The influence of the spirit of fornication on a man. What is fornication? Adultery and fornication - what is the difference
Fornication and adultery - what is the significance of these sins in the Orthodox Church? You can find out about this if you read our article.
Fornication and adultery
It is with the greatest sorrow that we have to begin the following pages: in essays intended for the baptized, for believers, for members of the Church, these pages essentially should not have existed. The Apostle Paul writes: “But sexual immorality and all uncleanness and covetousness must not even be mentioned among you” (Eph 5:3; see also 1 Cor 6:9-10). However, the depravity of this world around us has so dulled the moral sense (“bad communities corrupt good morals,” 1 Cor 15:33) that even those raised in the Orthodox faith (even they!) began to have premarital affairs and divorces. Anyone who has not entered into marriage, who is firm in his marital union, who is not embarrassed by the thoughts of extramarital adultery and who does not bear the cross of pastoral service, it is all the better not to read this essay.
Priest Alexander Elchaninov notes in his notes (and this observation is confirmed by other pastors) that men often do not repent of the sin of accidental lustful adultery, considering it unimportant; they admit it only when directly questioned by the confessor. He even recalls one wife who told her husband who was leaving on a business trip: “If you really need it, you can use someone there - I don’t mind and I won’t be jealous. It’s important to me that your life as a whole belongs to me.” And this was said by a woman, to some extent a believer, to her somewhat believing husband. Complete misunderstanding of the Gospel commandments, patristic instructions, the spirit of the church and even the commandments of Moses!
What does “thou shalt not commit adultery” mean?
What can be said against such a sin? We will cite only the statements of the Holy Fathers and the words of Holy Scripture.
1. “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28).
2. “...fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness should not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; know that no fornicator, or unclean person, or covetous person, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for for this reason the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience” (Eph 5:3-6).
3. “There shall not be a harlot among the daughters of Israel, nor shall there be a fornicator among the sons of Israel” (Deut. 23:17).
4. “Flee fornication; Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18). “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I, then, take away the members of Christ to make them members of a harlot? It won't happen! Or do you not know that whoever has sex with a harlot becomes one body with her? for it is said, “The two will become one flesh” (1 Cor 6:15-16).
5. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, which you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19-20). How can I defile this temple with fornication?
6. “Take care of your body as the temple of God - take care as one who has to rise again and give an answer to God; fear God as one who has to give an account to Him for everything that you have done; when your body receives a wound, you take care to heal it, so take care that it appears clean in the resurrection" (Abba Isaiah)
7. “If he who indulges in fornication before marriage is condemned and punished, much more so after marriage. For here there is a double and triple crime, which is heavier than any sin.
Let us reveal the meaning of the words of the great teacher of the Church, St. John Chrysostom. Here is a sin against one’s own body and a violation of the seventh commandment “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Here is a violation of the eighth commandment, which says: “Thou shalt not steal,” for “...your body,” as Chrysostom says, “is her (the wife’s) property and the most precious property of any property. Do not offend her in the most important matter and do not inflict a mortal wound on her. But if you despise her, then fear God, the avenger for such deeds, who threatens unbearable suffering for such sins.” Here is a violation of the ninth commandment - “thou shalt not bear false witness”, for an adulterer usually bears false witness about himself to his spouse - most divorces begin with lies in the relationship between spouses. Here there is often a violation of the tenth commandment, which says: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor anything that your neighbor has.”
8. St. John Chrysostom exclaims: “... there is truly nothing more shameful than a person who commits fornication after marriage.”
9. “The mouth of another man’s wife drips honey, and her speech is softer than oil; but its consequences are bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword” (Proverbs 5:3-4).
Extramarital affairs corrupt marital love, destroy families, deprive children of one of their parents, and corrupt bodies and souls.
10. “I wrote to you in a letter - do not associate with fornicators; however, not in general with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, for otherwise you would have to come out of this world. But I wrote to you not to associate with someone who, while calling himself a brother, remains a fornicator with him and does not even eat together” (1 Cor 5:9-11).
11. “Think about what a wife endures when she hears from someone or even suspects that you have given yourself over to a prodigal woman. When presenting this, not only avoid adultery, but also do not give rise to suspicion; and if your wife suspects unfairly, then calm her down and dissuade her. She does this not out of enmity or pride, but out of thoughtfulness.”
12. “From chastity comes love, and from love countless benefits. And so consider all women as if they were made of stone, knowing that if after marriage you look with lustful eyes at another woman, you become guilty of the sin of adultery, and if you see that lust for another woman is aroused in you and then your wife seems unpleasant to you, then enter the inner room and, opening this book, taking Paul as your mediator and constantly repeating these words, extinguish the flame. In this way, your wife will also be desirable to you; because such a wish will not destroy your goodwill towards her...
13. “But to avoid fornication, each one have his own wife, and each one have his own husband. The husband show his wife due favor; likewise is a wife to her husband. The wife has no power over her body, but the husband does; Likewise, the husband has no power over his body, but the wife does. Do not depart from one another, except by consent, for a time, for exercise and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you through your intemperance” (1 Cor 7:2-5).
14. “Let everyone’s marriage be honorable and the bed undefiled; But fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
15. “By carefully observing these words (that is, the words of 1 Cor 7:2-4. - Author) both in the square and at home, and during the day and in the evening, and at the table, and on the bed, and everywhere, we ourselves will try, and teach wives and us to speak in such a way as to live our present life chastely, and to make us worthy of the kingdom of heaven by the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father together with the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.
It is not so difficult to pray for anyone as for those who have fallen into fornication and adultery.
Denial of Christ and fornication with adultery put a wall between man and God, through which it is difficult for loved ones and lovers, and even priests, to offer prayer. Just as renunciation of the Son of Man leads to falling away from the Church, so fornication, if it is not dissolved by the deepest humility and repentance, leads to loss of faith. We know this both from the example of the laity and from the example of priests, some of whom, having committed adultery, were deprived of their rank (according to the 25th Rule of the Holy Apostles and the 3rd Rule of Basil the Great) and became full-time militant atheists. They were recognized by their shifting, lascivious eyes.
Only humility and the deepest repentance can return those who have renounced Christ and fornicators to God, like the apostle who renounced Christ. Peter, who “went out and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75).
Renunciation can be impulsive, like the ap. Petra, instantly. Fornication, to be perfect, requires time, some calculation, and preparation. It cannot be an involuntary sin, like an outburst of anger or a harsh word uttered - it is always a voluntary sin. Even murder can be involuntary, but fornicators always have time to come to their senses and ask themselves: “What am I going to do?” and move away from sin in the body, having committed it only in your heart. Fornication is terrible because of the obvious consciousness of the crime being committed.
A fornicator is worse than a harlot, just as an alcoholic is worse than an alcoholic - she is practically almost incurable, but an alcoholic, if he really wants, can be cured. The fornicator is vile because he consciously or unconsciously counts on his impunity.
“Our job is not to give birth, but to enjoy and run,” was one of the soldiers’ commandments in a censored form. A woman, and especially a girl, always takes risks. Complete fornicators, as war experience shows, are usually cowards in battle.
We know repentant harlots who became saints, and we honor Mary of Egypt as a great saint. Jesus Christ said to the priests and elders of the Jewish people: “I tell you that publicans and harlots are going ahead of you into the kingdom of God,” but He did not say fornicators.
Among men, there are no known ones who indulged in fornication and became saints; Mary of Egypt is not among them.
However, over the centuries, the mores of society have condoned men (“being a good fellow is not a reproach”) and condemned women (“walking woman”). Such views were opposed by the Church Fathers of St. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and many others. The first wrote: “The Lord’s saying that it is not permissible to leave marriage unless the words of an adulterous person are equally appropriate for men and women. But that is not the case. We find many strict sayings about wives.
“Don’t tell me now,” exclaimed St. John Chrysostom, - about external laws, which drag adulterous wives to the court and subject them to punishment, and leave husbands who have wives and commit adultery with their maids without punishment; I will read to you the law of God, which equally reproaches both wife and husband and calls this act adultery.”
There are, however, also terrible women who, “on a bet,” either out of revenge or envy, seduce pure young men and married men. They are found in all levels of society and sometimes have the appearance of respectable ladies, crowned with honorary titles and degrees.
It’s hard and disgusting to write about all this, but you have to shout with fear and pain in your heart: “Look, how dangerous you are walking!” Sin sits within us, the sin of the world surrounds us, offering us its seductive images. Hell often dresses in clothes not only of “feelings”, but also of aesthetic charm.
Examples include the favorite song of many parties, “Because of the Island to the Rod,” where at first the motive captures the width of the Volga expanses, and the text ends with the praise of Stepan Razin, who “fiddled around” with the princess all night, and the next morning, to please his comrades, drowned the girl as if he was unnecessary item. The amazingly musical romance “My fire shines in the fog” sounds even more deceptive and insinuating. Just think about the terrible meaning of the words, dressed in an elegant musical cover: “Remember, if another, / Loving a dear friend, / Will sing songs, playing, / On your knees...”.
One can cite many other songs, motifs, films, short stories, paintings, etc., that excite sensuality, corrupt the soul and body... “Satan himself,” in the words of St. Paul, - takes the form of an Angel of light, and therefore it is not a great thing if his ministers also take the form of ministers of righteousness" (2 Cor 11:14-15), - and, we add, - aesthetic sophistication. It is quite natural that under the cover of darkness in amateur and comradely groups and “creative” associations, when going out into the bosom of nature to the accompaniment of passionate music with its aesthetic and sensual cries and half-whispers, young people are corrupted and previously concluded marriages fall apart.
In such “companions” the participation of Christians, members of the Church, should be excluded. Remember the words of the ap. Paul: “What agreement is there between Christ and Belial? Or what is the complicity of the faithful with the infidel?” (2 Cor 6:15). This does not mean that we are against any partnership between believers and non-believers. The only question is when and in what ways we can and should be with them, and when and in what ways we must leave their midst and separate ourselves (see 2 Cor 6:17), remembering that “friendship with the world is enmity against God "(James 4:4).
It seems that never in the history of the world after the flood was the sense of sin so deeply lost among the peoples as at the present time. The princes of this world worked hard to tear him out of human consciousness. They were especially outraged by the seventh commandment. It is no coincidence that crime is growing all over the world, in different countries with different socio-economic and political systems. In some countries, even sodomy is not considered a reprehensible act and such relationships are protected by law.
Living in a corrupt world, the Christian is nevertheless called to purity (“blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” Matthew 5:8); it is necessary to constantly maintain in oneself the consciousness and feeling of where sin begins, cultivating in oneself the fear of sin, for sin, especially carnal sin, removes us from God.
Living in the world, we must constantly remember that a Christian is called to an “invisible battle” with the sin sitting in him, with the sin surrounding him from the outside, to fight for purity and love, for goodness, for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, for the Kingdom of God, which , according to the word of the Savior (Luke 17:21), must be within us. Every Christian must recognize himself as a warrior of Christ our God with sin, a warrior who acquires the joy of the Holy Spirit already here on earth.
American John Mott, the founder of the Christian student movement, called the fight against carnal sin “the most difficult struggle in a student’s life.” All or almost all monastics went through this struggle. Many people who get married do not avoid it either. Sin, especially carnal sin, begins with a thought, “for from within, from the human heart, come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, covetousness, malice, deceit, lasciviousness, an envious eye, blasphemy, pride, madness - all this is evil comes from within and defiles a person” (Mark 7:21-23). Therefore, constant control over your thoughts is necessary, especially such insidious ones as lust, adultery and vanity.
Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. But if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:27-29).
The world-famous psychologist V. Dzheme pointed out that it would be quite natural if a person, who has been indulging in lustful thoughts for days and weeks, finally goes to a brothel, and Saint Mark the Ascetic wrote: “When you have sinned, blame not the body, but the thought; for if the thought did not flow, the body would not follow it.”
The first elementary rule of dealing with thoughts is no participation in “greasy” conversations and jokes. If it is impossible for you to interrupt them, then do not approve of them with a smile or anything - read Jesus’ prayer at this time. We knew soldiers who said this prayer every time they used obscene language, and during the entire war they never swore obscenely. It is necessary to behave in such a way that it would be psychologically impossible to tell you such jokes and dubious stories, and it would be inconvenient to tell you in front of you. To do this, you do not need to declare yourself a Christian or say anything, but you just need to have inner chastity and prayerful memory. The Jesus Prayer in such situations will not only protect you from impurity, but will also make the very mental atmosphere of the group around you cleaner. She is a weapon in the invisible battle, Christ’s war for her own purity and for the purity of others. The second elementary rule is - do not go to voluptuous films even in old age, do not participate in comradely amateur song circles with a dubious repertoire, be chaste in choosing books to read, etc.
Summarizing the experience of the Holy Fathers, set out in the Philokalia, it must be emphasized that human consciousness cannot help but be busy: it either indulges in empty thoughts, including prodigal ones, or is busy with prayer and work, thinking about heavenly things.
For the sin in question, more than for any other, the popular proverb is true: “Laziness is the mother of all sin.” May work, prayer and mutual love be the companions of your life and may they protect the purity and strength of your marriage.
Marina Legostaeva
1. Patristic understanding of fornication
Speaking about fornication and its psychological aspects, we cannot help but touch on the Christian understanding of the meaning of the relationship between a man and a woman - the most important task that God has set before us. To answer this question, we turn to patristic anthropology (the science of man).
The Fathers of the Church consider the emergence of passions as a distortion of human nature after the act of the Fall committed by man.
According to their teaching, there is one main source of sin - our selfishness, that is wrong a person's love for himself. This is the reason and beginning of all passions.
Prodigal passion is no exception.
The words fornication, get lost, wander - all have the same root. Thus, falling into fornication, a person begins to wander away from the Truth. Submission to fornication inevitably leads him to spiritual fornication, to alienation from God.
The Lord in His parables reveals to us the hidden secrets of spiritual life and the Kingdom of Heaven. We all remember the parable of the prodigal son.
This parable is about physical fornication, spiritual fornication and repentance. In the literal and figurative sense, it reveals to us the essence of fornication (wandering away from oneself, from God, from true love).
Man was created by God endowed with many gifts. He has a word, he has a mind, he has high feelings. He has colossal capabilities and power.
But the question is, what does he spend all this on, what does he spend it on?
According to patristic anthropology, we have two options. One path is the path of adoption to God. The other is self-indulgence, one’s passions and whims. And this is the path to death.
This well-known parable tells of a younger son who walked away from God. It is said that he went to a far country and spent his property living fornication.
The first commandment given to us by God—thou shalt love thy God—has been broken. In its place passion developed. Love for God has been replaced by an attraction to carnal pleasure .
This choice did not pass without a trace for us.
A lot has been lost. The opportunity to see the spiritual world is closed for us. Thus, a person, moving away from God, ceases to be “sighted.” We become deaf to the voice of our conscience, to the voice of God, and we poorly distinguish between good and evil.
Why did the Lord in His parable choose fornication out of many passions? Why did He stop at this particular passion?
2. Relationships between men and women
Let's return to the question of the appointment of a man and a woman.
This is what L.F. writes. Shekhovtsova in the article “The Sexual Revolution through Women’s Eyes.”
“Let us not forget that both culture and civilization are mainly the product of male activity. A woman’s contribution to the history of mankind is traditionally the family, the home.”
She further writes: “I.S. Cohn very accurately expressed the male mentality of sexual behavior: to master a woman as an object, to establish himself through her possession, conquest without regard to emotional intimacy. A woman for a man is an object that does not have her own experiences, thoughts, inner world, i.e. “Subjectivity” is, as a rule, denied to women. A man does not take into account a woman’s feelings; for him they are, as it were, put out of the picture, as something insignificant, completely unnecessary. For a woman, on the contrary, It is feelings that are most important in a relationship with a man and in sexual contact.”(It is clear that we are not talking about those women who have made it their profession to make money by satisfying male lust).
Further, Shekhovtsova compares the relationship between culture and civilization as the relationship between a woman and a man.
“Culture is the sphere of the human spirit, human relations, where the values of mutual understanding and respect are expressed. This is the sphere of knowledge and understanding of science and art. Civilization is the technical sphere of ensuring human interaction with the world, the sphere of technical devices that make life easier for humans, but also require an expensive price for it (ecological deterioration, stress, and so on). Culture is the sphere of subjects, civilization is the object sphere.
Thus, a woman in a relationship with a man is a subject and enters into a subject relationship with a man. And a man treats a woman as an object. Thus, we can say that the relationship between a woman and a man symbolizes the relationship between culture and civilization: sincerity, subtlety, love, sacrifice, on the one hand. And possession, technique (dexterity, cunning - translation technology with Greek), pressure - on the other side."
Now I propose to return to the question that we outlined: who exactly is Eve to Adam?
To understand what we are really talking about, let us turn to the text of the Bible. The original Hebrew book of Genesis is not about a helper. The word “etzer” used here is much deeper in content than it appears at first glance.
Thus, the Orthodox theologian and historian professor (1878-1972) proposes to translate the Semitic ETZER as “REPLENIZING BEING.” “Eve is not just a helper, but the one who will stand face to face with him, with Adam.”
Such a translation fills the meaning of the union of a man and a woman with a completely different meaning. A husband and wife can stand face to face, as if contemplating each other, penetrating into the depths of each other, filling themselves with new content. They can see in each other all the beauty of the image of God.
Eternity itself opens before us, which through love connects two into a single whole. That is why, as the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote, telling a person: I love you is the same as telling him: “You will live forever, you will never die.” We find the same expression in .
In other words, we are talking not so much about assistance in labor, in the function of giving birth to children, but about the replenishment of existence itself.
And then it turns out that assistance in labor, the birth and upbringing of offspring is thought rather as a consequence of this replenishment.
Above we considered the metaphorical purpose of women and men as the social purpose of culture and civilization.
The husband has what the wife lacks. And the wife has what the nature of a man lacks. She is the one through whom he can become something more. He is the one through whom she will grow to her full measure. This difference is not mutually repulsive, but complementary and mutually enriching.
They are together only because they are different. So, according to the Bible, in the joint life of Adam and Eve, a complete change in a person’s life occurs, an expansion of his personality, God thus leads a person to the fullness of being.
That's how it was intended.
But the Fall changed everything. Relations between the sexes have changed. In modern society there is no dialogue and cooperation between culture and civilization.
3. What are the sources of the emergence and development of fornication?
4. How does prodigal passion develop?
5. Fornication as a consequence of pride
It has already been said that the emergence of passions is the result of the Fall. In other words, the moment a person decides to do without God, puts himself in His place, filled with pride, vanity and self-deception, our nature is distorted.
Thus, any human passion is a consequence of pride - a person’s arrogant intention to get along in this life independently, without God.
We also know that all passions are interconnected and influence one another.
Fornication is also a consequence of pride. How is this connected? The Holy Fathers believe that if the Lord had given the devil the opportunity to completely rule over us, then the demons would have torn us apart. But, by the grace of God, the Lord allows the action of the devil’s power within us to the extent that we can withstand resisting it. And when a person is in pride (and it blinds), he cannot see pride in himself - then the Lord, in order to humble him, allows the prodigal demon to attack him. And, seeing and enduring this destructive passion, always noticeable to him and always tormenting him, a person can determine that he is proud.
The Holy Fathers believe that the demon of fornication was allowed to act in us precisely for the purpose of to humble pride, because this passion is so disgusting that everyone tries to conceal it, hide it, is ashamed of it, does not stick it out. But even here our time is different in that fornication in its most varied manifestations is proud and exalted.
Thus, we see that the demon of fornication is connected with the demon of pride. The proud are providentially allowed to engage in particularly strong fornication, in order to cure a greater sin with a lesser sin, and a stronger one with a weaker disease. But if a person if he humbles himself in time, he will not need this cruel healing.
The Lord is sometimes in no hurry to allow a person to free himself from fornication, so that pride, the most dangerous passion, does not develop.
This helps us understand that the appearance of fornication is often the result of our pride or condemnation of another person.
Gives a good example. He talks about how at some point he was attacked by a strong temptation for fornication. He decided to cope with this temptation at all costs. He began to climb the mountain, reading prayers. But the abuse did not stop, but only intensified. At some point, he suddenly remembered that he had recently condemned a woman for her lustful passion. And he condemned him harshly. At that moment, he did not suspect the possible strength of this passion; apparently, in the depths of himself, he exalted himself above it. As soon as he remembered this episode and repented of his condemnation, his passion left him.
This is precisely an example of the fact that passion is sent to us to keep us from pride. She calls for humility and repentance. Calls for not judging your neighbor.
6. Prodigal passion and love
Before our eyes, the predictions of the Holy Fathers are beginning to come true. It seems that in the history of mankind there has not been such an all-encompassing pressure of sexuality as in our days. There is not a single area of social life left that is not involved in this process. Everything is used: literature, art, television, films, music, advertising, fashion, the Internet, computer games. Sex education in school, the way it is conducted, also serves to develop this passion. The idea is introduced into people's minds that abstinence is harmful for a person, and the satisfaction of lust is beneficial. The need to hold onto carnal desires is presented as “a dangerous matter that is traumatic for the psyche.” Chastity, modesty and modesty are declared an “inferiority complex.” A huge pornography industry has grown and is growing around sexuality, corrupting the hearts of young people and teenagers.
We are constantly exposed to a stream of sexual stimuli against our will.
At the same time, we need to remember that the Bible does not turn us away from carnal love. Sacred tradition has always been based on the Holy Scriptures.
We know that there is nothing random in the Bible. Let's turn to the Song of Songs. This book was included in the Holy Scriptures later than all the others. There was debate among Jewish theologians about the canonical merits of the Song of Songs. Some of them said that a book that does not even mention the name of God cannot be sacred. However, the book entered the canon and was accepted by the Christian Church.
When interpreted literally, we see in this book a depiction of earthly love. The main content of the book is the feelings of lovers. Priest G. Pavsky writes that two loving persons - a young man and a girl - express their tender and strong love to each other and extol each other to the skies, comparing them with everything that could be presented to them as the most beautiful and magnificent.
Meanwhile, there is also mystical-allegorical interpretation. This does not mean that the second interpretation excludes the first. Theologians believe that there is no reason to completely reject the literal interpretation, since the Bible, as a book addressed to all people, cannot ignore such an important aspect of human life as earthly love. It reveals the will of God for man. After all, love and marriage are commanded from above: “A man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and the (two) will be one flesh” (). Love in the Song of Songs is depicted as a powerful force that overcomes all obstacles.
And love here is monogamous in nature. Because for the Groom the Bride "the only one" Both of them find their second self in the other person, without which they cannot live. In the joy of the union of two, God’s plan is realized, the ultimate goal of which is the unity and harmony of all. We can treat earthly love as a school that prepares us for the highest form of love - love for God.
Now about the mystical meaning.
The deep mystical meaning of the Song of Songs is that earthly love here becomes a symbol of the relationship between God and man. The Word of God teaches us about the high dignity of pure human love. And marriage in the Church is one of its sacraments. The Orthodox theologian S. noted that this is the only one of the seven sacraments, the foundation of which was laid by God from the beginning, back in the Old Testament.
He who does not know how to love people will not be able to love God. This is why love, true love, is so dangerous to the enemy. Loving people are always attacked by the enemy, always tempted. Love is strengthened by trials. And if it is destroyed, then something was no longer right in the person’s heart. Apparently, there were cunning thoughts there, and a desire to command, and to be arrogant over others. Perhaps something completely different was taken for love.
To distinguish love from another feeling, to preserve it, to carry it through your life is the path to God. This is a feat of spirit.
7. The essence of fornication in the context of the meaning and purpose of love, based on the New Testament
In the sinful state in which we exist on earth, we cannot fully know God. It is only partially revealed to us. But we can move in this direction, continue this search throughout our lives.
In this regard, it turns out that leaving your love, betraying it, going into fornication is leaving Christ. It is probably no coincidence that it was Christianity - this complete Revelation of God the Trinity - that brought people the revelation of a monogamous marriage in which one can grow and develop spiritually. And marital crowns were equal to the crowns of martyrdom, because preserving love, carrying it through life is a feat of the spirit.
It is through love that a person can again return to his damaged integrity, gain the fullness of his being in the world. This is possible through loving communication with other people, the world and God. God has not been revealed to people in such completeness in any other religion. It was in Christianity that the great mystery and revelation of the God of the Trinity - the God of Love - appeared to us.
Where can we learn love, if not in our family, if not in a Christian marriage? It is no coincidence that for a Christian, family is small.
It is love that brings us closer to the knowledge of God, teaches us something that was not available to us before. Although somewhere deep down we always knew what it was. After all, every human soul, according to the word (who lived at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries) is a Christian. We carry this memory, this knowledge of Christ from birth. It’s just that in our intellectual fornication we lose this knowledge.
“In the New Testament (the sin of fornication) received a new severity, because human bodies received a new dignity. They have become members of the Body of Christ, and the violator of purity already brings dishonor to Christ, breaks the unity with Him... The adulterer is executed by spiritual death, the Holy Spirit retreats [from him], the sinner is recognized as having fallen into mortal sin... a guarantee of inevitable death... if this sin is not cured in time by repentance " Bishop.
Any human relationship, any activity in which there is no presence of the Holy Spirit leads to demons settling in the soul. And God moves further and further away.
The Apostle Paul says: nothing should possess me... the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body... Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit living in you().
“If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him” (), says the Holy Scriptures... Strengthen your resistance to the demon of fornication; do not agree to be carried away by a thought, because a spark ignites coals and a bad thought multiplies bad wishes. Try to destroy memories of them too.” Rev.
The Bible says a lot about love. This is what we find about her in the letters of the Apostle Paul:
“Let everything be done with love” ()
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so love one another" ()
“...constantly love each other from the bottom of your heart” ()
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved and gave Himself for her” (; )
And this is what he writes about love: “Love is an amazing feeling, but it is not only a feeling, it is state the whole being. Love begins at the moment when I see a person in front of me and see his depths, when I suddenly see his essence. Of course, when I say “I see,” I do not mean “I comprehend with my mind” or “I see with my eyes,” but “I perceive with my whole being.” If a comparison can be made, then in the same way I perceive beauty, for example, the beauty of music, the beauty of nature, the beauty of a work of art, when I stand in front of it in amazement, in silence, only perceiving what is in front of me, without being able to express it in any way. in a word, except the exclamation: “My God! How wonderful!” The secret of love for a person begins at the moment when we look at him without the desire to possess him, without the desire to rule over him, without the desire to take advantage of his gifts or his personality in any way - we just look and are amazed at the beauty that has been revealed to us "
8. About chastity
Every passion has its opposite. Chastity is opposed to fornication.
However, it is a mistake to think that chastity is a concept that concerns only bodily relationships.
Chastity is about wisely preserving the integrity of your soul, and when entering into marriage, the soul of another person. Chastity transforms physical relationships in marriage into a reverent union of two. Such a union of two people through physical relations is, as it were, the completion of the unity that lives in their souls.
Unfortunately, neither school nor society is currently involved in instilling chastity in the modern child. This leads to sad results.
Desacralization of the intimate sphere, the removal of the veil of romantic secrets (no wonder - the sacrament of marriage!) from love relationships entails disturbances in the experience of love as something personal and concerning only two. As a result, these disorders lead to suppression of libido and a depletion of the repertoire of love experiences. Psychotherapists have recently noted youthful impotence among young healthy boys who know sexual techniques so well from erotic films. That. the ongoing processes in the mental structure of a young man deprive him of full-fledged love experiences in the future, including sexual ones. There are obstacles to creating a full-fledged family.
Those who are involved in raising children: parents, educators, teachers must remember that chastity is a feeling that is given to a person from birth, and in the future must be preserved, nurtured, and carefully nurtured. The difficulties of this process lie in the fact that chastity is directly influenced by the entire environment in which today’s person develops and is formed.
Like all the most valuable and pure things, chastity, first of all, is formed and developed in the family. At the very least, the family can lay that foundation of purity and strength, which will always help the child in difficult times to resist sin. And even if a person falls, then it is the foundations of love, fidelity, honor, instilled in childhood, that give him the strength to rise and turn to repentance.
Family begins with the right choice. How you want to make the right choice and not make a mistake. Make a choice for life!
9. The problem of adultery
Extramarital relations (adultery) are a virtually unexplored area of marital relations. Scientific study of them using surveys, even anonymous ones, is a difficult matter, since the information received is related to a phenomenon traditionally not approved in society, and, therefore, may be incomplete or distorted. With all the changes in sexual morality in recent decades towards greater tolerance, for example, towards premarital affairs, the attitude towards extramarital affairs is much less tolerant.
What pushes a person to extramarital relationships?
I would like to note that often the motive leading to infidelity is emotional dissatisfaction in the marriage of one or both spouses. What is it?
Emotional dissatisfaction, melancholy, despondency….
“I learned that the demon of despondency precedes the demon of fornication and prepares the way for him,” writes (Fl. 27, 49).
This statement is consistent with the fact that addiction, the feeling of loss of novelty from relationships - all this gives rise, in particular, to despondency. And people try to get rid of this condition not by deeply analyzing this condition, not by working to find the cause within themselves, but by solving this problem externally, through external objects or new relationships.
However, as you know, the inner emptiness cannot be filled with anything other than God. And therefore, many married couples initially doomed go through crises. A man and a woman can be in a marriage, but also experience melancholy, loneliness and the meaninglessness of existence.
Modern man is increasingly accustomed to running away from inner pain. The situation in the family can often lead to states where we are in pain. After all, it hurts from those closest to you. Internal psychological pain is interpreted by many secular psychologists as something foreign that needs to be quickly removed, made so that it becomes comfortable and easy. This is contrary to the Orthodox approach.
In a new relationship, a person tries to cope with the inner emptiness that exists in him through passionate experiences of the novelty of feelings and relationships. And often he does not understand that the deep reason for this emptiness is his isolation from God. Finding God within yourself is not an easy task. It requires spiritual courage and patience. Moreover, if such a temptation as passion is given.
Passion attracts, excites, beckons. There is an intoxicating joy in it and the expectation that now I will be happy.
However, if we want to grow spiritually, then we must face our internal and external crises, our pain, with respect. And look at what is happening to us with unconditional trust in God. And it is from Him that we can draw strength in order to cope with the situation. By enduring the situation and all the difficult feelings associated with it, we develop spiritually. At the same time, our relations have a chance to develop. If we simply avoid pain and drown it out with fornication (or any other form of addiction), then we we lose the opportunity for deep personal transformation in God.
10. Common misconceptions characteristic of adultery
Returning to the vice of adultery, we can say that, in addition to the most passionate attraction, and sometimes simply lustful desire ,
is also based on several quite naive recurring misconceptions.
A spouse who allows himself infidelity in marriage convinces himself that “no one will know” his adventures. But the heart feels that mystically this is not only not hidden from anyone, but everyone knows about it: heaven, earth, children, wife or husband. And this is first on an unconscious level, and then it will be revealed with your own eyes. From patristic literature we know that the accompanying passions that support fornication and mutually reinforce each other are despondency, vanity, gluttony and drunkenness.
Another illusion is that there is supposedly no spiritual depravity in physical relationships. This is truly an illusion. Man, as a holistic being, cannot help but participate in every process entirely. Monogamous marriage requires a person (male or female) to be fully... holistic participation in marital relations. Participation of spirit, soul and body. And it is precisely the reluctance to participate fully (and this happens during adultery) that leads to increased internal splitting, and thereby to moving away from God.
11. The spiritual aspect of adultery
We remember from the Gospel story that the integral structure of man (spirit-soul-body) was disrupted by the Fall. A person suffers painfully due to a violation of his integral structure. It is possible to come to integrity only by freeing yourself from passions. Prodigal passion (like any other passion), strengthens this splitting.
It destroys the personality structure. After all, a person has to hide, deceive, and take care that his husband or wife does not find out about it. And even if this passion is committed quite openly, it nevertheless internally devastates a person, weakens him spiritually. And this leads to the alienation of the soul from the body. As a result of frequent changes of partners, it becomes increasingly difficult for a person to feel love or even sympathy. At some point, he is surprised to note that he simply stops experiencing any feelings. What for? After all, they only interfere and lead to attachment. It's inconvenient, painful, uncomfortable .
Feelings begin to separate from the mind, from the body. If any feeling suddenly arises, it must be suppressed. This is unnecessary, it interferes, it will create unnecessary problems. Thus, a person learns to simply use another person sexually. And treat your body like a machine. A simple pursuit of sexual pleasure begins, which surprisingly dulls. After all, everything gets boring. And the fornicator needs more and more new relationships, new connections. But, unfortunately, they all cease to satisfy.
And indeed, it is always a kind of spiritual deadness, a frightening emptiness of loneliness. The fornicator is an image of spiritual wandering. It’s not for nothing that prodigal deeds are called adventures. Fornication, wandering, lost, lost, forsaken by God - all this is one semantic synonymous series.
12. Psychological approach to the problem of adultery
We are now touching on important issues. They are so complex that by giving any schemes and strict rules, we risk making an irreparable mistake. One thing is clear: sexual relationships only in marriage are fully worthy, pure and beautiful. However, even there, if the desire for sexual pleasure is placed higher than the good relationship and devotion of the spouses to each other, then intimate relationships can turn into evil. In this case, the true spiritual essence of marriage is lost as an opportunity to grow together to its full extent in Christ.
When psychologically counseling a family, you can immediately notice that the concepts treason And loyalty are subjective. Each partner of a married couple and the married couple as a whole have their own ideas about fidelity and infidelity. It is clear that in Orthodox families this idea exists more definitely. And this point is a positive factor when it comes to counseling an Orthodox family.
Secular and Orthodox psychologists view family crises differently. Accordingly, different solutions are also offered.
The topic of relationships between men and women is inexhaustible. Here it is easy to slide both to one pole (hypocrisy and moralizing) and to the other - to follow the motto that the world is ruled by love, and, therefore, everything that we call love is allowed and justified.
And yet I would like to note that we are not calling for the need to maintain any relationship, no matter what. We all make mistakes. There are marriages that are inherently destructive. Perhaps the decision to get married was made without the proper degree of responsibility and without prayerfully coming before God. Then the development of relationships in marriage may not go in the direction of mutual growth in God, but creates a threat to the physical or psychological state of one of the spouses or children. With this option, a possible positive solution to resolve this situation would be divorce.
There are quite frequent cases in counseling practice when people come to us with the fact that they have lost the ability to love and are not capable of long-term relationships. They always have partners, but there is loneliness and pain in their souls. This applies to both men and women.
Unfortunately, the processes taking place in society to “legalize sex” cannot but affect all areas, including the principles of psychological counseling. In this context, as a consequence of spiritual and professional degradation, the advice of many secular psychologists now appears, calling for the fact that if, they say, you have sexual incompatibility with your husband (wife), or depression, or some other difficulties, then have a yourself a mistress (lover). This is not a way out of the situation. But it’s just a way to push the problem deeper.
We are mistaken if we think that the Church prohibits adultery simply from the principles of Christian morality. Not in this case. In marriage, husband and wife form a special unity, but fornication creates a crack, a schism, a black hole. If in the unity of the marriage union in the family the presence of the Holy Spirit was felt, and it was some kind of warm atmosphere of love and trust, joint activity and joy, inexpressible in words, then after the commission of adultery this internal atmosphere of the family is gradually destroyed.
Often children begin to immediately react to what happens between their parents. As the weakest link, they are the first to “take upon themselves” responsibility for the sins of their parents. The virus of sin is transmitted to them. Not always, but quite often children begin to study poorly, behavioral problems appear, and various kinds of addictions arise. In my consulting experience, you constantly come across the fact that children’s problems are the consequences of parents’ stupidity and pride.
There are families in which parents separate in a fairly civilized manner, doing everything possible to ensure that the divorce affects the children as little as possible. Fortunately, this also happens.
As mentioned above, only psychologically we are not able to cope with any passion. Man cannot do anything on his own. And only by turning to the Holy Spirit for help, we are able to change and move forward on the path of our healing.
But what should you do if people really have incompatibility? In this case, you need to understand each specific situation, but know for sure that moral decline does not provide either mental or physical comfort. On the contrary, such advice gives rise to a whole series of problems and worries.
13. Homosexuality
There is no clear answer to the nature of homosexuality either in medicine or in psychotherapy. Apparently, as in all deviations (perversions), they occur due to the fact that the integrity of a person is violated; and in the hierarchy of spirit-soul-body, bodily pleasure occupies first place.
You can look at the problem of homosexuality in this way: these are two individuals, two human beings who initially “agreed” to settle on spiritual-carnal relationships. God created man and woman so that it was in their union, in their contact at all levels of existence, that they would do spiritual work in marriage that would bear fruit.
Living together in a normal marriage their differences, overcoming their limitations together, at the levels of body, soul and spirit, two people - a man and a woman - accomplish a feat in their spiritual development. Same-sex homosexual relationships cannot have a positive spiritual meaning; they are based on a negative, demonic spirituality and are severely condemned by the holy fathers.
Just as marriage has its own mystery, the mystery of piety, Truth and Righteousness, so in fornication and in homosexual relationships there is also a mystery, but the mystery of lawlessness and sin. The mystery of piety does not impose itself, but humbly and meekly rises above us. The mystery of fornication beckons, flirts, seduces, deceives, sticks.
In order to resist fornication psychologically, it is necessary to resist the development of “fornication consciousness” in oneself.
In the treatment of addictions, quite a lot of attention is paid to the psychological aspect. To find the right landmarks, you need to see what traps false psychological attitudes we get caught if we are inattentive to what is presented to us in the form of certain axioms.
Religious and moral normalization of sexual relations presupposed a person’s ability to control himself, his inclinations, desires (mastery of neuropsychic processes, the motor-motor system). It was possession spirit over flesh. Self-control begins with mastery of the word, of your consciousness. When a person “slides” from the spiritual level to the spiritual or carnal level, then the process of losing power over oneself begins. A person who does not control his own emotional-volitional processes loses himself.
14. Neurotic sexual addiction as fear of death
Obsession with sex helps modern man to hide his fear of death. We, people of the 21st century, are practically not protected from this fear, since we have lost faith in the immortality of our souls, which was armed to generations based on Christian dogmas. And due to the loss of faith, a universally significant goal in life is lost. Death causes fear in a non-believer, and accordingly, thoughts about it are almost always suppressed.
It turns out that in order to prove his existence, his potency, a person strives to constantly prove to himself that he is alive. Psychotherapists of the existential direction believe that sexual activity is the most convenient way to drown out the internal horror of death, since death is a symbol of absolute impotence, complete powerlessness and finitude.
A person who has not yet entered into marriage tries to fill his inner emptiness, states of loneliness associated with the lack of spiritual life, with carnal emotional experiences. He doesn’t even understand that the problem of his condition lies on a different plane. And in this case, fornication becomes something akin to a drug. Indeed, sexual relationships without love can give peace for a while, and then everything returns with even greater force.
Thus, dependence on the sensations associated with fornication arises. It forms and develops, like other forms of addiction.
And, like any form of addiction, in its deepest version it is our unconscious, unbearable experience of the feeling of being abandoned by God.
In the practice of family counseling, there is a form of work when couples turn to a consultant before getting married. And together with him, the future spouses clarify the reasons for their decision, the presence of common values and meanings, that is, the foundation on which the family will be built.
These consultations are carried out with the aim of helping young people make the right choice when starting a family, clarifying the discrepancy in values, in matters of raising future children - thereby identifying an area of potential conflict.
It often happens that the basis, the main motive for creating a family, is sexual attraction. If this is the main reason, then there is no doubt that as this attraction subsides, people begin to experience dissatisfaction in marriage.
15. Psychological aspects of getting rid of lustful passion based on the ascetic teaching of the fight against thoughts
A person captured by passion gradually destroys his personality.
The first step to liberation from passion-addiction is the realization that addiction has formed and that it already owns you. As long as a person thinks that he can cope on his own at any moment, he is in "charm", i.e. unable to truly assess reality and sinks deeper and deeper into addiction. Consciousness always finds a justification for any action.
If there is an awareness of the situation, an awareness of one’s powerlessness and a desire to get rid of passion, then it means that one will be given the strength and opportunity to cope with it. “My strength is made perfect in weakness” ().
The Lord begins to help a person when he, realizing his powerlessness, the futility of all his efforts, calls on Him for help.
A modern person, focused on external life and activity, needs to learn to pay attention to “his inner man,” that is, learn to carefully observe his thoughts and feelings. And also, without guile, to realize how our passionate desires are formed, how we indulge them, intellectually justify them. In a word, using patristic terminology, we should learn sobriety and “spiritual warfare.”
It must be remembered that man himself cannot cope with temptations without God’s help. But if you ask, you are given grace-filled strength to resist them.
Working with thoughts is an entire art. We start by observing ourselves.
16. How to carry out self-observation work
When working with clients, I often recommend putting off captivity for a while. Telling myself that this will not get away from me. And devote five to ten minutes to describe the process of “capture by thought.” These stages are sometimes very difficult to track in consciousness. When we write down, we gradually begin to grasp what follows what. Our attention to the inner life, the “inner man” is trained. And after such training, a person is increasingly able to grasp the beginning - the preposition. All this begins to succeed only when it is possible to observe the process of internal warfare a little from the outside.
It is also important to remember that our psyche is very conservative and inert. It takes quite a lot of time to retrain yourself to think and feel differently. There will definitely be “falls”. However, you shouldn't give up. We must continue the fight again and again. Any experience of “falls” should be recognized as much as possible.
We must live our falls with contrition and repentance, but not lead to despair. To develop the process of observing thoughts, it is useful to keep a diary. Write down in your diary all the moments of falls and victories. You should describe as if from the outside, trying to be dispassionate. And then the skill of working with thoughts will develop, which will allow you to escape from the captivity of sin.
Based on the patristic teaching of the fight against passions, we recommend the “algorithm” for liberation from passions proposed by the saint.
However, we must remember that this is just a diagram. A specific living example of work is always more complex and multifaceted.
In this case, an example of working with prodigal passion is given - addiction to viewing porn sites.
17. To achieve success, you need to form a strong intention.
The first thing you need to do is clarify and strengthen your motivation. To do this, you need to answer (preferably in writing) a number of questions:
- think about how good it will be when I overcome the passion for fornication(y my relationships with girls will improve, in the future I will be able to create a good family; anxiety and tension will go away; I will become happier, freer internally...)
- why don't I want to fight passion (I don’t believe that I will succeed; I will have to devote time to this, I don’t have much of it, I need to pay attention to my inner life, but I don’t know how to do this....)
- describe the consequences of passion (fear that this will entail loneliness, there will be no stable relationships, there will be no family, I am increasingly withdrawing from people, I am getting used to relieving stress and anxiety in this way and I don’t know how it can be done otherwise...)
- Am I determined to fight?(see paragraph 1 Yes, I have to decide, but can I cope?)
- mobilize your will and ask God for help (I can’t handle it on my own, but with God’s help I can handle it...)
Confirming your intention (motivation) is important, because this is where we will draw strength from failures and mistakes. We need strength in order not to give up under any circumstances, but to continue to work on ourselves further. Success will definitely come if you have patience and always remember that you cannot resist this struggle without God’s help.
Let us remember that passion is not born in a person’s soul right away. The Holy Fathers say that it begins with a prelog (attack). In Slavic, to be struck means to collide with something.
18. Stages of passion formation
The process of passion formation is conventionally divided into four stages.
First stage- see the emergence in oneself adjective.
The pretext arises in a person’s mind from impressions of what he saw, for some other reason, or as an image imposed by the enemy - the devil. But the excuse comes against the will of a person, without his consent and participation. A person himself is free to accept the pretext in his heart or reject it.
Second stage– the pretext has been accepted, it is already being thought about, becoming one’s own. Fathers call it also combination or interview with intention.
Third stage- this is an inclination to a thought, or condolence, when a person’s will has already submitted to the influence of a sinful thought and the person is ready to move on to action. We remember the words of the Lord in the Gospel: “ Evil thoughts come from the heart...(). Sin begins “with an evil thought” about it. And the Apostle James writes: “But lust, having conceived, gives birth to sin, and committed sin gives birth to death” ().
Fourth stage–captivity by thought. A sinful thought turns into action (deed, words).
For a person inexperienced in spiritual warfare, infection with passionate thoughts occurs much faster. The initial stages of the development of thoughts (preposition-combination-addition) often go unnoticed at all, and only at the level of captivity, if the struggle with developing passions begins, do they come out.
We have already said that our thoughts are not always ours, but come from the “enemy”. Knowing this, the Holy Fathers suggest not to be afraid of them, and not to become discouraged by your own sinfulness. This is one of the moments of spiritual warfare. Pomyslov no need to be afraid, but also no need to talk to them. You should also protect yourself from temptations. After all, every person himself knows well what a situation of temptation is for him.
This is a very important point that ordinary psychologists do not pay attention to and do not even consider. We should take a closer look at it. What is said below is revealed to us only by patristic experience.
It is necessary to perceive thoughts as something external that has nothing to do with us. It is necessary to remember that you cannot cope with temptation on your own without God’s help. And a person who already has some spiritual experience and a consciousness purified by repentance can observe the development of thoughts internally calmly and soberly. In this case, he is given grace-filled strength to resist them.
So, those who want to free themselves from passions must learn to kill bad thoughts in the bud, to “break their babies against a stone” (see:). And the germ of a thought is (as already mentioned above) - a preposition.
It is necessary to begin the fight against thoughts with prayers to the Lord, saints and guardian angel. This is important so that we refrain from attributing the successes of spiritual warfare to our own efforts, and only to the help of God.
19. An example of work on self-observation with the thought of fornication
The example is the same. A person is very tempted to enter a porn site….
Prilog
I’m very tired today, I’ll go turn on the computer and relax...
What needs to be done to prevent passion from developing further: I know that I will definitely go to a porn site. Lord, help me to hold on!
Combination
Nothing special, I’ll just turn it on and look at the mail, it doesn’t mean anything...
To prevent the thought from developing further, you need to shift your thoughts to something good.
Yes, but I know myself, it’s better if I try to relax differently. I’ll go and ride a bike... I know that it’s better for me to avoid temptations for now.
Pairing
It’s okay, everyone is on these sites. Nobody died from this. And in general, why today? After all, I’m tired now and what… do I even need a bike?
Here it is necessary to be able to look at yourself from the outside before the onset of captivity. See your spiritual weakness and how, in essence, communication and conversation with the demon occurs in internal dialogue. And then really ask yourself the question: do I choose Christ or the devil? (Lord, help me not to betray You!)
Captivity
And anyway, what does Christ have to do with it? I don't want to think about it...
The example given cannot serve as an ideal scheme in all cases. Of course, a person’s inner life cannot be limited by schemes and algorithms. But to better understand the essence of the process, we have to resort to this. Truly working with thoughts is the essence of Orthodox asceticism - the science of sciences.
In monasteries, monastics confessed their thoughts to the elder. Many of us lay people, deprived of spiritual guidance, need not only to get rid of sinful thoughts and not allow them into our soul, but also to fill it with other thoughts - and to master all this personal experience of spiritual warfare.
Ideally this work is part of ascetic practice, developed by Eastern Christianity. It leads to pure consciousness, inner silence, to constant prayerful standing before God - what is called in Orthodox asceticism. But this is a completely different topic for discussion. And we should stop here...
20. Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to say a few more words about the fact that passion (any passion, not just the passion of fornication) leads us to unfreedom, to internal slavery. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says: “You, brothers, are called to freedom!” ().
We do not know how to use it with dignity, poorly understanding what kind of feeling this is (it can cause anxiety) and we replace freedom with self-will, thereby falling into the slavery of sin. Christianity is the opportunity given to us to find freedom in Christ.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” ()
If we want to get lasting results in the fight against passion, then we need to work towards developing our Christian worldview.
Without personal Rooted in the Christian consciousness, a person cannot cope with this problem due to the fact that society as a whole, as it now relates to sin, is a powerful factor generating temptations.
The process of building a Christian worldview is not quick, but at times difficult and painful, as is the process of any birth. And here the birth of a new personality in Christ takes place. The Orthodox Church gives us the opportunity to repent. And this is the only opportunity to reconsider your actions, thoughts and feelings in order to get away from the temptations of repetition, and at the same time not fall into a state of melancholy and despondency from the awareness of your sinfulness and spiritual poverty.
We always have a choice - to die of hunger in a foreign country, herding pigs, as the prodigal son did, or to return to the Father's house.. Spiritual struggle. Words. Volume 3. M., 2003
Why does a person who has violated the Divine law of chastity and at least once desecrated his body or only his thoughts with fornication, be irresistibly drawn to experience these sensations again? Supporters of “sex education” argue that it is human “nature” to extract “pleasure” from everything, and let, they say, teenagers also join in this “joy of natural feeling”, and they do not need to listen to parents who are “complex” with outdated views, erecting all sorts of prohibitions! Sex stormtroopers call this concern for the souls of children “sexual discrimination” against teenagers...
Molesters slyly keep silent (and many of them themselves do not understand, being deeply damaged people) why the “forbidden fruit,” ceasing to be forbidden, very soon entails a desire for a new “forbidden fruit.” That is, a person who has fallen into “ordinary” fornication soon becomes fed up and begins to gravitate towards various perversions. Fed up even with “non-traditional sexual orientation” (as the mortal sins of Sodom are now shyly called), a sinner can desire “pleasures” with animals, with corpses, with his own daughter or son, and fall into the abyss of ritual satanic depravity... IS THERE A LIMIT TO THIS FALL? !
Yes, if we stop and honestly analyze what is actually happening to many of our compatriots, why people who were normal yesterday begin to behave like regulars in brothels. Why does a person, even once falling into fornication, be subtly attracted by demons to new terrible falls, and if he does not resist, does not repent of his way of life, then he soon becomes an OBSESSED person, that is, an obedient slave of the demon who has taken possession of him, a weak-willed puppet in his hands. And the “extraordinary sensitivity” of homosexuals, which TV commentators are now shouting about when interviewing unfortunate sick people, is nothing more than a sign of demonic possession...
It’s scary to read about how this fall under the influence of a demon occurs, what power the forces of hell can have over us. But you need to know this. And this analysis is a merciless sentence to those who would like to turn our country from Holy Rus' into Sodomic Rus'.
“The spirits of wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12) conduct their struggle competently: they start with small things, and then quietly move on to bigger things - this is a strategy. Sleeping too much, intemperance in food and voluptuousness are just a person’s preparation for committing a more serious, this time “mortal” sin, which is fornication in all its manifestations.
In a well-fed and, especially, in an overly rested body, lustful passions will certainly seethe. While in this state, the body, like gunpowder, is ready to ignite from just one lustful thought, from one lustful vision in the mind or in reality, from a single lustful sensation caused in it by a demon. One might say that such a body is like a barrel of gunpowder, waiting only for a chance spark to be followed by a destructive explosion. It is quite clear that an explosion is more likely if a person has either not yet entered into marriage, or has consciously decided to devote himself to God by taking a monastic vow of chastity.
WHY IS IT DIFFICULT FOR US TO DEAL WITH LUST?
Why then (albeit to a much lesser extent), and especially now, people, even those who have come to know the True God and His commandments, do not always cope with fornication? Why is it that the soul, which does not have the instinct and need for reproduction, since, as mentioned above, is not intended for reproduction, cannot control its body? Why does our physical body, which, it would seem, should obey the physiological restrictions and constants initially inherent in the named instinct (such as the cessation of sexual activity during gestation), does not obey them? In addition, the soul of a person, even if he does not know the commandments of God, for reasons of expediency alone, as well as on the basis of logic and experience, would have to restrain himself and his body from wrong actions in the sphere of sexual relations. But why are so many tragedies, so many sins and so many troubles caused by incorrect sexual behavior? Why is it so difficult for us to manage ourselves?
Truly, there would be nothing complicated here (and there are examples of this), if not for the intervention of an outside, demonic force, the purpose of which, hiding behind a natural instinct, like a screen, is to force a person to constantly violate both the spiritual and physiological laws established by God. Demons achieve this quite consciously, since they know much better than us that violation of the Creator’s laws is the main reason for the departure of Divine grace from a person. The latter, as mentioned above, is necessary for mastering the will of a person and subordinating him to the will of the demonic.
In addition, demons are well aware that it is in this purely intimate sphere of human relationships that people can inflict the most painful blows on each other, capable of destroying their lives and souls. The painfulness of the blow is due to the fact that only in this area of people's lives can the most monstrous, truly devilish substitution of the highest of all concepts of happiness - the concept of LOVE - occur. Demons know that it is this substitution that gives rise to the most difficult emotional experiences, feelings of unbearable pain from deception, betrayal, frustration, etc.
Demons achieve their goals, as a rule, in two ways:
1) indirectly, by the method of suggestive-telepathic influence,
2) directly, by the method of sensory influence on the higher regulatory systems of the brain.
In the first case, that is, with suggestive-telepathic influence, demons introduce sexually charged thoughts into a person’s consciousness, reminiscent of the object of desire, and then, with the help of constant repetition, make these thoughts obsessive. Having become accustomed to them, a person himself will strive for the object indicated by them, an irresistible desire to see it and possess it will appear, regardless of any norms and laws.
At a deeper stage of mastering a person’s consciousness, demons can already transmit visual images into his consciousness, which, having the nature of pornographic pictures and “films,” using a special reflex mechanism, cause strong stimulation of the thalamic pleasure centers. The result of such an impact can be a form of sexopathology called “mental orgasm.” Demons most easily carry out this influence during sleep when consciousness and will are switched off, when, under the influence of erotic visions, both men and some women (Functional female sexopathology. V. Zdravomyslov et al., Alma-Ata, 1985) have wet dreams. But even in the waking state, demons force a person to fantasize about topics of an erotic nature given by them, thereby psychologically preparing him to commit sin: fornication, adultery, masturbation (synonyms: masturbation, malaria), as well as many severe sexual perversions.
In the second case (sensory stimulation method), demons, with directed energy impulses, excite orgiastic pleasure centers, covering the thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, reticular formation of the brainstem and cerebral cortex. Such an effect can be simulated by implanting electrodes into the corresponding centers and exposing them to a weak electric current. In this case, the subjective sensations of a person, which are based on the reflex mechanism, will be the same as with ordinary mechanical excitation of receptor fields. When exposed to this effect, a person feels an exciting burning sensation, tickling and other specific sexual sensations (SENESTOPATHY) in the area of the genital organs, which are peripheral formations of the reflex arc. Such long-term demonic influences on these centers turn people into sexual maniacs (EROTOMANIA).
THE GOAL OF DEMONS IS POWER OVER HUMANITY
The main goal of the work of demons over the consciousness, will and body of every person is to achieve complete power over all of humanity, separating people from their Creator and making them like themselves. The demons set this goal for themselves because of their fierce and immeasurable hatred of God, from Whom they once fell away, wanting to take revenge on Him through those whom He loved so much that He voluntarily went to the Cross, atonement for their sins.
A passionate thirst for revenge in order to satisfy their boundless pride and lust for power forces demons to ensure that people fall away from God, whom they personally cannot harm. But in order to tear them away from the Heavenly Father, to distort the image of God in them, making people similar to themselves (i.e., demonic), demons must first deprive people of protection - those grace-filled uncreated Divine energies that do not allow demons to control their will and thoughts and the human body. The grace of God, the accumulation (acquisition) of which, according to the word of St. Seraphim of Sarov, should be the main work of a Christian on earth, increasing in quantity within him, creating also outside him a kind of protective “screen” that complicates the external influence of demons and prevents their penetration into the human body. That is why the demons had a very pressing question: how to deprive a person of this blessed protective “screen”
UNIVERSAL LURE: HYPERTROPHY OF THE SEXUAL INSTINCT
As the fallen angels are well aware, a person has no other way to remain without the grace of God, except for one thing - to commit a sin by violating any Divine commandment. However, it is not so easy to persuade a person to sin, especially initially, since conscience, as a divine instrument given to every person to distinguish between good and evil, greatly interferes with the performance of this task. In order to facilitate it, the demons needed to find such a universal bait that could, firstly, reliably hide the hook under the guise of, for example, natural physiological attraction, and secondly, be equally attractive to all people. The instinct of reproduction with its inherent natural attraction of opposite sexes to each other was chosen by demons as precisely such a universal bait, trapping all of humanity in the net of sin. Thanks to special methods of influencing human consciousness and physiology, demons are able to immeasurably increase (hypertrophy) sexual desire.
Thus, the method of hypertrophy of the sexual instinct is for demons a ubiquitous, main and universal method of mastering the will and body of a person. He easily and imperceptibly allows demons to force a person to cross the limit of the use of this instinct permitted by God, limited to the sphere of legal marriage, and, thereby, to sin. At the same time, demons, at their own choice, can direct their hypertrophied sexual desire to any, the strangest, inappropriate, or even terrible and disgusting object that:
Or is prohibited by God (for example: someone else’s wife, a small child, a subject of the same sex, any animal, a dead female body, etc.),
Or it is obvious, due to its social, intellectual or moral qualities, that it is not suitable for further married life. In the latter case, the demons set themselves the goal of creating painfully difficult relationships between people who are alien in spirit, but who find themselves in a marriage union, whom the demons quite deliberately united with the help of a mutually directed fornication suggestion. Both spouses, and most importantly, their children, will suffer from this “failed love” (but, from the point of view of demons, very successful).
But still, the main reason, in my opinion, that demons have completely taken control of the sexual instinct of any person is that it is this instinct in a hypertrophied form (with their help) that is the most powerful means by which they manage to provoke people are rebelling against God. The conflict artificially created by demons between what is desired (in the sexual sphere) and the commandment of God for many centuries among those who know God manifests itself, as a rule, in three main forms.
THREE FORMS OF REVOLT
AGAINST GOD
The first type of rebellion against God is personal rebellion. So, for example, in both of the above cases (see “inappropriate objects”), fueled by a passionate, uncontrollable attraction, a person, under the supervision and control of demons, tries to overcome all the obstacles that God’s commandments, parents, society and his own conscience place before him. An indomitable, truly insane desire to satisfy either sexual desire or romantic feelings of “love” inspired by demons forces a person to rebel against God and His prohibitions, not noticing that he is hooked and has become a puppet in the hands of fallen angels. It is precisely this obsession with prodigal passion, over which demons know how to throw an elegant romantic veil, that is “fed” to readers in almost all novels and poetic works called “love,” although this passion has nothing to do with true love.
The second type of rebellion against God, which is based on hypertrophied sexuality, manifests itself in two forms: a) in the form of a distortion of Christian teaching and b) in the form of a transition from revealed teaching to paganism (i.e., to unrevealed religions).
Fornication as the basis of heresies
A) Distortion of Christian teaching.
An analysis of the biographies of the founders of various heresies and sects that departed from the original apostolic teaching leads to the conclusion that the main reason for the damage to the consciousness of almost all the founders of sects (heresiarchs) is the sin of fornication.
A conscience wounded by sin usually forces a person either to reject sin (which, in this case, he does not want at all), or to seek justification for it in Christianity “renewed” for this purpose, since they cannot find justification in the undistorted teaching of Christ. Thus, paradoxically, at the heart of almost all dogmatic distortions of sectarianism lies the sin of fornication, which forged a new weapon for rebellion against God - heretical teaching. This conclusion, made speculatively on the basis of written sources, including the lives of many heresiarchs (including Arius, Apollinaria, Luther, Zwingli, L. Tolstoy, etc.), I can confirm with my own observations. So, for example, all ecumenists of any level that I personally know are, unfortunately, involved in this sin.
(Nevertheless, I admit, of course (as an exception), that a completely worthy person, who knows nothing about the tasks that the Luciferite Masons set for themselves when creating the WCC and similar organizations, can become an ecumenist through a misunderstanding. -childishly pure and naive people are not even able to believe in the reality of the existence among people of a single, powerful and centralized satanic organization, one of the prominent bodies of which is world Freemasonry).
As life itself has shown, the thinking abilities of heretics (as, indeed, of all other people) are damaged when grace departs from a person as a result of prodigal sin. This amazing relationship between seemingly distant phenomena was, however, noticed a very long time ago. Amazingly accurately (based on personal experience of moral failures) at the end of his life the wise Solomon said about this: “Excitement of lust corrupts the mind” (Wis. 4, 12). The existence of a relationship between the quality of mental abilities and sexual behavior can also be seen in the fact that the word chastity, which denotes whole, intact wisdom, otherwise holistic understanding, three-dimensional vision (in Greek sophrosyne - prudence), has long been used to denote bodily purity and innocence , the loss of which, as it turned out, directly entails the loss of correct thinking, that is, that very whole, intact wisdom. The fragmentation of thinking that all humanity suffers today is the result of the loss of chastity, that is, bodily purity (I remind you that intimate relationships in a legal marriage are completely legal and do not violate chastity).
The Path to Idolatry
B) The transition from revealed religion to paganism.
This form of struggle with God is characterized by a retreat from the true revealed religion and a return to some ancient or modern pagan religions that do not restrict, but, on the contrary, in some cases even stimulate complete sexual freedom. Here are just a few of them: the cults of Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Thammuz, Adonis, Lucifer, as well as Tantrism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Dianetics and numerous other occult systems.
Provoked by demons, the desire for moral deliverance from a clear and precise limitation of sexual function, which for people was determined by God in the form of legal marriage, i.e., the desire for sexual “freedom”, or more precisely, for debauchery, was, it seems to me, the main reason repeated deviation into idolatry of the ancient Israelites - the only people who possessed a revealed religion in the pre-Christian period. The Prophet Ezekiel, for example, in one of his revelations saw how at the northern gate of the temple of the Lord “women were sitting weeping for Tammuz” (Ezek. 8:14). The meaning of God's denunciation of this wickedness was... that the Israeli women seen by the prophet served the idol Tammuz (Tammuz), placed in the temple of the True God (!!) along with other pagan “gods” by the wicked king of Israel Joachim. This service was accompanied at first by crying for Tammuz (Tammuz), and then by unbridled joy, combined with the most vile and shameless debauchery (Biblical Encyclopedia, M., 1891, p. 686).
All Christians have been experiencing a similar demonic influence in the sexual sphere for many centuries, gradually falling away from the true teaching, and some from Christ. It is enough here, as an example, to cite the Roerich family that fell away from Orthodoxy and their numerous followers, who fell into the most primitive demon worship (paganism), clothed, however, in an elegant tinsel of pseudoscientific, as well as Hindu and Lamaistic concepts and terms.
“Human rights” to debauchery
C) The third type of rebellion against God and His Church is the direct revolutionary activity of Freemasonry and all other varieties of deeply religious Satanism, the task of which is the complete destruction of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, as well as Catholicism, which fell away from it in the 11th century, which was most openly manifested in the French Revolution of the late 18th century, and most importantly - in the three Russian revolutions of the 20th century. The deep motive of these uprisings for many of the revolutionaries (of course, not among the most dedicated) was, in my opinion, a sexual rebellion, a struggle for freedom for sin and, first of all, for the sin of prodigal.
By the way, the last Russian (this century - the fourth), the so-called Gorbachev revolution, which destroyed the economy (including industry and agriculture), the army, science, healthcare, schooling and education, and most importantly - moral values (still preserved in Russia from Orthodox ancestors), one of its main goals was the fight for “human rights”. These rights were discussed at Gorbachev’s meeting with the American president in the famous Masonic lair on the island of Malta. R. Reagan demanded from Gorbachev, of course, freedom and respect for human rights, and specifically sexual freedom, which, as it later turned out, was expressed in the “human rights” to homosexuality (i.e., the sin of sodomy), prostitution and pornography! And this freedom was granted to everyone who was possessed by a prodigal demon: articles that persecuted homosexuality, prostitution and pornography were removed from the USSR Criminal Code. “Yes,” you say, “but many churches have opened!” In fact, the Orthodox were simply thrown a distracting bone, and in the meantime, tens of millions of young souls were morally destroyed, irrevocably (for the most part) separated from God and from the Church by rampant sexual freedom, spiritually crippled by the “human rights” to fornication and sexual perversion. Again, one of the main goals of this revolution was the fight against God and Orthodoxy, based on the sexual instinct exaggerated by demons (not without the help of their servants in the media).
PRODIGAL SIN
OPEN THE DOORS TO DEMONS
I note that these consequences are most clearly revealed in those cases when young people commit these sins for the first time. This is explained by the fact that the picture of consequences is clearly revealed only as long as it is not “blurred” by other sins. My conclusion, unfortunately, is unpleasant and, I would even say, scary, but so far I have not been able to find a refutation of it. Here he is:
Prodigal sin deprives people of grace-filled protection to such a significant extent that demons IMMEDIATELY get the opportunity to ENTER THEIR BODIES, certainly captivating the will to one degree or another and binding the mind.
In other words, prodigal sin always leads people to one form or another of obsession and damage (to varying degrees) to the mind. Spiritually unenlightened and inexperienced people, as a rule, do not understand this, being surprised at the sudden and drastic change in the character of their son or daughter. Parents are literally amazed by the unexpected appearance of various bad habits in their children (alcohol, drugs, etc.), immensely increased pride, rudeness, and the disappearance of any kind of mutual understanding. Since the very fact of depopulation and the indicated degree of demonic possession of a person’s soul and body can actually lead him to spiritual death, then this very fact, in my opinion, is the reason that many St. the fathers call prodigal sins mortal.
Firstly, as you know from the Bible, the Creator, having created the first couple, blessed an exclusively monogamous heterosexual marriage with words spoken by Him through Adam, that is, prophetically, at the inspiration of God: “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). God will repeat the same thing five and a half thousand years later, directly Himself, coming to earth: “... and the two will become one flesh” (Mark 10:8). Note: in both cases we are talking about one wife and one husband, who are united, as it were, into one being. Thus, from the words of Christ Himself it clearly follows that not three or four people are united into a single being (as, for example, among Muslims), but precisely two and, moreover, of different sexes! Pay attention here to the fact that the word “flesh”, in the quotes I have given, does not mean a material body at all, but a certain single spiritual essence, consisting of two (if there are no children yet) souls, as if two hypostases that appear before God as one whole. Moreover, this single spiritual whole does not cease to be one even when the spouses are temporarily separated by the circumstances of their lives and are spatially separated from each other by a large distance.
The study of the essence of spiritual connections in married couples led me to the conviction that the connection of two people (spouses) is carried out, first of all, at the spiritual-energetic level. This means that in marriage there is a unification of two different potentials of uncreated energy (grace), which first belonged to each of their spouses separately. As a result, a kind of new spiritual essence is formed (one in two forms), which has its own special, averaged spiritual potential. Thus, now, when one of the spouses, sinning, is to some extent deprived of God’s grace for his sin, this instantly affects the other (and if there are children, then also on them), since the general level of grace-filled energies falls. More than once, for example, I heard confessions of this kind: “Once, when I cheated on my wife on a business trip, on the same day and hour she had a severe heart attack, from which she almost died, although she had never had a heart problem before.” ”, or, for example, - “When I met a man at a resort, my husband was in a car accident that same day, and my daughter, who was at the summer dacha of the kindergarten, has since started having epileptic seizures, which continue to this day "
LAW OF PARENTAL SIN
In the latter case, for the mother’s mortal sin, as you may have noticed, the entire family lost the grace of God. The husband and daughter remained unprotected from the influence of demonic forces, and the child’s body was directly invaded by demons, which was expressed in the form of epilepsy, as one of the most severe forms of possession. Quite conventionally, all family members can thus be compared to communicating vessels in which the level of liquid simultaneously decreases, even if it is drawn out from only one vessel. In the two examples I gave above, which could be endlessly multiplied, we observe the action of one of the most important laws of God, regulating the life of man as a rational spiritual person, and therefore called spiritual laws, in contrast to the laws given by God to nature: physical laws, chemical, biological, etc. This law, let's call it the LAW OF PARENTAL SIN, explains the reason, incomprehensible to many, why children suffer for the sins of their parents. Let me try to formulate it now:
The sin of even one of the parents (especially “mortal”) necessarily reduces the common potential of uncreated Divine energy (grace) for the whole family, which has the greatest impact on children, as the weakest members of the single body of the family, depriving them and all other family members graceful divine protection from the negative effects of demonic forces.
The fact that the family can truly be considered as a single spiritual body, just as the Church, consisting of many members (people and local Churches), is the body of Christ, can be read from St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 5:23-27), as well as in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:12-14). Look how the apostle likens a husband to Christ, and a wife to the Church... This comparison contains an extraordinary depth and mystery, which we can only partially reveal.
Just like the Church, which “by water and the Spirit” gives birth to new children (in spirit) for eternal life and thereby grows itself, a wife gives birth to children (in the flesh) for this earthly life, thereby multiplying the body family, the head of which is the husband, just as Christ is the head of the Church. Just as all members of the body of the Church are “filled with one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12), that is, united into a single body by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the single body of the family is united by a single common potential of grace-filled energy, although each member of the family, I think , has some kind of reserve of grace.
WHAT IS “FORDINARY MARRIAGE”?
To understand why the Church considers prodigal sin so serious that it calls it “mortal,” we must remember another amazing pattern indicated by St. Paul, but hidden for many in the darkness of misunderstanding. It turns out that fornication has the same spiritual and energetic consequences as legal marriage, but only with a negative sign, since it is illegal and, like any illegal action that violates God’s commandment, has as its inevitable consequence the deprivation of grace to those who sin. The Apostle Paul writes: “... whoever has sex with a harlot becomes one body with her, for it is said: “The two will become one flesh” (1 Cor. 6:16). Please note - this is the same formula, the same words that are used to celebrate the marriage of Adam and Eve in paradise! So, fornication actually formalizes a marriage, but a marriage that violates the purity of the true and complete union in love of the spouses, as was originally intended by the Creator. An illegal marriage, just like a real one, leads to the unification of the spiritual potentials of both sinners, which means that in addition to the enormous loss of grace-filled energy by both as a result of this sin, each of them is even more deprived of grace due to the fact that the consequences are transferred to him all the sins of the “partner”. Ultimately, the loss of grace in such an illegal union is so significant for both partners (sometimes falling almost to zero) that demons instantly move into their bodies (or join the ranks of those who have already moved in earlier), since, I repeat, only the grace of God protects a person not only from the introduction of demons into his body, but also from control of his thoughts and will from the outside.
HOW TO GET RID OF
UNINQUETED “GUESTS”?
As a result of the “sexual revolution”, successfully launched by the World Satanic Church (WCC) (Not to be confused with the World Council of Churches, which, having the same abbreviation - WCC, is controlled by the leadership of the Satanic Church) in the 60s of this century in America and successfully spread by Freemasons almost all over the world with the help of so-called mass culture, finding a person today who is not inhabited by demons (only their number and degree of influence are different) is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. This, of course, is not a reason for despair, but only a reminder that, with God’s help, we must complete a very important task in our lives: get rid of uninvited guests (demons), having won freedom for our will from enslavement by the will of the demonic and, as a result, literally become ourselves.
Hegumen N.
How we emerge from our teenage years depends very much on how we enter them. The water falling from the cliff boils and swirls below, and then flows quietly through different channels. This is an image of youth into which everyone is thrown like water into a waterfall. Two orders of people emerge from it: some shine with kindness and nobility, others are darkened by wickedness and depravity; and the third is the middle class, a mixture of good and evil, the likeness of which is a brand from the fire, which inclines now towards good, now towards evil, like a broken clock - sometimes it goes right, sometimes it runs or lags behind. He who has safely passed through his youthful years is as if he has swum across a stormy river and, looking back, blesses God. And another, with tears in his eyes, in repentance, turns back and condemns himself. You can never get back what you lose in your youth. Will he who has fallen still achieve what he who has not fallen has? The one who never falls is always young. The traits of his moral character reflect the feelings of a child before he becomes guilty before his father. In it, the fruits of the Spirit indicated by the Apostle are revealed in full force: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control. Then he is characterized by a certain insight and wisdom, seeing everything in himself and around himself and knowing how to manage himself and his affairs. All this together makes him both respectable and amiable. He involuntarily attracts you to himself. The existence of such persons in the world is the great grace of God.
Feofan the Recluse
The sin of fornication has the property that it unites two bodies, albeit illegal, into one body. For this reason, although he is forgiven immediately after repentance in confession on the indispensable condition that the repentant leaves him, the cleansing and sobering of the body and soul from prodigal sin requires a long time so that the connection and unity established between bodies ... and infected soul, dilapidated and destroyed.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov.
About a girl's chastity
Although you did not say or utter those words of the harlot: “Come and let us wallow in lust,” you did not utter it with your tongue, but spoke with your sight, did not utter it with your lips, but spoke with your gait, did not invite with your voice, but invited with your eyes clearer than your voice. Although by inviting, you did not betray yourself; but you are not free from sin either; for this too is a special type of adultery; you remained clean from corruption, but bodily, not mental.
St. John Chrysostom
On the chastity of young men
Nothing beautifies a young age more than to enter into marriage free from all debauchery. And their wives will be kind to them when their soul does not know fornication in advance and will not be corrupted, when the young man knows only the woman with whom he entered into marriage. Then love becomes more ardent, and affection is sincere. And friendship is more reliable, and a wife is the sweetest of all, when young men marry in compliance with this rule... If the young man was corrupt before marriage, then even after marriage he will again look at other people’s wives and run to his mistresses. He who was chaste before marriage will remain so even more so after marriage. On the contrary, whoever learned to commit fornication before marriage will do the same after marriage.”
St. John Chrysostom
The prodigal sphere is the force that moves the world. It determines almost all human motives. Just the slightest carelessness... and you're in a whirlpool! No one is immune from it: neither illness nor age will give any guarantee. This is generally an almost uncontrollable attraction. Real magic that works subconsciously.
Fornication is a force that rules the whole world... For men it acts like a magnet of monstrous power, attracting all their spiritual strength, and for women it is simply uncontrollable magic that can cause almost unconscious gestures, elusive movements... There can be no moderation here. Nothing can protect you from fornication: neither youth, nor old age, nor illness.
Every person accepts lustful thoughts, receives wounds and wins the fight against them. If not, then it falls. This is the goal of demons: prodigal sin is their complete victory for decades! They receive special rewards and promotions for this.
The fact is that falling into fornication affects the soul so strongly that this wound turns out to be almost incurable. It is the mind that is affected, it opens up to thoughts and becomes defenseless for decades... We can say that fornication completely kills the soul. If anger destroys for a while, then fornication simply destroys. Fornication paralyzes the soul - not forever, but for some long time...
The fact is that when the soul is damaged by fornication, life leaves the soul very quickly. Grace can only reside in a pure soul. It takes a long time to cleanse. But how to cleanse yourself? Repentance! How can a person repent if his soul has become deaf and blind?! He finds himself trapped.
This is tragic. If this were not so, then it would be very easy to go to God. But in fact, this is a dangerous path on which mortal wounds are inflicted and killed.
If we manage to achieve something in life, exaltation immediately begins to accompany this achievement. Therefore, any ability is often the cause of our downfall. Remember constantly, with the invasion of prodigal thoughts, the emergence of a flow of them, especially when obsession arises, it means that secret exaltation has begun... They are like companions. If we straighten ourselves out in humility, our thoughts will go away...
Chastity is a great protection. A person who has not known fornication is not accessible to demons. Their machinations are being destroyed. Demons can only use the evil that you have known. They will know by your reaction, but the main thing for them is to feel the person’s energies. And the purer his energy, the more inaccessible he is to attack. They can't even come close. It breaks them, it hits them like an electric shock from a distance.
Chastity is all a person has. And the whole battle is going on for him, the spiritual warfare revolves around him. Forgetting this is deadly. In modern Orthodox literature, a lot has been written about the nature and harm of fornication, many explanations are broad and lengthy, but little is said about what I will write below.
Of course, I understand that it is impossible to comprehensively cover the problem in a short article. And yet the volume offered is enough to make a person aware and horrified of any form of fornication. In God's plan, marriage is complete unity in love between husband and wife. The unity of spirit, soul and body of two free loving individuals. This is done only in marriage. “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Take adhesive tape and stick it to something, tear it off. And stick it again and tear it off. And again, and again. Everyone knows that the adhesive ability decreases each time. This is an image of fornication that is clear to everyone - the loss of the ability to cling to the heart.
“Fornication” and “delusion” have the same root. Man, do you think you will find peace, happiness, love, joy along this path? You are wrong, you are mistaken...
There is also a good image. The potential of love given by God can be likened to a golden cup with a priceless drink, without which a person cannot become a Man with a capital “H.” While fornicating, a person seems to swing a cup from side to side, and little by little the ability to love spills out of him. And that's true. One man bitterly told the following about himself. He had many women. He tried to have more sexual relations. With a certain sporting interest in being significant in one's own opinion. “But now,” he said, “I cannot love. Physically, like an animal, I can connect, but I can’t love with my heart... which is why I suffer a lot.”
Yes, indeed, he spilled the shrine. We can say that I gave away my heartfelt feelings, my strength like pieces, to my prodigal partners, partners, and my heart became empty. “And he squandered his substance by living fornication.” (Luke 15:13)
Any sin makes people strangers to each other and to God. Little is said about adultery in one's heart. If people who want to get married are looking for “their other half” and evaluate the prospective applicants in every sense (with the exception of physical relationships, which are possible only in marriage), there is no adultery here. But if you are married, or look at a person who is married with lustful thoughts, then you are committing adultery. And here everything is very serious. Christ says this: “Whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.” (Matt. 5:28). (This also applies to women looking at men this way). Adultery begins when a person does not reject the “devilish shooting” in thought, but accepts it, enjoys it, gets carried away. These are the first steps. “If your eye is pure, then your body will be bright (holy); and if your eye is evil, then your body will be dark” (defiled by sin). (Luke 11:34). Therefore, guard yourself, man, in your heart and mind. If a sinful thought came, and you recognized it and cut it off, then there is no sin here. Christ gave us the power to “tread on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you” (Luke 10:19). You must be angry at a sinful thought and act as Christ did when he said: “Get away from me Satan” (Matthew 4:10), or similar: “go away,” “go back,” “this is not mine, but yours, devil, take yours and go to hell,” etc. This also applies to lustful thoughts. And you don’t need to perceive your neighbor as a piece of meat: “to love” only his body, and not the whole person with his soul and spirit - this purely consumerist attitude is unworthy of a Christian.
I remember the incident. They asked me to consecrate a village house. The family is complete: husband, wife, children. On the shelf in the room where we were talking, I saw several pornographic videotapes. When my wife went out into the yard, I explained to my husband the danger of adultery and, pointing to the tapes, said: “Well, you looked at these tapes, you wanted to be with these women. You cannot physically realize your desire, but you are united with them in your heart and spirit. And now, after watching, you have become a little stranger, you cannot love your wife with the same intensity. This is true? Do you need this? The face of my interlocutor changed, there was anxiety and fear in his eyes: “Father, I understood everything. I will destroy these tapes and never do this again,” he said, confused and fearful, like a child. I added that his wife does not understand with her mind the reason for the possible cooling, but feels it with her heart.
I have already noted in a number of my articles and will mention again that we are all mutually connected from heart to heart by special information connections of a spiritual order. Due to incorrect spiritual life, these connections are damaged, polluted, become atrophied, sick, but do not disappear.
Correct prayer organizes, heals, purifies these connections, makes relationships between people more sensitive and fills them with grace. Remember an incident from the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh: one day, during a meal, he unexpectedly stood up for the brethren and bowed somewhere to the side, greeting St. Stephen of Great Perm, who was going to the Perm region. Moreover, they were dozens of miles away from each other. The people accompanying Saint Stephen testified to the same thing when he greeted St. Stephen with a bow and a word. Sergius. In a similar way, he commemorated fallen soldiers. Similar things happen to people and non-saints.
One person told the following about himself. It happened that he had to go to another city on business, but his wife stayed at home. In a foreign city, he “picked up” a prostitute and went off together for fornication. Everything went according to his plan, but suddenly the phone rang. On the phone he heard the hysterical voice of his swearing wife, she cursed him for cheating, swore terribly, shouted that she even saw what a “taken” prostitute she was!!! But such cases are extremely rare; usually people feel each other less clearly.
I repeat, from heart to heart we are mutually connected, these connections are especially strong among loving people. This connection does not change with distance. People may even be in different cities, states, thousands of kilometers away, but they are able to feel each other. It happens like this: it’s hard for the husband and children, they are in danger - the mother and wife feel it. Thanks to heart connections, people feel envy, hatred, hostility, lies, deceit, double-mindedness, betrayal of a spouse (and premarital fornication) and other sins of each other. Not understanding or knowing with the mind, but feeling, the heart begins to mistrust, worry, and be burdened. Our mind and spirit are like a computer. Records all information, including adultery committed in the heart. If spouses do not physically cheat on each other, but one of them is somewhere at work, flirting with someone, wants to have a fornicating relationship with someone and tells his spouse that he loves him, the other feels in his heart: this is a lie. And the heart of the liar is pricked by his conscience (if he still has one).
Here's an example: one of my friends was at a friends wedding without his wife. Among those invited, one woman was very attractive to him. We danced together, talked, joked and parted. The wife, when looking at the general wedding photograph, where there were many women she didn’t even know, with more outstanding appearance than the one her husband liked, unmistakably pointed her finger at her and asked: “Who is this?!” It happens that young people want to start a family. Moreover, they approach their choice carefully and carefully. They get to know each other and tell each other about themselves. Outwardly, rationally, they can be together: both are educated, modest, decent, of the same faith, churchgoers, but the heart of one of them cannot love the other. I repeat: the mind is not against it, but the heart is silent. He is silent because he feels that the other has a serious sinful experience, including in the area of fornication, debauchery (for women and abortion).
Sometimes marriages are destroyed. The husband left for someone else, the wife remained with the children, could not resist and also fell into fornication (thus putting herself in the same position as him). The husband has returned and asks to accept him, but his wife does not perceive him as a husband, her heart has turned away. Although their sins are the same, her heart is silent: her husband apologizes formally, shows signs of attention to her and the children. But her heart is silent. And she will remain silent, because the husband acts selfishly: he is afraid of completely losing his wife, children, living space, etc. Then only her heart will turn towards him when he sincerely repents both before God and before her. Only then will her heart soften when her husband’s heart changes. And the words of apology will come from the heart, and not from the cunning mind.
These examples can be multiplied, but these are enough.
By committing adultery in the heart, people little by little become internal strangers. This is where the deepest reasons for the destruction of the family are, here is the crack that can become an abyss.
Any type of fornication or adultery, physical or mental, including the use of pornographic products, computer technology, masturbation, etc. - is opposition to God’s plan for man and will result in disaster for the sinner. Christ says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs in elsewhere (in another way, from the back door), he is a thief and a robber” (John 10:1). Only in marriage can one legally fulfill what is commanded to people: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it...” (Gen. 1:28). The Lord looks at any fornicator as a thief and robber.
In the non-church world, illegal cohabitation is very common, and people do not want to legitimize their relationship. The latter testifies to their cowardice, consumer attitude towards each other, lack of desire to bear responsibility in all senses, they always cowardly leave themselves escape routes. There have been cases when young pregnant women complained: “my boyfriend left me and is already marrying someone else, and I’m in my eighth (or other) month,” the cases are different. And there are a lot of such tragedies.
Obscene profanity also testifies to the passion for fornication. Often in such swearing a person uses obscene verbal language about genitals, relations between the sexes, perversions, etc. All this comes from the depths of consciousness and subconscious. This is how his spirit lives, this is how he disfigures, damages himself, stains those who hear his verbal impurity, poisons himself and others with this stench.
In a fornicator, even in cases of adultery in his heart, psychological and spiritual changes begin in the direction of departure from the image of God, the degradation of the WHOLE person begins. Any prodigal contact also affects a person’s genetics, the gradual degeneration of the family begins, its descendants will be more susceptible to mental and physical ailments: both science and Holy Scripture speak about this. “Flee fornication; Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body" (1 Cor. 6:18), "The way of the wicked will perish" (Ps. 1:6), "... the arms of the wicked will be broken" (Ps. 36:17 ), “...the offspring of the wicked will perish” (Ps. 36:28), “Far from the wicked is salvation” (Ps. 119:115), “... the future of the wicked will perish” (Ps. 37:38), “... he will destroy all the wicked” (Ps. 144:20).
“Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor fornicators, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor. 6:9) “...no fornicator...has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” (Eph.5:5).
Christ calls us to perfection: “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
ABOUT THE IMPACT OF DEMONS ON THE HUMAN SEXUAL SPHERE
Why does a person who has violated the Divine law of chastity and at least once desecrated his body or only his thoughts with fornication, be irresistibly drawn to experience these sensations again? Supporters of “sex education” argue that it is human “nature” to extract “pleasure” from everything, and let, they say, teenagers also join in this “joy of natural feeling”, and they do not need to listen to parents who are “complex” with outdated views, all sorts of prohibitions! Sex troopers call this concern for the souls of children “sexual discrimination” against teenagers...
Molesters slyly keep silent (and many of them themselves do not understand, being deeply damaged people) why the “forbidden fruit,” ceasing to be forbidden, very soon entails a desire for a new “forbidden fruit.” That is, a person who has fallen into “ordinary” fornication soon becomes fed up and begins to gravitate towards various perversions. Fed up even with “non-traditional sexual orientation” (as the mortal sins of Sodom are now shyly called), a sinner can desire “pleasures” with animals, with corpses, with his own daughter or son, and fall into the abyss of ritual satanic depravity... IS THERE A LIMIT TO THIS FALL? !
Yes, if we stop and honestly analyze what is actually happening to many of our compatriots, why people who were normal yesterday begin to behave like regulars in brothels. An excerpt from the letter of Igumen N gives an explanation of the reasons for incorrect sexual behavior, explains why a person, even once falling into fornication, is subtly attracted by demons to new terrible falls, and if he does not resist, does not repent of his way of life, then he soon becomes an OBSESSED person, then is a submissive slave of the demon that has taken possession of him, a weak-willed puppet in his hands. And the “extraordinary sensitivity” of homosexuals, which TV commentators are now shouting about when interviewing unfortunate sick people, is nothing more than a sign of demonic possession...
It’s scary to read about how this fall under the influence of a demon occurs, what power the forces of hell can have over us. But you need to know this. And this analysis is a merciless sentence to those who would like to turn our country from Holy Rus' into Sodomic Rus'.
EXTRACTS FROM LETTER No. 5 OF IGUMEN N TO HIS SPIRITUAL CHILD
The “spirits of wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12) conduct their struggle competently: they start with small things and then quietly move on to bigger things; this is a strategy. Sleeping too much, intemperance in food and voluptuousness are just preparing a person to commit a more serious, this time “mortal” sin, which is fornication in all its manifestations.
You, of course, have read and know very well that in a well-fed and, especially, in an overly rested body, lustful passions will certainly seethe. While in this state, the body, like gunpowder, is ready to ignite from just one lustful thought, from one lustful vision in the mind or in reality, from a single lustful sensation caused in it by a demon. One might say that such a body is like a barrel of gunpowder, waiting only for a chance spark to be followed by a destructive explosion. It is quite clear that an explosion is more likely if there is a person or else. did not marry, or consciously decided to devote himself to God, taking the monastic vow of chastity.
In order for us to have clarity on this rather complex issue, let's turn first to anthropology and then to physiology.
(I would like to warn you in advance that without in any way departing from the patristic understanding of “man” as a dual being consisting of soul and body, I consciously separated them in this case, focusing on the primacy of the soul, for the convenience of identifying that physiological function organism, which is inherent only in a fit body, i.e., the reproductive function.)
A rational, god-like personality, or soul, which in the first place should be called a man, during its earthly life lives, according to the apostle, in the body, as in a kind of “hut.” And “when our earthly house, this hut, is destroyed, we have from God a dwelling in heaven” (2 Cor. 5: 1 - 4), i.e. the soul, after the death of the body, for a long time (it can be calculated in thousands of years), until the day of the Last Judgment, will remain without its material body in the spiritual world (the pneumatosphere, which is most often called “Heaven,” although in fact it consists of two , relatively speaking, parts: the higher and lower spheres, called hell).
In turn, our earthly body is one of the higher species of animal organisms belonging to the class of mammals with the species name Homo sapiens. Like all other bisexual animals, our modern body, in which the soul temporarily resides, has so-called vital instincts (from the Latin vita - life), which are destined by God to carry out the basic functions of vital support for the body in the outside world. The main vital instincts include the instincts of hunger, thirst, sleep, self-preservation and, finally, the instinct of reproduction. This last one has a purpose. exclusively procreation, i.e. the reproduction of a new animal organism within each individual animal species.
As is known, the fusion of two sex cells (gametes) produces a fetus (zygote), which has a full set of chromosomes (23 + 23 = 46), which contain a comprehensive program for building a new organism. In other words, a fertilized egg (zygote) is, as it were, a whole organism in a not yet opened, latent state. This human organism, complete in its essence and in its program, but not yet manifested, at the very beginning of its existence (probably after implantation into the wall of the uterus, which usually happens on the 7th day!) receives an intelligent, creative soul from God the Creator created by Him in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). With full right, each of us can call God our Father precisely because every rational, self-conscious human person is a direct creation of God. The moment of the union of the soul with the embryo (zygote) on the 7th day, after its fertilization, seems to me the most likely because many of the simultaneously fertilized zygotes die without reaching the uterus, during their 7-day movement through the fallopian tubes. As a rule, only one zygote safely reaches the uterus and is implanted into its wall, which, thanks to the formation of the placenta, begins to receive nutrition from the mother’s body through it. It is this embryo, in my opinion, that receives a god-like soul from the Creator. I also cannot fail to take into account the important fact that implantation, as studies have shown, occurs precisely on the 7th day after fertilization. It seems that the number 7, in this case, was determined by the Creator not by chance, since it was laid by God as the basis of this world.
So, the material body is formed by the creative power of God from atoms of various chemical elements, i.e. matter, “earth,” and goes back into the earth, again decomposing into its component elements, as the Creator says about this: “you are earth and you will go back to earth” (Gen. 3:19), but the spiritual essence (soul), created directly God, goes to God, as the Scripture says: “And the dust will return to the earth as it was; and the spirit (here we mean soul) will return to God, who gave it" (Ec. 12:7).
Thus, if God creates the bodies of animals (including the bodies of insects and humans), as we see, through two other material bodies (organisms) possessing the instinct of reproduction, then God Himself creates a God-like rational soul, as St. Fathers of the V Ecumenical Council. So, the instinct of reproduction was given by the Creator only to the animal organism, so that like would give birth to like.
Unlike the body, the soul, like its Creator, does not have such an instinct, since it cannot reproduce either by budding or in any other way. Only God can create a rational, god-like personality.
(You should not think that this is some kind of new Act of Creation, since God does not create anything fundamentally new, no unknown, unprecedented form of being. The creation of new souls does not go beyond the framework of the so-called providence of God about the world, the providence that he speaks of Christ: “My Father works hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17)).
However, the human body is given this instinct only temporarily for a short period of our earthly existence. After the earthly form of existence has fulfilled its purpose and those who have been selected over many past centuries enter eternal life, the marriage relationship (in the carnal sense) will cease, and only love, as the highest gift of the grace of the Holy Spirit, will abide in them. eyelids. Christ Himself pointed this out quite clearly, saying: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but remain as the Angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 22:30; Luke 20:35). From what the Lord Jesus Christ said on this topic and as it was accepted by the Orthodox Catholic Church, it follows that the rational representatives of the Spiritual world, called Angels, have no reason for carnal copulation, because they do not reproduce (they have no flesh , nor gender differences). Likewise, people who are worthy to be included in the Church Triumphant (although the difference between the sexes is preserved among them) will live like the Angels of God, in joy and the purest divine love.
CAUSES OF INCORRECT SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
Now let's try to generalize the above thoughts on the topic of gender in order to try to answer one of the most painful questions of all times - THE QUESTION OF THE REASONS FOR INCORRECT SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN PEOPLE.
From all the above we can conclude that:
1. The soul does not have the instinct and need for reproduction, because it is not intended for reproduction.
2. She is godlike, and therefore, what God does not have (the function of reproduction), she does not have either.
3. Sexual attraction to carnal copulation has nothing to do with the human soul (as a spiritual and god-like entity) has no relation.
4. Sexual desire is caused exclusively by the physiological instinct of reproduction, inherent only in our physical body, as well as in the body of any other animal organism.
If the soul, this god-like personality, has no reason to be attracted to carnal intercourse; if the specified attraction is inherent only in our body, as in the earthly house in which it lives; if the soul is introduced by the Creator into the human body in order to use it (the body) for life and creativity in this material world; if she is called by God (and really can) control her body as a very perfect instrument for transforming the visible world, then it would be natural to expect from her the same ease in controlling the sexual instinct with which a hungry mother easily controls the instinct of hunger, sharing food with her as a child, and sometimes completely abandoning it when there is not enough food for two (even animals are capable of this).
And in fact, there have always been people capable of controlling their sexual instinct: let us remember, for example, Joseph the Beautiful and many Christian saints or even simple monks and pious laymen, of whom there were a lot on Russian soil (and in other Orthodox countries ) even in the last century...
WHY IS IT DIFFICULT FOR US TO DEAL WITH LUST?
Why then (albeit to a much lesser extent), and especially now, people, even those who have come to know the True God and His commandments, do not always cope with fornication? Why is it that the soul, which does not have the instinct and need for reproduction, since, as mentioned above, is not intended for reproduction, cannot control its body? Why does our physical body, which, it would seem, should obey the physiological restrictions and constants initially inherent in the named instinct (such as the cessation of sexual activity during gestation), does not obey them? In addition, the soul of a person, even if he does not know the commandments of God, for reasons of expediency alone, as well as on the basis of logic and experience, would have to restrain himself and his body from wrong actions in the sphere of sexual relations. But why are so many tragedies, so many sins and so many troubles caused by incorrect sexual behavior? Why is it so difficult for us to manage ourselves?
Truly, there would be nothing complicated here (and there are examples of this), if not for the intervention of an outside, demonic force, the purpose of which, hiding behind a natural instinct, like a screen, is to force a person to constantly violate both the spiritual and physiological laws established by God. Demons achieve this quite consciously, since they know much better than us that violation of the Creator’s laws is the main reason for the departure of Divine grace from a person. The latter, as mentioned above, is necessary for mastering the will of a person and subordinating him to the will of the demonic.
Violation of Divine laws occurs not only in the sexual sphere in the form of SATYRIAZ (male hypersexuality), NYMPHOMANIA (female hypersexuality) or HOMOSEXUALISM, it also manifests itself in other types of HYPERBULIA (hypertrophy of biologically and socially determined passions and drives, the slave of which the “patient” becomes), as well as in various forms of BULIMIA (for example, pathological gluttony, etc.).
DEVILIC SUBSTANCE OF THE CONCEPTS OF LOVE
In addition, demons are well aware that it is in this purely intimate sphere of human relationships that people can inflict the most painful blows on each other, capable of destroying their lives and souls. The painfulness of the blow is due to the fact that only in this area of people's lives can the most monstrous, truly devilish substitution of the highest of all concepts of happiness - the concept of LOVE - occur. Demons know: it is this substitution that gives rise to the most difficult emotional experiences, feelings of unbearable pain from deception. betrayal, disappointment, etc.
HOW DO YOU BECOME A PUPPETS OF FALLEN ANGELS?
As we said above, the law embedded in the body of an animal and regulating the function of reproduction (reproduction) is called the reproductive instinct (in humans - libido) and, like any law, has its own natural limitations.
These natural restrictions are connected both with the total duration of the childbearing period and with a certain cyclicity of the so-called mating periods. The latter are directly related to the duration of the intrauterine period of fetal development. They can be observed in the lives of all types of animals.
For women, the average duration of the childbearing period is 35 years, from the time of puberty until the onset of menopause, which, according to average statistics, occurs at 45-46 years. In a spiritually and mentally normal woman, as well as in a man (such people are now extremely rare), with the onset of menopause, libido begins to fall sharply and usually stops with the establishment of menopause - this is the first natural limitation.
(However, for people possessed by a prodigal demon (now the majority of them), everything can happen the other way around; in this case, among the people there is a saying that absolutely correctly reflects the essence of the phenomenon: “Grey hair at the temple, and the demon at the rib”).
Another limitation of the sexual instinct in all animals, as mentioned above, is associated with the time of pregnancy, which applies to individuals of both sexes. In human individuals, it lasts on average 9 months, not counting the necessary period of cleansing and rest of the female body at the end of the difficult process of bearing a fetus. This last period lasts approximately 40 days to two months.
If in all other animal organisms the limitations of the sexual instinct are contained, one might say, in this instinct itself, then to man, as a rational being with the ability to control his body, God assigned restrictions through certain rules and commandments given by Him through the prophets and apostles. Restrictions are prescribed in the form of fasts and other periods of abstinence, such as during the premarital period. Reasonable abstinence and fasting are recommended by the Creator solely for our benefit. They are necessary because man is a social being and bears great responsibility for the consequences of his actions both before God and people, and before his future offspring. Generations of accumulated experience show that intemperance always leads to sad consequences both for the person himself and for the one with whom he (she) illegally entered into a relationship, but, of course, the offspring suffer the most.
Knowing what kind of troubles, even tragedies, a violation of the reasonable abstinence commanded by God leads to, both in the mental (interpersonal and social) plane and in the spiritual; Knowing about the promised punishment for disobedience and about the moral and physical consequences of sin for the sinner himself and for his offspring, demons make every effort to force a person to constantly sin in this seemingly natural sphere of physiology. Here too they resort to their favorite method of unnatural exaggeration of the ordinary animal instinct and, just as in the case of the hunger instinct, they extremely hypertrophy (HYPERSEXUALITY) the normal instinct of reproduction (libido).
Demons achieve their goals, as a rule, in two ways:
1) indirectly, by the method of suggestive-telepathic influence,
2) directly, by the method of sensory influence on the higher regulatory systems of the brain.
In the first case, that is, with suggestive-telepathic influence, demons introduce sexually charged thoughts into a person’s consciousness, reminiscent of the object of desire, and then, with the help of constant repetition, make these thoughts obsessive. Having become accustomed to them, a person himself will strive for the object indicated by them, an irresistible desire to see it and possess it will appear, regardless of any norms and laws.
At a deeper stage of mastering a person’s consciousness, demons can already transmit visual images into his consciousness, which, having the nature of pornographic pictures and “films,” using a special reflex mechanism, cause strong stimulation of the thalamic pleasure centers. The result of such influence may be a form of sexopathology called “mental orgasm.” Demons most easily carry out this influence during sleep when consciousness and will are switched off, when, under the influence of erotic visions, both men and some women (Functional female sexopathology. V. Zdravomyslov et al., Alma-Ata, 1985) have wet dreams. But even in the waking state, demons force a person to fantasize about topics of an erotic nature given by them, thereby psychologically preparing him to commit sin: fornication, adultery, masturbation (synonyms: masturbation, malaria), as well as many severe sexual perversions.
In the second case (method of sensory influence), demons with directed energy impulses excite orgastic pleasure centers, covering the thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, reticular formation of the brainstem and cerebral cortex. Such an effect can be simulated by implanting electrodes into the corresponding centers and exposing them to a weak electric current. In this case, the subjective sensations of a person, which are based on the reflex mechanism, will be the same as with ordinary mechanical excitation of receptor fields. When exposed to this effect, a person feels an exciting burning sensation, tickling and other specific sexual sensations (SENESTOPATHY) in the area of the genital organs, which are peripheral formations of the reflex arc. Such long-term demonic influences on these centers turn people into sexual maniacs (EROTOMANIA).
Observations show that the first method of suggestive-telepathic influence can be either external, external action, or internal. In the latter case, the influence is carried out by demons already initiated into the human body and living in it.
The second method of sensory influence directly on the central nervous system (CNS) is possible only if the initiation (introduction) of demons into the human body has already taken place. It is this mechanism, which I described above, that, I believe, underlies a very wide range of phenomena that in psychopathology are called SENESTOPATHIES.
(By a similar sensory-energetic influence on the central section of the taste analyzer of the cerebral cortex (opercular region and hippocampus), demons can, for example, cause any taste sensations in a person in the complete absence of the corresponding stimulus. This phenomenon is well known to psychiatrists under the name PARAGEUSIA).
Considering both methods of demonic influence separately, for convenience of description, I must, however, note that very often demons use them in a complex manner. With such an integrated approach to a person, thanks to the simultaneous impact on both the abilities of the soul (mind, self-awareness, imagination, will) and on his central nervous system (CNS), they often manage to perform a PERVERSION (perversion) of the sexual instinct.
At the stage of sufficiently deep mastery of the feelings, will and body of a person, demons, in the overwhelming majority of cases, amuse themselves by perverting the natural sexual instinct, giving rise, for example, to an irresistible attraction to persons of the same sex (homosexuality), as well as such unimaginable perversions as sadism, masochism, exhibitionism, visionism, voyeurism, servilism, incest, pedophilia, necromania, coprophagy, etc.
I would like to especially note that it is perversions and perversities that are the best and universal indicator of the highest degrees of human obsession, when he becomes practically a puppet in the hands of fallen angels.
THE GOAL OF DEMONS IS POWER OVER HUMANITY
The main goal of the work of demons over the consciousness, will and body of every person is to achieve complete power over all of humanity, separating people from their Creator and making them like themselves. The demons set this goal for themselves because of their fierce and immeasurable hatred of God, from Whom they once fell away, wanting to take revenge on Him through those whom He loved so much that He voluntarily went to the Cross, atonement for their sins.
A passionate thirst for revenge in order to satisfy their boundless pride and lust for power forces demons to ensure that people fall away from God, whom they personally cannot harm. But in order to tear them away from the Heavenly Father, to distort the image of God in them, making people similar to themselves (i.e., demonic), demons must first deprive people of protection - those grace-filled uncreated Divine energies that do not allow demons to control their will and thoughts and the human body. As you and I said earlier, the grace of God, the accumulation (acquisition) of which, according to the word of St. Seraphim of Sarov, should be the main work of a Christian on earth, increasing in quantity within it, it also creates outside it, as it were, a protective “screen” that complicates the external influence of demons and prevents their penetration into the human body. That is why the demons had a very pressing question: how to deprive a person of this blessed protective “screen”.
UNIVERSAL LURE:
HYPERTROPHY OF THE SEXUAL INSTINCT
As the fallen angels are well aware, a person has no other way to remain without the grace of God, except for one thing - to commit a sin by violating any Divine commandment. However, it is not so easy to persuade a person to sin, especially initially, since conscience, as a divine instrument given to every person to distinguish between good and evil, greatly interferes with the performance of this task. In order to facilitate it, the demons needed to find such a universal bait that could, firstly, reliably hide the hook as a subtype of, for example, natural physiological attraction, and secondly, be equally attractive to all people. The instinct of reproduction with its inherent natural attraction of opposite sexes to each other was chosen by demons as precisely such a universal bait, trapping all of humanity in the net of sin. Thanks to special methods of influencing human consciousness and physiology, which will be discussed in detail below, demons are able to immeasurably increase (hypertrophy) sexual desire.
Thus, the method of hypertrophy of the sexual instinct is for demons a ubiquitous, main and universal method of mastering the will and body of a person. He easily and imperceptibly allows demons to force a person to overpower the limit of use of this instinct permitted by God, limited to the sphere of legal marriage, and, thereby, to sin. At the same time, demons, at their own choice, can direct their hypertrophied sexual desire to any, the strangest, inappropriate, or even terrible and disgusting object that:
Or is prohibited by God (for example: someone else’s wife, a small child, a subject of the same sex, any animal, a dead female body, etc.),
Or it is obvious, due to its social, intellectual or moral qualities, that it is not suitable for further married life. In the latter case, the demons set themselves the goal of creating painfully difficult relationships between people who are alien in spirit, but who find themselves in a marriage union, whom the demons quite deliberately united with the help of a mutually directed fornication suggestion. Both spouses, and most importantly, their children, will suffer from this “failed love” (but, from the point of view of demons, very successful).
But still, the main reason, in my opinion, that demons have completely taken control of the sexual instinct of any person is that it is this instinct in a hypertrophied form (with their help) that is the most powerful means by which they manage to provoke people are rebelling against God. The conflict artificially created by demons between what is desired (in the sexual sphere) and the commandment of God for many centuries among those who know God manifests itself, as a rule, in three main forms.
THREE FORMS OF REBEL AGAINST GOD
The first type of rebellion against God is personal rebellion. So, for example, in both of the above cases (see “inappropriate objects”), fueled by a passionate, uncontrollable attraction, a person, under the supervision and control of demons, tries to overcome all the obstacles that God’s commandments, parents, society and his own conscience place before him. An indomitable, truly insane desire to satisfy either sexual desire or romantic feelings of “love” inspired by demons forces a person to rebel against God and His prohibitions, not noticing that he is hooked and has become a puppet in the hands of fallen angels. It is precisely this obsession with prodigal passion, over which demons know how to throw an elegant romantic veil, that is “fed” to readers in almost all novels and poetic works called “love,” although this passion has nothing to do with true love.
The second type of rebellion against God, which is based on hypertrophied sexuality, manifests itself in two forms: a) in the form of a distortion of Christian teaching and b) in the form of a transition from revealed teaching to paganism (i.e., to unrevealed religions).
Fornication as the basis of heresies
A) Distortion of Christian teaching.
An analysis of the biographies of the founders of various heresies and sects that departed from the original apostolic teaching leads to the conclusion that the main reason for the damage to the consciousness of almost all the founders of sects (heresiarchs) is the sin of fornication.
A conscience wounded by sin usually forces a person either to reject sin (which, in this case, he does not want at all), or to seek justification for it in Christianity “renewed” for this purpose, since they cannot find justification in the undistorted teaching of Christ. Thus, paradoxically, at the heart of almost all dogmatic distortions of sectarianism lies the sin of fornication, which forged a new weapon for rebellion against God - heretical teaching. This conclusion, made speculatively on the basis of written sources, including the lives of many heresiarchs (including: Arius, Apollinaria, Luther, Zwingli, L. Tolstoy, etc.), I can confirm with my own observations. So, for example, all ecumenists of any level that I personally know are, unfortunately, involved in this sin.
(Nevertheless, I admit, of course (as an exception), that a completely worthy person, who knows nothing about the tasks that the Luciferite Masons set for themselves when creating the WCC and similar organizations, can become an ecumenist through a misunderstanding. -childishly pure and naive people are not even able to believe in the reality of the existence among people of a single, powerful and centralized satanic organization, one of the prominent bodies of which is world Freemasonry).
As life itself has shown, the thinking abilities of heretics (as, indeed, of all other people) are damaged when grace departs from a person as a result of prodigal sin. This amazing relationship between seemingly distant phenomena was, however, noticed a very long time ago. The wise Solomon said this amazingly precisely (based on personal experience of moral failures) at the end of his life: “The excitement of lust corrupts the mind” (Wisdom 4:12). The existence of a relationship between the quality of mental abilities and sexual behavior can also be seen in the fact that the word chastity, which denotes whole, intact wisdom, otherwise - holistic understanding, three-dimensional vision (in Greek sojrosunh - prudence), has long been used to denote bodily purity and innocence , the loss of which, as it turned out, directly entails the loss of correct thinking, that is, that very whole, intact wisdom. The fragmentation of thinking that all humanity suffers today is the result of the loss of chastity, that is, bodily purity (I remind you that intimate relationships in a legal marriage are completely legal and do not violate chastity).
The Path to Idolatry
B) The transition from revealed religion to paganism.
This form of struggle with God is characterized by a retreat from the true revealed religion and a return to some ancient or modern pagan religions that do not restrict, but, on the contrary, in some cases even stimulate complete sexual freedom. Here are just a few of them: the cults of Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Thammuz, Adonis, Lucifer, as well as Tantrism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Dianetics and numerous other occult systems.
Provoked by demons, the desire for moral deliverance from a clear and precise limitation of sexual function, which was determined for people by God in the form of legal marriage, i.e., the desire for sexual “freedom”, or rather for debauchery, was, it seems to me, the main reason for repeated deviations into idolatry of the ancient Israelites - the only people who possessed a revealed religion in the pre-Christian period. The Prophet Ezekiel, for example, in one of his revelations saw how at the northern gate of the temple of the Lord “women sitting weeping for Tammuz” (Ezek. 8:14). The meaning of God’s denunciation of this wickedness was that the Israeli women seen by the prophet served the idol Tammuz (Tammuz), placed in the temple of the True God (!!) along with other pagan “gods” by the wicked king of Israel Joachim. This service was accompanied at first by crying for Tammuz (Tammuz), and then by unbridled joy, combined with the most vile and shameless debauchery (Biblical Encyclopedia, M., 1891, p. 686).
All Christians have been experiencing a similar demonic influence in the sexual sphere for many centuries, gradually falling away from the true teaching, and some from Christ. It is enough here, as an example, to cite the Roerich family that fell away from Orthodoxy and their numerous followers, who fell into the most primitive demon worship (paganism), clothed, however, in an elegant tinsel of pseudoscientific, as well as Hindu and Lamaistic concepts and terms.
"Human rights" to debauchery
C) The third type of rebellion against God and His Church is the direct revolutionary activity of Freemasonry and all other varieties of deeply religious Satanism, the task of which is the complete destruction of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, as well as those who have fallen away from it in ?? century of Catholicism, which was most clearly manifested in the French Revolution of the late 18th century, and most importantly - in the three Russian revolutions of the 20th century. The deep motive of these uprisings for many of the revolutionaries (of course, not among the most dedicated) was, in my opinion, a sexual rebellion, a struggle for freedom for sin and, first of all, for the sin of prodigal.
By the way, the last Russian (this century - the fourth), the so-called Gorbachev revolution, which destroyed the economy (including industry and agriculture), the army, science, healthcare, schooling and education, and most importantly moral values (still preserved in Russia from Orthodox ancestors), one of its main goals was the fight for “human rights.” These rights were discussed at Gorbachev’s meeting with the American president in the famous Masonic lair on the island of Malta. R. Reagan demanded from Gorbachev, of course, freedom and respect for human rights, and specifically sexual freedom, which, as it later turned out, was expressed in the “human rights” to homosexuality (i.e., the sin of sodomy), prostitution and pornography! And this freedom was granted to everyone who is possessed by the prodigal demon : articles that persecuted homosexuality, prostitution and pornography were removed from the criminal code of the USSR. What this led to, you see for yourself... “Yes,” you say, “but many churches have opened!” In fact, the Orthodox were simply cheated a distracting bone, and meanwhile tens of millions of young souls were morally destroyed, irrevocably (for the most part) torn away from God and from the Church by rampant sexual freedom, spiritually crippled by the “human rights” to fornication and sexual perversion. Again, as you can see, one of the main goals of this revolution was the fight against God and Orthodoxy, which is based on the sexual instinct exaggerated by demons (not without the help of their servants in the media).
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PRODIGAL SIN OPENS THE DOORS TO DEMONS
I will share with you another conclusion that I made as a result of many years of spiritual activity based on an analysis of the consequences of prodigal sins. I note that these consequences are most clearly revealed in those cases when young people commit these sins for the first time. This is explained by the fact that the picture of consequences is clearly revealed only as long as it is not “blurred” by other sins. My conclusion, unfortunately, is unpleasant and, I would even say, scary, but so far I have not been able to find a refutation of it. Here he is:
Prodigal sin deprives people of grace-filled protection to such a significant extent that demons IMMEDIATELY get the opportunity to ENTER THEIR BODIES, certainly captivating the will to one degree or another and binding the mind.
In other words, prodigal sin always leads people to one form or another of obsession and damage (to varying degrees) to the mind. Spiritually unenlightened and inexperienced people, as a rule, do not understand this, being surprised at the sudden and drastic change in the character of their son or daughter. Parents are literally amazed by the unexpected appearance of various bad habits in their children (alcohol, drugs, etc.), immensely increased pride, rudeness, and the disappearance of any kind of mutual understanding. Since the very fact of depopulation and the indicated degree of demonic possession of a person’s soul and body can actually lead him to spiritual death, then this very fact, in my opinion, is the reason that many St. The Fathers call prodigal sins mortal.
Firstly, as you know from the Bible, the Creator, having created the first couple, blessed an exclusively monogamous heterosexual marriage with the words He spoke through Adam, that is, prophetically, at the inspiration of God: “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). God will repeat the same thing five and a half thousand years later, directly Himself, coming to earth: “... and the two will become one flesh” (Mark 10:8). Note: in both cases we are talking about one wife and one husband, who are united, as it were, into one being. Thus, from the words of Christ Himself it clearly follows that not three or four people are united into a single being (as, for example, among Muslims), but precisely two and, moreover, of different sexes! Pay attention here to the fact that the word flesh, in the quotes I have given, does not mean a material body at all, but a certain single spiritual essence, consisting of two (if there are no children yet) souls, as if two hypostases, which before God are a single whole . Moreover, this single spiritual whole does not cease to be one even when the spouses are temporarily separated by the circumstances of their lives and are spatially separated from each other by a large distance.
The study of the essence of spiritual connections in married couples led me to the conviction that the connection of two people (spouses) is carried out, first of all, at the spiritual-energetic level. This means that in marriage there is a unification of two different potentials of uncreated energy (grace), which previously belonged to each of the spouses separately. As a result, a kind of new spiritual essence is formed (one in two forms), which has its own special, averaged spiritual potential. Thus, now, when one of the spouses, sinning, is to some extent deprived of God’s grace for his sin, this instantly affects the other (and if there are children, then also on them), since the general level of grace-filled energies falls. More than once, for example, I heard confessions of this kind: “Once, when I cheated on my wife on a business trip, on the same day and hour she had a severe heart attack, from which she almost died, although she had never had a heart problem before.” ", or, for example, "When I met a man at a resort, my husband was in a car accident that same day, and my daughter, who was at the kindergarten's summer dacha, has since started having epileptic seizures, which continue to this day." .
LAW OF PARENTAL SIN
In the latter case, for the mother’s mortal sin, as you may have noticed, the entire family lost the grace of God. The husband and daughter remained unprotected from the influence of demonic forces, and the child’s body was directly invaded by demons, which was expressed in the form of epilepsy, as one of the most severe forms of possession. Quite conventionally, all family members can thus be compared to communicating vessels in which the level of liquid simultaneously decreases, even if it is drawn out from only one vessel. In the two examples I gave above, which could be endlessly multiplied, we observe the action of one of the most important laws of God, regulating the life of man as a rational spiritual person, and therefore called spiritual laws, in contrast to the laws given by God to nature: physical laws, chemical, biological, etc. This law, let's call it the LAW OF PARENTAL SIN, explains the reason, incomprehensible to many, why children suffer for the sins of their parents. Let me try to formulate it now:
The sin of even one of the parents (especially “mortal”) necessarily reduces the common potential of uncreated Divine energy (grace) for the whole family, which has the greatest impact on children, as the weakest members of the single body of the family, depriving them and all other family members graceful divine protection from the negative effects of demonic forces.
You can read about the fact that the family can really be considered as a single spiritual body, just as the Church, consisting of many members (people and local Churches), is the body of Christ. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 5:23-27), as well as in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:12-14). Look how the apostle likens a husband to Christ, and a wife to the Church... This comparison contains an extraordinary depth and mystery, which we can only partially reveal.
Just like the Church, which “by water and the Spirit” gives birth to new children (in spirit) for eternal life and, thereby, grows itself, a wife gives birth to children (in the flesh) for this earthly life, thereby multiplying the body family, the head of which is the husband, just as Christ is the head of the Church. Just as all members of the body of the Church are “filled with one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12), that is, united into a single body by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the single body of the family is united by a single common potential of grace-filled energy, although each member of the family, I think , has some kind of reserve of grace. The latter will become visible and understandable if you remember the comparison of a family with communicating vessels, and imagine that these vessels connected by tubes, although they have the same level of liquid, but its volume in each of them is different, because some of these vessels deep and wide, while others are flatter or narrow (I hope you understand that no earthly comparison can be completely adequate and accurately describe spiritual phenomena; it only partially helps to understand their main principles).
WHAT IS “PRODICTANT MARRIAGE”?
Secondly, in order to understand why the Church considers fornication sin so serious that it calls it “mortal,” we must remember another amazing pattern indicated by the Apostle Paul, but hidden for many in the darkness of misunderstanding. It turns out that fornication has the same spiritual and energetic consequences, like legal marriage, but only with a negative sign, since it is illegal and, like any illegal action that violates God's commandment, has as its inevitable consequence the deprivation of grace for those who sin. The Apostle Paul writes: "... he who has sex with a harlot becomes one body with her, for it is said: “the two will be one flesh”" (1 Cor. 6:16). Pay attention, this is the same formula, the same words with which the marriage of Adam and Eve is celebrated in paradise! So, fornication actually formalizes a marriage, but a marriage that violates the purity of the true and complete union in love of the spouses, as was originally intended by the Creator.An illegal marriage, just like a real one, leads to the unification of the spiritual potentials of both sinners, which means that in addition to a huge loss for both graceful energy as a result of a given sin, each of them is even more deprived of grace due to the fact that the consequences of all the sins of the “partner” are transferred to him. Ultimately, the loss of grace in such an illegal union is so significant for both partners (sometimes falling almost to zero) that demons instantly move into their bodies (or join the ranks of those who have already moved in earlier), since, I repeat, only the grace of God protects a person not only from the introduction of demons into his body, but also from control of his thoughts and will from the outside.
HOW TO GET RID OF "UNINQUETED GUESTS"?
As a result of the “sexual revolution” successfully launched by the Worldwide Satanic Church (WCC) (Not to be confused with the World Council of Churches, which, having the same abbreviation - WCC, is controlled by the leadership of the Satanic Church) in the 60s of this century in America and successfully spread by Freemasons almost all over the world with the help of so-called mass culture, finding a person today who is not inhabited by demons (only their number and degree of influence differ) is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. This, of course, not a reason for despair, but only a reminder that we, with God’s help, must complete a very important task in our lives: get rid of uninvited guests (demons), having won freedom for our will from enslavement by the demonic will and, as a result, in literally become ourselves.
Hegumen N.
All materials from the issue “Lessons of the Vologda Business” can be found here
The difference in the agreement of thoughts and the bending of the will
The Monk Macarius taught that it is impossible to avoid carnal warfare, but one must make a distinction:
“It is impossible not to feel abuse, but one must have a difference - in the agreement of thoughts and the bending of the will.”
Cause of prodigal warfare
The Monk Macarius explained that, in addition to natural causes, pride can be the cause of fornication:
“Attribute the victory to the help of God; and the reason for the motivation is pride, which you often don’t even notice behind you.”
All the Optina elders spoke about the fact that thoughts of fornication often follow thoughts of vanity and exaltation.
The Monk Ambrose wrote:
“After vanity, thoughts and exaltations always follow.”
“You are very overcome by vanity, that is why the Lord allowed such strong warfare. You are proud, vain, envious, judgmental, all this strengthens voluptuousness, and until you humble yourself, the fighting cannot decrease. With this strong abuse, you are so proud - what would happen if you were free? And I wouldn’t be able to reach you with my hand!”
“Fornication and fear are allowed for our pride.”
How to deal with prodigal passion
The Monk Macarius, in a letter to his spiritual child, instructed:
« You complain about the abuse, which is helped by the objects around you, and ask for my guidance. What am I telling you and what am I saying?
Just this: run to the Lord, who is able to keep you unburned in the cave of this flame, just as he saved the three youths in the cave of Babylon and Daniel in the den of lions. Have a good will to preserve the lamp of purity from the winds of the spirits of wickedness. Offer your weakness before the Lord, as the holy fathers teach us: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak” (Ps. 6:3). Move away from yourself, to the extent of your strength, objects that arouse violence in you.
Call upon our Most Pure Intercessor, the Mother of God, a strong and quick Helper in the troubles of those who exist; also Thomaida the martyr, John the Long-Suffering, Moses Ugrin and others who fought against the flesh and defeated it. Read in the books of the fathers about this battle: the 15th word of St. John Climacus, St. Cassian the Roman, Nilus of Sora and others, and the Lord will help you.”
The Monk Ambrose taught how to pray correctly when attacked by lustful thoughts:
“Pray like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner...” Emphasize the word “sinful”... Remember the sins with which you offended the Lord, and humble yourself. If you cannot humble yourself, and “virtues” come to mind, say this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Oh, indecent slave! Behold your former prodigal confusions!” And now again: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
The elder recalled the power of the sign of the cross:
“Be baptized as often as possible. When making the sign of the cross, remember and feel that you are protected by the power of the Crucified One. When you sit alone in your cell, cross yourself constantly; Having your hands free, especially make the sign of the cross on yourself. From time to time, stop what you are doing, bow a few times, and get back to work again. Be baptized sometimes in front of others; if they ask: why? - say: “It’s your choice.”
The Monk Ambrose also warned:
“Beware of touch... it excites passion and obscene movements, it is bad and very harmful...”
Reverend Anatoly (Zertsalov) taught:
“Reproach yourself and try not to look at the tempter - and temptation will pass.”
“The remedies for lustful thoughts are: humility, self-reproach, abstinence, and most of all – love for your neighbors: the weak, infirm, sick, sisters captive to passions.”
The Monk Joseph instructed to refrain from ridicule and unclean thoughts:
“Unclean thoughts and imaginations come from dreams. Also refrain from jokes and ridicule - and passions rise from them.”
“The 90th Psalm “Alive in the Help of the Most High” is useful to read three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening. At noon a person is especially attacked by a prodigal demon, and this same psalm drives him far away.”
Purity is returned by repentance
St. Nikon reminded that purity is returned through repentance: With the Lord everything is possible:
“...Here it is no longer an ulcer, not a disease, it is not a scab, but the whole person is affected by a disease - sin. An ordinary doctor can no longer heal, but only the Lord resurrects with His touch: girl, arise! And virginity returns, like Mary of Egypt, the harlot of the Gospel and others... All things are possible with the Lord.”
Be careful until you die
The Monk Leo, in response to a letter to his spiritual daughter that she felt a weakening of passions, replied that this rest from passions is given by the grace of God according to God’s mercy, and otherwise hardly anyone would be able to maintain themselves in chastity:
“The universal enemy is the devil, always using his warfare and intrigues, deceiving and defeating us with such cunning and insidious tricks; and do not insist that your rage and carnal passion completely fade away; But have you been given some time to rest?
And it is not the enemy who teaches this weakness, but through the mercy of God His grace invisibly, through the prayers of father and mother, helps; for if it were not for God’s grace invisibly protecting and strengthening, then hardly anyone would be able to keep himself in integrity.”
The Monk Joseph taught to beware and be careful until death:
“One must be careful against fornication even to the point of death, as the holy fathers write.”
Our reverend fathers, the elders of Optina, pray to God for us sinners!