Liberation from sexual addiction and unclean thoughts. Techniques for combating lust

People living in the world do not take vows of celibacy, but fornication is also dangerous for them: extramarital affairs, adultery, delight in lustful dreams and spectacles. The Optina elders knew well about deceit and force and taught how to fight it.

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.

Reverend 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 abuse 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. Doing 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 will 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 - the devil, always using his warfare and intrigues, deceives and defeats 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!

A child, when born, is pure, like an angel... The world that the baby gradually learns and accepts imposes on this Blank sheet your seal. Sometimes so bright and not erased. Especially when parents have no time and cannot answer their child’s basic questions about where it came from. Then the questions become more serious. And still no answers. No, they are dating. But in a form unacceptable for a childish or adolescent soul. The holy fathers talk about this...

From the reference dictionary: “Fornication - 1. Sin against chastity; one of the passions in the ascetic teaching of the Church. 2. In a religious-metaphorical sense - any deviation of a person from God’s Providence for him; idolatry, unbelief. In Russian, fornication has synonyms: fornication, debauchery, debauchery.

The fight against the spirit of fornication is the longest, everlasting and for a few ending in victory. The passion for fornication begins to manifest itself in a person from early maturity and does not stop until he conquers his other passions. Since the rebellion of this passion is twofold (in the body and in the soul), then it must also be resisted with twofold weapons. Fasting alone is not enough to achieve perfect chastity. It is necessary to add to it both repentant contrition of the spirit and persistent prayer against this bad spirit (the passion of fornication). In addition, you must constantly read Holy Bible, engage in contemplation of God, alternating this with physical labor and handicrafts, which keep thoughts from wandering here and there. Most of all, one must have deep humility, without which victory cannot be achieved over any passion (Venerable John Cas.).

How high is the dignity of chastity, so strong are the slander of the enemy who takes up arms against it. Therefore, we must, with all diligence, not only be abstinent in everything, but constantly lament in our hearts with prayerful sighing, so that the Holy Spirit, with the gracious dew descending into the heart, cools and quenches the furnace of our flesh, which the king of Babylon (the devil) is constantly trying to kindle ( Rev. John Kas.).

When lust is inflamed, think about the unquenchable fire and the undying worm, and the flame in your members will immediately go out. Otherwise, having weakened, you will be defeated and get used to sinning, although you will repent. Therefore, from the very beginning, be strict with any such desire, so that it does not overcome you and so that you do not get used to conceding victory to the enemy. After all, habit is second nature. He who is accustomed to yielding victory to a sinful desire will always be denounced by his conscience; and although he will show a cheerful face in front of others, he will be depressed internally due to the convictions of his conscience. For the property of lust is to impart painful sorrow to those who fulfill it. Therefore, pay attention with your soul, always having God within you (Ephraim the Sir.)

When the demon begins to draw tempting objects in your imagination, and imagines in your mind the beauty of a woman that you once saw, bring the fear of God within yourself, and remember those who died in sins - think about the day when your soul will be separated from your body - imagine causing oneself to tremble at the voice of God, which will be heard by those who are careless about a righteous life and who do not keep the commandments of Christ: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (). Also imagine an undying worm and never-ending torment. Think about this, and the thirst for pleasure will dissipate in you, just as wax melts in the face of fire, for demons cannot resist the fear of God for even a moment. (Efrem Sir.)

Overcoming this passion is conditioned by the complete cleansing of the heart, from which, according to the word of the Lord, the poison of this disease flows. “From the heart,” He says, “evil thoughts come... adultery, fornication, and so on” (Venerable John Cas.).

Do not let your eyes wander here and there, and do not peer into the beauty of others, lest with the help of your eyes your adversary overthrows you (Ephraim the Sir.)

If the demon of fornication bothers you, rebuke it, saying: “May the Lord consume you, full of stench, the demon of uncleanness.” For we know the one who said: “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Efrem the Sir.).

If carnal warfare arises in you, do not be afraid and do not lose heart. Otherwise, you will give courage to the enemy (the devil), and he will begin to instill in you tempting thoughts: “The kindling in you will not stop until you satisfy your lust.” But having endured the Lord, pour out your prayer with tears before His goodness, and He will hear you, and will take you out of the ditch of passions (impure thoughts) and from the clay of the mud (shameful dreams) and will place your feet on the stone of purity (). Then you will see the help coming to you from Him. Just be patient, don’t relax your thoughts, don’t become exhausted, bailing water out of the boat, because the pier of life is close. Then you will call, and He will say: “Here I am!” (). But He is waiting to see your feat: are you really ready to resist sin even to death? So, do not be faint-hearted: God will not leave you. The Lord looks at your feat, both the faces of angels and the crowd of demons look at him. Angels are ready to give a crown to the winner, and demons are ready to cover the vanquished with shame. Be careful not to make your (angels) sad and not to make the demons happy (Efrem Sir.).

Abba Pimen says regarding prodigal thoughts: “If a chest filled with things stands for a long time, and the clothes in it are not changed, then they will decay over time. The same thing happens with bad thoughts put into us by the devil: if we do not put them into practice, they will decay and disappear over time” (Abba Pimen).

The novice asked Abba Agathon how to deal with fornication. The elder replied: “Go, surrender your strength before God [humble yourself extremely before Him], and you will find peace.”

And indeed, if every success in virtue is a matter of the grace of the Lord, and overcoming various passions is His victory, then even more so the acquisition of purity and overcoming prodigal passion is a matter of the special grace of God, as evidenced by the holy fathers, experienced in cleansing from this passion. For, being in the flesh, not feeling its sting is in some way like leaving it. And therefore it is impossible for a person to fly on his wings to the heavenly heights of perfection if the grace of the Lord does not lift him out of the earthly mire. For people are not so closely similar to angels by any virtue as by acquiring the grace of purity (Venerable John Cas.).

An indicator of purity and achieved perfection is that on vacation or in a pleasant dream no seductive image arises in a person, or, having arisen, this image does not arouse any carnal desires in him. However, involuntary desire, although not imputed to sin, indicates that the soul has not yet reached perfection, and the roots of passion have not yet been uprooted (Venerable John Cas.).

The sin of fornication has the property that it unites two bodies, although not legally, into one body. For this reason, although he is forgiven immediately after repentance and confession, with the indispensable condition that the repentant leaves him, but the cleansing and sobering of body and soul from prodigal sin requires a long time for the connection and unity established between bodies... and infecting the soul to become dilapidated and destroyed. Those who have not yet acquired true heartfelt prayer are helped (in the fight against the prodigal demon) by suffering in bodily prayer (St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)…

Fornication lust must be suppressed by remembering that this sin greatly torments and torments the conscience. Advice from Abba Dorotheus The devil, out of envy, raised up a fight against you. Take care of your eyes and do not eat until you are full. Drink a little wine, and only because your body is weak, if you have to. Acquire humility, which dissolves all enemy networks (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk).

He who fights with this rival (the prodigal demon) with bodily labor and sweat is like one who binds his enemy with a weak rope... He who fights against him with abstinence and vigilance is like one who has surrounded his enemy with iron shackles... He who arms himself with humility, lack of anger and thirst is like one who killed his opponent and buried him in the sand. Who tries to satisfy with abstinence alone prodigal warfare, he is like a man who thinks to swim out of the abyss by moving one hand. Combine humility with abstinence, for the former without the latter brings no benefit (John Climacus).

Anyone who looks at a woman with lust, whether he is a layman or a monk, will be equally punished for adultery. Why are you staring at someone else's face? Why are you rushing into the abyss? Why are you putting yourself online? Protect your eyes, cover your vision, lay down a law for your eyes, listen to Christ, Who, threatening, equates a shameless gaze with adultery, Who loves to look at beautiful faces, he most of all kindles the flame of passion in himself and, making the soul a captive of passion, soon begins to fulfill the wish. If you want to look and enjoy your gaze, then look constantly at your wife and love her; No law prohibits this. If you look at someone else’s beauty, you will offend both your wife, turning your gaze away from her, and the one you are looking at, since you touch her contrary to the law. Don't say: what if I stared at beautiful woman? If you commit adultery in your heart, you will soon dare to commit adultery in your flesh. Adultery is a consequence of vanity, sensual lust and excessive voluptuousness. If your brother has gone astray, do not revile him with hurtful words, do not mock him. You will not bring him any benefit by doing this, but you will only harm him (John Chrysostom).

The pillar rests on a foundation, and lustful passion rests on satiety (Nile of Sinai).

Adultery is eradicated by the one who turns his eyes downward and his soul to the Lord (Efrem the Syrian).

A woman who dresses up in order to arouse the lust of the intemperate is already committing fornication in her heart (Basily the Great).

And that by God’s permission you have been allowed to fight prodigal thoughts, and especially demonic dreams, then don’t be too surprised that such stinginess is represented in your dreams by the all-evil enemy! But just, my beloved daughter, know that this permission was not granted to you lightly! But for the contempt of others, some of the weak ones: apparently, in her thoughts she secretly condemned and scorned. And therefore, secretly, the grace of God departs not far from us, and the greedy enemy, seeing us defenseless, takes revenge on us and<повергает>into such placeless and stingy thoughts and imaginations. But we, having been punished by this event and tired to the point of exhaustion, and as if we were wounded and wounded, let us resort to the All-True Physician of our souls and bodies, our Lord Jesus Christ, as if we were infants and who knew by experience our weakness and insignificance! And let us ask the All-Merciful God, that He Himself may take revenge on our rival, the seducer, the devil, for us who are weak and fall into his nets filled with sorrows. And may he preserve us who are weakest from all the arrows of the enemy (Venerable Leo). Call upon the prayers of those who labored for purity, the holy martyr Thomaida, Saint John the Long-Suffering, Saint Moses Ugrin, and the prayers of the spiritual fathers and all mothers; and consider yourself the worst of all. During the struggle, all these means are useful... N. say: when he humbles himself, then the fighting will subside - sleep less, eat less, beware of idle talk, condemnation and do not like to adorn yourself with a good dress, guard your eyes and ears. All these means are protective; not yet allow thoughts to enter the heart, but when they begin to come, rise up and ask for help from God (St. Macarius). M., when it is absolutely not necessary to protect her doors with barriers about her lips, (then) otherwise it is impossible for her to free herself from the embarrassment and torment of the most voluptuous excuses and thoughts of fornication, and from them - boredom and despondency, and then the most destructive thoughts of despair (Venerable Leo) . You write that you are attacked by lustful thoughts, but from prayer you do not have the consolation that you had before, and you do not feel warmth. Continue to force yourself to pray, do not become discouraged and do not grow cold. Although you are sometimes defeated in your thoughts, again turn to God with a new fervor of jealousy and zeal and, in humility of spirit and hope in His mercy, continue the usual prayers at home and in church, surrendering all of yourself to the will of God. Take care of your conscience and eyes, have the fear of God, think more often about death, oh Last Judgment and that if now you do not control yourself in a good life pleasing to God, then later you will completely weaken towards goodness. Arm yourself against lustful thoughts by abstinence in food and sleep, try to always be at work and in business, and most of all, always have humility and self-reproach in everything, do not condemn anyone (Venerable Ambrose). For the sake of prodigal passion, pray to St. John the Long-Suffering and the Holy Martyr Thomaida, making three bows every day. Pray also for those sisters towards whom you have dislike and inequality. As it is said: pray for one another, that you may be healed (St. Joseph). Prodigal dreams happen at night in a dream... When this happens, you should bow 50 times and read: “Have mercy on me, O God,” Psalm (50) When prodigal thoughts attack, pray to the holy martyr Thomaida. And say the Jesus Prayer more strongly... (Venerable Anatoly). You ask me to tell you a way to get rid of lustful thoughts. Of course, as the holy fathers teach: the first thing is to humble yourself, the second thing is not to look at the deacons or the young children, and the third thing, most importantly, is to be patient (Venerable Anatoly). At the same time you complain about your neighbor who disagrees with you and about your lustful passion. You're a wonderful girl! You stupid nun! It burns her on the right with fire, and pours cold water on her on the left. Yes, you foolish one, take water and pour it on the fire! That is, be patient with your weak sister! And the passion for fornication will fade away. After all, this passion lives and is supported by hellish fervor (arson) - pride and impatience! Be patient and you will be saved! Let the enemy and the flesh oppress you, but I will not stop repeating to you the word of the Psalm: “Be patient with the Lord, be of good courage and be strong.” your heart, and be patient with the Lord!” () (Venerable Anatoly). Saint Mark the Ascetic says in his spiritual law: “the root of lust is the love of human praise and glory.” Lust intensifies, as other holy fathers say, when a person loves bodily peace (in food, drink and sleep) and especially when he does not keep his eyes from tempting objects (St. Ambrose). You are worried about inappropriate carnal abuse. Where there should be spiritual benefit for you, here the enemy manages to create a temptation for you. Despise this, because the absurdity of absurdities is such a suggestion of the enemy. You write that in this struggle it seems to you that someone is standing next to you. Similar things happen when a person, during confession, either completely forgot some important sin, or did not know how to confess something as he should have. Pray to the Queen of Heaven and Guardian Angel to help you remember and confess this. Then the worthwhile dreaming will pass. You also need to humble yourself before God and people, considering yourself worse than everyone else. Due to carnal warfare, I find it inappropriate for you to go to Moscow for treatment. This will intensify this struggle even more. It is better to suffer from illness in order to atone for your sins. - This is more correct (Rev. Ambrose). (Optina elders).

Anonymous: I want to ask you for help. For a long time, since childhood, I have been guilty of the sin of malakia (masturbation, masturbation), and I have also become addicted to various erotica and pornography, which I searched for in magazines, and later on the Internet. I understood that this was a sin, I repented, I tried not to sin, but I lost it again. And so on all the time.
One day, on the Internet, I found a special course for those who are addicted to pornography and masturbation. I started taking this course, but quit before finishing it, and again fell into sin.
And now, I decided to go through it again. Look at the link, what do you think about this course?

O. Seraphim: According to my concepts, this course is a replacement of bodily voluptuousness with mental one. Many drug addicts are cured of drug addiction in the same way. The sensations that mental voluptuousness brings are much stronger than the sensations emanating from bodily voluptuousness. And therefore, a person easily moves from one passionate state to another, stronger one. And if demons also induce voluptuous sensations, then most immediately perceive this as an action of Grace. And thus, they enter into spiritual delusion. Prodigal demons do not touch such people. And they perceive this as a gift of purity from God. In the end, it is an illusion, a demonic deception.

This is called the illegal path of liberation from passion. For the goal should not be liberation from such and such a passion, but the salvation of the soul. And it can be accomplished only through liberation from passion, on legally.

Freedom from passion, accomplished and achieved not on a legal basis, is an illusion and self-deception, the replacement of one passion with another, stronger one. In reality, this is a state of destruction, perceived by people as freedom from passions, due to spiritual delusion and blindness.

A lawful struggle with any passion should lead a person to an experienced knowledge and feeling of his weakness. For, as the Lord said, « My strength», those. action God's grace, connecting passion, "made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9).

But if this is not the case, then such a struggle gives rise to conceit and a spirit of self-confidence. Hence, such deliverance from passions will be accomplished on the basis of the spirit of selfhood and, thus, will lead a person to the spirit of self-affirmation, i.e. to spiritual delusion and self-delusion.

Our struggle, on its own, without God’s help, is powerless. It only shows our desire not to sin. And if this desire, in this struggle, is combined with a feeling of one’s weakness (a feeling of powerlessness to overcome passion on one’s own), with a contrite and humble spirit, dissolved in a feeling of trust and hope in God’s mercy alone, then this mood of the spirit attracts us, into the soul , saving Grace. Only such deliverance from passion is salutary for the soul.

But nowadays there is nowhere to escape from temptations. Because they are everywhere. Of course, in places more remote, from crowds of people and from various centers, they are in to a lesser extent, but they still exist.

And therefore, “it is impossible for someone living in the midst of temptations not to be influenced by temptations. Just as ice, when exposed to heat, loses its hardness and turns into the softest water: so a heart, filled with good will, being subjected to the influence of temptations, especially constant ones, relaxes and changes” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, vol. 5, ch. 30) .

Therefore, in the living conditions in which we find ourselves - with modern life, with its Sodomo-Gomorite temptations. In a situation and conditions that have never been seen before, in order not to be corrupted, the best option is to get married. For lust is natural to man, and man cannot simply remove it from himself. “Do not think to cast down the demon of fornication with objections and evidence; for he has many convincing justifications, as fighting against us with the help of our nature” (Ladder 15, paragraph 24).

Therefore, in your desire, ultimately, you must have the intention of getting married. And ask God about it. And at the same time, fight with your passion, presenting your weakness before God, asking Him for help. And then the Lord will see that you want to get married because of the feeling and awareness of your weakness, and not just self-confidently staying in the middle of the world, with its Sodomo-Gomor temptations. And then, for the consciousness and feeling of your weakness, for humility, according to your requests and petitions to Him, the Lord can give you relief in battle and struggle.

Others, due to the fact that they lack an experienced feeling and knowledge of their weakness - due to being possessed by the spirit of self-confidence and arrogance, conceit, the spirit of selfishness and pride - follow the path of illegal asceticism and deliverance from passions, through false asceticism. Demons do not touch such people: “From some, not only the faithful, but also the unfaithful, all passions have departed, except one. This alone they leave as the primary evil that fills the place of all other passions; for it is so harmful that it can overthrow from heaven itself” (Ladder, f. 26, paragraph 62). – These, in spirit, turn out to be demonic ascetics, hiding behind the robes of truth, hiding behind Christian, Orthodox terminology. These are the New Testament Pharisees, sitting on the spirit of selfishness and pride, from among whom, according to the prophecies of the Holy Fathers, the Antichrist should emerge.

You can also read my concepts and opinions here .

Anonymous: I am obsessed with the passion of handjob (masturbation), and I also constantly sin with my eyesight. I listened and read your conversations on this topic, and I want to free myself from this passion. But I can't do anything.
Two years ago I had the idea of ​​becoming a monk, and I wanted to go to a monastery, thinking that in this way I would get rid of passion. But after your conversations, and everything that I read, as well as seeing what was going on around me, I came to the conclusion that I need to get married. But at the same time, the thought overcomes: first get rid of masturbation, and then get married. What do i do?

O. Seraphim: The reason that a person cannot overcome this passion is a skill, a habit. And most importantly, the spirit of conceit, self-confidence and pride. For God allows these falls in order to humble our conceit and arrogance. – To crush our self-confident and arrogant spirit. We must begin to recognize our weakness in this struggle and every time a desire arises, we must fall before God, externally or in our soul, and cry out to Him for help until the desire passes. And so every time. And also, in the morning or evening, ask God for deliverance from this passion. And if you fall, then do not slow down in this state of mind, but immediately warm up the feeling of contrition, bring yourself to the point of determination and inspiration to fight again. And, laying down your weakness before God, ask Him for help, so that he does not abandon you in this battle.

A person must be in a state of struggle with his passions. Through this struggle and fall, in the midst of temptations, he must not look for excuses for his fall, citing circumstances, but come to the knowledge of his weakness, and fall warmer and more fervently to God, calling on Him for help.

And especially in those moments when passion arises, one must present one’s weakness before God and strenuously, with a feeling of trust and hope, cry out to Him for help. To do this, you can retire somewhere in these moments to fall on your knees and ask God and cry out to Him until the passionate desire passes. And if there is nowhere to go, then try to do the same inside, in feelings and sensations, trying to turn them to God. To do this, it is enough to turn your feelings and spirit to God, thirsting for deliverance from Him. In this matter, the main thing is: feelings and thirst of the spirit turned to God.

You just need to learn to wage war, struggle, laying down your weakness before the Lord, with the intention of getting married, because of the awareness of your weakness, in the face of temptations. The Lord, seeing your intention - and that it contains a feeling of your weakness, a humble attitude of spirit, and the desire to remain faithful to your future wife - will help you in this struggle.

For in this case, you will protect yourself with humility: 1). Due to the awareness of his weakness, in the face of temptations, - the intention to get married. 2). In moments of temptation, throw your weakness before the Lord, crying out to Him for help, for the sake of maintaining fidelity to your future wife.

And as Holy Scripture says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).This is what the Lord said, "My strength" those. the action of God's grace that binds passion, "made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9).

Instruction, at the moment when passion arises:

If you do not give in to passionate desire and feeling, then as a result of this you will experience sorrow from unsatisfied craving. But we must not run away from this sorrow, but accept it as deserved for our sins. – When passion is unsatisfied, then because of its dissatisfaction it produces sorrow. We must, at this moment, thank God for grief, accept it with joy, as a medicine that cleanses the soul from a passionate state. This will be the humility of the soul before God’s Providence and its entry into the mainstream of God’s will, according to the mood of the spirit, in this moment, in specific circumstances. For only to the humble does God give redeeming Grace: “ God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6).

But you don’t need to listen to the thought, because Marriage is given, not only for procreation, but also for satisfying lust:
“Marriage is given for procreation, and even more so for extinguishing the natural flame. Paul is a witness to this when he says: “But to avoid fornication, each one must have his own wife” (1 Cor. 7:2).Didn't say: for childbirth. And then "stay together" (1 Cor. 7:5 ) He commands not in order to become parents of many children, but for what? "so as not to tempt" speaks, "You are Satan." And continuing his speech, he didn’t say: if they want to have children, so what? “But if they cannot abstain, let them marry” (1 Cor. 7:9). In the beginning, marriage had, as I said, the two aforementioned goals, but later, when the earth, the sea, and the whole universe were filled, only its purpose remained - the eradication of intemperance and debauchery” (St. John Chrysostom, Book on Virginity).

“I do not list marriage among the bad things, but I even praise it very much. It is a haven of chastity for those who wish to use it well, without allowing nature to rage. By presenting legal copulation as a stronghold, and thus holding back the waves of lust, he provides and preserves us in great peace” (St. John Chrysostom, Book on Virginity).

“Marriage is good because it preserves the husband in chastity and does not allow the one who deviates from adultery to perish. Therefore, do not disdain marriage; he brings great benefit by not allowing the members of Christ to become members of a harlot, not allowing the holy temple to be defiled and unclean. He is good because he strengthens and corrects those who are ready to fall” (St. John Chrysostom, Book on Virginity).

“So, firstly, for this reason - those who marry have more peace of mind; and, secondly, because if their flame (of passion) ever rises high, then subsequent copulation will soon extinguish it” (St. John Chrysostom, Book on Virginity).

So, as St. John Chrysostom says: “Marriage is given” not only for “for procreation,” but “even more for extinguishing the natural flame.” For when “the flame (of passion) rises high, the subsequent copulation” with his lawful wife “soon extinguishes it” (Book of Virginity).

Anonymous: What is your doctrine regarding homosexuals?
And can homosexuals be saved from the judgment of the Lord God?

O. Seraphim: Here is our teaching on this issue:“Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, neither malakia nor homosexuals, neither thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor predators - They will not inherit the kingdom of God"(1 Cor. 6:9). We believe as St. Paul says.

Malakis are onanists. Homosexuals are homosexuals. This also includes pedophiles and child molesters. The Apostle Paul does not mention child molesters for the reason that such a sin was very rare in their times. Child molestation, of all these sins, is the most serious and requires greater punishment.

So Equal to the Apostles Tsar Constantine introduced death penalty for sodomy and rape. But there were very few such punishments for these sins. This indicated that there were few such sins in that society. The sins of child molestation in that society were unthinkable. And we are in favor of introducing the death penalty or a very long term of imprisonment for particularly serious sins, such as child molestation and aggravated rape. And if the death penalty for these sins were shown on TV several times, then the level of crime for these sins would immediately fall. And for the future, many others would be saved from these sins. And if there is impunity for all this, then it will never be eradicated. Moreover, they are imprisoned and immediately released. Everything that modern justice and government does only contributes to the spread of these sins.
In theory, they all need to be treated ideologically and mentally. But for this it is necessary that society completely changes and the laws begin to work. But so far there is nothing of this.

And if a person takes the path of repentance and correction for these sins, leaves the sin and does not return to it, then God forgives him those sins for which the person sincerely, sincerely, with all his soul repents and hates this sin. In such cases, you need to help him take the path of correction (but this is a separate topic). There is something about this

Fornication (or lustful passion) is particularly cunning. It can take over a person’s mind and the process of indulging it often becomes the only incentive for life. To shield their passion for fornication, many give it the name “love,” although in reality what is meant is not a pure and bright feeling, but only a physical desire to satisfy their sexual needs.

You will learn more about fornication and methods of combating it from this material.

Speaking about fornication with its psychological aspects, it is imperative to touch upon Christian understanding the meaning of the relationship between a man and a woman. That is, the main life task that the Creator sets for people.

To consider this topic most objectively, one should study patristic anthropology (the doctrine of man).

The Church views the appearance of any kind of passion as a distortion of human essence after a person has committed the act of sin. Christian teaching states that there is one main reason for committing sins - human selfishness, that is, the feeling wrong love person to yourself. It is from here that all human passions and vices begin to grow.

Prodigal passion is no exception.

Please note that the words “fornication” and “to get lost”, “to wander” have the same root. And this means that when a person falls into fornication, he begins to wander far from the Truth. Having allowed a vicious fornication passion into himself, a person inevitably commits not only physical, but also spiritual fornication, as a result of which he moves away and is alienated from the Creator.

The Almighty in His parables reveals to people the sacred secrets of spiritual life and the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who have read the Bible know the parable of the prodigal son. It examines bodily and spiritual fornication and subsequent repentance. The parable, in the literal and figurative senses, demonstrates to us the main meaning of fornication (that is, wandering away from oneself, from the Creator and true love).

The Lord created man in his own image and likeness and endowed him with various gifts. Thus, people have the power of speech, the power of reason and high feelings. Man has truly colossal capabilities and power.

But the problem is, does he really always spend his energy on the right things?

Patristic anthropology says that a person has only two paths. One of them is to be adopted by God. And the second is to indulge oneself, to succumb to one’s passions and whims, and this is the path that leads to the death of a person’s soul.

How is fornication related to pride?

We have already written about the fact that the process of the emergence of any passions is the result of the Fall. To explain it differently, the moment a person decides to do without the Lord, begins to put himself in his place, he is overwhelmed with pride, vanity and self-deception - all these are signs of a distortion of our nature.

It turns out that each of human passions is a consequence of pride - a person’s arrogant intention to arrange his life independently, without divine intervention.

All passions have a close connection with each other and have a mutual influence on each other. For example, the passion of fornication is a consequence of pride. How does this mechanism work?

The priests are convinced that if the Almighty allowed the Devil to have complete power over a person, then the demons would simply tear people to pieces. But the merciful Lord allows the devil’s power to act on a person only to the extent that he is able to resist it and resist temptation.

When a person is subject to the passion of pride (which is blinding), he ceases to see pride in himself and the Lord, in order to pacify him, allows the demon of fornication to attack him. And only by enduring this destructive passion, which is always felt by a person and always torments him, does a person realize that he is proud.

According to the opinion of the holy fathers, the demon of fornication has power over a person solely for the purpose of pacifying pride, because it is such a disgusting vice that everyone tries to hide it, is ashamed of it and does not stick it out. Although today fornication is becoming more and more popular in its various forms and people are even beginning to be proud and exalted about it.

It turns out that we can observe a close connection between the demon of fornication and the demon of pride. But the Almighty does not always quickly free a person from the passion of fornication in order to prevent the development of pride - the most dangerous of all passions.

Suffering from the passion of fornication, a person begins to understand that this vice often indicates his pride or desire to condemn other people.

We can observe a wonderful example from the revelation of the clergyman Paisius the Holy Mountain. He talks about how he once faced a strong temptation with the passion of fornication. He set himself the goal of eliminating this temptation at all costs: he began reading prayers. However, the abuse not only did not stop, but began to intensify even more.

At some point, Paisius suddenly remembered that he had recently condemned a woman who also suffered from fornication. And his condemnation was quite severe. Then he could not even imagine how powerful this passion was and, probably, within himself he began to rise above it. As soon as this episode appeared in his memory, he sincerely repented that he had judged the woman unfairly and his passion immediately left him.

This is a great example of how God gives us passion to keep us from being proud. It is designed to call for humility and repentance and save a person from the sin of judging his neighbors.

What psychologists say about the passion for fornication

Having dealt with the opinion of the clergy regarding the passion of fornication, let’s move on to what psychologists think about this sin.

Psychologists say that often one problem actually has completely different roots. For example, parents come to a psychologist and complain that their child is behaving badly, but in reality they themselves do not give him any free will. Or a person complains that everyone is treating him unfairly, although in reality he himself does not pay due attention to other people.

The same thing happens with the passion of fornication. When a specialist begins practical work with a patient, he often finds a whole range of completely different reasons, violations, and problems.

When considering sexual addiction, it should be noted that it has existential spiritual components - a deep unconscious fear of death, repressed by a feeling of inner devastation, inner loneliness.

It happens that completely different violations occur:

• different types of psychological childhood trauma;
• sexual abuse (if it occurred in adolescence);
• bad, pathological relationships in the child’s family.

All the factors described above begin to “throw” a person into dependence on sex, because in this way he tries to look for a kind of “anesthesia” for himself, an illusory consolation. In reality, of course, he does not receive any consolation, but only begins to fall deeper and deeper into this addiction, losing healthy and correct life guidelines.

The passion for fornication is actually a much more fundamental problem than just addiction to sex. It has a significant connection with the spiritual sphere of the individual. Fornication is a kind of departure, an escape of a person from something, in some cases, a search for a false goal.

The personality begins to wander, trying to find something, his soul is in tossing, but he is looking in the wrong place, and therefore does not find anything.

This applies not only to fornication, but also to other passions. The main goal of every passion is to take possession of a person at all levels: physical, mental and spiritual. It is by the spiritual level that one can determine a person’s connection with the Creator.

Therefore, fighting passion does not simply mean eliminating lustful thoughts from your head, as many may mistakenly think. This means fighting for a person’s personality, for his improvement, in the Christian religion - for the salvation of the souls of the righteous.

If a person turns to a psychologist for help, then his task will be not simply to indicate a means of confronting a given passion, but to guide the person in such a way that he begins to reveal his most best properties soul, learned to fully accept myself. Then, ultimately, through such self-disclosure, all lustful thoughts will disappear from thoughts.

The fight against fornication according to the church

The clergy say that the first stage of the fight against fornication should be abstinence in food (as indicated in the Holy Scripture: “You must punish your thoughts with poverty of food, so that your thoughts are occupied with hunger, and not fornication”).

This means fasting will be required, since the testimonies of the holy fathers indicate that the passion for fornication arises precisely as a result of gluttony. “The pillar stands firmly on its foundation, and in the same way, fornication rests on satiety” (saying of Neil of Sinai). Alcohol abuse will also pose a particular danger.

After all, under the influence of alcohol, a person, firstly, is not able to give a sober assessment of his actions and control his desires.

Secondly, it is alcoholic drinks that can inflame the passion of lust. You don't need to look too long for examples of this. It’s not for nothing that many sexual adventures happen far from being sober. Moreover, here we are not only talking about lost control, because it often happens that in a state of alcoholic intoxication a person is capable of doing things that would not even occur to him on a sober head.

Although it still depends on the amount you drink. It is no secret that at a certain stage of alcohol intoxication, sexual desire basically disappears and the act of copulation becomes completely unattractive or even impossible. In this case, the demon of fornication is replaced by the demon of despondency.

Fornication provokes the development of many other sins and bad deeds, namely:

• prodigal irritation;
• prodigal sensations and the situation in which the heart and soul of a person find themselves;
• accepting unclean thoughts, talking with them, enjoying them, indulging them and procrastinating in them;
• fornication and captivity;
• failure to preserve feelings, especially touch, which is the most important insolence that can destroy all virtues;
• foul language and reading voluptuous literature.

To achieve success in the fight against the passion of fornication, you will need, first of all, a clearly formed intention.

The first thing you need is to clarify and strengthen your motivation. And for this you will need to answer several questions. And this must be done in writing:

1. Think about how wonderful you will feel after overcoming prodigal passion (relationships with girls will be established, in the future it will become possible creation strong happy family, get rid of anxiety and tension, become more joyful and freer inside).
2. For what reasons do you not want to eliminate this passion (for example, you don’t believe that everything will work out, you will need to spend too much time fighting, which you don’t have enough, you will have to deal more with your inner life, but you don’t know how to do this).
3. Describe the consequences that this passion is fraught with (for example, the fear of being alone, that you will not be able to create stable relationships, a family, that you are increasingly isolating yourself from others, you are used to getting rid of tension and anxiety using this method and have no idea how to do it can be done in another way).
4. How firm is your decision to eliminate fornication?
5. Mobilize all your will and be sure to ask the Almighty for help.

It is extremely important that you establish your motivation, because it will give you a boost of strength and energy that will help you cope with failures and mistakes. We need energy so that we never give up, but continue to work on ourselves.

You must have sufficient patience, and also always remember that only God's help will support you in this difficult matter. And then you will certainly achieve success.

In conclusion

In conclusion, it is necessary to say that passion in absolutely any form (this means not only fornication) ends in lack of freedom and internal slavery. If you open New Testament, then in it we find the words of the Apostle Paul: “You are brothers, called to freedom!”

A person often does not know how to manage his freedom with dignity and does not understand true value this feeling. Then he begins to replace freedom with self-will, finding himself imprisoned in the slavery of sins.

The Christian religion is the opportunity granted to man to gain freedom with the help of Jesus Christ.

“The truth will be revealed to you and through the truth you will gain freedom.”

Therefore, if a person wants to achieve a sustainable result in eliminating his passion, then he should work and actively develop his Christian worldview.

If a person does not have a rooted Christian consciousness, he will not be able to solve this problem. Since society is mostly sinful, sin is a powerful factor that gives rise to all types of temptations.

The process of becoming a true Christian is never quick, and often it becomes very difficult and painful - like any birth. In this case, a new personality is born in Christ.

Thanks to Orthodox Church a person can repent of the sins he has committed. And this is a wonderful opportunity to review your actions, thoughts and feelings, which allows you to avoid the temptation to find yourself in a similar situation again, but at the same time does not allow the development of despondency and melancholy from the awareness of your sinfulness.

Every person always has the right to choose - either die hungry in a foreign land, herding pigs, similarly to the prodigal son or return to his Father's house.

Almost a week of time between the days of memory of the two great Kiev-Pechersk ascetics - St. John the Long-Suffering (July 31) and St. Moisei Ugrin (August 8). Both of them are known for their prayerful help in the fight against the passion of fornication.

St. John resisted her so much that he buried himself chest-deep in the ground throughout Lent, and she, in the form of a serpent, attacked the saint, so that his whole body burned with an unbearable fire. And St. Moses, having entered the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra already severely crippled for his desire to maintain chastity, had from God the gift of healing monks from the rage of the flesh with one blow of his staff.

Nowadays we don’t bury ourselves in the ground, does this mean that fornication is not as relevant for us as it was many hundreds of years ago for the Pechersk ascetics? If there is a difference between bodily hunger and overeating with excesses, then maybe not every carnal movement is a sign of lustful passion? Where is the limit of a person’s responsibility for his desires, if, for example, the Lord Himself said to a woman: “Your desire is for your husband”?..

We decided to ask these and other questions to Archpriest Andrei TKACHEV, publicist and preacher, rector of two Kyiv churches - in the name of St. Agapit of Pechersk and in the name of St. Luke of Crimea, united into one parish, known for its active missionary activities.

The conversation took place on the day of St. John the Long-Suffering. On the day of memory of St. Moisei Ugrin brings it to the attention of readers.

“We are all capitulators to fornication. That’s why there is no war, because everyone surrendered.”

– Father Andrey, for whom is the conversation about this passion relevant, if it is relevant today at all?

– One person asked another person for help: I ​​am tormented by various thoughts. And he says to him: if you didn’t have thoughts, you would have deeds...

If a person does not recognize thoughts of fornication in himself, which he feels as an invasion of himself and something alien, then he is so immersed in fornication that he does not even notice it.

– But there are no visible manifestations. It cannot be said that, for example, morals are loose in the Orthodox community...

– There are no visible manifestations of committing fornication, in this sense? Firstly, it only “seems”. And secondly, the level of human biological activity has decreased. Previously, fasting was needed, for example, for real weakening of the flesh, because the person was strong and healthy. In some recent 19th century for us, a man, as it is written in the life of Elder Silouan, could eat 200 fried eggs on Easter, kill a three-year-old bull with his fist (Sholokhov has such Cossacks in every village).

And over the last century, man has seriously fallen in vital strength, he has become weak. And now he does not need fasting as a way to curb the flesh - the flesh is already weak. The post has already switched to the informative side: you need to limit yourself from information, weed out the unnecessary, give rest to your head, eyes, tongue; remain silent, move away from irritants, seek silence.

As for fornication... Are there any attempts at any terrible outrages? - Well, thank God it’s not. But it seems to me that we, the children of modern civilization, are all capitulators to fornication. That’s why there is no war, because everyone surrendered (this is speaking on a macro scale). This front has been surrendered, and therefore there is no one to fight with. But the war is felt by those who suddenly said to God: “That’s it, I am coming to You, God, away from all filth.” And went. And he began to do something that was a little similar to how the Pechersk ascetics fought. And then this dormant, idle evil force, suddenly surprised to find one “Mohican” who had not died, comes to him and begins to fight with him. And then literally the same thing happens to him that happened to John the Long-Suffering.

John was so tormented that he could not look at the faces: neither men’s, nor women’s, nor children’s. That is, he simply could not look at people, could not be among them. Any stay among people, hearing a voice, touching any human part of the body - a shoulder, an arm - plunged him into some kind of hell. To do this, he went into a cave and lived there for a very long time, so that, without seeing anyone and fasting, he could kill, at least, the source of irritation within himself. And this was also not enough, because it all lived inside. He buried himself in the ground, and then the devil came to him like a snake.

This struggle remains relevant for all people. Where there is a struggle, there is a revelation of the devil. When there is a struggle, then he reveals his presence. Why reveal your presence next to non-fighting people? So that they die of fear?..

As for me, this question is quite understandable. Our civilization is a civilization of people who have capitulated to many sins and to fornication in particular.

We capitulated to the love of money. Before pride - too. We love ourselves, we want to live comfortably, we love money, and we have become enslaved to fornication in its various forms, including mental.

- So what should we do?

– Good question. First of all, you need to be honest with yourself, it seems to me. There is no need to pretend to be something that you are not. There is no need to pretend to be a Christian of the first centuries. There is no need to pretend to be a winner over passions. You need to not pretend to be anything and honestly try to understand: “Who am I really?”

Having understood who I am, you need to understand what I can do. And this honest way of life in the face of God will probably be saving.

What to do? The Lord has not changed, He is the same forever. We must seek Him, and on the way to Him we must find ourselves, because we do not know ourselves. This may sound very general, but we need to ask where the Lord is. It is written in the prophets that the priests will be punished for early morning They didn’t ask where the Lord was. We must seek God and strive for Him. And only on this path does a person begin to find himself, and what is hidden in him reveals itself.

In a compressed form, all sins are present in us, and repentance must be brought to God not only for the facts of your sinful biography you have committed, but also for what is hidden in you, which you do not know about yourself.

There is such a fabulous turn: are you ready to give me something that you yourself don’t know about at home? As a rule, people are ready. And what people don’t know about themselves is either the most precious thing they have, or the worst thing about them. In terms of sins, probably the worst thing about us is that we don’t know about ourselves. And the most precious thing is what we value least. Probably so.

I think that all of us, people, are in a criminal state of soul and mind, in which we know neither good nor bad about ourselves. We do not value the best in ourselves; we are not afraid of the worst in ourselves. Therefore, it is probably impossible to save a person, because he does not know himself. Who can be saved if instead of you, a person, there is one continuous illusion, only continuous ideas about oneself and a set of masks...

Spiritual life reveals a person. She does not automatically turn him into an ascetic, but removes his masks. Our rickety, sort of Paralympic attempts to portray giants of spirit - they are actually ugly. Our fasting, our prayers, our spiritual training, in general, our way of life is often ugly, unfortunately.

Words such as “temptation”, “pride”, “hell”, “consolation”, “grace”, “paradise”, “passion”, “visitation of God”, “faded passion”, “awakened passion” - these are all not some archaic terms, but real phenomena. And real passions - they gnaw at you like dogs and sting you like wasps...

In order to positively fill a person’s life, we need to fill all the gospel vocabulary that we so easily use with inner experience, a living sensation. In fact, it's all there. And then a person understands what he is like, and in total this all gives rise to two words: “Lord, have mercy!”

“And gluttony reaches the point of nausea. Fornication is dangerous because it has no end.”

– Father, we have gone deep into the topic, but can we ask a few questions that are on the surface? There is hunger, when you want to eat, and there is passion, which is called gluttony. So in this case: where is the difference between the carnal hunger that a person experiences by nature, and the lustful passion that fights him. How to distinguish them?

– The fact is that the ancients believed that a person’s bodily needs in terms of sexual communication with the opposite sex were as natural as eating food. Breathing, eating, drinking, satiating sexual needs and desires are equally natural, therefore, they are not shameful, not blameworthy, and there is no point in casting a shadow over the fence. That's what they thought.

But the Apostle Paul says - and this is the novelty of Christianity - that “food is for the belly and the belly is for food, but God will abolish both. But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”

The New Testament, as it were, invades, drives a wedge into these concepts and says that there will be another life - without food. But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body, therefore grace, which really acts on a person, gives him new plan an existence in which new interests arise and old ones disappear. A person is not abolished as a man, does not disappear as a woman, but something important appears in his life, and this main thing silences what used to speak loudly. Grace, without changing nature, fills a person with a different meaning.

Surely each of us knows such states when the flesh is silent if we are busy with something serious: work, raising children, writing scientific work, reading a good book or standing for a long time during Lent services. Then you keep everything unimportant to the side, and the flesh is silent, submissive to the spirit. She is, as it were, in a sacred state of slavery and performs her work.

But we also know another state, when the flesh begins to declare its rights as a rebellious plebs: “I want!” The soul tries to squeak something in response, but it cannot be heard. The flesh rears up, and that’s all: the person is already obsessed with some other desires, does not know what to do, as if he is languishing on fire... We all know both. We can all compare these two states.

There is a struggle with passion, when passion has awakened and demands its way, but you don’t give anything - you grabbed each other by the throat and both are strangling each other. This is a rare thing now.

We read in the patericons that people, like wrestlers in the arena, fought with passion: it crushes them, and they crush it. She fires up a person, but he takes it and doesn’t eat, for example, all day. She presses him further, and he goes to sleep on the floor, not on the bed. She presses him further, and he begins to bow. She is this, and he is that, and he crushed her or she crushed him - it happens differently.

I think, modern people completely forgot how to do this. In terms of fighting, we have completely lost experience. I apologize, but even among the monks it is difficult to find a person who would know this struggle and would wage it patiently.

There is another type of struggle: when you don’t fight passion directly, but as if you don’t notice it, you continue to do your own thing, something good. For example, you take care of the sick. And while you are caring for them, passion is suppressed by grace and does not manifest itself.

This is how, it seems to me, one can distinguish the degrees of struggle. That is, you can go above it without noticing, or you can fight it.

How can you differentiate whether a desire is natural or not? It is said: “Do not turn cares for the flesh into lusts.” The need for food and clothing is natural, but it can develop into gluttony, delicacy, or some kind of ostentation.

Fornication is dangerous because it has no end. And gluttony reaches the point of nausea. Any fattest person, even if he doesn’t dare to run in the morning, can have liposuction. But fornication tends to develop more and more, reaching the wildest forms of satisfying brooding passions, the existence of which a person could not even guess in himself. Fornication expands the field of its activity and at some stage changes a person so that he can no longer look at the world with a more or less pure look, but sees everyone as a sexual object. Fornication changes the very view of the world.

And in this sense, we need to evaluate the role of marriage. The natural barrier to fornication is marriage - not asceticism, but precisely marriage. Marriage introduces the sexual sphere into a clear channel and gives it a certain law. In this sense, marriage is invaluable, especially when a person loses the strength and ability to fight fornication. Then the virtues of marriage increase.

There were times when people were spiritually stronger and could afford to treat marriage with disdain. The apostle writes: unmarried people think about how to please the Lord, but married people think about how to please their wife/husband. The Apostle recommended everyone to remain like him - single.

But today, as we are less and less able to serve the Lord, the dignity of marriage increases. Marriage makes a person chaste, fulfills the most primary and necessary saturation of sexual needs, and the saturation is legal, given by God, preventing lusts from developing into something unnatural.

“I think that in the Kingdom of Heaven liberation from the languor of the flesh awaits us”

– You mentioned the words of the apostle that the Lord will abolish both food and stomach. Do you have any ideas about what will happen with other bodily desires? Will that “thorn in the flesh” that the apostle speaks about, and in which many mean sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, go anywhere?

- I don’t know if it will work. Here it is appropriate to discuss what it would have been like if there had been no Fall. And how it will be later is difficult to think about, this is a question of the future, which has not yet been given, it has only been determined. I think a person can expect such a metamorphosis, comparable to the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. When everything changes completely, when a crawling creature becomes winged.

– Will everyone “remain like angels”?

- I think yes. The Gospel teaches this. Liberation awaits us from this languor associated with the flesh and all these things. All this will temporarily and functionally die out, because the function will fulfill itself.

Dostoevsky said (and not only he) that humanity, as it multiplies, strives for a certain goal. Because humanity is one thing. One person cannot contain within himself, in one life, the achievement of a universal human goal. Everyone pours water into a common mill. The reason we multiply is because we strive together for a common goal. You have done some part of the work, you leave behind offspring, and they continue to do this work. Everyone adds something to this universal human treasure.

There is a very correct intuition in this. Why did Western society stop reproducing? People don't want to get married. If they get married, they don’t want to give birth, and if they give birth, they only give birth to one or two and say: “Stop, that’s enough.” Why? Because they feel accomplished. Society is developed, what else is needed? The only interesting thing is to move to other planets or decode the human genome. “We live comfortably and well, our rights and needs are balanced.”

Humanity, as it multiplies, strives for a certain goal, this is clear. Why shouldn't a monk reproduce? Because he (or she) achieved the goal, he was moved by Christ. Did you find Christ? -Found. Did you cling to Him and hug Him by the knees? What else do you want, where should you reproduce? All! The one who reaches the goal does not reproduce. And he who is on the way prolongs himself in posterity.

Therefore, in the Kingdom of God the need for reproduction will be abolished. The multiplication of humanity reaching Paradise will be resurrection of the dead. So many of them have already been born that all the resurrected ones who lived before will make up the fullness of humanity.

But to speculate about what it would have been like if there had been no Fall, this is a curious thing, maybe not so easy to think about, not very safe, but interesting.

As far as I know, Western theologians, for example, St. Augustine, believed that a person without lust would reproduce if he did not sin. He would dispassionately attract his girlfriend to him the way a friend hugs another. And all this in people would not be associated with some kind of shame, fear, intensity of passions, palpitations, insomnia, painful fantasies of an inflamed imagination, jealousy and other things. The mind would control it all.

That is, Western theologians think that a person would control everything that happens with his mind, everything would be, so to speak, cold and dispassionate.

But the Easterners think on the contrary, that it would be as natural as the functions of, say, swallowing, blinking, which are not controlled by the mind. The mind does not interfere with 90% of what the body does.

It would be the same here: the function of reproduction would be given to a place where there is no sin, but there is no mind, because sin arises where there is mind.

An interesting topic to ponder is what it would be like if we were not sinners. You can understand a little how it would be by looking at truly loving people who do not cheat on each other, who got married out of love. However, they also have a place for sin, because they, too, at times are jealous, quarrel, and envy.

“Marriage was not designed by God to be worn like shackles. Many things were created by God for man to enjoy.”

– You say marriage is holding you back. But marriage is also different. For some, everything is easy - they love each other, live together in pleasure, and take care of each other. And for others, everything is through force: joy is difficult, intimacy is difficult, communication is difficult. Is it possible to say that those who do everything in marriage through force and forcing themselves are worthy of blame, while those for whom everything is easy lead the right lifestyle?

- No, rather the opposite. He who does everything through strength is worthy of praise, because everything that is done out of duty, through strength, has a greater reward than what is done out of love and easily.

- But why does this happen? After all, it’s natural to love children, your spouse, come home, take care... Why can everything change at some point?

– You see, it seems to me that everything natural has become a rarity not today or even yesterday. We are now in a very difficult situation, when what is natural has already become a Red Book. Naturalness is dying.

And a marriage that was not concluded for love or that quickly lost love is generally a disaster, it is a prison sentence. I can hardly imagine how millions of people live, who are married out of necessity, under the pressure of circumstances, out of habit, for the sake of children...

– Christians fall into this category primarily because they cannot divorce in principle.

- Absolutely right. Christians are among the first to fall into this category, and they are bound big amount moral obligations. In this case, they, unfortunately, turn into slaves on the galley. Those who will carry this heavy cross to the end will probably be saved.

But it seems to me that this is not what marriage is made for. Marriage was not intended by God to be worn like shackles, but on the threshold of Paradise to throw off these shackles and enter Paradise. Many things were created by God for man to enjoy and through joy to experience existence. Being as the source of joy and God as the source of being.

But, apparently, everything has deteriorated so much that one can only groan and sigh about how the most sacred thing is turning into a burden. Why is that? This is not the business of our brains; we will not be able to give a comprehensive answer. Maybe people are in a hurry to get married. Maybe the marriage is under. We are under pressure from some external circumstances - pressure from parents or premature pregnancy. Maybe personal immaturity pushes people into each other’s arms, and then, having matured, they suddenly realize that there is a stranger nearby.

There can be a lot of things here. But, definitely, a marriage that is not consummated true love, is a punishment.

- So what to do?

– This is an even more difficult question, there is no answer to it. Because we are dealing with specific married couples. But since the marriage has already been concluded, children have been born, then what can there be...

Although people who are voluntarists are not afraid of anything, they throw off any yoke that seems unbearable to them, look for new happiness, try to embark on adventures, or, while maintaining the appearance of marriage, look for a life of their own on the side.

Today, the responsibility for getting married has increased greatly.

– How good can it be in marriage?

– Marriage can be good to an almost heavenly state. Marriage is a real, maximum resemblance to the union of Christ and the Church.

But even the most serious marriage must go through serious tests. The bitterness of possible loss must go through a marriage, because the price of everything is determined by the fear of real loss. Either this is the threat of death through illness, or separation through betrayal... Cooling of feelings and then their resurrection - even the most successful marriage must go through all this, it seems to me.

This is what I think: it is important that every person at every stage of his life grows up and changes his attitude towards the world and himself in line with growing up.

What do I mean? For example, a 3 year old child. He was taught to believe in God, he has some kind of faith that there is Jesus Christ, there is the Mother of God, there are commandments, there are some responsibilities. Then he will be 7 years old. He will go to school, get into society outside the family. His faith must grow, that is, a 3-year-old faith at the age of 7 will no longer satisfy him. Many questions arise: why is there so much evil in the world; why there are things that I don’t want to do, but should; and what does God say about this; He always looks at me or not; what is sin and so on.

Then there will be 14 years, and the faith of a 14-year-old person should be 14 years old. Then it will be 25 years old and at 25 years old a person cannot believe with the faith of 14 years. He needs to be trusted adequately. Then he will be 50, then he will have to die, and in each of these periods faith must be adequate. That is, the faith of an old man is not equal to the faith of a child.

It’s the same, it seems to me, with love. People met, and they have their own share of love. If they want to live their whole lives on this share of love, then this is stupid. Because when they get married, a month later they will already have a second measure of love, completely different from the one they had at the time of their meeting. And then they lived for two or three years, managed to break the plates, tried to go to their mothers, or something else happened, they got to know each other more deeply - both in good and bad. And we need to go through all this and love each other with a greater degree of responsibility. If their love does not catch up with them, and the experience of life does not pull up the experience of shared love, then this love will remain in the past, wither away as a vestige. This, in fact, is the main conflict of married life. It is necessary for feelings to mature along with a growing person.

Then, I think people should fall in love with each other again after a certain period, for example every 5-7 years. Because when we were 22, we had the same love. When we reached 30, a lot has changed in our bodies, in our brains, and in our living conditions. There is a need to fall in love with each other again.

Why, for example, do spouses sometimes need to relax together without children, or go somewhere without anyone, or just find time to talk with each other? Because people need to get to know each other again. People are quite deep creatures. I can live side by side with someone, having some kind of primitive relationship with the person. Then suddenly something happens and I say: “Listen, you’re like this interesting person. I’ve lived next to you for 20 years and didn’t know you.” The person opens up, and you are suddenly surprised - wow! Deep down he has a lot of hidden talents and untapped potential.

We can see this in a perverse way when someone else falls in love with your partner. And he sees in him something that you no longer see. You have blurred your eye, and thanks to his eyes, you suddenly discover with horror that next to you is the most wonderful person. But someone else revealed it to you; he saw it, but you didn’t. And then this third one opens your eyes to what you have. But it would be better without it. It’s better for you to open your eyes to your loved one.

In a word, this is all moving towards old age, and at each stage there is an opportunity, as it were, to get to know a person again, to fall in love with him again. I think a person should have several such roller coasters - up and down with breathtaking excitement - in their life. Otherwise the marriage will fall apart. I am more than sure that a person needs to fall in love more than once in his life. And it is best to fall in love with your own wife (husband).

“There are things in life where you have to say: no, stop, I’m not going any further. Because then the point of no return comes."

– Can I ask a question about falling in love? What is this? Can we say that this is a type of passion for fornication?

- You see, I think none of the fornicators began to fornicate because they decided so from the beginning. Everything is much more complicated, more cunning. In general, it is the soul that commits fornication, not the body. The body obediently submits to the soul. That is, fornication begins in the brain, in the heart, in the consciousness, and then the rest of physics and mechanics are involved. Moreover, she connects obediently and inevitably, like a wife to her husband in a classic marriage, so matter submits to the spirit. Therefore, no one can attribute fornication to a bodily function alone. As Skovoroda said: “Don’t judge the world, this corpse is not guilty of anything.” We ourselves are to blame for everything we do; the world doesn’t play a role here at all.

So, as for falling in love, there are many interesting things here. Falling in love, it seems to me, corresponds to some kind of unfinished childhood, this is the property of an immature person. If this is a girl, then these are such wide-open eyes, and her spiritual portrait can be drawn with bows.

An amorous person is a curious person with a childish mind; he wants to be loved, to be paid attention to, to devote some time to him, to give him some emotional part of his life. And he himself looks at the world with a child’s eye, and other people’s things seem more interesting than his own. As they say, “someone else’s wife is always a girl,” she is always more interesting.

I repeat once again: this is a property of immature people. And since people grow up asynchronously with the aging of the body (physically he may have matured for a long time, but mentally, perhaps, he has not yet begun this process), they can fall in love until old age.

But if at some age this is completely natural, then at another age it will already be pathological. All this must end someday. If a person has not outgrown this by the age of 40, then he seems to have been delayed in development.

And physical fornication comes later. For example, a woman is amorous and emotionally cannot hide her interest in someone. A person pays her in the same coin, either out of elementary gallantry, or with reciprocal interest. But there the spirit is not far from the flesh. And in general, hay and fire cannot be kept close to each other for a long time; even if the hay is wet, it will still dry out and burst into flames. Physics will catch up with the psyche.

There is a novel I recommend reading, Kobo Abe’s “Woman in the Sands.” This is a creepy little book about the inevitability of some things. An absurd novel, a novel about a trap that you didn’t even know about... A man finds himself in a sand pit in which a certain woman lives - a terribly ugly one. And the man understands that he will not get out of there, and that he will definitely sleep with this woman, although she is terrible, and if he were free, he would never dare to do this.

This is how things happen sometimes. There are certain inevitable things that you cannot dodge if all previous steps have already been taken in this direction. Imagine it as a slide, a springboard. While you are walking along the stairs, climbing this springboard, you can stop at any time and go down. And when you have already entered the springboard - this is the last point of freedom, you can still go down. But when I pushed off from the springboard, then freedom ended and necessity began. You will fly it to the end, break away from it, and then land or crash - there are options here.

So it is in human life. There are points at which you have to say: no, stop, I'm not going any further. But there are points of no return, after which freedom ends and necessity begins. As a rule, then physics comes into its own and fornication is simply mechanically committed, which had already been committed in the soul.

Why is it said: I saw - I wanted, which means I have already committed adultery in my heart. That is, there, in the depths, everything has already happened; now the question is how it will be actualized, how the body will be involved in what has already happened in the heart.

“The crisis begins with the main thing, and the main thing in the world is a man”

– Tell me, to what extent can we talk about a woman’s responsibility for her desires, if the Lord said to Eve after the Fall, as a curse, the words “your desire is for your husband.” According to these words, it turns out that a woman has a greater desire for a man than a man for her...

– A woman needs a man more than a woman needs a man, that’s a fact. A woman needs a man essentially; she is attracted to him not for pleasure, but for life. She simply cannot live otherwise.

A man is attracted to a woman for pleasure. Essentially, he can do it without her, albeit with difficulty.

Therefore, a woman, accordingly, has less sin - due to her inevitable attraction to a man. Just as a bird wants to fly into the sky, so a woman wants to get married or take wing. There is nothing to blame her for in this sense.

Why does a woman in the East wear a burqa? Because a man looks at a woman as an object of desire. But when a woman looks at a man, there is no lust; she is looking for the owner, there is a search for strength and wisdom. Therefore, she is allowed to look at men, but men are not allowed to look at her. That is, his gaze is impure, but hers is pure.

Although in our world everything doubles, triples and requires clarification. In the Middle Ages, women were classically considered the source of all evil. “The devil himself couldn’t do it, so he sent the woman” - that’s what they said. And great men have fallen through women, because a woman knows how to get where no one else can get. This is true. But this does not mean that all female nature is to blame.

As for responsibility... It seems to me that responsibility for the whole world lies with men. I would not blame women for anything in the context of this conversation. I would say that the whole burden for existence, for the world, lies on the shoulders of men. And if they withdraw themselves from responsibility for the world, then everything goes to waste. And our women would be more beautiful and amazing in all respects - from beauty to intelligence, if men were real men - responsible, masters of the word, wise, strong, patient, for whom it is not a shame to hide.

The crisis begins with the main thing, and the main thing in the world is a man. If the best spoils, then there is no point in blaming those who are on the sidelines. And women in the world are in second place.

– And for the third time during this conversation I’ll ask the question: what to do? It is clear that we need to properly raise future men - little boys...

It’s scary to say, but in many cases nothing can be done. On a macro scale, change is often impossible. It's been too long since things got messed up and too long ago. The condition is such that something needs to be done, but nothing can be done. This is the state before a thunderstorm...

If you read history and literature, then before the most terrible changes in the world - before world wars, disasters - the best people the world felt this twofold thought. When something needs to be done, that’s the first thing. And secondly, nothing can be done. And multiplying efforts only increases chaos.

– Father Andrey, I personally like your thoughts and, in general, what you say. But many people see you as a pessimist and say that you are pushing things too hard. And to these words of yours one can object: “Well, not everything is so bad. And Father Andrei is threatening some kind of misfortune”...

- Yes, I’m not threatening. But I can't help but talk about what I see. If a person is pink-cheeked, and the analysis shows that he has a tuberculosis bacillus, then his pink cheeks do not make the doctor complacent about his future health.

Likewise, the priest should be able to see the Koch sticks that are multiplying in our people. We are too sick to hope for any consoling changes.

My pessimism is balanced, fortunately, by the fact that I am a priest. My deep conviction for many years is that the most important thing we have is the Liturgy. And raising the Liturgy to the proper height, turning it into a measure of church life and a worldview measure is the goal. She is like a lifesaver, the touch of which on any aspect of life can miraculously change the world. This is where God intervenes in life.

Moses, when he saw the dust from Pharaoh's chariots on the horizon, knew that this was the end. Actually, it's over. His plans did not include dividing the Red Sea. This was neither his initiative nor his engineering thought.

So we see some kind of process. From the point of view of mathematical analysis, we are heading for disaster very quickly. We are at a bad point on the spiritual map. And it would be a lie to say that everything is wrong.

But there is God. And some historians said that the complete predictability of the process is directly proportional to its lack of spirituality. The more we predict the process, the more spiritual it is. And a spiritual process is when something happens that could not be predicted.

So it is here. I repeat once again - there is a Lord who can part the sea, feed manna in the desert, multiply the loaves and fishes for a large number of hungry people. I'm not discounting this by any means.

But I don’t preach a miracle either. A miracle can only be received as a gift.

- Thank you very much for the conversation! And special thanks for ending it this way.

Yulia Kominko