(Great fortune! God’s great mercy!)
Before we begin our tour of the apothecary and continue familiarizing ourselves with its thought-medicines, we must share what happened here recently (since our last meeting). Glory to our Heavenly Father, who loves us divinely and cares for each of us tenderly! We (especially I) lost our vigilance and accepted evil thoughts: we started thinking highly of ourselves, considering ourselves something significant: after all, we are fighters for the purity of Orthodoxy, exposers of heresies, antichrists, satanists, various anti-Christian synagogues, evangelists, teachers, prophets, “persecuted,” “confessors”… (see parts I-IV, especially parts III-IV)—in a word, heroes. (We poor souls forgot that only God is Good, that all Good (starting from thoughts and ending with the completion of the work) is accomplished by the Holy Spirit (as a Gift, Grace), that everything stands through Christ, through Him and for Him, therefore all glory belongs to God!). And to top it off, the grandmothers of our village fuel the fire of pride and egoism: they praise us, kiss our hands, call us fathers… And then: Volodya praises Bohdanovych, Bohdanovych praises Andreyiv, Andreyiv praises Volodya… (It’s easy to fall into delusion under such conditions, especially considering that those who are tempted are spiritual invalids). How can one not believe that they are a giant, a super-priest, a tireless worker in the Heavenly Field?! The merciful Father, blessed forever, took pity on us and brought us down from the sky of illusion to the ground of humility-truth.
Being the monopoly experts-reapers in our village, we began to consider ourselves super-powerful workers (reapers) in the Lord’s field. (In reality, we walked into the field with rusty, dull sickles… no, no, not to reap, but to sunbathe and rest in the shade!? Not only did we do nothing good, consuming the bread (which our grandmothers brought us for lunch) in vain, but we also trampled the wheat, looking for a comfortable place to rest, to have lunch, to indulge our egoism, our passions-lusts… we were only causing losses! And against this background of horror, we (zeros-nothing, negatives) fell into a double delusion, thinking about ourselves that we were not just “something,” but mega-something!). We were in such a severe delusion until the Father sent an inspection from the City. Mighty Men-Combiners-Sowers arrived on modern (New Testament) combines, tractors equipped with everything a combiner-tractor driver could dream of (= all the gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit); working on such powerful machines is pure pleasure, a continuous Paschal celebration, an ocean of miracles—to the glory of God the Father! The combines are combines (although we, villagers, when we saw those machines, our jaws dropped), but the Men are true professionals, virtuosos of their craft! Now imagine the scene: we stand with dull sickles, jaws dropped, against the background of these Men on modern giant multifunctional computerized-automated combines! Now tell me: who are we? Correct: complete nothing! In fact, not just zeros, but negatives (because we waste bread, mislead grandmothers while being misled ourselves, and trample the wheat…). And our grandmothers told us that we were super, the best (workers-priests-theologians) in the world, that there was no such super collective farm anywhere like ours… Glory to the merciful Father, who had mercy on us and delivered us from this harmful delusion!
We won’t detail how the inspection went—that’s a separate multi-volume conversation—we will limit ourselves to introducing these Men (not all, but only two of them) and their Firms, and some results of this inspection-review—this great mercy of God. Just one thing: during the entire inspection, when these Men revealed our shortcomings, sins, mistakes-delusions, taught us how to heal and correct them, when they showed us a master class in sowing-reaping… we were in such a state: (and how much melatonin and sedatives were consumed—can’t describe… and how many sleepless nights there were…).
You ask: how did we survive, endure this inspection (= God’s mercy), how did we not fall into despair-perdition?! Thank God-Love, we had thought-medicines just for such cases in our apothecary: “Keep your mind in hell, but do not despair!” While being in hell, we had the anchor of hope-consolation that everything happening to us (the inspection with all its consequences of this mercy of God, and the fact that we reached such a catastrophe, managed so poorly, served so poorly) is the Love of God the Father, our Beloved Father, His Divine care for us, so that we may be Happy! We always take these thought-medicines for prevention, and during this period, we consumed them in handfuls…
So, let us introduce you to these Men and provide the coordinates of their firms (perhaps you too will need to conduct an inspection-review, and these Men will gladly help you and do an excellent job; we are confident that they will do even better for you if they did an excellent job for us; I hope your farm is not as neglected as ours?!).