Beloved by God, love divinely—everyone, everywhere, always! Wish everyone Happiness (the Kingdom of Heaven, Eternal peace-bliss!) and do everything you can to help your beloved (every person, every image of God) achieve this Eternal Bliss!!! God is Love! I am divinely loved at every moment, everything is good, very good! It remains for each person to ensure that it is good for me, that I am filled with God’s love, that I become Love (by the grace of the Holy Spirit)! Therefore, the Lord said: seek the Kingdom of God (= prepare your hearts to humbly accept the Kingdom of God, which has long been given to you!), and all other things necessary for the flesh will be added to you (more precisely, have already been given and are given at every moment: we all, together and individually, are constantly in Paradise—divinely loved by God-Love (through everyone and everything)!)!
Externally, everything is good—the Kingdom of God (which is among you and already in Christians), so take care of the internal, of the heart—by diligently following God’s commandments (wills), enter a state of humility and contrition, in which you will be able to receive the Gift of Salvation—the Holy Spirit, becoming a temple of the Holy Trinity! Therefore, do not worry about what to eat, what to drink, what to wear—God-Love the Father has taken care of all this. Instead, focus on how to thank God—diligently follow God’s commandments—love God and the image of God! The essence of spiritual life: faith in God’s providence (= God’s Love for me, for everyone, and everything)! (And of course, never forget about prudence with advice!). Therefore, take care of the internal (how to give your heart to God-Love)—God has taken care of the external!!! Everything that is outside of me (all circumstances, everything sweet and bitter, pleasant and sorrowful, comfort and pain-suffering…), and everyone in them (“enemies” and friends…)—is always the best, most appropriate for me (according to my spiritual-mental-physical state)!
One elder, testing his disciple, asked: why pray?! God is Love, He loves everyone and gives everything He can to each one! Why then pray?! The disciple was embarrassed and did not know what to answer… Then the elder continued: God is absolute Love, which means He cannot be made more loving or less loving, more merciful or less merciful… People can be moved, persuaded to their side, as the ancients said: gifts incline even the gods. But God is not like that. God is the Sun, the fullness of rays (light) directed at everyone, but whether we accept this fullness or not depends on us. A person can close the windows (of the soul-heart) with shutters, draw black curtains, and sit in darkness, convinced that darkness is everywhere. They are told that the sun is outside, it is a clear day. But such a person insists: what sun, what light?!—pitch darkness… Prayer is a sincere desire to change: in striving towards God, I seek to resemble Him, I repent. To be in repentance, to repent means to change, to make oneself capable of perceiving this Divine Light. That is why we pray, why we must pray. We must repent, remembering that we have to change ourselves (which is absolutely impossible and absurd) but transform ourselves. The essence of human life lies primarily in repentance, in change, in the desire to change. The effort of prayer is the effort of repentance. I can only allow myself more or less of this Hypostatic Humble Loving Light, enter into communion with God, or turn away from Him (you can’t be forced to love)! Prayer is the transformation (repentance) of us, making us capable of receiving God’s Love, all His Gifts, all His Blessings, that is, making us gods by Grace, the temple of the Holy Trinity! That is why we need to pray (constantly; at all times in the Spirit; we are created for prayer…—see more about prayer in part IV).
As soon as we said (preached) that God is Love, and you understood, comprehended the essence of this Gospel (God is Love: Jesus Christ is the Son of God-Love…), and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, it means that the theoretical course of theology is over! Only one thing remains—to pray (= repent), to work tirelessly, diligently follow God’s commandments (which clarify, explain, characterize love-gratitude), trying to love, striving to become love, to humble oneself, and with a humble and contrite heart, in the poverty of the Spirit, accept the Holy Spirit, be baptized by the Holy Spirit, receive the fire of the Love of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Someone might reasonably ask: “Then why do you continue to expound various theoretical thoughts-medicines if you have already talked about the Gospel of Love?!” Yes, we have already said practically everything, but we are in an apothecary where there are various thought-medicines (for the treatment of various diseases: heresies, delusions, madness, ignorance…) for those who have not yet realized that God is Love, who have not yet believed that God is Love (and everything that follows from this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Kingdom of God has come…). Therefore, if you believe that God is Love, you have nothing to do here (in our humble social apothecary) (acquire the Holy Spirit and go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ)! But those who still have doubts, have questions or misunderstandings, can carefully, without bias, wander among the shelves of our apothecary…