Patriarch Kirill about love. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill: Modern man suffers from an acute shortage of true love...

Marriage disappears when love disappears, and therefore the reason for the separation of families is precisely what can be called a crisis of love. In the past, this also happened, but people were brought up differently - the fear of God was present in their hearts.

Even when something happened in the depths of the soul and feelings for each other were transformed, family relations and marriage were preserved through prayer, turning to God, good deeds. And then, when people went through these difficulties, they suddenly discovered at a mature age that a preserved marriage is the greatest value in their life, because only it protects them from the cold winds from the outside. Marriage remains a real home, a fortress, a place where people support each other - sincerely, disinterestedly, in the most difficult circumstances.

Have you ever seen elderly people walking arm in arm along the sidewalk? If it is winter, then they are terribly afraid for each other, so that someone does not slip, does not fall. They literally cling to each other, they both need support, they have ceased to be strong, they have ceased to be independent of many circumstances, and the only thing that remains in their life is the support that is next to you.

What happens to people who destroy marriage, family? And the following happens. Love disappears, and then life together becomes torment. Why does love disappear? After all, there was love when they met, when they looked after each other, when they entered into family relationships ... Yes, not just love - a kind of apogee of life! In German, “marriage”, “wedding” is a “high time of life”, this is a kind of apogee. In a sense, this is true - an emotional, spiritual apogee.

What happens next? Why is this apogee gradually fading away? Yes, because this great feeling that people experienced, they did not save, they destroyed it - unconsciously, in small things. When a person begins to live more for himself than for another, then he proceeds to this destruction. He undermines, saws the tree, and the more he or she lives for himself, and not for another, the more it loosens. And when there is nothing left for another, but only for oneself, when there are some parallel connections, hobbies, a parallel life with new interests, with new sensations - then you just need to lightly touch the tree, which is sawn from all sides, or blow a strong wind, not to mention an earthquake, how it will collapse and crumble into chips.

This is exactly how family relationships are destroyed. It is necessary to cherish love and cherish marriage from the first day, and remember that this is a difficult job, that this is a kind of feat that a person voluntarily undertakes.

The problem is that the words “happiness” and “pleasure” have different meanings. It's not the same thing. If a person strives only for pleasure, then he will not be happy - neither in the first marriage, nor in the second, nor in the third, nor in any other.

No common property, no common house, and even common children stop people from making fatal decisions if the feeling of love is exhausted and hatred appears instead of love. To avoid such a fatal development, take care of your love.

The culmination of the visit was a meeting with the youth. The patriarch spoke about dreams, happiness and love, and at the same time about how he relates to the current government. The sincerity and extraordinary emotional intensity of the speech captured the huge hall, where more than 8,000 students gathered. The introduction was short, and the Primate moved on to the main thing:

What is happiness? Work, home, health, family. There are many answers, if they are reduced to a common denominator - a person wants to be happy. If a dream cannot be realized, the high ideals associated with it are destroyed and ridiculed. And then the person turns in the other direction.

According to the Patriarch, a person can be happy only if he lives in the system of moral coordinates created by God. At the same time, the material factor is by no means discounted: "This is an important component of human well-being. But a person has a house, a car, but only others have a better house and a car is more expensive. Consumption can be endless, but it ceases to bring satisfaction. A person can to have so much, but not to experience joy." The patriarch spoke about his grandfather, who spent a total of almost 30 years in Stalin's camps (with short breaks) for defending the Church from repressions. At the end of his life, he became a priest and died at the age of 91. "Grandfather was happy," says the Patriarch. And here is another example: one of the richest people on Earth - a fortune of tens of billions of dollars. His son, the heir to this empire, not being mentally ill, before he reached the age of 30, committed suicide.

Whatever external well-being, an immoral person cannot be happy. By definition ... God's, - says the Patriarch. - Through faith, a person is given the power of God to make the right choice. I wish that no one would change the course that is the only way to find happiness.

As soon as the Patriarch finished his speech, a long line of people wishing to ask questions appeared at the microphone.

Why did you choose the monastic path? asked the seminarian.

He creates optimal conditions for work in the name of God. The difficult position of the Church in the state also affected. My service could cause displeasure of the authorities, I didn’t want to endanger loved ones, - answered the Patriarch.

How do you know if love is from God or not? the student asked.

Seminarians ask for a blessing on marriage. Once a couple came, and something seemed doubtful to me. We had known each other for two months. They arrived on a motorcycle. And I asked him: "Now, if you fall, she will become disabled - will you take care of her all your life?" I didn't need an answer, but a reaction. He was confused. And love is always associated with sacrifice. If you're not ready, you don't love. And now they are getting married, and then - the salary is not the same, there is no prosperity, and that's all - there is no love.

After the meeting, the students said that this answer turned out to be more interesting to them than others. Both girls in mini-skirts, not at all of a church look, and young men who smoked admitted that everything seems to be said simply, but it makes one think: "After all, it's true, there are a lot of divorces."

Not without politics: "You said that you support the course of the country's leadership. But in what way exactly?"

There are many shortcomings in our society, corruption, imperfection of legislation. Nobody says that we have reached the ideal. Our country is on the verge of modernization, but for the first time the state is trying to connect it with the spiritual, cultural matrix. And this is the movement we support. The reforms of both Peter I and the Bolsheviks were rejected by the people because they were carried out without taking into account fundamental values.

Sermon at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra on the Day of Commemoration of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
“I declare to you, brethren, that the gospel which I proclaimed to you is not human, I received and learned not from men, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1, 11-12). We have just heard these wonderful words of the apostle Paul; he addressed them to the ancient Galatians, but through them to the whole world, affirming the great truth that the Gospel is not the fruit of human wisdom, that the Gospel is Divine Revelation, that is, the word of God Himself.

Today we celebrate the day of memory of the Holy Baptist of Russia Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. And it is no coincidence that the Church offers us these apostolic words on the days of memory of the holy equal-to-the-apostles men and women. Holy Prince Vladimir showed the truth of these words with his life. Who was Vladimir before being baptized? A voluptuous cruel ruler. He caused the deaths of many innocent people. The thirst for power, money and pleasure was the main goal of his life, as it was the goal of the life of other rulers of that time. Therefore, wars were waged and lands were seized - so that there would be more power, so that there would be more opportunities to command others.
And what happened after Prince Vladimir plunged into the baptismal waters? His life has changed. He did not become a more rigid, evil, voluptuous ruler - he became a ruler whom the people, in tenderness and joy of the heart, called the Red Sun.
What happened to this person? Why did he change those clear and understandable goals and values ​​that he professed as the ruler of the state to other goals and life values? Because with Baptism he received Christ into his mind and into his heart; together with Baptism, he adopted a new system of values, so radically different from what he lived, what he believed in, for which he fought before.
And what lies at the basis of this system of values, to which Saint Vladimir gave his mind, soul and life, for he wished that after him all the people would join this system of values? This is the Gospel word, and in the center of this word is something that is still difficult for people to understand; something that never ceases to amaze each subsequent generation of people with its novelty and attractive power. In the center of the Gospel message is one and the most important word: “love”. Love as the basis of being, love as the basis of personal and family life, love as the basis of social and even state life.
These words remain incomprehensible to many people - power, money and power are much more understandable. Any political program can be designed for these purposes, you can inspire people to fight, even to war, because this demon sits in everyone - the desire to be rich, strong, powerful.
What is the love that Christ preaches? How can you love your neighbor, how can you love even an enemy? This question, already being believers, we ask ourselves, realizing that there is no love in the heart for another person, and even more so for the enemy. What do these words of the Lord mean? After all, these are not human words, not the wisdom of generations, not the wisdom of peoples or of all mankind - this is Divine wisdom. Whether it is understandable to people or incomprehensible, whether people are able to follow this wisdom or not, this does not stop the word of God from remaining God's word and Divine truth, eternal and unchanging. And the strength of a believing person lies in the fact that even without fully realizing the Divine truth with his mind and life experience, he kneels before it with his mind and heart in obedience to the word of God.
Divine truth becomes clear through the inner, religious experience of man, and this experience helps us understand what God in Christ, His Son, has done for our salvation. The Lord came and suffered so that people would have life, and life in abundance, as we just heard in the Gospel of John (John 10, 10), so that this fullness of human existence would not cease with death, but pass into eternity. For the sake of this, the Lord came and gave Himself, His life, to the reproach of human malice, envy, anger and impurity. He did this, driven by love for people, for His creation, and through this example of the Lord Himself, we can understand what love is - love is, first of all, the ability to give oneself to others. The readiness to give oneself and part of one's life, time, care, money, human warmth and participation to another is a manifestation of love - not beautiful words, but the ability to share one's life with another.
It pleased God that it was precisely this human ability to share one's life with others that formed the basis of human existence, the basis of the most important law, according to which only personal, family and social life should be arranged. Each of us knows from experience what it is. When is a family strong? When the husband gives himself to his wife and family, and the wife gives herself to her husband and children. Try to stop giving yourself to another - the family immediately feels a terrible cold breath of wind. Trust disappears, suspicion appears: why did he or she do this, what is hidden behind it? Maybe he or she doesn't love me anymore? We know how families fall apart only because the spouses have ceased to give themselves to each other, to take care of each other, to perceive the life of another as their own life. Isn't this the problem of fathers and children, the problem of generations? After all, it grows out of understatement, from the fact that parental love was not fully expressed, from the fact that parents did not receive the love of their children. And the continuity is broken, the historical connection of generations is broken.
And what happens in societies when the law of love disappears, when the struggle for their private interests begins - political, economic, national, class or social, when these interests and values ​​become the most important? There is a struggle not for life, but for death, and the fabric of human communication is being destroyed, and where there should have been mutual support, love, solidarity, harmony, human chaos and disorder appear under the slogans of building a happy life.
Troubles and divisions of the people always stem from slogans that call us to a happy life. Didn't our people wash themselves with blood when, in the terrible years of the revolution, they were tempted by these slogans and believed that it was possible to build a happy, prosperous, peaceful life without God and without love? Millions of people died, and this dream was not realized. It was not given to be realized, because at the heart of this political dream were malice, confrontation, the desire to achieve their goals, fooling people with calls for happiness.
The Church is called to be the place where people experience love and unity. Where there is separation, there is no love. And how hypocritical and terrible it is when a division occurs in the Church in the name of some “higher” goals! This division is the most terrible thing that can be in the life of a Christian - the absence of love. What then can be the preaching of love, where is Christ, if for the sake of private interests, one way or another understood the goals and objectives of worldly dispensation, the foundation of human existence is destroyed, love is destroyed and trampled on by human malice? This is a perversion of the Christian message, this is a rejection of the Gospel, which is not a human, but a Divine revelation. This is a rejection of the gospel with its eternal system of values, far from our vain aspirations.
The Church proclaims to those near and far, and to the whole world: there is no other way for the development of the world and human civilization, for the development of any human society, except for the law of love and solidarity arising from love, mutual support, harmony and peace.
We have learned all this from the Kyiv font, from the Holy Prince Vladimir. Here, on the banks of the Dnieper, in the ancient walls of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the image of the Grand Duke is especially bright and strong in our minds. He threw off not only bodily, but also spiritual blindness, leaving the baptismal font. He saw through the secret of human existence and happiness, he turned away from cruelty and lust for power, from everything that until recently warmed his soul and inspired his actions. Prince Vladimir at that moment rethought his whole life and gave us a great covenant of love and unity.
It is within these walls that we especially strongly experience the meaning of this commandment of St. Prince Vladimir, church unity and life according to the law of love.
We will pray to the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir for giving us the strength to love our neighbor - husband, wife, brother, sister, children, work colleagues. May he give us the strength to love our enemies and prove by the experience of our lives that not a face distorted by malice, preaching this or that human truth, but the meek face of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, who emerged from the baptismal font, is the ideal of Holy Russia. And this ideal is invincible and insurmountable, for it is the word of God, and not of man. Amen.

The ministry of the word, that ecclesiastical obedience, which His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, like no one else, carries throughout his conscious life. His talent as a preacher bore abundant fruit. On the day of the 70th anniversary of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, we again turn to his word, filled with Truth, faith and love.

Church

This Church - the Church of the Holy Spirit - cannot be defeated by the devil and by no other power, because the Church of the Holy Spirit feeds on the power of God, which is stronger than any human and diabolical power.

In the Church we not only learn the will of God. In the Church we enter into a special communion with God through prayer. In the Church, we are given the opportunity, by correlating our actions and thoughts with the Word of God, to see how much we deviate from the course, how right or wrong we act. And in the event that we act or think wrong, we have the opportunity to repent to God and correct our life course.

Something else very important is also happening in the Church: we not only learn the Word of God, we not only can correct our lives, but by the power of the Divine we can actually destroy our sin.

The Church is not only a meeting place for a person with God, but also a special meeting place for people. Through communion of the One Bread and the One Chalice, we become one whole, and in this mysterious unity of people all existing differences are overcome - social, property, national, political. If the world shows us an example of divisions that only multiply with the course of history, then the Church is a place for people to unite, a place for joint standing before God, and therefore a place where, in a mysterious but real way, human divisions are overcome or can be overcome.

The Lord saves us by giving us a clear understanding of good and evil, and as long as the faith of the Church preserves this norm of human life, as long as the faith of the Church bears witness to what is truth and what is false, what is sin and what is holiness, together with the Church the entire human race preserves the ability and possibility in the conditions of dissent, in the conditions of a plurality of views and beliefs, to preserve a certain common basis of human existence.

If, however, sometime in the eschatological perspective, the end of human history occurs and evil triumphs over good, then this will happen only when humanity completely renounces the moral basis of its existence and when the voice of the Church turns out to be inaudible, when people are unable to perceive Divine truth.

The earthly Church is called the militant Church - the Church in the struggle. Our struggle is not a struggle with human views and beliefs, not with flesh and blood; our struggle is against the forces of darkness, for the true faith, through which alone the moral nature of the human race can be preserved, regardless of how people know or do not know the true faith, whether they accept it or not. But as a fermentative element, like yeast, like leaven, the faith of Christ is capable of transforming the whole world, the whole creation.

To abide in the Church means to abide in faith, in communion with God by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the creation of God's truth, in life according to the law of God - in that life to which the Lord has called us all.

By the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church, in the community of faith, the Sacrament of Salvation is performed. In this community, by the power of the Holy Spirit, everything that Christ has done is actualized; it becomes real, effective for every person, regardless of the time and place of his life. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we mysteriously come into contact in the Mystery of the Church, in the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist, with heavenly, Divine life. While still here on earth, we touch the Divine Kingdom. That is why the Liturgy also begins with a marvelous exclamation: Blessed be the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - because by the power of the Holy Spirit we come into contact with this Divine Kingdom, which is reflected in our hearts with grace, joy, peace and love.

Quite often baptized people treat the Church with contempt, allow insults, ridicule the Church. Why is this happening - after all, they received the gift of the Holy Spirit at baptism? And this is what happens - because of passion and unbelief, the grace of God stopped, and a person does not feel God, does not feel an answer to his prayers, for him coming to the temple is like coming to a museum, his heart does not beat joyfully during worship, it is dead, because it is enslaved by passions and unbelief.

In order for the Church of God to be renewed following the example of the original apostolic community, we must use all our strength to fight against passions, to arouse faith in ourselves through constant prayer, through repentance, through the acceptance of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, through a critical, strict attitude towards ourselves. themselves, through constant censure of themselves, through control over their thoughts, deeds, movements of the heart.

The main service to which the Church devotes herself is the service of the grace of God. Having received it from the Lord Himself on the day of Pentecost, she is called upon to distribute it to people and perform such actions, pronounce such words, build such relationships with the outside world so that everything is aimed at banishing passions from human hearts and ardent faith coming into the heart and along with it is the power of the grace of God, which from illiterate fishermen made powerful preachers who conquered the universe, which from numerous ascetics formed a host of holy miracle workers, from ordinary people - martyrs, from ordinary bishops and priests - saints and reverends.

The church exists to call on the Holy Spirit. The most important mission of the Church is the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the epiclesis, as we say, using the Greek word.

The church exists to call on the Holy Spirit. The most important mission of the Church is the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the epiclesis, as we say, using the Greek word. The epiclesis is not only a prayer for the invocation of the Holy Spirit - it is life in Christ, it is a heart open to meet Him, it is a courageous and honest confession of faith in Christ the Savior and in the Holy Trinity. And in response to the life of the Church, God sends the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit lives and works in us.

If it were not for the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church, then Christianity would be just another intellectual teaching, another version of human philosophy.

Faith

Faith, refracted in a person's real religious experience, gives him a special spiritual vision, the ability to see and understand the meaning of ongoing events, to see as far as no politician can see if he does not believe in the Lord and Savior. Faith gives a special visual acuity, which means it helps people to find the right position in life. This position may be in conflict with the tastes of the era, with fashions for lifestyle and way of thinking, with human philosophies. And we know from history that this clash of the faith of Christ with human inventions very often requires a feat from those who keep the faith.

The answer that a Christian addresses to those who blaspheme should always be filled with wisdom, spiritual strength and tranquility, because God is with us (Is. 8:10; Matt. 1:23), the Lord Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith .

Preserving the Orthodox faith, preserving the ability to distinguish good from evil, we must also in our life - personal, family, social - always take the side of those forces that are either directly, or perhaps not quite visible, but in essence - together with Christ, together with Him who is the author and perfecter of our faith.

Unity of the Church

Sometimes even in our parishes there are divisions between the clergy and the laity. Often these divisions are connected with the struggle for some kind of primacy, for some kind of power in the parish. We know how parishioners are sometimes divided, grouped around one or another priest. The veneration of this or that shepherd and love for him is lawful, but division in the name of love is sinful, because where there is love, there can be no division.

We must preserve the unity not only of Ecumenical Orthodoxy from any heresies and schisms, we must not only preserve as the apple of our eye the unity of our Local Church, the Martyr Church, which has suffered its right to be one and indivisible. We must preserve the unity of our parishes and monasteries, remembering that the most important criterion for evaluating the activity of any Christian - from a Patriarch to a simple layman - is love. There is love - there is Christ! No love - no Christ!

Walk in the face of God

What does it mean to walk before the face of God? It means to feel God's presence, to realize that God is near. And if God is near, then how can one offend God, how can one do what is contrary to God? If God is near, then a person not only constantly turns to Him, but tries to build his life in such a way that the Divine eyes, looking at Him, are always filled with mercy and love.

We need to learn to hear the voice of God, to see the presence of God both in human history and in our lives, and for this we need to be sensitive to the impact of God's grace on us. A person who trusts in his own strength is most often deprived of such sensitivity. For him, God is at best a philosophical concept. At best, he agrees with God's presence as a kind of theory, but in practice there is no God in the life of such a person. The strength of the intellect, the strength of the will, the strength of convictions, the strength of power, the strength of money, the strength of the organization - this is what is placed above God, because, relying on strength, many solve the problems they face.

Body of Christ

The body of Christ is not a metaphor, it is a reality. And when the Church, a community of believers, gathers together with its bishop or priest and together celebrates the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, when by the grace of the Holy Spirit, through the prayers of the Church, bread and wine become the receptacle of the incapable God, then the Sacrament of the Church appears in a visible way - the Sacrament Body and Blood of the Lord and Savior.

In this Sacrament, we are freed from sin, through this Sacrament, what Adam destroyed is restored, and we, weak and weak, enter into real communion with God, touch the Divine Kingdom.

It is in the Eucharist that the Church reveals her essence, it is in the Eucharist that she is what she has become by the will of God - the Body of Christ, continuing the work of the Savior in this world.

The Church of God is that community where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, people constantly partake of all that Christ did, through partaking of the bread and wine consecrated in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, through partaking of the true Body and Blood of the Lord. And through this communion we gain great strength - God enters into us, corrects our infirmities, forgives our sins, grants us spiritual and physical strength. The Holy Eucharist is the greatest action that takes place in the human race. Nothing can compare with this action, because it is an open road to God, along which a person ascends to Heaven and along which Divine grace descends from Heaven on a person.

Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, we become one body, we become a community that lives and exists in the image of God.

In order for us to be able to realize the unity with each other and with God that we have acquired in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in the life of this world, we must also remember that love is a sacrifice. And if we are able to give a part of ourselves, to sacrifice our time, our attention, our love, our means - to donate to those who need it, then we will live outside the temple according to the law of love.

Prayer

If a person prays, then he is a truly religious person. If he calls himself a believer and is even convinced of the existence of God as a Higher Power, but if he does not turn to God with a prayer, then such a believer is a non-religious person. Sometimes it even happens that people who are quite ecclesiastical stop praying. They become so accustomed to their churchness that living prayer as a connection with God disappears from life. It happens that even some clergymen, performing divine services, knowing prayers by heart, do not pray with their hearts. If a person stops praying, he stops living a religious life.

The skill of prayer is one of the most important ascetic deeds. You need to pray with the words of prayers, if you know them, as well as with your simple words, pray not only in the morning and evening, you need to pray many times during the day, turning to the Lord at least for a moment.

Today, many people come to churches, turn to God, but not everyone knows how to pray. There are circumstances in which even people of little faith pray - when we find ourselves in difficult life circumstances. As the participants in the war say, even the atheists went on the attack with a prayer. When despair arises and the realization of the impossibility of overcoming difficulties on their own, then a person turns the words of prayer to God with ease. This also happens when, suddenly turning to a doctor, a person hears the terrible words of an incurable diagnosis. That's when people pray and find words and no one needs to be taught to pray. But it is worth overcoming difficulties, receiving healing, and communication with God and prayer are again cut off.

You need to educate yourself to strive to understand what is said in the temple. But even if by thought we depart from prayer due to our weakness, then all the same, being in the temple, in the fertile atmosphere of the prayer of other people, we are under the constant influence of Divine grace. That is why prayer in the temple has a special meaning, significance and power, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them"(Matthew 18:20).

Repentance

In repentance, we again return God to his place in our life, we push ourselves, giving way to God. And if we do not push ourselves, then we will never leave this central place, and God will forever leave our lives, no matter how much we assure ourselves that we are believers.

Repentance is the turning to God. There can be no conversion without repentance, and without conversion there can be no return of God into our lives. Renouncing our own "I", we restore the order of life that God was pleased to establish when creating the world and man. In repentance, we, as it were, recreate God's plan for the world and man.

If there is no repentance, there is no religious life. And no wisest religious philosophies, no most beautiful words can change anything in a person's life if he does not have the experience of repentance.

True repentance requires a change of mind, a change of life. No wonder the Greek word "metanoia", which is translated into Russian as "repentance", means a change, a change of mind, heart, life. We know how difficult it is to make this change, how sin attracts us, how many times we repeat it.

Word

The Word is a great gift from God. Through words, we connect with other people. The word is a means and a way of communication, something that belongs to a person and distinguishes him from another world, the wordless world. But the word exists only when it is heard. If there is no listener, then there is no word.

When we fulfill the word with sinful emptiness, we destroy the inner world of other people with this word.

The empty, idle words that we address to our neighbors devastate their souls, and, even not wanting to harm them, we harm them with our idle talk. So the Lord tells us that we will give an answer for every idle word, because the soul of other people is damaged by this word.

The word that we turn outward is the result of our thought. When a person thinks, he spends internal energy, but when he speaks, much more energy is spent. It only seems that the word is something quite simple and light.

The word is part of our inner life. If we talk idle, utter idle words, then we squander our inner strength, we damage our spiritual life.

Heresy

In search of a wise and up-to-date interpretation of faith, one should never cross the line beyond which there is no longer interpretation, but destruction.

What is heresy? How can heresy be distinguished from dissent that is acceptable in the Church? How to distinguish a heretic from a zealous Orthodox Christian who wants to defend and preserve the purity of his faith? There is only one way. Every heresy breeds a schism, and where there is a schism, there is no love. We know this well from our lives. The family breaks up: spouses disperse, children turn away from their parents when love disappears from the family. And no matter how kind, good words one of the spouses utters, where there is no love, there is no purity of relations and no unity. The same thing happens in the Church. If we meet a person who claims to be fighting for the purity of Orthodoxy, but in his eyes there is a dangerous fire of anger, he sees heretics everywhere, he is ready to fight and to divide the Church, he is ready to shake the foundations of church life, allegedly defending Orthodoxy; when in a person who leads a heretical doctrine, we do not find love, but find only anger, then this is the first sign that this is a wolf in sheep's clothing - like Arius, Nestorius and many others who preached fervently, having no love in their hearts, and were ready for the sake of their righteousness to go to the division of church life.

Heresies were an intellectual challenge to Orthodoxy: referring to pastoral expediency, to logic, to common sense, referring even to the need to maintain piety, the heretics tried to introduce false truths into the consciousness of the Church that destroy the true truth. Such intellectual attempts most often ended in a terrible struggle, when the Church had to defend the Orthodox faith with all her might, and by the grace of God she defended it.

If you look at the history of the emergence of heresies, then they all arose under plausible pretexts, and heresiarchs, the founders of heresies, were driven by good intentions. It seemed to them that faith needed to be made more understandable, logical, convincing, more in line with the Word of God, and, delving into their own understanding of faith, ignoring the church-wide conciliar perception of faith, they came to conclusions that were extremely dangerous for the very existence of the Church.

Defense of Faith

The entire history of the Church of Christ is the history of the struggle for the purity of the Divine Word.

If one takes a look at the whole history after Christ, one can testify that no other human belief, no other worldview has experienced so many attempts to distort or destroy it. These attempts were made at different levels: at the level of thought, philosophy, practice, and, finally, as just mentioned, at the level of public policy. And we know that standing for the truth has never been easy - it required courage, firmness of spirit, strength of faith, strength of one's convictions.

The main reason why the Orthodox faith is indestructible is that through this faith people gain such an experience of life with God that exceeds all the joys of the earthly world. It is this experience of life in communion with God that fills our hearts with the conviction that our faith is right and gives us the strength to build our lives on this conviction.

Humility

Humility and humility are identical concepts. But the word "humility" helps to better understand the meaning of humility, because it combines two words - "humility" and "wisdom".

A humble person is a person for whom God is at the center of life, and he puts his deeds under the judgment of God, which means, under the judgment of his conscience.

A humble person is one who puts himself under the judgment of God.

If we yield to God the main place in our lives, if God becomes the most important thing in our life, then everything secondary that we are called to do by virtue of our calling, position or professional duty is accomplished with the help of God. God communicates to a humble person a part of his Divine power, and no human power can compare with this power.

Forgetting such a virtue as humility is very dangerous for human society. In our daily lives, we suffer from the fact that this greatest virtue is becoming less and less common.

Patience

Patience is the ability to respond to evil that touches us without losing our presence of mind, without wasting our inner energy, without falling into grumbling, into anger, into malice, into a desire for revenge.

Undoubtedly, the will is present in our attempts to acquire patience, but a patient person does not have to be strong-willed, because patience is a state of mind. Every strong-willed person at some point cannot stand untruth, insults, insults. And the will is not enough, and patience ends, because there was no patience, but there was a will or a good upbringing.

Hope in God, a living sense of faith, understanding that God will protect and God will restore justice, and create inner peace of a person. Patience, like armor, protects the inner state of our soul from all external evil and sinful circumstances, and patience becomes a step on the path to the Kingdom of God.

A patient person is one who has already acquired the Holy Spirit in himself. Then nothing can shake his calmness, because even the most terrible and dangerous devilish obsessions are not capable of crushing the power of the Holy Spirit.

Patience as a virtue elevates us above the vanity of the world. A patient person acquires a different angle of view on everything that he sees, and a different starting point, a different ability to evaluate what is happening. In a sense, patience is always wisdom, distinguishing a person from those who do not have wisdom.

Mercy

We must remember - and perhaps first of all those who take on the great responsibility of serving mercy - that through this sacrifice that we make to people, God will give us His love.

Mercy is the school of love. The modern world, modern society sometimes asks itself in bewilderment why in our enlightened age, when almost everyone has an education, when science has reached such heights, we see so much suffering, crimes, family tragedies, human grief. And one does not need to be a philosopher to say: neither education, nor strength, nor power, nor money - all that is so desirable for modern man - are unable to give people love, unable to bring them happiness.

Love

Love is sacrifice, it is communion and it is unity.

The ability to give oneself to another is one of the most important and essential manifestations of love. A person gives himself to another sincerely - there is no hypocrisy here, here is a real feat, a real sacrifice. The clearest manifestation of such sacrifice is maternal love, but not only: whenever we give ourselves to another, we love.

If we give our place to God, it means that we love God. No philosophical definitions are required, everything is extremely clear: if we devote ourselves to God, at least partially give ourselves to God, then we love Him.

To give God a place in your life means to give a place to other people. Love for one's neighbor, self-sacrifice, the ability to give oneself to others - this is the most important dimension of a person's religious life.

The word "love" is used in everyday life so often and in such different contexts that modern man is no longer able to clearly understand its meaning. Like many holy things, this word is often defiled and devalued in human life by the power of the devil. But this does not make the concept of love any less significant. As the Apostle John the Theologian tells us, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16), and this is an exhaustive definition of love.