THE HUMAN SOUL AND THE CHRISTIAN ORTHODOX 
SAINT JEAN DE CRONSTADT
(Extrait de son Journal, 1894‑1899)
L'âme de l'homme est créée à l'image et à la ressemblance de Dieu. C'est là sa dignité et son plus grand sujet d'honneur. La sainteté et la lumière, la justice, la simplicité, la bonté, la douceur, l'humilité, l'absence de méchanceté, la spiritualité, la vigilance, prayer, ardent love of God, all that was innate in her. Until the fall shameful and pernicious, God Himself had His home in the first men. The Holy Spirit appears, lit them, consoled them. But with the fall, the soul is completely changed: she became sinful, sinister, malignant, voluptuous, proud, malicious, envious, disobedient, hostile, greedy, adulterous, loving herself instead of loving God. But since she had been seduced and robbed by the devil, the murderer loses, repentance was granted and she can now stand up brilliantly the fall by the grace and mercy of God.
Be careful, Christian soul! The Lord has honored a love supreme. The Bridegroom to bride has chosen you for an engagement incorruptible, spiritual, spotless, eternal and blissful. You have to stick him every day, every moment, until your last breath. And there, in eternity, you'll always be safe in a continual present. The life here is short, but it is through that bought eternity. Do not fall asleep, t'affaiblis do not, do not betray God, do not stain by earthly passions and carnal. Pray, fast, do good works.
Man, created in the image and likeness of God with an immortal soul, rational and free, high beyond any measure above unreasonable of all creatures, destined to eternal happiness by fulfilling the commandment of God and submission to his will imperfect and limited to the will of heaven, very wise, and infinitely perfect God, was seduced by the forbidden fruit and fell into the sin of disobedience, pride, disobedience, lack of attention, ingratitude and corruption, good and evil. If she loves the world, she feels enmity to God. The friendship with the world is enmity against God (Jac.4, 4). To divert the man from the love of God, holy things and the truth, the enemy directed its violence and malice with thoughts and heart to the world, the earthly and impure, luster and softness of land, and especially feminine sweetness and beauty, because man is passionate and reflects little. Therefore those who sincerely desire to serve God and please Him must despise the earthly pleasures, the riches of this world and its pomp, and direct their hearts to the joys of heaven and elevated to the heavenly beauty and incorruptible, to the light that never sets.
Man! Try with all your strength to implement, develop and strengthen your soul in love and a sincere caring for each man! Always hunting and ruthless in your heart all envy or malice, which breeds contempt, enmity or hatred, such darkspawn the Devil. Let the righteous Judge who searches the hearts to judge sinful men. On your side, praying for them with zeal, so they turn to the court for not perish and be saved. Sometimes we are angry against the workers of iniquity, that we judge them harshly, we wish them a punishment or suffering, and death, forgetting that they have a rational soul capable of feeling, love, repentance, amendment, improvement. Try with all your strength to give love to all, to wish well to everyone, so we want to worry you too and we love you. Imitates not evil (the Devil) but the good (God) (3Jn. 1, 11).
Guard your heart more pure than anything else because it is the wellspring of life (Prov.4, 23). Do not let your heart enter the land and passionate desires. A small transient lust defiles the soul and separates it from God. Make sure that your heart is constantly drawn skyward and not toward the earth, to God and not to idols, so he wants incorruptibility, love, virtue, gentleness, humility, simplicity, the absence of malice, not the earthly corruption, be it soft or shiny. Corruption land puts us in constant danger. Sinful man is attracted to anything that is forbidden. Guard your heart with anger, malice, envy, lust, pride, presumption, and the tendency to put themselves forward before the others.
unreasonable attachment of the soul to life by breaking down its integrity, peace, freedom and health, then it tends naturally to God, created it. Then occur tribulations, afflictions and injuries. She falls into a infinite vanity and pulled away from God. The friendship with the world is enmity against God. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (IJn.2, 15). Everything is permissible but I will not let myself be dominated by anything (lCor.6, 12).
It is finished! The eternal council was held. The will of God and the salvation of mankind was made. The board of the snake killer on destruction of mankind and the Devil's works were destroyed. Man is saved! The blessed existence had been lost, but a better life, happier still has been given to the skies in the future: the deification. The man, who had originally wanted to be God, is not now, and has lost even what he had. But God became Man so that man might become god. Oh, wonderful divine counsel, that your works are ineffable! Now, it depends on the willingness of the man himself to be saved or perish.
Our Creator, the Initiator of the fighting, established from the beginning that the time of our earthly life was a preparation time for eternity, learning time, a time of fighting and exploits a time of spiritual warfare, not a time of inaction and idleness, vain concerns. He also determined that our future and immortal state is a state of retribution, eternal glory and bliss, or a state of eternal disgrace of the enormous suffering for inaction, indolence, negligence and other countless sins .
Every Christian, every Christian must know and remember well the real purpose that the Creator of all things in this world has assigned to powers of the soul and members of the body: the personal property, the property of others and the glory of God. But we, because of our passions, our sins and blindness of our souls, we forget the goal of the beneficent Creator and His good intentions to turn away the evil, our perdition
and others or in excess of the measure or by working inappropriately, either by working against the direction. And then, what moral or physical harm of that disorder, that corruption of the soul and body!
In the true Christian, everything in her mind in her body and her life takes a turn to share: his thoughts are spiritual and holy, heavenly and spiritual desires, his will just, holy and good, his imagination pure and holy, his memory other, his eyes pure, simple, holy and without malice. In short, Christians must be a different man, heavenly, new, holy, divinely living, thinking, feeling, talking, acting through the Spirit of God. These are the saints. Read their life, listen, learn, imitate!
Scans more carefully and your spiritual inner world, full of intellectual and moral interests, and am no longer attracted by the outside world, material, temporal. Heaven and earth will pass away, it is said in the immutable words of the Creator, but My words shall not pass away (Mark 13.3 1). In this inner world, a lot of hard work and effort await. The man indeed perverts and the spiritual laws of creation, and his soul and his body are thereby corrupted. The kingdom of God is within you (Lucl7, 21). The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force (Matt. 11, 12). Remember the barren fig tree (Mt.21 0.18 to 22) Vine and Vigneron (Mt.21 0.33 to 43), the servant owes his master a multitude of talents (Mt 18.28-3 5).
The Lord knows those who belong to Him, who pronounces the name of Christ depart from iniquity (2Tim.2, 19). Who are those who belong to Him? Those who live not for flesh and blood, but by the spirit and intelligence of the Lord, who fight and conquer their passions, working for justice, which focus on what is high and does not look down who have constantly in their heart the Lord's commandments and follow them unerringly (or stand up immediately if they fall through weakness or habit), who give their lives for the Lord and do not refuse to die for Him, for justice and truth.
In this life of hardship and spiritual achievements, the Christian is always between two currents: the good and evil, trial and tribulation and the coming of the enemy consolation and help from God. It is a sort of competition between God who is righteous, holy and magnanimous, and the enemy evil and totally wicked. Sometimes the man is under the influence of the enemy, now under the grace of God. The enemy leads to mistakes and sins of all kinds, and the Lord forgives sinners who repent, purifies, sanctifies, justifies them, soothes, renews and strengthens them. This competition and the victory of grace over sin takes place mainly during the Eucharistic Liturgy, this wonderful, pacifying sacrifice and sanctifying God's mercy peace, the sacrifice of praise.
This is not against flesh and blood that we have to fight, but against principalities, against Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness (Eph.6, 12). Our life on earth is a war, a permanent war. Our invisible enemies fight us constantly throughout our countless passions. Our flesh itself, subject to the passions, we fight too. The adulterous and sinful world we struggle through its temptations, its injustices. Our flesh fights us with love for ourselves, for pleasure, by laziness in prayer and good works, by hypocrisy, malice, concealment, pleasure, thoughts of adultery, lust , malice, hatred, malice, envy, irritation, acedia, the murmur, cowardice, lying, deception, injustice, blasphemous thoughts, the passion to judge others, intemperance, drunkenness, gluttony, greed, wickedness, freethinking, insubordination, disobedience, Coldness, the zeal for all sin and expulsion of all good. That is why our Lord said in the Gospel: The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force (Nit.11, 12). But we must always believe and remember that God is with us, invisible helper and companion in arms against sin, quick guard and all-powerful, and winner of our enemies with us as our Sovereign Lady the Mother of God, our driver invincible with us as guardian angels, the saints still with us, who by their prayers intercede with the Lord and their lives show us all the ways to resist constantly sin, to pray, to pay attention to ourselves, to overcome sin by the grace of Christ.
Guard your heart more than anything else because it is the wellspring of life. By all means, keep your heart from fleshly lusts which bring dirt, disorder, the obtuseness, Slavery, corruption. It is by carnal lust as sin fits most easily into the flesh because we love the sweetness and corruption easily between sweetness.
The Christian must be concerned with its decidedly spiritual education. First, he is reborn in the baptismal font by the Holy Spirit, receives spiritual renewal, is marked by Miron and the gift of the Holy Spirit, becomes worthy of receiving the Body and the pure blood of Christ. According to the will of God, the Holy Church is the first teacher of Christian souls and the most appropriate. There is no work more important than the education of Christian souls. Judge for yourself and understand how these are dear to God and immortal souls reasonable redeemed by the blood of the Son of God Himself, recalled from the darkness into the knowledge of God by the Lord Himself, brides and united with the Lord as pure virgin to a pure all-Husband. As is the salvation of these precious souls whom God offers food and drink His Body and His Blood very pure souls such as himself has undertaken to instruct spiritually by those wonderful, terrible, life-giving and beneficent Mysteries. Mind you all for your spiritual education, with all the attention and all the zeal that suit. Mind you raise your thoughts to God, to pray, you examine yourself, you judge yourself, you amend it. Work out in the virtues, in gentleness, humility, obedience, patience, mercy, chastity, simplicity, goodness. Leave out all thoughts of lust, passions and sinful habits.
The Christian life is a struggle and a spiritual feat. This fight must focus and result in strengthening the faith and love of God and neighbor. The enemy of humanity struggle, he joined the powerful fighters and servants voluntary or involuntary, as heretics, cult members, freethinkers, blasphemers, traitors to God and the sovereign, adulteries, drunkards, the envious, the proud, murderers, thieves, troublemakers ... Through them, he acts against God, against men, against the powers that be. More these men meet their passions, the stronger they become, the more they serve the devil and become even bigger enemies of God and men (think Judas the traitor, to Leo Tolstoy. God's justice demands that the man who became a being deposed by his own will, consciously work against sin, controls, and calling with zeal overcomes the grace of God to his aid. Without this grace, it can never overcome sin, nor merit the reward of eternal God.
In the Gospel, the Christian life is compared to the many guards of the soldier, the first, second, third ... This suggests the constant vigilance of a Christian on his thoughts, feelings, the movements of his will, his vigilance against the enemies who attack intangible until the end and try to swallow it. Day or night, the saints are spiritually care. They pray without ceasing, fast, struggle, live a life that is both active and contemplative. Any truth in our lives, we must be on call. Our life is short, and we have to solve a large and complicated, yet a multitude of enemies attack us with force, malice and wickedness. Let us be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Mt 10, 16).
Thy Name be hallowed, thy kingdom come, Thy will be done! The Christian must hope and wish that the other name of God always be glorified in him and in the other and must grieve when this name is not glorified, but blasphemed by various sins. It is desirable that all the temples of God are not made by human hands. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (ICor.3, 16)
Everything is pure to the pure. But for those who are defiled and who have no faith, nothing is pure. Their spirit and their conscience are defiled (Titel, 15). All shocked him unclean, holy things themselves it considers impure. That is how sin infects the heart and the entire human being. Man, then purifies your heart day and night in prayer, repentance and tears, so long as the time to practice and test.
The description that the Apostle Paul makes mores of his contemporaries should it not also our contemporaries? He writes: they are filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, malice, not breathing Enver, murder, arguing, deceit, malignity; slanderers, detractors, enemies of God, who insult, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, without heart, ruthless (Rom. 1.29 to 3
Orthodox Christians! Do you know, do you, do you understand that the Lord our God always sees our thoughts, our desires, our intentions, our actions, and judge justly every man? Remember that your conscience is the witness of justice God's testing you and guide you, and that according to her and the Gospel of the Lord that you will be judged on Judgement Day? Remember what the Prophet and King David was repeated several times: the Lord comes to judge the earth, He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in righteousness (Ps.97: 8-9). If you've forgotten, I remind you ...
the Judgement of God you will know, sinner, that you were in the union venerable, holy, full of honor and of the Church and of Heaven, and thou shalt see how you made it unworthy. You'll know what you had powerful intercessors before God for your salvation, intercessors you do not call for help by impiety, pride and depravity, for you accounts at all about yourself and your intelligence and passion myopic.
To God be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
