansing of sins, peace of soul, to union with God, to becoming sons, to boldness before the Lord. There is reason to fast and confess from the heart. The reward for conscientious labor will be beyond price. How many of us have the feeling of filial love toward God? How many of us dare boldly, without fear of judgment, to call upon the heavenly God-Father and say: Our Father… Or is it not the opposite—in our hearts is there no filial voice at all, drowned out by the vanity of this world or attachment to its objects and pleasures? Is not the Father of heaven far from our hearts? Should we not think of Him as an avenging God, we who have gone off into a far country? Yes, by our sins we all deserve His righteous wrath and punishment, and it is marvelous how He bears with us so much, how He does not cut us down as barren fig trees. Let us hasten to appease Him with repentance and tears. Let us enter into ourselves, examine our unclean heart with all strictness, and see what a multitude of filthiness blocks access to our heart to divine grace, let us recognize that we are spiritually dead.

You will endure the difficulty and the painful sharpness of the operation, but then you will be healthy (this is about confession). This means that at confession you must openly reveal to your spiritual father all your shameful deeds without any concealment, even though it is painful, shameful, disgraceful, humiliating. Otherwise the wound remains unhealed and will ache and throb, undermining your spiritual health, becoming a leaven for other spiritual infirmities, sinful habits, and passions. The priest is a spiritual physician; show him your wounds without shame, sincerely, openly, with filial trust: for your spiritual father is your spiritual father, who should love you more than your natural mother and father, for Christ’s love is above fleshly, natural love—he must give an account to God for you. Why has our life become so unclean, filled with passions and sinful habits? Because very many hide their soul’s wounds or sores, and for that reason they fester, become inflamed, and no medicine can be applied to them.

As many times as you fall, rise and you will be saved. You are a sinner, you constantly fall, learn to rise; take care to acquire this wisdom. This wisdom consists in this: memorize the psalm “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy” (Ps 50), which the Holy Spirit revealed to King and Prophet David, and read it with sincere faith and trust, with a contrite and humble heart; after your sincere repentance, expressed in the words of King David, forgiveness of sins will immediately shine forth to you from the Lord, and you will feel peace in your soul’s powers. The main thing in life is to strive for mutual love and judge no one. Each will give an account to God for himself, and you look to yourself. Beware of malice.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2Cor 5:21). Will you then be ashamed to acknowledge any sin or to accept an accusation for a sin you did not commit? If the Son of God bore the guilt of sin for us, though He was sinless, you too should accept all accusations with meekness and love, for you truly are guilty of all sins. And for the sins you did not commit, accept the accusation out of humility of mind.

By our faith alone mountains are moved—that is, the heights and weights of sin. When Christians lay down the burden of sins in repentance, they sometimes say: “Thanks be to God, a mountain has fallen from my shoulders!”

Correction of Life

“I run the way of Your commandments when You enlarge my heart.” Ps 118:32.

How pleasant it is, how joyful, when you find some lost, necessary, and valuable thing! You are ready to leap with joy. Now imagine how pleasing it is to the Father in heaven when He sees His lost child—the sinful person—found again, when He sees His lost sheep that has come alive again, when He sees His lost drachma found again, that is, this living image of God—man! It is impossible to describe this joy. The Father in heaven’s joy over His lost and found prodigal son is so great that it moves all the loving and benevolent heaven to rejoice: there is rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner (Lk 15:7). Perishing brothers and sisters! Return from the path of destruction to the Father in heaven. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near (Mt 3:2).

How good it is to conquer the passions! After victory you feel such lightness in the heart, peace and greatness of spirit!

In this age we sin continually, and yet we are so self-loving that we will not bear any reproof, especially before others; but in the age to come our transgressions will be revealed before all the world. Remembering this fearful tribunal, let us bear reproof in humility and non-malice here, and let us amend ourselves from all our faults and sins; especially let us bear reproof from those in authority, and let the Lord grant them wisdom to rebuke not out of malice but with love and in a spirit of meekness.

Listen: for cleansing your heart from sins you will receive an infinite reward—you will see God, the all-good Creator, your Providence. The work of cleansing the heart is difficult because it is joined with great deprivations and sorrows, but the reward is great. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Mt 5:8).

How quick we are to evil and slow to good! I want to be kind to my enemy and show my kindness in deed, but before I have time to become kind in my heart, I am already malicious, already the fiery arrow of malice burns my insides; I want to be patient, but before I establish my heart in patience, I become irritable and impatient; I want to be humble, but satanic pride has already found a spacious corner in me; I want to be gentle—meanwhile, when I need to show gentleness, I turn out to be crude; I want to be free from love of money and generous, but love of money and stinginess, at the slightest pretext, like hungry and roaring lions, already demand their food; I want to be simple and trusting, but craftiness and doubt already gnaw at my heart; I want to be serious, concentrated, and reverent in serving the Almighty, but frivolousness and heart’s inattention already anticipate me; I want to be impartial, abstemious in food and drink, but when I see pleasant food and drink and sit at table, I am like a slave, drawn by my belly into a pleasant captivity, easily allowing myself to eat and drink more than my nature requires: greed and intemperance again anticipate and overcome my desire to be indifferent to food and drink. I am like that paralyzed man who lay on his cot for thirty-eight years, and as many times as he came to the sheep pool that healed everyone who was first to go down into it after the angel troubled the water, another stepped in ahead of him (Jn 5:7). And when I, paralyzed by my sins, gather my efforts and come to myself—intending to immerse myself in God and change for the better—another, sin and the devil, step into my heart before me, anticipate me in my own house, in my own heart’s pool, do not allow me to reach the Source of living waters—the Lord, do not let me plunge into the cleansing pool of faith, humility, heartfelt contrition, and tears. Who heals me? Jesus Christ alone. When He sees my sincere and firm desire for healing from soul’s paralysis, my fervent prayer for it, then He will say to me: take up your mat and walk (Jn 5:8)—and I will rise from the mat of heart’s paralysis and go, that is, easily—by His grace—overcome all passions and accomplish every virtue.

Those who strive for piety, brother and sister! You will have to hear, and perhaps often, especially from your own household, that you are a difficult, unbearable person; you will see strong dislike directed toward you, enmity because of your piety, though those who are hostile will not express that it is precisely because of piety they oppose you—do not be disturbed by this and do not fall into despair: because the devil can truly exaggerate your some weaknesses to enormous sizes, from which you yourself, being human, are not free, but remember the words of the Savior: the enemies of a person are those of his own household (Mt 10:36), and correct yourself from your faults while holding firmly to piety. Examine your conscience, your life and your deeds before God, who knows our hearts. However, look upon yourself impartially: are you not in fact difficult by nature, especially for those in your household; perhaps you are morose, unkind, unsociable, reticent. Open your heart to fellowship and gentleness, but not to indulgence; in reproofs be meek, not irritable, not bitter. Let all that you do be done in love (1Cor 16:14), said the apostle. Be patient, do not reprove for everything, endure some things in silence, and overlook them. Love covers all things and bears all things (1Cor 13:7). Sometimes an impatient reproof creates enmity, because the reproof was given not in a spirit of meekness and love, but in the spirit of self-loving desire for another’s obedience.

Make a firm resolve in your soul to hate every sin—in thought, word, and deed—strongly and steadfastly, and when temptation to sin comes, resist it courageously and with a feeling of hatred for it; only be careful that your hatred does not turn against your brother who provides the occasion for sin; hate sin with all your heart, but pity your brother; instruct him and pray for him before the Most High, who sees all of us and examines our hearts and inner parts. You have not yet resisted unto blood (Hebr 12:4), striving against sin. Without hatred of sin firmly established in the heart, one often cannot help but fall into it. Self-love must be uprooted from the root: every sin comes from self-love; sin always pretends, masquerades as our well-wisher, promising us satisfaction and peace. The tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise (Gen 3:6). This is how sin always appears to us.

Fasting

“And now says the Lord your God: Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with lamentation.” Joel 2:12.

Whoever wants to save his life will lose it (Mt 16:25), that is, whoever wants to save his old, carnal, sinful self will lose his life: for true life consists in crucifying and mortifying the old man with his deeds and putting on the new man, renewed according to the image of Him who created him (Col 3:9-10). Without mortifying the carnal old man there is no true life, no eternal blessedness. The stronger and more painful the mortification of the old man, the more perfect is his renewal and rebirth, the higher his purification, the more perfect his life, and the higher his blessedness in the age to come. Mortify yourself and you will live. Ah! I myself feel that when I am in perfect health and do not tire or exhaust myself with labors, I die then in spirit, then there is no Kingdom of God in me, then my flesh rules me and with the flesh the devil.

It is necessary for a Christian to fast in order to clarify the mind, awaken feeling, develop it, and impel the will to good action. We darken and suppress these three human faculties above all by gluttony, drunkenness, and worldly cares (Lk 21:34), and through this we fall away from the source of life—God—and descend into corruption and vanity, distorting and defiling in ourselves the image of God. Gluttony and sensuality nail us to the earth and cut off, as it were, the soul’s wings. But look at the lofty flight of all those who fast and abstain! They, like eagles, soared in the heavens; they, earthborn, lived in mind and heart in the heavens and heard there ineffable words, and there learned divine wisdom. And how man degrades himself through gluttony and drunkenness! He distorts his nature, created in the image of God, and makes himself like the brute beasts and even worse than them. Oh, woe to us from our attachments, from our lawless habits! They prevent us from loving God and our neighbors and fulfilling God’s Commandments; they root in us a transgressive fleshly self-love, whose end is eternal destruction. Thus the drunkard, for the pleasure of the flesh and to stupor himself, does not spare much money, but grudges the poor kopecks; the tobacco smoker throws tens and hundreds of rubles to the wind, but grudges the poor kopecks that could save his soul; those who love to dress luxuriously or who are fond of fashionable furniture and dishes spend enormous sums on clothing and furniture with dishes, yet pass the poor with coldness and contempt; those who like to eat well do not spare tens and hundreds of rubles on dinners, but begrudge the poor pennies. The Christian must fast also because through the incarnation of the Son of God human nature has been spiritualized and deified, and we are hastening to the heavenly kingdom, which is not food and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17); food is for the belly and the belly for food, but God will destroy both (1Cor 6:13). To eat and drink, that is, to have attachment to sensual pleasures, is proper only to paganism, which, not knowing spiritual, heavenly pleasures, places all of life in the pleasure of the belly, in much eating and drinking. Therefore the Lord often rebukes this destructive passion in the Gospel. And is it reasonable for a person to live constantly in the stomach’s fumes, in the stomach’s vapors rising within from the continual cooking of food and its fermentation? Is a person merely a walking kitchen or a self-moving chimney, which could justly be likened to all who engage in constant smoking? What pleasure is there to live in constant fume, vapor, and smoke? What will our dwellings be like? Why will we poison the air with stench and breathe it, and most of all obscure and suppress the soul, kill its remaining spiritual powers?

To the extent that a person satisfies his sensuality, he becomes carnal and removes from himself the Most Holy Spirit of God, Who cannot dwell in people living a fleshly life: what fellowship does light have with darkness (2Cor 6:14)? Very many experience this state worthy of tears and—alas!—do not know that they do not have the Spirit of God in them, just as those blind from birth do not recognize the great loss in not seeing the light. Such people do not have faith and love in their heart and a spirit of prayer, they avoid fellowship with the Church. My God! how many dangers there are for me in life. I become the greatest enemy to myself when I satisfy my flesh excessively.

If you greedily eat and drink much, you will be flesh; but if you fast and pray, you will be spirit. Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18; 1Thes 5:6-8). Fast and pray: and you will accomplish great deeds. The full are not capable of great deeds. Have simplicity of faith and you will accomplish great deeds: for all things are possible to the one who believes (Mk 9:23). Have diligence and zeal: and you will accomplish great deeds.

Fasting is a good teacher:

Whoever rejects fasts forgets how the fall of the first people came about (from intemperance) and what weapon against sin and the tempter the Savior revealed to us when He was tempted in the wilderness (fasting forty days and nights), whoever does not know or does not wish to know that man falls away from God most often precisely through intemperance, as was the case with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and with the contemporaries of Noah—for from intemperance comes every sin in people; whoever rejects fasts takes away from himself and others the weapon against the multi-passionate flesh and against the devil, both strong against us especially through our intemperance, is not a soldier of Christ, for he throws away his weapon and surrenders himself willingly as a captive to his pleasure-loving and sin-loving flesh; he, finally, is blind and sees no connection between causes and consequences of deeds.

Some say: it is not important to eat non-fasting foods during fasts; the fast is not about food; it is not important to wear expensive, beautiful clothes, go to the theater, to parties, to masquerades, to set up magnificent expensive dishes, furniture, expensive carriages, spirited horses, to gather and hoard money, etc.; but because of what does our heart turn away from God, the Source of life, because of what do we lose eternal life? Is it not because of gluttony, not because of expensive clothes like the evangelical rich man, not because of theaters and masquerades? Because of what do we become hard-hearted to the poor and even to our own relatives? Is it not because of our attachment to pleasures, in general to the belly, to clothing, to expensive dishes, furniture, carriages, to money, etc.? Can one serve God and mammon (Mt 6:24), be a friend of the world and a friend of God, serve Christ and the tempter? It is impossible. Because of what did Adam and Eve lose paradise, fall into sin and death? Was it not because of food alone? Look carefully: because of what do we not care for the salvation of our soul, which cost the Son of God so dearly; because of what do we add sins to sins, fall continually into resistance against God, into vain life, if not because of attachment to earthly things, and especially to earthly pleasures? Because of what does our heart become hard? Because of what do we become flesh rather than spirit, distorting our moral nature, if not because of attachment to food, drink, and other earthly goods? How then can we say after this that eating non-fasting foods in fasts is unimportant? This very talk of ours is pride, vain wisdom, disobedience, insubordination to God, and distance from Him.

Man is precious to the Lord, the whole world is subject to him; the Son of God Himself came down from heaven to earth for his salvation from eternal torments, for his reconciliation with God. All manner of fruits, various meats of animals are given to him for food, various drinks are given him for the satisfaction of his taste, but not for attachment, not as the sole pleasure. A Christian has great, spiritual, divine pleasures; these pleasures must always be subordinate to the fleshly ones, to moderate or completely discontinue them when they hinder spiritual pleasures. Therefore, the restriction on food and drink is not to sadden man, not to confine his freedom, as the world says, but to give him true satisfaction, lasting and eternal, and that is why non-fasting foods and wine drinks are forbidden (during fasts), because man is so precious to God, and lest his heart cling to what is corruptible instead of to God, which he does not deserve. But man corrupted by sin easily clings to earthly pleasures, forgetting that his true enjoyment, his true life is God eternal, not the pleasant irritation of the flesh.

Have no attachment not only to food and drink, to clothing, to spacious and well-adorned dwelling, to rich household implements, but to your health as well, and have not the slightest attachment even to your own life, having surrendered your whole life to the will of the Lord, saying: for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil 1:21). He who hates his soul in this world will keep it for eternal life (Jn 12:25). Attachment to temporal life, to health, leads to many deviations from God’s Commandments, to indulgence of the flesh, to violation of fasts, to avoidance of conscientious fulfillment of the duties of service, to despondency, impatience, irritability. Never sleep in the evening before evening prayers, lest your heart become dull from untimely sleep, and the enemy seal it with hardened insensibility at prayer. Be sober, be watchful (1Pet 5:8). Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation (Mt 26:41). Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour the Son of Man is coming (Mt 25:13). Watch therefore: for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, at midnight, at the cock-crowing, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch (Mk 13:35,37).

The root of every evil is the self-loving heart, or self-pity, self-sparing; from self-love or excessive and unlawful love of oneself proceed all passions: coldness, insensibility, and hard-heartedness toward God and neighbor, evil impatience or irritability, hatred, envy, stinginess, despondency, pride, doubt, little faith and unbelief, greed for food and drink, or gluttony, love of money, vain-glory, sloth, hypocrisy. Never spare yourself in anything, crucify yourself—your old man dwelling chiefly in the flesh—and you will cut off all your passions. Bear patiently all that happens that is unpleasant for the flesh, do not spare it, oppose it, and you will be a true follower of Christ. All the wisdom of a Christian consists in wisely opposing his own flesh in life in all things, for what is good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh (Rom 7:18), says the apostle.

With excess and drunkenness, the bodiless enemy enters a person’s heart—every attentive person can feel this. This is the reason why with increasing drunkenness the tendency to drunkenness is so terribly strengthened (because the power of the enemy over the person grows), why in drunkards there is such a force drawing them involuntarily to satisfy the passion or the inner impulse to wine—in these unfortunates the enemy is in their heart. How then to cast out the demon of drunkenness? By prayer and fasting. The enemy enters because people give themselves over to a carnal way of life, gluttony, and do not pray—naturally, he can also leave them from opposite causes: fasting and prayer.

Oh, how terrible it is to use food and drink for amusement, to overeat and get drunk! A full belly loses faith, fear of God, and becomes insensible to prayer, to thanksgiving and glorification of God. A full heart turns away from the Lord and becomes hard as stone and insensible. This is why the Savior carefully warns us against gluttony and drunkenness, lest that day come upon you suddenly (Lk 21:34), because of God’s wrath upon us for the frivolous and idle passing of time in food and drink.

Perfect pleasing of God consists in having perfect detachment from your body; for example, when during prayer we, despite sloth and a strong inclination to sleep, force ourselves and do not give in to it, we have detachment from the body. The martyrs and ascetics had perfect detachment.

When you perceive that there is no peace in your heart because of attachment to something worldly, and instead irritability and malice breathe in it, immediately stand guard over your heart and do not let it be filled with the devil’s fire. Pray with heartfelt prayer and strengthen your passionate, impatient heart with God’s power. Be firmly convinced that the evil-breathing inflammation of the heart is the work of the enemy; and the enemy strongly wars against the heart through a full belly. Experience confirms this.

Do not believe your flesh threatening you with failure during prayer: it lies. When you begin to pray, you will see that the flesh becomes obedient to you as your servant. Prayer will vivify it. Always remember that the flesh lies.

Begin to fulfill the Commandments concerning small things, and you will fulfill the Commandments concerning great things: the small leads everywhere to the great. Begin to fulfill at least the Commandment about fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, or the tenth Commandment concerning evil thoughts and desires, and you will fulfill all the Commandments; for he who is unfaithful in little is unfaithful in much (Lk 16:10).

If you eat abundantly, you become a carnal person without spirit, or a soulless body; but if you fast, you draw the Holy Spirit to yourself and become spiritual. Take cotton that is not dampened with water—it is light and in small quantity floats in the air; but dampen it with water and it becomes heavy and immediately falls to the floor. So it is with the soul. Oh, how much the soul must be guarded by fasting!

The matter of the world is as nothing (Ps 38:6); everywhere and in all things is the life-giving Spirit of God, higher than all. When you pray to God, imagine that matter as if does not exist and all creatures as if they do not exist, and that God alone is everywhere present and unique, to whom there is no place, who fills all things with Himself, encompasses, creates, and preserves. If you are detached from material things and exercise yourself in fasting and prayer, then the spirit in you will as if consume the flesh, and you will be spiritual, will contemplate the Spirit-God everywhere in nature; whereas on the contrary, those attached to earthly things, especially to food, to drink, to money, are worldly, not having the Spirit (Juda 1:19), and see only the flesh in all things, not contemplating the spirit, and even rejecting the spiritual aspect of things.

To repent means to feel in your heart the falsehood, madness, and guilt of your sins—means to recognize that you have offended your Creator, the Lord, your Father and Benefactor, infinitely Holy and infinitely abhorring sin—means with your whole soul to desire amendment and atonement for them.

Do not hasten to food and drink, but rather hasten to God’s work, and when performing God’s work, do not think of food and drink. Remember firmly before whom you stand, with whom you converse, whom you praise; be wholly in God, belong entirely to Him alone, pray with all your heart, sing with all your heart, serve your neighbors as yourself, warmly, with all your heart, not double-minded and divided in thought. O Lord! help: without You I can do nothing (Jn 15:5).

Why does the Lord add day to day and year to year of our existence? That we might gradually cut away and cast off malice from our souls, each his own, and acquire for ourselves blessed simplicity—that we, for example, might become like innocent lambs, like simple children, that we might learn to have not the slightest attachment to earthly things, but as loving and simple children cling with all our heart to God alone and love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might, and all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. Let us hasten therefore through heartfelt and tearful prayer to ask the Lord for simplicity of heart, and let us be zealous, take care in every way to cast off the malices of our souls—for example: evil suspicion, ill-will, schadenfreude, malice, pride, haughtiness, self-praise, contempt, impatience, despondency, despair, sensitiveness and irritability, fearfulness and cowardice, envy, stinginess, gluttony and excess, mental and heartfelt lust and actual lust, love of money, and in general the passion for acquisition, sloth, disobedience, and all the dark host of sins. O Lord! without You we can do nothing. Bless us yourself for this work and Yourself grant us victory over our enemies and our passions. So be it!

When hungry, do not press heavily upon food—you will burden both heart and body. Without greed, eat quietly, with reflection, to the glory of God, remembering God the Provider, and especially His incorruptible food, His Body and Blood, how He Himself, for love’s sake, gave Himself to us as food and drink, and remembering the holy word of the Gospel.

Direct your most strict and active attention to this daily action of yours, to the taking of food and drink, for very much depends on your spiritual, social, and family activity from food and drink, from their quality and quantity. Take heed lest your hearts be weighted down with gluttony and drunkenness (Lk 21:34); and tea and coffee too belong to drunkenness if consumed at wrong times and in excess. Woe to us, satiated now and often looking with neglect upon God’s gifts!

O Lord! As it is the nature of the Archetype to attract, to assimilate to Himself the images, to dwell and live in them—so those who are created in Your image should naturally strive with all love, with all zeal toward the Archetype, to cling to Him. But behold our flesh, greedy and pleasure-loving, dull and heavy, tears us away from You; we have need of fasting, of restraint, yet we are passionate for pleasures. Strengthen us for restraint!

And judge not my brother, for you are blessed forever and ever. (Prayer of Saint Ephraim of Syria).

Amen.

On Holy Communion

The Divine Liturgy

“Of Your mystical Supper this day, O Son of God, receive me as a communicant.”

“Do this in remembrance of Me.” 1Cor 11:24.

The Divine Liturgy is truly a heavenly service on earth, during which God Himself is present and dwells with people in a special, immediate, and most intimate way, being Himself the invisible Celebrant, both offering and offered. There is nothing on earth more holy, higher, more magnificent, more solemn, more life-giving than the Liturgy! The church becomes an earthly heaven at this especially sacred time, the clergy represent Christ Himself, the Angels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, and the apostles. The Liturgy is the eternally repeated triumph of God’s love for the human race and the all-powerful intercession for the salvation of the whole world and of each member in particular. The Bridegroom’s feast—the marriage of the Royal Son—in which the Bride of the Son of God is each faithful soul, the One who betroths is the Holy Spirit. With what prepared, pure, exalted soul one must always be present at the Liturgy, lest you find yourself among those people who, not having the wedding garment but having the defiled garment of passions, are bound hand and foot and thrown out from the bridal chamber into outer darkness. But now, unfortunately, many do not think it necessary to attend the Liturgy; some attend only out of habit, and leave the same way they came—without lofty thoughts, without a contrite heart, with an unrepentant soul, without resolution to amend. Some stand irreverently, distractedly, without any concentration, without any preparation at home through reflection and restraint, for many manage to drink before the Liturgy, and sometimes even eat. When the Lord descended on Sinai, the Hebrew people were commanded beforehand to prepare and purify themselves; here it is no less a descent of God than that on Sinai (see Ex 33:23), and more: there it was only the back of God, but here it is the very face of God the Lawgiver. When the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush on Horeb, he was commanded to take off his sandals; but here it is greater than the theophany on Horeb: there was a type, here is the very Transformer. Oh, how attached we are to the earth! We will not even devote one hour, as we should, exclusively to God! During the divine, heavenly Liturgy, even then we allow ourselves to daydream about the earth and fill our soul with images and desires of earthly things, sometimes—alas!—even with unclean images; whereas we ought to pray fervently, contemplate earnestly this great Mystery, repent of our sins, desire and ask for purification, sanctification, enlightenment, renewal, and confirmation in Christian life, in the fulfillment of Christ’s Commandments, pray for the living and the dead; for the Liturgy is a propitiatory, thanksgiving, laudatory, and supplicatory sacrifice. Great is the Liturgy! On it is commemorated the entire life—not of some great person, but of God incarnate, who suffered and died for us, who rose and ascended, and who will come again to judge the whole world!

The Liturgy is a supper, a feast of God’s love for the human race. Around the Lamb of God all are gathered on the paten—the living and the dead, the holy and the sinners, the Church triumphant and militant.

Remember that the celebration of the life-giving Mysteries is an unchanging will of the life-giving Trinity, predetermined from the foundation of the world; it cannot be otherwise. When you celebrate the Mysteries, God the Father Himself through His Holy Spirit transforms the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ—you are only an instrument. The Father Himself, the Son, and the Holy Spirit through you celebrate the Liturgy and sanctify the gifts. You are the offerer and the offered, we sing, O Christ our God (Prayer of the priest at Liturgy before the Cherubic). Remember then God’s immutability and faithfulness in all His words.

The Holy Mysteries are called Divine gifts because they are given to us by the Lord completely gratuitously, as a gift, undeserved on our part; instead of punishing us for our countless iniquities committed every day, hour, minute, and delivering us to spiritual death, the Lord in the Holy Mysteries gives us forgiveness and cleansing of sins, sanctification, peace of soul’s powers, healing and health of soul and body, and every good, solely through our faith. If then the Master daily gives us gratuitously to taste Himself, His Divine Mysteries, should we not immediately give gratuitously, as a gift, corruptible goods: money, food, drink, clothing—to those who ask for them from us? And how can we be angry with those who freely eat our bread, when we ourselves taste freely the priceless and immortal food of the Body and Blood of the Lord? Do not demand from the one who takes your things (Lk 6:30).

Christ is the Bread of Life; therefore let us set aside our care for other bread. The Lord, who gives us to eat and drink the flesh and blood of His Son, will all the more give us natural bread; He who clothes our soul in Christ will all the more send us material clothing; He who deigns to dwell in us will not deprive us of a corruptible dwelling.

What is marvelous if God the Word Himself, the Creator of all that is visible and invisible, transforms and transubstantiates the bread and wine into His most pure Body and most pure Blood? In this bread and wine the Son of God does not become incarnate anew, for He was incarnate once—and that is enough for all infinite ages—but becomes incarnate with that very Body that was incarnate before—just as He multiplied the five loaves and with these five loaves fed several thousand. There are many mysteries in nature which my reason cannot comprehend even in material things; nevertheless things exist with their mysteries. So also in this Mystery of the life-giving Body and Blood—a mystery to me, how bread and wine become the Body and Blood of the Lord Himself; but the mysteries of the Body and Blood actually exist, though incomprehensible to me. My Creator (I am His workmanship—or out of flesh and blood the Lord created me and breathed into me a spirit) as God infinitely wise, infinitely almighty—has many mysteries; I myself am a mystery to myself, as a work of His hands. For my soul—the Spirit of the Lord, for my soul and body—His Body and Blood.

Appreciate as it deserves the greatest wonder of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, shown in Communion with faith in His Divine Mysteries. What is this wonder? The peaceful rest and vivification of your heart, killed by sin, so evident after the previous often turbulent state of the heart and spiritual death preceding Communion. By no means, from familiarity, regard it as something ordinary and trivial: such thoughts and heart dispositions draw the Lord’s wrath upon you, and you will not taste peace and life after Communion. With the most lively heartfelt thanksgiving for the gifts of vivification acquire life from the Lord, and let your faith increase more and more. Fear and anxiety come from unbelief. Their emergence during Communion regard as a sure sign that you are drawing away through unbelief from the Life present in the Chalice, and pay no attention to them. Oh faith, faith! you yourself are a wonder for us! You save us: your faith has saved you (Mk 5:34). And after lively faith in God’s truth we always depart from the Lord in peace; on the contrary, after little faith—always without peace. Ah! Satan often enters after unworthy Communion of the Holy Mysteries, and he tries in every way to plant in our heart his lie, that is, unbelief, because unbelief is the same as a lie. A murderer from the beginning, he strives even now to kill a person by his lie and various evil thoughts, and, having crept into the heart in the form of unbelief or some passion, afterward shows himself in a fitting way, especially through impatience and malice. And you see he is in you, but you will not quickly rid yourself of him, because usually he tries to lock up all the ways out of the heart—by unbelief, hardness, and other offspring of his. In vain do you labor against me, fallen Archistrategus. I am a servant of my Lord Jesus Christ. You, exalted pride, humble yourself, struggling so fiercely against me, the weak one. Thus speak mentally to the evil spirit that lies heavily as a burden on your heart and drives you to evil of various kinds. These words to the proud spirit are like fiery lashes, and he, shamed by your firmness and spiritual wisdom, will flee from you. You will see this at once, feel it tangibly, and marvel at the wonderful change in yourself: the heavy, soul-killing burden on your heart will disappear, it will become so light, so light, and you will be convinced tangibly that there are spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places constantly seeking our destruction, poisoning our heart with the venom of dark and malicious thoughts, striving to destroy love for people and fellowship with them.

Communing with unwavering faith in the life-giving Mysteries, I learn in a tangible way the omnipresence of Christ. How? In this way: in every particle of the Body and in every drop of Blood I receive the whole Christ, and thus I see with the eyes of my heart that He is at one and the same time wholly present in all particles and drops, however many they might be, to infinity. Likewise, the Lord is wholly present in every church; and since Orthodox churches are found throughout the whole earth, the Lord is present not only by His Godhead but by His soul and body throughout the whole earth, everywhere communicating Himself whole and undivided to the faithful and producing in them sweet fruits: forgiveness of sins, sanctification of the souls and bodies of Christians, righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, uniting all with Himself, with the Father, and with His Holy Spirit. We know, furthermore, that through fervent prayer He dwells in the souls of believers with the Father and His Holy Spirit. While present to the whole material world and simultaneously vivifying it all and each part separately, the Lord is all the more present to people and especially to Christians, lives in them: do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you fail the test (2Cor 13:5). Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who lives in you (1Cor 6:19).

God the Father, acting in our understanding and heart through His hypostatic Word (expressed in our word through the Holy Spirit, resting in the hypostatic Word) and through our word of faith, hope, meekness, and love, coming forth from our lips, in an instant accomplishes once and for all, predetermined from the foundation of the world, the wonderful works of our rebirth in Christ, sanctification, strengthening, spiritual nourishment, and healing—though the preparatory rites for these acts are very lengthy—for God is a simple, all-powerful Being. For example, the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is accomplished instantly after the pronouncement of the words: make this bread the honored Body of Your Christ, and what is in this chalice—the honored Blood of Your Christ, having changed it by Your Holy Spirit,—after these final words and the cross-like blessing with the hand in an instant the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, but not before, for the divine omnipotence awaits the cooperating word of the priest: God is our helper (1Cor 3:9). The cross-shaped blessing at this with the name of the Lord signifies that the Mystery is accomplished by the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of Jesus Christ, for the sake of His intercession, by the blessing of God the Father.

When you receive the life-giving Mysteries, imagine firmly in the forms of bread and wine Christ Himself; make a mental inscription on them: Jesus Christ, and with this mental inscription (for there is also a sensory one) conduct it mentally into the depths of your heart, and there mentally place the life-giving Guest. If thus, with such faith, you receive the Holy Mysteries, you will see what they will produce in you: the deepest peace of the soul’s powers, everything will become extraordinarily easy for you. To the measure of our faith the Lord bestows His benefits; to the measure of our heart’s readiness the Body and Blood become a life-giving coal on the heart of the believer. The Church is heaven; the altar is the throne of life, from which God descends to nourish and vivify the faithful in the Holy pure Mysteries. Wonderful are Your deeds, O Lord (Apok 15:3). You prepare us in advance for the contemplation of the throne and the One sitting on it, by the vision of the earthly throne in the church and the contemplation by the eyes of faith of Him who is seated upon it.

Revere with all the powers of your soul all the Mysteries, and say to yourself about each Mystery before its celebration or reception: this is a Mystery of God. I am only an unworthy servant or participant of it. But our proud reason wants even to investigate God’s Mystery, and if it cannot investigate it, rejects it as not conforming to the insignificant measure of its reason.

I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Mt 28:20). Yes, O Master, You are with us all days, not one day do we live without You, without Your co-presence! You are with us especially in the Mystery of Your Body and Blood. Oh, how truly and essentially do You abide in the Mysteries! You clothe Yourself, O Master, at each Liturgy in a body like ours, without sin, and feed us with Your life-giving flesh. Through the Mysteries You are wholly with us, and Your flesh is united with our flesh and Your Spirit is united with our soul—and we feel, sense this life-giving, transcendent, most sweet union, we feel that, cleaving to You in the Eucharist, we become one spirit with You, as it is said: he who unites himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him (1Cor 6:17). We become, like You, good, meek, and humble, as You said of Yourself: I am meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29).

True, often the cunning and blind flesh or the prince of this world dwelling in our sinful flesh whispers to us that in the Mysteries there is only bread and wine, not the very Body and Blood of the Lord, and sends as deceitful witnesses for this the sight, taste, and touch. But we do not allow ourselves to listen to his slanders and reason thus: For You, O Lord, all things are possible; You create flesh for people, animals, fish, birds, reptiles—all creatures; will You not create flesh for Yourself, You who are everywhere present and fill all things? What sculptor, making a statue for others, is not able to make it for himself? Moreover, You transform dead matter into a living being—for example, Moses’ rod into a serpent, and there is nothing impossible for You. Will You not create flesh from bread and wine for Yourself, which are so close to our flesh, being consumed as food and drink and transformed into our flesh and blood? You do not let our faith be tested beyond what it is able to bear (1Cor 10:13); You do not transform a lump of earth into Your most pure Body and Blood, but You use white, soft, pure, pleasant-tasting bread; You do not make water into Your Blood, but use wine suitable in color to blood, which is called the blood of the grape in Scripture (Sir 39:32), pleasant to taste and rejoicing the heart of man. You know our weakness, the weakness of our faith, and therefore graciously willed to use for the Mystery of Your Body and Blood the most suitable substances. Let us then firmly believe that under the forms of bread and wine we partake of the true Body and true Blood of Christ, that in the Mystery of Communion the Lord will abide with us to the end of the age (Mt 28:20).

Preparation for Holy Communion

“Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” 1Cor 11:28.

Brothers and sisters preparing for Communion! Let us fear the hardened insensibility to our sins; let us fear our heart’s pride, which says: I do not need forgiveness of sins, I am not guilty, I am not a sinner; or: my sins are light, human ones—as if there need to be demonic ones; or: it is not bad for me to live in my sins. This is satanic pride, and Satan himself whispers those same words in our heart. Let us feel deeply, deeply, with all our heart our countless iniquities, let us sigh for them from the depths of our soul, let us shed tears of compunction for them, and let us appease the angered Master. Let us by no means justify ourselves like the Pharisees, like hypocrites, for before God no one living will be justified (Ps 142:2), and only through sincere repentance of our sins can we appease God. Let us abandon indifference and coldness, let us serve the Lord with a burning spirit; let us not forget that after a long period of lawless life we now come to appease the Master of our life and our righteous Judge. Is this a time for coldness and indifference, which are not approved even in common life in dealings with people? Should not our whole soul be transformed into spiritual fire and poured out in tears of sincere repentance? Oh, our God, our God! Our iniquities have truly multiplied more than the hairs of our head, more than the sand of the sea, and we do not feel them, we are indifferent to them, we do not even stop loving them. What if You note all our iniquities, O Lord?…Who then will stand before You, O Lord? (Ps 129:3) Grant to all of us, O Lord, a broken spirit and a humble heart, that we may bring You true repentance. Amen.

What is your obligation, communicant of the Divine Mysteries? You must set your minds on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col 3:1-2), and not on earthly things, for Christ came down to earth for this reason, to lead us to the heavens (Akathist to Jesus the Sweetness, Kondak 8). In My Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you (Jn 14:2). Our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:3,20). Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God (Lk 18:16). Do you see what the ultimate goal is for which Christ came down to earth, for which He gives us His Divine Mysteries—His Body and Blood? This goal is to give us the Kingdom of Heaven. Strive for it.

He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him (Jn 6:56). This is tangible, and experience confirms it. Most blessed, full of life is that person who with faith communates in the Holy Mysteries, with heartfelt repentance for sins. This truth is tangible and clear even from the opposite. When without sincere repentance for sins and with doubt you approach the Holy Chalice, Satan enters into you and remains in you, killing your soul, and this is extremely felt.

When receiving the Holy Mysteries, be also absolutely certain that you are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, just as you have no doubt that you breathe air every minute. Say to yourself: as it is certain that I constantly inhale air, so it is certain that I now, together with the air, receive into myself my Lord Jesus Christ, my breath, my life, my rejoicing, my salvation. He is before the air, at all times of my life; He is my breath; before my word—my word; before my thought—my thought; before any light—my light; before any food—my food; before any drink—my drink; before any clothing—my clothing; before any fragrance—my fragrance; before any sweetness—my sweetness; before my father—my Father; before my mother—my Mother; before the earth—the solid earth that bears me, unshaken forever. Since we, earthborn, forget that at all times we live, move, and exist in Him, and have dug for ourselves broken cisterns (Jer 2:13), He has opened in His Mysteries—in His Blood—a source of living water that flows to eternal life, and He Himself gives Himself as food and drink to us, that we may live by Him (1Jn 4:9).

Those who attend the Divine Service of the Orthodox Church and study the science of Divine Service must remember that service here on earth is a preparation for the most joyful service to God in heaven; that, serving God with the body, one must all the more serve God with the spirit and a pure heart; that, listening to Divine Service, one must learn to serve God as the saints served, of whose lives and deeds we hear during Divine Service, of their faith, hope, and love; that serving God should be primarily in deed and truth, not only in words and tongue. By our very existence we are already called to the service of God: we have been given an upright stance so we might gaze constantly on God, thank and glorify Him; to that end we have been given reason, heart, will, and all our senses.

How long will the Holy Mysteries we receive remind us that we are one body, though many (1Cor 10:17), and how long will we not have mutual heartfelt unity among ourselves as members of the one Body of Christ? How long will we continue to govern ourselves lawlessly, to wage war against each other, to envy each other, to bite and devour each other, to grieve and consume each other, to judge each other, to rail at each other? How long will we lack the Spirit of Christ in us, the Spirit of meekness, humility, non-malice, sincere love, self-denial, patience, chastity, restraint, simplicity, and sincerity, contempt for earthly things, and complete striving for the heavenly? O Lord Master Jesus Christ! Enlighten the eyes of our hearts and let Your good Spirit guide us all into the right way (Ps 142:10). Give us Your Spirit!

The believer in the Savior and who feeds on His flesh and Blood has eternal life in him: and here is the reason why every sin produces a strong sickness and disturbance in the heart; but those who do not have eternal life in them drink iniquity like water and are not pained: because in their heart there is no eternal life.

Some place all their well-being and correctness before God in reciting all the appointed prayers, paying no attention to the readiness of the heart for God, to their internal amendment; for example, many recite the rule for Communion in this way. Meanwhile, what is most important here is to look to the amendment and readiness of the heart to receive the Holy Mysteries; if your heart has become right in your breast through God’s mercy, if it is ready to meet the Bridegroom, then thank God, even if you did not manage to recite all the prayers. The kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power (1Cor 4:20). It is good to obey the Church in all things with discernment, and if possible, he who is able to receive this, let him receive it—a lengthy prayer. But not everyone can accept this saying (Mt 19:11); if a lengthy prayer is incompatible with spiritual fervor, it is better to make a brief but fervent prayer. Remember that one word of the tax-collector, spoken from a burning heart, justified him. God does not look at the multitude of words but at the disposition of the heart. The main thing is living faith of the heart and the warmth of repentance for sins.

Whoever comes to the Holy Chalice with any passion in the heart comes like Judas, coming with a deceitful kiss to the Son of Man.

To commune with unwavering faith in the life-giving Mysteries and overcome all the enemy’s snares and slanders, imagine that what you receive from the Chalice is the One Who Is, that is, the One Who alone is eternally existent. When you have such a disposition of thoughts and heart, then from receiving the Holy Mysteries you will be at peace, will rejoice, and will be vivified, you will know in your heart that the Lord truly and essentially dwells in you, and you are in the Lord. This is proven by experience.

The Fruits of Worthy Communion

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” Jn 6:56.

By their fruits you will know them (Mt 7:16). By the fruit of the Liturgy—most sweet, most blessed, life-giving—of the pure Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord—you know that it is from God, that it is the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, and this Most Holy life-giving Spirit breathes in all its prayers and sacred rites. What a wonderful living tree is this Liturgy! What leaves! What fruit! Even the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations (Apok 22:2), not only the fruit. For who has not received great spiritual benefit, peace, and sweetness in the soul from reverend presence at the Divine Liturgy alone! And what produces good fruit must itself be good; this is the law of things, this is the creative law.

To the glory of the Most Holy Name of the Master Lord Jesus Christ and the Sovereign Mother of God. I have felt countless times in my heart that after Communion in the Holy Mysteries or after fervent prayer at home, usual or on account of some sin, passion, sorrow, or distress, the Lord, through the prayers of the Sovereign, or the Sovereign Herself, through God’s goodness, gave me, as it were, a new nature of spirit, pure, good, magnificent, bright, wise, benevolent, instead of an unclean, despondent, and languishing, faint-hearted, gloomy, dull, evil one. Many times I changed with a wondrous, great change, to my own surprise and often to that of others too. Glory to Your power, O Lord! Glory to Your goodness, O Lord! Glory to Your mercies, O Lord, which You show to me, a sinner!

I marvel at the greatness and life-giving power of the Divine Mysteries: an old woman who coughed up blood and was completely exhausted, eating nothing—from Communion in the Holy Mysteries which I administered—on that very day began to recover. A young woman who was dying—after Communion in the Holy Mysteries—on that very day began to recover, to eat, to drink, and to speak, whereas she had been almost unconscious, tossing about greatly, eating nothing and drinking nothing. Glory to Your life-giving and awesome Mysteries, O Lord!

Communicants of the Divine Mysteries! Know how truly you are united with the Lord if you commune worthily. What boldness you have toward the Lord and the Mother of God! What purity you should have! What meekness, humility, non-malice! What freedom from earthly attachment! What ardent desire for heavenly, most pure, eternal pleasures!

Throughout their whole earthly life people seek everything except Christ the Life-giver—that is why they do not have spiritual life, that is why they are given over to all passions: unbelief, little faith, avarice, envy, hatred, ambition, the pleasures of food and drink. Only at the end of their whole life do they seek Christ—in Communion—and then out of crying necessity, and then, as it were, following the custom accepted by others. Oh, Christ God, our Life and Resurrection! How vain have we become, how blind! But what would it be like for us if we sought You, if we had You in our hearts? The tongue cannot express that blessedness which those who have You in their hearts taste. You are for them both strong food and inexhaustible drink, bright raiment, and sun, and the peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil 4:7), and unspeakable joy, and everything. With You all the earthly is dust, decay.

It is good for me to pray for people when I commune worthily, that is, consciously: then the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, my God, are in me, and I have great boldness before Him. The King is then in me as in a dwelling: ask what you will. We will come to Him and make our dwelling with Him. Whatever you ask, it will be given to you (Jn 14:23,15:7).

Opening the door of the Kingdom of Heaven to others through baptism, will we ourselves not enter? Purifying others through repentance and remitting others’ sins, will we not receive the forgiveness of our own sins? Uniting others with Christ in the Mystery of Communion, will we not ourselves be truly united with Him in the undarkening day of Christ’s Kingdom? In chrismation giving the strengthening grace of the Holy Spirit, will we ourselves not receive strength and power from the All-Holy Spirit and not grow in the gifts of the spirit? Truly we firmly trust to receive the promised blessings through the grace, mercies, and philanthropy of our Savior God. May God grant that all receive them! Only may we not become idle, may we not lose heart, may we not gratify the desires of the flesh (Rom 13:14), keep hold of the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience (1 Tim 3:9), and may we advance in love toward God and neighbor.

I thank You, O Lord, that You give me new life each time when, with tears of repentance and thanksgiving, I celebrate the Divine Liturgy and commune in Your pure and life-giving Mysteries. I am indebted to Your holy Mysteries for the continuation of my being, for the purity of my paths, and for good renown among Your people. May Your great Name be sanctified ever and ever more in me and in all Your people, upon whom Your holy Name is called, and in all Your world; may Your kingdom come, the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, into all our hearts, as You said: I will come in and dine with them, and they with Me. I will be their God, and they will be My people (2Cor 6:16; Lev 26:12; Jer 3:19), and may Your holy, wise, all-good, all-perfect, all-blessed will be done as in heaven so also on earth in all Your people and in me a sinner, for our own will is erroneous, short-sighted, sinful, destructive, unloving, evil, envious, arrogant, idle, sensuous, greedy, and stingy.

As in Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of God bodily (Col 2:9), so also in the life-giving Mysteries of His Body and Blood. In the small human body—all the fullness of the infinite, incomprehensible Godhead, and in the small Lamb, or bread, in every tiniest particle of it—all the divine fullness. Glory to Your omnipotence and goodness, O Lord!

How many times, O Master Lord Jesus, have You renewed my nature corrupted carelessly by my sins! There is no number or measure to it! How many times have You drawn me out from the furnace burning within me, from the furnace of many-fold passions, from the abyss of despondency and despair! How many times through Your Name alone, called upon with faith by me, have You renewed my heart’s corruption! How many times have You accomplished this through the life-giving Mysteries. Oh Master! Truly there is no number nor measure to Your mercies toward me, a sinner. What shall I bring You, or what shall I render to You for Your boundless benefits toward me, Jesus, my Life and my Ease! May I be watchful in my paths by Your grace, for You are pleased with all watchfulness in the way, as You spoke by Your Spirit through our father David (Ps 118:1); I will strive to be faithful to You, humble, meek, patient, non-malicious, long-suffering, diligent, merciful, generous, free from greed, obedient.

Let not the Communion of Your most pure Mysteries, O Lord, be unto me for judgment or condemnation, but for the healing of soul and body.

“O Lord, have mercy on me, heal my soul.”

Ps 40:5.

Amen.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Genesis
Genesis 3:68. Correction of Life (8.8)
Genesis 3:102. Self-Knowledge (2.3, 2.6)
Exodus
Exodus 33:2311. The Divine Liturgy (11.3)
Leviticus

Leviticus 26:1213. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.9)

1 Samuel
1 Samuel 1:157. Confession (7.3)
1 Samuel 2:12. Self-Knowledge (2.7)
Psalms
Psalms 5:10–115. Sins of the Flesh (5.10)
Psalms 22:14. Malice (4.8)
Psalms 24:152. Self-Knowledge (2.5)
Psalms 25:14. Malice (4.6)
Psalms 38:69. Fasting (9.19)

Psalms 40:513. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.14)

Psalms 50:122. Self-Knowledge (2.12)

Psalms 50:196. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.1)

Psalms 84:92. Self-Knowledge (2.5)

Psalms 102:36. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.2)

Psalms 118:113. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.11)

Psalms 118:328. Correction of Life (8.1)

Psalms 129:34. Malice (4.4); 12. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.2)

Psalms 138:72. Self-Knowledge (2.10)

Psalms 138:23–242. Self-Knowledge (2.2)

Psalms 142:212. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.2)

Psalms 142:1012. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.7)

Isaiah

Isaiah 29:136. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.7)

Isaiah 43:267. Confession (7.2)

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 2:135. Sins of the Flesh (5.8); 12. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.5)

Jeremiah 3:1913. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.9)

Jeremiah 23:242. Self-Knowledge (2.3)
Jeremiah 32:192. Self-Knowledge (2.10)
Joel
Joel 2:129. Fasting (9.1)
Sirach
Sirach 39:3211. The Divine Liturgy (11.15)
Matthew
Matthew 3:28. Correction of Life (8.2)
Matthew 3:67. Confession (7.3)
Matthew 4:45. Sins of the Flesh (5.3)
Matthew 4:177. Confession (7.3)
Matthew 5:88. Correction of Life (8.5)
Matthew 5:405. Sins of the Flesh (5.4)
Matthew 6:144. Malice (4.4)
Matthew 6:249. Fasting (9.8)
Matthew 6:335. Sins of the Flesh (5.3)

Matthew 7:1613. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.2)

Matthew 10:368. Correction of Life (8.7)
Matthew 11:127. Confession (7.4)
Matthew 11:2911. The Divine Liturgy (11.14)

Matthew 12:343. Pride (3.6); 7. Confession (7.3)

Matthew 15:192. Self-Knowledge (2.12)
Matthew 16:115. Sins of the Flesh (5.4)
Matthew 16:259. Fasting (9.2)

Matthew 19:1112. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.9)

Matthew 25:139. Fasting (9.10)

Matthew 26:419. Fasting (9.10)

Matthew 26:756. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.2)

Matthew 28:2011. The Divine Liturgy (11.14, 11.15)

Mark
Mark 5:3411. The Divine Liturgy (11.9)
Mark 9:239. Fasting (9.5)

Mark 11:245. Sins of the Flesh (5.11); 6. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.5)

Luke
Luke 4:234. Malice (4.4)
Luke 6:3011. The Divine Liturgy (11.6)
Luke 12:15. Sins of the Flesh (5.4)
Luke 15:78. Correction of Life (8.2)
Luke 16:109. Fasting (9.17)

Luke 18:1612. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.3)

Luke 21:349. Fasting (9.3, 9.13, 9.24)

Luke 22:61–626. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.2)

John
John 5:78. Correction of Life (8.6)
John 5:88. Correction of Life (8.6)
John 6:275. Sins of the Flesh (5.4)

John 6:5612. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.4); 13. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.1)

John 12:259. Fasting (9.10)

John 14:212. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.3)

John 15:56. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.7); 9. Fasting (9.21)

John 15:174. Malice (4.8)

Romans

Romans 7:182. Self-Knowledge (2.13); 9. Fasting (9.11)

Romans 8:266. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.4, 6.8)

Romans 8:324. Malice (4.8)

Romans 13:1413. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.8)

Romans 14:176. Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin (6.4); 9. Fasting (9.3)

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 3:911. The Divine Liturgy (11.11)

1 Corinthians 4:2012. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.9)

1 Corinthians 6:139. Fasting (9.3)

1 Corinthians 6:1711. The Divine Liturgy (11.14)

1 Corinthians 6:1911. The Divine Liturgy (11.10)

1 Corinthians 10:1311. The Divine Liturgy (11.15)

1 Corinthians 10:1712. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.7)

1 Corinthians 11:2411. The Divine Liturgy (11.2)

1 Corinthians 11:2812. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.1)

1 Corinthians 12:4–113. Pride (3.3)
1 Corinthians 13:44. Malice (4.1)
1 Corinthians 13:78. Correction of Life (8.7)

1 Corinthians 16:148. Correction of Life (8.7)

2 Corinthians
2 Corinthians 1:95. Sins of the Flesh (5.11)
2 Corinthians 5:217. Confession (7.10)
2 Corinthians 6:149. Fasting (9.4)

2 Corinthians 6:1613. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.9)

2 Corinthians 13:511. The Divine Liturgy (11.10)

Galatians
Galatians 5:19–245. Sins of the Flesh (5.1)
Galatians 6:23. Pride (3.4)
Ephesians
Ephesians 2:8–93. Pride (3.3)

Ephesians 5:185. Sins of the Flesh (5.10); 9. Fasting (9.5)

Philippians

Philippians 1:219. Fasting (9.10)

Philippians 3:2012. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.3)

Philippians 4:713. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.6)

Colossians

Colossians 2:913. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.10)

Colossians 3:1–212. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.3)

Colossians 3:9–109. Fasting (9.2)
1 Thessalonians
1 Thessalonians 5:6–89. Fasting (9.5)
Hebrews
Hebrews 1:35. Sins of the Flesh (5.2)
Hebrews 12:48. Correction of Life (8.8)
1 Peter
1 Peter 5:53. Pride (3.1)
1 Peter 5:89. Fasting (9.10)
1 John
1 John 1:8–97. Confession (7.1)

1 John 4:912. Preparation for Holy Communion (12.5)

Jude
Jude 1:199. Fasting (9.19)
Revelation
Revelation 15:311. The Divine Liturgy (11.12)

Revelation 22:213. The Fruits of Worthy Communion (13.2)

The Author: Saint John of Kronstadt

Saint John of Kronstadt (1829–1908) was a Russian Orthodox archpriest, pastor, and spiritual writer, and one of the most beloved and influential figures of the late Russian Church. A married parish priest rather than a monk or a bishop, he became renowned across the whole empire for his fervent celebration of the Divine Liturgy, his ministry of prayer and healing, and his tireless charity among the poor of Kronstadt.

He was born Ioann Ilyich Sergiev to a poor clerical family in the far north of Russia, in the village of Sura in the Arkhangelsk province. He was educated at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, and in 1855 was ordained to serve at Saint Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, the naval town near the capital, where he would remain for more than half a century. He gave himself to the destitute of the town, founding the House of Diligence to give work and dignity to the poor, and thousands sought him out for confession, counsel, and prayer.

He is best remembered for his spiritual masterwork My Life in Christ, a collection of reflections drawn from his diaries on prayer, repentance, and the Eucharist, marked throughout by a vivid sense of the reality of God and of the Church’s Mysteries. His many sermons, catechetical talks, and later diaries—among them A Living Ear of Wheat and his Lenten preaching—extend the same ardent, experiential piety, and everywhere his eucharistic realism is stated without reserve.

He reposed in 1908 and was mourned throughout Russia. He was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1964 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1990, and is commemorated on 20 December and on 1 June, the day of his glorification. His writings remain a standard of modern Orthodox spiritual life.

Colophon

Thoughts of a Christian on Repentance and Communion
by John of Kronstadt.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
The Last Supper (1863)
by Nikolai Ge (Russian, 1831–1894), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction

- On Repentance

- Self-Knowledge
- Pride
- Malice
- Sins of the Flesh
- Deep Sorrow and Contrition for Sin
- Confession
- Correction of Life
- Fasting

- On Holy Communion

- The Divine Liturgy
- Preparation for Holy Communion
- The Fruits of Worthy Communion

- Scripture Index
- The Author: Saint John of Kronstadt
- Colophon