Repentance or sad soul-searching?
– Indeed, a person just coming to the Church may experience dissonance between what is written in the Gospel and the regular practice of repentance, which, as it may sometimes seem, is the main thing in Orthodoxy.
Tears of repentance, the struggle with passions and sins are spoken of in the texts of divine services, in home prayer rules, and in the works of many holy fathers much more often than about joy.
The word “Gospel” itself is translated as good, that is, joyful news. And we know that the news of the resurrection of Christ was really proclaimed by the apostles and perceived by their contemporaries, and then by the first Christians precisely in this, its main sense. “Rejoice, for death has been conquered.”
A true Christian dispensation always maintains a balance, an internal combination, a golden mean, without depriving itself of joy, but remembering repentance. It is impossible without this, because true joy without penitential labor is false.
But in any case, you will have to start with repentance. Christ said: “First cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside of them may also be clean,” that is, fight sin within yourself. When people tried to fulfill this, a huge experimental science was born: cutting off thoughts, fighting passions, that is, Christian asceticism. The holy fathers call this “contrition of the heart.”
We remember what is said in Psalm 50: “God will not despise a broken and humble heart.” The entire practice of church prayer, all that colossal number of repentant motives in prayers are needed for this heartache to be the basis of a person’s spiritual life.
But even without joy, this heartache is also meaningless and unbearable. If there is no joy, then it will not be repentance, but simply dull soul-searching that does not lead to Christ. It is very easy to slide into it, but difficult to get out. This is the same “sinful sorrow” from which we ask God to deliver us.
The disease of our time
A person can live in such a way that he neither rejoices in joy nor grieves in sorrow. There are also sickly, suspicious people who aggravate their situation too much and believe that they have the heaviest cross to bear. There are still fewer people who know how to truly spiritually rejoice.
But, probably, it would be wrong to pose the question: what is more in spiritual life - sorrow or joy. The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem—is it sorrow or joy? And Christianity is all that. After all, “through the Cross joy came to the whole world”[2], so here it is in no way possible to separate one from the other.
The question is not to go to extremes: joy is the joy that illuminates a person’s world, and sadness should not become despondency... Sadness and despondency are different things.
In general, despondency is a diagnosis of the modern world. Dejection, emptiness... World culture, starting from the first years of the twentieth century, gradually turned into a culture of despondency, albeit with very bright, highly artistic images.
There is human nature, and the laws of this nature are known: a person is close to God - he is full of life, a person retreats from God - he is close to death. Here comes humanity. It lives according to exactly the same laws: as a person is, so is humanity - society. And global things - such as culture, social life - are naturally built on this basis. Culture allows us, as if using a litmus test, to look at what is happening in humanity now. For example, underground culture is a culture of despondency and depression, even if it sometimes blends into a certain Christian context. Postmodernism is a typical, clearly defined complete depression and such cynicism that gives rise to even greater despondency. The absence of any guidelines at all, the absence of any spiritual work, all this pop music, fashion and glamor is also an obvious sign of despondency. A special idea of despondency is the popularity of “Curve Mirrors”, “Full House” and the like. “All-laughing hell”[3], which was horrified when the Lord entered it. “All-laughing hell” takes on such a face... Yes, this is a given - the way it is today. But let us remember that the Lord still broke hell and won!
Why don't you kneel on Sunday?
Return of the Prodigal Son.
Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn. Drawing from 1642 But here’s what’s amazing: when a person is broken-hearted, God comes close to him, and out of humility joy is born. And you understand: despite the fact that over the years of Christian life I know more and more nasty things about myself, I understand that God loves me.
Our joy is precisely about this: in ourselves there is no reason for our salvation, and there is no reason why we hope for anyone else to enter the Kingdom of God, except because He loves us. And this causes unfeigned joy. This joy is not false, but it is not born without penitential labor.
Repentant work, if it does not end in joy, is also in vain. And the task of the Church, the task of the confessor, and then, with experience, of the Christian himself, is to find this repentant remembrance without losing joy. For a Christian, these concepts alternate all the time. So you repent for six days, and then Sunday comes - Little Easter.
Work six days, and on the seventh day rejoice. Think about it: Sunday is a day of rest from worries, on Sunday joy surpasses repentance! Even such a direct expression of repentance as prostration is not allowed on Sunday, and for good reason: on this day you should no longer kneel, because in resurrection a person enters into filial dignity.
The father, as in the parable of the prodigal son, raised you, hugged you, kissed you, and gave you a white robe. And you can't kneel in it because you'll get it dirty.
On Sunday, the conversation about repentance and forgiveness seems to be muted for a while - now there is a feast and a holiday. And the happiness of this holiday is not that Christ came and gave us health, beauty and success. This is a joy that cannot be taken away from us under any circumstances, this is a joy that is not of this world: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is many in heaven.”
There is no one without the other
Joy in Christ and sadness in God are phenomena of the same order. One does not exist without the other. If you have true sadness about your sins, then your joy in God is always real. That's all. You can't imagine anything else here.
And repentance, in my opinion, should be expressed primarily in works. After all, when sins happen to us and we go to confession, most often we do not understand that seeing our sins is, in fact, a great joy. We treat it completely differently: we saw that we had committed a sin and were afraid. And we felt bad: “Oh, what have I done! But if I had not walked along this street and would not have met such a person, if he had not said some word to me and I would not have answered him like that! What a shame that this happened to me!” We don’t understand that we actually did or didn’t do this sin – it doesn’t matter. If there is some sin in me, then sooner or later I will commit it. And therefore, when sins that are obvious to us happen, it is wrong if we treat them simply as annoying failures in our lives or annoying misdeeds: I did something, I said it in confession and now I won’t remember it. Sin is a state, it is not an act, but it is through the act that we learn about our sin. And if the Lord gives us the opportunity to look at ourselves this way, then we can rejoice at this and say: “Lord, I thank You for showing me who I really am; Now I know what I really have to fight with, because I thought I was one thing, but in reality I am another. And even if I didn’t do this yesterday, I won’t do it tomorrow, then today I did it, and if I didn’t do it today, then the day after tomorrow it can happen to me, because this sin is in me, and until I cast it out, it will continue to exist. will fight me."
If we say that sometimes people’s sadness about sins is expressed in some gloom and alienation, then everything comes with spiritual experience, with the acquisition of some kind of sobriety. And then, after all, what’s the point of having fun when we’re bad? Indeed, I want to cry a little about myself. And it seems to me that this is a normal state when a person can seriously grieve like this about who he really is. After all, there won’t be a fight against sin if we take it lightly—and, just think, what’s wrong with that! - and then nothing will happen to us, no change.
Why was Seraphim of Sarov so happy?
The rector of the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian on Maroseyka is Archpriest Fyodor Borodin.
Photo: Pavel Smertin When they talk about joy, they remember Seraphim of Sarov, who greeted everyone who came to him with the words “My joy, Christ is Risen!” This is what always amazed me: a man went into seclusion and hoped to live there until the end of his days. The Mother of God and the apostles appeared to him many times, and we cannot even remotely imagine what revelations the saint had. Seraphim.
Such a life was desirable for him, and there was no reason to return to the world.
But then the Mother of God appears to him and says: “Go and receive the people.” And he begins to communicate with people 24 hours a day. Just like us, because people are the same at all times: petty, judgmental, sad, angry, envious.
People tore the saint away from communion with God, in which he lived and in which he was so successful. But he says to everyone: “My joy.”
He chose these very words for greeting because the arrival of every person was a joy for him. Joy because Christ is Risen, which means we have all been granted salvation.
Today in the Church we forget about this out of some falsely understood humility. It seems to us that we have no right to joy since we are sinners.
But I want to once again dwell on the fact that the joy of Christians cannot be deserved, not because it exists because we are great and worthy of the Kingdom of God. The joy of Christians is that Christ has risen and given the resurrection! How can you not be happy about this? Is it possible not to share this joy with your neighbor?
I saw such joy in the Georgian Church. The parishioners of our church and I went on a pilgrimage to Georgia and ended up in the monastery of St. Anthony of Martkop. This is a rather poor monastery located in the mountains. That day - it was Bright Week - we were not expected there, but we were received very cordially. The abbot met us, asked one of the monks to give us a tour of the pillar where St. Anthony prayed, and then invited us to come see him.
I was struck by how this monk was also hospitable to us. He showed everything, he was simply happy that he could share the surrounding beauty and the story of the saint whose name he bears. No irritation that this group of onlookers supposedly fell on his head. They say, I’m engaged in hesychasm here, and you interrupt me - as sometimes happens with us when we greet pilgrims.
When we returned from an excursion to the monastery, we went to see the abbot. And suddenly he takes us into the refectory, and a luxurious table is laid there. Not for the brethren - for us. Fish, several types of salads, wine. Everything is incredibly delicious.
Then the abbot invited the cook and told us: “Here, the priest cooked for you.” The hieromonk comes out of the kitchen, beaming with happiness, who for some reason was happy to throw a whole feast for us.
This ability to see joy in another person who is also a Christian, your brother or sister in Christ, is very significant. Because through the person who suddenly came into your life, you can serve Christ himself. The tradition of joy for our neighbor has been lost a little, which is a pity.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in everything” (1 Thess. 5:16-18) Joy is the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit in the human heart
.
This article was made on December 19th. On the joyful feast of St. Nicholas, which opens the approach of the Nativity of Christ, the Church, as it were, reminds us to always rejoice. “ Rejoice in the Lord always
;
And again I say: rejoice!” Always! This is exactly what the Apostle Paul writes. Do you think it is impossible to always be happy? Constant joy is a state of quiet happiness
.
In modern Russian, the concept of joy is contrasted with the concept of pleasure on the basis of “spiritual” - “bodily”. Joy is a feeling that lives in the human soul
(“... always in the Lord”). Pleasure is perceived primarily as “the joy of the mind.”
The source of true joy is in God
“There cannot but be joy where there is love, for love generates joy, and “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16); and therefore where God is with His grace, there is joy. And since they have this treasure, spiritual joy, within themselves and carry it with them always and everywhere, then nothing can take it away: neither the happiness and misfortune of this world, nor honor, nor dishonor, nor wealth, nor poverty, nor illness, nor wounds, nor sorrow, nor bonds, nor prisons, nor death itself. It is a joy for one who truly loves God to suffer for the sake of the Beloved... So the holy martyrs joyfully gave themselves up to torture and death for the name of the sweet Lord Jesus, as if for a sweet spiritual feast. And the greater love someone has, the greater joy he feels in himself, the more fearlessly he strives for the name of Christ.” “Joy in the Holy Spirit” is one of the signs of the reign of God in the human heart (Rom. 14:17). “When the Spirit of God descends upon a person and overshadows him with the fullness of His influx, then the human soul is filled with inexpressible joy, for the Spirit of God gives joy to everything that He touches,” says the Rev. Seraphim of Sarov, who throughout his life showed the possibility of “compatibility” of the bitterness of repentance and self-abasement with deep joy “in the Lord.” “Humility gives no place for irritability in your heart and eradicates anger in your soul, drives hatred, envy and malice far away from you, but, on the contrary, fills you with love, peace and joy - not human joy, not the joy of the mighty of the earth, but joy spirit, joy of wisdom." “Does joy suddenly flare up in you, with its incomparable pleasure making your tongue fall silent? Does a certain pleasure constantly flow from the heart, captivating the mind completely? At times, some kind of delight and joy enters imperceptibly into the whole body, and the carnal language cannot express this until everything earthly is considered dust and vanity in this remembrance. For this delight flowing from the heart, sometimes at the hour of prayer, sometimes during reading, and sometimes also as a result of incessant occupation and duration of thought, warms the mind. And this joy most often happens without these reasons, and very often during simple work, and just as often at night, when you are between sleep and awakening, as if in a dream and not in a dream, awake and not awake. But when this delight comes upon a person, beating throughout his whole body, at that hour he thinks that the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing else, but this is the same.” “But when grace overshadows you and the holy Angels, protecting you, approach you, and at this approach all those who tempt you retreat, do not become exalted and do not think in your soul that you have reached a quiet haven and unchanging air, and have completely left this depth of the opposite winds, and there is no longer an enemy or an evil meeting, because many dreamed of this and were in danger, as the blessed Nile said. Or do not also think that you are higher than others, and you are worthy of such a state, while others are not at all worthy of their life; or, since they do not have sufficient knowledge, they are deprived of such gifts, but you have the right to this, because you have achieved the perfection of holiness, and spiritual degree, and unchangeable joy.” “When the time approaches for the spiritual man to be resurrected in you, then the deadness of everything is awakened in you, joy is kindled in your soul, which is not likened to creatures, and your thoughts are contained within you with that sweetness that is in your heart.” “He who is long-suffering is always in joy, gladness and delight, because he trusts in the Lord.”
Joy in the Lord
The highest joy is “
Joy in the Lord
.” “Rejoice, ye righteous, in the Lord” (Ps. 33:1). “The heavens tell the glory of God (Ps. 18:2), causing the viewer to marvel at the Creator and love Him with the beauty of its brilliance.” “This joy is not about food and drink, not about honor, not about wealth, gold, silver, or anything else that the sons of this age rejoice in, for this joy is carnal. But there is spiritual joy, joy in the Lord Savior, in His goodness and love for mankind, consolation and peace of conscience, as the apostle teaches: “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. ch. 5). For the holy Gospel is joyful news, and faith is the heartfelt acceptance of the Gospel, therefore those who receive it will certainly receive spiritual joy in their hearts, as it is written about the prison guard mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles: “And he rejoiced with all his house because he believed in God” ( Acts 16:34). Therefore, this joy in many places of Holy Scripture is offered to the faithful as sweet spiritual food, which can be seen in the Psalms, Gospels and Apostolic Epistles” (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk). “...For the contemplation of Your face is joy: is it not You. My God, are you the every and only good? But, delivering every good thing to those who see You... “When the grace of God is with a person, then every phenomenon in the world amazes the soul with its incomprehensible miraculousness, and the soul, from contemplating visible beauty, comes to a state of feeling God, living and wondrous in everything.” “Once, seeing the Monk Gregory of Sinaite leaving his cell with a joyful face, I (the saint’s biography) in the simplicity of my heart asked him what he was happy about. He replied: “The soul, clinging to God and consumed by love for Him, rises above creation, lives above visible things and, filled with the desire of God, cannot hide in any way.” After all, the Lord also said: “Your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6); and again: Let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). For when the heart rejoices and has fun, the mind is in pleasant excitement, then the face is joyful, according to the saying: “The heart is glad, the face blooms”” (Athos Patericon). The Monk Seraphim of Sarov said: “Once I prayed to the Lord that He would bring me into communication with Him and show me His heavenly abodes. And the Lord did not deprive me of His mercy. He fulfilled my desire and request. So I was caught up in these abodes, but I don’t know whether with the body or apart from the body. God knows - it's incomprehensible. But it’s impossible to say about the joy and heavenly sweetness that I tasted there.” After a long silence, sighing from the depths of his soul, the Monk Seraphim said to his disciple again: “Oh, if you knew what joy, what sweetness awaits the soul of the righteous in Heaven, then you would decide in temporary life to endure all kinds of sorrows, persecution and slander with thanksgiving... There is no illness, no sorrow, no sighing... There is joy and sweetness unspeakable, there the righteous will be enlightened like the sun. But if the Apostle Paul himself could not explain such heavenly glory, then what other human language can explain the glory and beauty of the mountain village in which righteous souls dwell.” Prologue in teachings (81, 506). “A clear sign of God’s love is heartfelt joy in God. For what we love, we rejoice in. Likewise, God’s love cannot exist without joy. And to the extent that a person feels the sweetness of God’s love in his heart, to that extent he rejoices in God. For love, as the sweetest virtue, cannot be felt without joy. Just as honey delights our throat when we taste it, so the love of God gladdens our heart when we taste and see “how good the Lord is!” (Ps. 33:9). “This joy will become perfect in the Future Age, where the beautiful and eternal Sun will open and bring indescribable joy to those who love and see Him, when they see Him not “as through a glass darkly,” but “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12) and will be satisfied with this sweet sight without end and satiety, and inherit all the blessings, for “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no one has entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9)” (St. Tikhon Zadonsky).
The Joy of Prayer
Faith gives us the joy of Prayer, conversation with God. Prayer, both private and public, inspires believers, unites them with the holy inhabitants of heaven in common praise, petitions and thanksgiving sent to God, to which the Lord always responds in a fatherly manner.
Icon of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy”
Icon of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy”
The icon is named so in memory of the healing of one sinner. A certain lawless man spent his life in sins, but he used to bow before the image of the Mother of God and bring her the Archangel’s greeting: “Rejoice, full of grace! The Lord is with You." Once, getting ready to go on a sinful deed, he, without even thinking about his blasphemous act, again turned to the Mother of God with prayer. Suddenly, fear and trembling overwhelmed him: the Mother of God appeared alive on the icon, and the Divine Infant had ulcers on his arms, legs and sides, and blood flowed from there. Falling to the ground, the sinner cried out: “Oh, Lady, who did this?” “You and other sinners,” the Mother of God answered him, “you are crucifying My Son again. You call Me merciful, why do you insult Me with your lawless deeds?” Shocked to the depths of his soul, with a contrite heart, the repentant sinner prayed to God for the forgiveness of his sins and asked the Mother of God to beg Her Son to forgive him. Since then, the former sinner began to live a pure and godly life. Thus, the Mother of God gave the sinner the unexpected joy of forgiveness and remission of sins, and these events served as the reason for painting the image “Unexpected Joy.” It depicts a man on his knees praying before the image of the Mother of God with Her Eternal Child. The first words of the story “A certain lawless man...” are usually placed under the image.
Icon of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy”
Bearing grievances with joy
Many sorrows are sent to people, as the prophet says: “Many are the sorrows of the righteous” (Ps. 33:20). These sorrows are sent to us from outside, but they will not take away our spiritual joy. The mind is insulted, but the soul rejoices. And therefore they are not immersed in these sorrows, but are lifted up even more by “tribulations, knowing that from tribulation comes patience, and from patience comes experience, from experience does hope, and hope does not disappoint” (Rom. 5: 3-5). “Whoever can joyfully endure an insult, even having in his hands the means to repel it, has received consolation from God through faith in Him.” “Christians must have this spiritual joy in prosperity and adversity, for this joy stems from the love of God, which they must always have. God, as unchangeable Goodness and Love, is always worthy of love... Therefore, Christians should have both love for God and the subsequent spiritual joy not only in prosperity, but also in misfortune. For just as true love for God is recognized through joy in God, so the same love is recognized in adversity.” “The joy of God is stronger than life here. And whoever has found it will not only not look at suffering, but will not even look back at his life, and there will be no other feelings there, if there really was this joy. Love is sweeter than life, and understanding according to God, from which love is born, is sweeter than honey and honeycomb. Love will not regret accepting a hard death for those who love. Love is a product of knowledge” (Reverend Isaac the Syrian). “The martyrs, being exposed to suffering, not only did not become faint-hearted, not only did not grieve, but rejoiced, triumphed, and rejoiced” (St. John Chrysostom). “My joy,” said St. Seraphim to those who came to him, and constantly lived in this Easter joy. Father Ambrose of Optina and John of Kronstadt are both remarkably bright, joyful, and vital. Father Ambrose almost only jokes and jokes - in letters, in conversations; face o. Everyone knows John - this is joy itself.
Mercy
According to etymology, the primary meaning of the Old Church Slavonic and Russian “
rad
” is “ready for a good deed - its commission or perception.”
“ To care
” - to take care of someone or something, to show diligence, diligence in relation to something.
It is characteristic of love to rejoice when helping one’s neighbor or loved one
. Likewise, the Monk Isaac the Syrian says: “If you give something to someone in need, let the cheerfulness of your face precede your giving, and comfort his sorrow with a kind word. When you do this, then your gaiety in his mind overcomes your action, i.e. it is higher than satisfying the needs of the body.” A person has two joys: one is when he receives, and the other is when he gives. He who takes something accepts human joy. He who gives receives divine joy. We embrace divine joy by giving. The joy one feels when giving is incomparable to the one one feels when receiving something. A person, in order to understand whether he is truly successful in spiritual matters, must first of all test himself to see whether he rejoices by giving and not by receiving. Does he get upset when they give to him, and does he experience joy when he gives? We must learn to rejoice in giving. A person takes the right position if he rejoices while giving. He is then “connected” to Christ’s “network” and has divine joy. The joy he feels when he gives something away or helps in some way contains divine “oxygen.” But when a person rejoices in what he accepts, or in the fact that others sacrifice themselves for him, then in his joy there is a stench, a suffocation. Christ is moved when we love our neighbor more than ourselves, and fills us with divine joy. “Pay attention not to the spending of money, but to the benefits of this spending. If the sower rejoices, although he sows in uncertainty for the future, how much more should he who cultivates Heaven rejoice. If you gave little, but with joy, then you gave a lot; in the same way, even if you gave a lot, but with regret, then you made a little out of a lot.” About the joy of St. John Chrysostom wrote: “If we want... to rejoice, we have many occasions for this. For if we establish ourselves in virtue, then nothing will sadden us; for it inspires good hopes in those who have acquired it... and the indescribable produces pleasure in them. For although it takes a lot of work to establish yourself in virtue, it greatly pleases the conscience and produces so much inner pleasure that no word can express it.” “First, from crying for God, humility is born; then indescribable joy and joy come from him; around humility according to God the hope of salvation grows” (Reverend Simeon the New Theologian). “Humility will bring you closer to God, and God will rejoice in you and make you glad, and you will become a worthy vessel for the glory of your Lord” (Reverend Ephraim the Syrian).
↓↓↓↓ HUMILITY
“There is humility out of the fear of God, and there is humility out of love for God. Some are humble through the fear of God, others are humble through joy, and the humble through joy are accompanied by great simplicity, a growing and uncontrollable heart” (Rev. Isaac the Syrian). Types of asceticism in the Russian Land (Table of Contents)
Copyright © 2022 Unconditional love
The Russian soul lives in the future
Photo: Pavel Smertin
It seems to me that the inability to rejoice is also a characteristic of the Russian mentality.
We always have some kind of super-tasks, we are always focused on the future and do not see the present. We say: we will be happy when we enlighten the whole world, when all enemies, all enemies disappear. Thinking “about the main thing”, we don’t notice anything good around us.
Here is our church - until recently it was closed, and no one could go here, but now it has been restored, and on Sundays we have 180 people receiving communion. Or even 30 years ago, a priest could not give a person the Gospel to read, but today there is a lot of different literature.
What a Sunday school in the Soviet Union - you could go to jail for this! And now - please. This is our Russian property; probably, everything is not enough for us.
We need to solve all the problems, but because of this we often miss the small, beautiful, bright things that are today's miracle.
We all dream of how one day we will clear away all our sins, all the garbage, and then we will live a real Christian life. But life goes on here and now, and there is so much joy in it, but it is important to see and appreciate it, and not to neglect its “smallness”.
This imbalance arose, it seems to me, also because in the 90s our Church consisted of 97% neophytes. And during the period of neophyte, a person is inclined to attribute spiritual gifts to himself and “fly away” a little. He does not yet have the skill of repentance, sobriety, that is, the foundation of spiritual life. A person needs to be helped, accustom him to this - that’s why they talked so often about repentance.
But listen, at least 30 years have passed since then! Most of us have already built the foundation; it’s time to build a house. And this house, that is, spiritual life, absolutely must be beautiful, so that another person looks and thinks: “I want the same” and also begins his path to God. Such “construction” is a huge creativity, a real adult spiritual life, which, of course, still needs to be grown into.
Bright people
These are those people who have already come a long way to God. There are such people. I know one woman whose son died at Nord-Ost, I meet with her every year and serve a memorial service. One day recently we were sitting with her, recalling these events, and at some point she suddenly said: “Now I can say that I am grateful to God for everything.” Or another case, also one of my old parishioners, whose daughter disappeared when she was twelve years old, and a few days later she was found murdered. She was then expecting her sixth child, then she took in orphans, and so she said: “I’m so afraid for the man who did this to Nastenka, I’m so afraid for him, I’m so scared for him!” This woman was able to pray for him.
And it’s not about the strength of the soul - they are weak. And these are absolutely simple people - not saints, not monks, not ascetics, and they don’t even think of themselves as anything like that. In our understanding, they do not lead any particularly high spiritual life. Their strength is trust in God. That is why they were able to experience such things in themselves in a special way. At some point, when a person has nothing left to hope for - say, a person sits at home for five days, and terrible things happen in Nord-Ost, or another case: how many days did the parents look for their Nastya and did not find them? - then you can either go crazy or completely surrender to the will of God. The second path is what makes a person strong.
And people can do something to help in troubles. However, you cannot specifically look for those on whom you can transfer your grief. It’s just that there are always and will be people who agree to take part of the grief upon themselves, share it, and then the pain, of course, will decrease. And, surprisingly, they come on their own. And if joy multiplies with those who share joy, then sorrow with those who share it is quenched.
