“Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind…. Loving God with all your heart: what does it mean?

Before we begin our discussion on the topic of Christ’s commandments, let us first determine that the law of God is like that guiding star that shows a person traveling his way, and a man of God the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. The law of God has always meant light, warming the heart, comforting the soul, consecrating the mind. Let's try to briefly understand what they are - the 10 commandments of Christ - and what they teach.

Commandments of Jesus Christ

The commandments provide the main moral basis for human soul. What do the commandments of Jesus Christ say? It is noteworthy that a person always has the freedom to obey them or not - the great mercy of God. It gives a person the opportunity to grow and improve spiritually, but also imposes on him responsibility for his actions. Violation of even one commandment of Christ leads to suffering, slavery and degeneration, in general, to disaster.

Let's remember when God created our earthly world, then a tragedy occurred in the angelic world. The proud angel Dennitsa rebelled against God and wanted to create his own kingdom, which is now called Hell.

The next tragedy occurred when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and their lives experienced death, suffering, and poverty.

Another tragedy occurred during the Flood, when God punished people - Noah's contemporaries - for unbelief and violation of God's laws. This event is followed by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, also for the sins of the inhabitants of these cities. Next comes the destruction of the Israeli kingdom, followed by the kingdom of Judah. Then Byzantium and the Russian Empire will fall, and behind them there will be other misfortunes and disasters that will be brought down by God’s wrath for sins. Moral laws are eternal and unchangeable, and whoever does not keep the commandments of Christ will be destroyed.

Story

The most important event in the Old Testament is people receiving the Ten Commandments from God. Moses brought them from Mount Sinai, where God taught him, and they were carved on two stone tablets, and not on perishable paper or other substance.

Until this moment Jewish people represented powerless slaves working for the Egyptian kingdom. After the emergence of the Sinai legislation, a people is created that is called to serve God. From this people later came great holy people, and from them the Savior Jesus Christ himself was born.

Ten Commandments of Christ

Having familiarized yourself with the commandments, you can see a certain consistency in them. So, the commandments of Christ (the first four) speak of human responsibilities towards God. The following five define human relationships. And the latter calls people to purity of thoughts and desires.

The Ten Commandments of Christ are expressed very briefly and with minimum requirements. They define the boundaries that a person should not cross in public and personal life.

First commandment

The first sounds: “I am your Lord, may you have no other Gods besides me.” This means that God is the source of all goods and the director of all human actions. And therefore, a person must direct his entire life to the knowledge of God and glorify his name with his pious deeds. This commandment states that God is one in the whole world and it is unacceptable to have other gods.

Second Commandment

The second commandment says: “Do not make for yourself an idol...” God forbids a person to create imaginary or real idols for himself and bow before them. The idols for modern man have become earthly happiness, wealth, physical pleasure and fanatical admiration for their leaders and leaders.

Third Commandment

The third says: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” A person is forbidden to use the name of the Lord irreverently in the vanity of life, in jokes or empty conversations. Sins include blasphemy, sacrilege, perjury, breaking vows to the Lord, etc.

Fourth Commandment

The fourth says that we must remember the Sabbath day and spend it holy. You need to work for six days, and devote the seventh to your God. This means that a person works six days a week, and on the seventh day (Saturday) he must study the word of God, pray in church, and therefore devote the day to the Lord. These days you need to take care of the salvation of your soul, conduct pious conversations, enlighten your mind with religious knowledge, visit the sick and prisoners, help the poor, etc.

Fifth Commandment

The fifth says: “Honor your father and mother...” God commands to always care for, respect and love your parents, and not to offend them either in word or deed. A great sin is disrespect for father and mother. In the Old Testament, this sin was punished by death.

Sixth Commandment

The sixth says: “Thou shalt not kill.” This commandment prohibits taking the life of others and oneself. Life is a great gift from God, and only it sets man the limits of earthly life. Therefore, suicide is the most serious sin. In addition to murder itself, suicide also includes the sins of lack of faith, despair, murmuring against the Lord and rebellion against his providence. Anyone who harbors a feeling of hatred towards others, wishes death to others, starts quarrels and fights, sins against this commandment.

Seventh Commandment

In the seventh it is written: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It states that a person must be, if he is not married, chaste, and if married, remain faithful to his husband or wife. In order not to sin, there is no need to engage in shameless songs and dances, watch seductive photographs and films, listen to piquant jokes, etc.

Eighth Commandment

The eighth says: “Don’t steal.” God forbids the taking of another's property. You cannot engage in theft, robbery, parasitism, bribery, extortion, as well as evade debts, defraud the buyer, conceal what you have found, deceive, withhold the salary of an employee, etc.

Ninth Commandment

The ninth says: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The Lord forbids a person to give false testimony against another in court, to make denunciations, to slander, to gossip and to slander. This is a devilish thing, because the word “devil” means “slanderer.”

Tenth Commandment

In the tenth commandment, the Lord teaches: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his field, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox...” Here people are instructed to learn to refrain from envy and not have bad desires.

All of Christ’s previous commandments taught primarily correct behavior, but the last one addresses what can happen inside a person, his feelings, thoughts and desires. A person always needs to take care of the purity of his spiritual thoughts, because any sin begins with an unkind thought, on which he can dwell, and then a sinful desire will arise, which will push him to unfavorable actions. Therefore, you need to learn to stop your bad thoughts so as not to sin.

New Testament. Commandments of Christ

Jesus Christ briefly summarized the essence of one of the commandments as follows: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” The second is similar to it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the most important commandment of Christ. It gives that deep awareness of all those ten, which clearly and clearly help to understand in what human love for the Lord is expressed and what contradicts this love.

In order for the new commandments of Jesus Christ to benefit a person, it is necessary to ensure that they guide our thoughts and actions. They must penetrate our worldview and subconscious and always be on the tablets of our soul and heart.

The 10 commandments of Christ are the basic moral guidance necessary for creation in life. Otherwise everything will be doomed to destruction.

The righteous King David wrote that blessed is the person who fulfills the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. He will be like that tree planted by streams of water, which bears its fruit in its season and does not wither.

Schema-Archimandrite Eli (Nozdrin) labored on Holy Mount Athos for more than 10 years. He was entrusted with clergy in the Panteleimon Monastery. He carried out his obedience in one of the monasteries of the St. Panteleimon Monastery, on Stary Russik. Father Eli talks about Athos and its Russian inhabitant, Silouan of Athos, who achieved holiness.

Elder Silouan is a modern ascetic. There is no falsehood or charm characteristic of our times in it. He was not a great ascetic, but his path was not false. He was looking for the main thing - unity with the Lord, he wanted to truly serve Him, to be a monk. He acquired a prayer that truly connects with God. The Lord heard His servant and appeared to him Himself. “If this vision had continued, my soul, my human nature, would have melted from the Glory of God,” he said. The Lord left him a memory of grace: when it left, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord again filled him with His strength. The elder’s prayer was incessant, and did not stop even at night.

A modern Christian should definitely read the revelations of St. Silouan of Athos - what Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) wrote about him, and how the elder himself expressed his spiritual experience. By the grace of God he writes what the Lord revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. A man without higher education created a book that gained such fame and was translated into dozens of languages. Every believer who seeks the Truth, having read this work, cannot help but speak of it with high praise and gratitude to Elder Silouan.

When in 1967 I first read the book of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) “The Venerable Elder Silouan of Athos,” I definitely found myself in a bright space in which the content of our faith was reliably revealed. The force field of this book strengthened me, and I received answers to many questions of spiritual life.

The Monk Silouan of Athos brought to us the treasure that the holy fathers carried through the centuries: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.” It talks about humility. There is everyday, secular pride, and there is spiritual, when a person, having received a special closeness to God, strengthened in faith, begins to think that his life is “undoubtedly high.” This is very dangerous for the ascetic. Therefore, the Lord, perhaps, does not give many grace, inspiration, strength for ascetic labors, spiritual gifts - so that they do not become proud. Since a person cannot contain and preserve all this due to pride. Grace is incompatible with pride.

When the devil, who, being a spirit, can materialize only by God’s permission, apparently appeared before Elder Silouan, the ascetic was perplexed: why does he pray, but the demon does not disappear? The Lord revealed to him: this is for spiritual pride. To get rid of it, you must consider yourself the smallest, most insignificant, sinful. For your sins, recognize yourself as an heir to hell. And for what you have, thank the Lord. All our earthly and spiritual gifts are from God. We cannot be proud of anything - neither material wealth, nor mental abilities. Neither our talents, nor our strengths, nor our works - nothing is ours, but only the grace of God. And everything that Elder Silouan received from God, the very appearance of the Lord to him - all this is a gift from God. The Lord is generous and merciful, He reveals to us the saving formula: “Keep your mind in hell...” As for the second part of it, if a person prays, he simply cannot have complete despair.

Athos by the grace of God is a destiny Mother of God on the ground. From the 5th century Monks live here, in the 10th century. self-government of the only one in the world was legalized monastic republic, there was a ban on women entering there. To this day, there are 20 monasteries, many hermitages and cells. Some of them, such as St. Andrew's and Elijah's monasteries, can even exceed monasteries in size. About 30 cells are known. From time to time, the so-called Siromahi live in them - poor monks who do not have a permanent shelter.

Athos - guardian Orthodox faith. There is nothing else that makes sense in our life, the only thing is the salvation of the soul.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength... [and] your neighbor as yourself(Mark 12:30-31).

The implementation of this Christian ideal has been the Holy Mount Athos for many centuries. Anyone wishing to asceticize on Athos can apply to the Athos metochion in Moscow or, having arrived on Athos, present his request to the abbot of the monastery he would like to enter, and at the request of the monastery authorities, the Holy Kinot can decide the issue of staying on the Holy Mountain.

It cannot be said that Athonite monasticism is somehow fundamentally different from our Russian one. We have one law - the Gospel. Holy Mount Athos is simply historically a place of high Christian achievement. You can also ask: what is the difference between a prayed icon and an ordinary one? Or a person of spiritual experience from a worldly Christian who has just begun to comprehend the Gospel law? You can just log in consecrated church, but you can enter one where divine services have been held for more than one century - here, of course, a special decorum and splendor are felt. But just as our Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever, so is the feat Christian Dan to all of us for all time. Just as in the first centuries of Christianity a person struggled and was saved, so it is now. Our faith in the Holy Trinity, holy truths, and dogmas should not be diminished or changed.

We must live according to the will of God. It is expressed in the Gospel. In him Divine Revelation presented in a concentrated form, briefly. This good news is given to all nations for all times. To individually implement it in your life, you need to turn to the experience of our Orthodox Church. The Holy Fathers, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, explained the Gospel law to us. We must be true Orthodox people. In Baptism we become members of the Church - Orthodox Christians. But to our deep regret, even considering ourselves children of the Church, we attach very little importance to the Gospel Revelation. While there is nothing more vital than knowing what the Divine Word says and building your life according to the will of God. We, to our deepest sadness, do not realize how fleeting the path of our life is. We don’t notice how we stand at the threshold of eternity. It's unavoidable. God created the world and controls it. There are physical laws and there are moral ones. Physical ones act unconditionally, as the Lord once asked them. But since a person is senior management creation of God and endowed with reason and freedom, the moral law is determined by our will. God is both the Creator and the Master of our lives. And for fulfilling the moral law, a person is rewarded - both with internal satisfaction and external well-being, but above all - with eternal bliss. And through our deviations from fulfilling God’s commandments, we suffer various disasters: illnesses, social disorders, wars, earthquakes. Nowadays people are inclined towards extremely immoral lifestyles. The people are darkened: revelry, drunkenness, banditry, drug addiction - these manifestations of an anti-moral state have become ubiquitous. The Lord has given us a lot to improve ourselves and to be pious: through education, upbringing, and the media. But the media, which are called upon to educate young people in piety, also, to our deep regret, are increasingly turning them to an ungodly life. There are three types of temptations: from our fallen nature, from the world and from demons. People today are becoming relaxed. And there must be a fight. Saints, like the Monk Silouan of Athos, spent their entire lives in struggle and conquered passions, the world, and repelled demonic attacks. We have helpers in this - the Lord Himself, the Mother of God, Guardian Angels, martyrs, confessors, all the saints! The Lord wants salvation for everyone and calls everyone to fight sin, but does not force anyone.

And one lawyer from among them asked, tempting Him: “Teacher! What is the greatest commandment in the Law?” He answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment, and the second is similar to it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The entire Law and Prophets rest on these two commandments. (Mt.22.35-40)

Translation by Sergei Avrintsev

Many people unfamiliar with the gospel believe that Christianity is a religion of moral precepts. But, firstly, some Christian thinkers refuse to call our faith a religion. After all, the very word “religion” means the connection of a person with a deity. And in Christianity we see the unity of God and man in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, secondly, moral commandments are a consequence of the most important thing in the Gospel message - the coming into the world of the Son of God. But at the same time, church commandments are priceless, because if for non-believers moral precepts are a consequence of historical and social processes, then for us their creator is the Lord God. And to the question of what is the most important thing in the moral law embedded in the human heart and in the Law that was revealed to Old Testament humanity, the Lord Himself once answered.

We see in the Gospel that people who do not accept the teachings of the Savior repeatedly try to catch the Lord in the word in order to then accuse Him. The Pharisees and Herodians send their disciples asking whether it is permissible or not to pay a tax to Caesar; the Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection from the dead, ask the Lord about some incredible story- widow of seven deceased brothers. And when the Lord, with His answer, shames the Sadducees as “ignorant of either the Scriptures or the Power of God,” the Pharisees, the ideological opponents of the Sadducees, gather together and one of them, a “legalist,” that is, an expert and interpreter of the Law, wanting to test the Lord, “tempting Him, asked , saying: Teacher! What is the greatest commandment in the law?” Of course, the lawyer does not know that he is addressing not just a teacher, but the One who gave man the Divine Law. The Old Testament contains many legal norms and definitions, but at its core, first of all, those 10 commandments that the Lord God gave to Moses at Sinai. The Decalogue speaks about the relationship of man to God, and about the relationship of man to man. And the essence of these commandments, the essence of the whole law and everything that the prophets proclaimed, is briefly formulated in the Scripture itself, these are the words that the Lord now pronounces: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind (Deut. 6, 5): this is the first and greatest commandment; the second is similar to it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). And of course, it is impossible to fulfill just one of these commandments; they are closely related to each other. The Apostle John the Theologian says that we have a commandment that loving God loved his neighbor too. “And the one who says that he loves God but hates his neighbor is a liar. For how can you love God whom you do not see, while you hate whose brother you see?” (1Jn...)

But in order to learn to love a person, we must first of all know that it is God who loves us, that it was He, as John the Theologian speaks with surprise about himself and others, who loved us “while we were still sinners.” . God loved us so much that He gave His Son so that He would become Man and shed His Blood so that we would have eternal life. And knowing how God treats man, we ourselves can learn to love our neighbor.

Evangelist Matthew has a very negative attitude towards the Pharisees, and this is also connected with the community to which he is addressing - Christians brought up on the Old Testament and living in a hostile environment. And therefore, Matthew, conveying the teachings of Christ and talking about His deeds, draws attention precisely to the fact that Old Israel and its spiritual leaders will be rejected. Unlike Matthew, Mark, who wrote down the gospel for the Roman Christian community from the words of Peter, talking about this episode, also says that the scribe, having heard the Lord’s answer, warmly agreed with him and was praised by Him: “You are not far from the Kingdom God's." To know and accept God’s commandments with all your heart means to already be on the threshold of the Kingdom of God!

After such an answer, the Pharisees no longer dare to ask the Lord anything, and then He Himself asks them, asks about Himself: “What do you think about Christ, whose son He is? They answer him: “Davidov.” But how then does David in his prophetic psalm say about Christ: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” (Ps 109:1) How is He the son of David if he calls Him Lord? Of course, the Pharisees could not answer this question, because the fullness of the knowledge of God belongs to His Son, and to the one to whom the Son wants to reveal it - His Church. Christ is the Son of David according to His human nature, which He received from the Virgin Mary, Theotokos. And as the Son of God, Christ abides eternally, and therefore David calls Christ, who has not yet come into the world, Lord, just as in this psalm he calls God the Father Lord. The name Lord is associated with the history of the Old Testament, with the calling of Moses, who was destined to lead the Jewish people out of slavery and through whom God gave the 10 commandments. One day, when Moses was tending his father-in-law's sheep, he saw an extraordinary phenomenon - a luminous bush, burning and not being consumed. And when Moses approached, he heard the voice of God calling him to go to Egypt to the sons of Israel in order to bring them to freedom. And to Moses’ question: “What is Your Name?” God answered: “I am who I am.”

The burning bush and blackberry bush, from which God was revealed to Moses, are still shown to this day on the territory of the monastery of St. Catherine at the very foot of Mount Moriah, on the top of which Moses received the stone tablets with the 10 commandments. And the sacred name of God - Jehovah, Yahweh, I am who I am - can be understood as an indication of the fullness of Being which God possesses by His nature. This name was surrounded by such reverence that it was pronounced only once a year by the high priest, entering the sanctuary of the Jerusalem Temple with sacrificial blood. In other cases, when reading Scripture, this name was replaced by the word Adonai - Lord. And when in the third century BC the Law and the Books of the Prophets in Egyptian Alexandria began to be translated into the most common language in the Roman Empire - Greek, then the sacred name of God - Jehovah - was transferred to the title Lord. Thus, by calling Jesus Christ Lord, we testify that He is the true God Who revealed Himself in the Old Testament, led the people out of Egyptian slavery and gave the law at Sinai. And this God came into the world becoming a man, and this God teaches us how we should live. Of course, every person wants to be happy, and we see that all the law and the prophets, all the wisdom and spiritual experience of mankind testify that God will treat us the way we treat others and others - the people around us, will treat us the same way the same way we treat them. And Christ God Himself tells us that first of all we must learn to love God and love our neighbor, for this is precisely the meaning of everything given to a person Divine law!

Below I present the tossing and turning of the soul of one believer - a Christian, who is trying to find in his heart the answer to what kind of relationship with God he prefers, Old Testament or New Testament...

A. Podgorny

New Testament painful for a person. Defiantly simple, nakedly frank, it - if read carefully - evokes feelings that never arise when reading the Old Testament. The commandments of the Old Testament are strict, orderly, weighed and calculated. The commandments of the New Testament break hearts. Thoughts, feelings and heads break like crystal from this simplicity. And it seems easier to overcome hundreds of commandments-steps from pre-Christ times than to walk along the three steps of Christ’s commandments without stumbling. All at once the railings of the safety of the law disappear, and here are these three simple steps into the sky, but... over the greatest abyss.

Jesus said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.

It's like a ring, and it compresses. It’s pressing, and it’s unclear where to start and how. How to love like that, and is it possible?! God’s infinite trust in man strikes and stings more than punishment, more than the written law. Trust, ah, this trust is Yours, as if You are not learning anything, Lord... Thousands and thousands of times in the Bible people reject God, thousands and thousands of times they betray him in the most disgusting way. But then Christ comes and says: the first and most important commandment is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind...”
...I believe, says God, that man can love Me. I believe so unreasonably, so... madly, so... hopelessly that I go to the cross. I believe - says God - I believe until my bones crunch, when nails are driven into My hands. I believe until the sun scorches over the cross, until my dry lips. Until my dying cry... until my death... I believe in love.

Love! How is it?! And what is my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind? Love? And who are you and what have you done for me - You, who was somewhere when I suffered so much, You, to whom I never reached out, You, who so indifferently abandoned me in difficult times? Yes, we still need to believe in You... what kind of love can we talk about?!

Your words are impossible, Lord, and love for You is impossible - You are too far, You are too removed from our affairs, You are there, and we are here, and what do we have in common?
But, looking into our eyes, embittered by eternal abandonment of God, and tearing up the Old Testament law of obedience and submission, the Lord says: love, love - as I love you. Do you know how much I love you?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

All veils are torn apart by a powerful hand. You can look into the eyes of the Living God. But tell me, man, weren’t you more comfortable in the Old Testament? Not stained with the blood of your God?
If someone read and accepted the New Testament - with all the horror of its impossible responsibility and personal standing before God - this does not mean that the whole world was immediately illuminated by the mutual love of man and God. No, it is not enough to convert a people and a country to Christianity - we need to do more - convert every soul. Old Testament could have been concluded with the people - The new one is concluded with each individual separately, and the former common responsibility suddenly became frighteningly personal... But what should I do now? himself do we need to be responsible for our relationship with you?!

Does the Lord really not know what abandonment and orphan malice the hearts of His people are filled with?
The new covenant is putting your hand in the hand of God. Put it in and shudder when you touch the bleeding wound. Shudder and look into His eyes. Burn yourself with a boiling mixture of love and crazy hope for reciprocity.
Oh God, how painful the New Testament is.
Because what conscience is not twisted in a painful knot by His hope? His insecurity. Reluctance to come victoriously and take. "I love you so madly, says the Lord. So crazy that I leave the choice up to you"".
And the uncertainty of His outstretched hand is more painful than a slap in the face, and the meekest words “I will not judge unless someone believes in Me” are worse than the promises of punishment. Because you have to make the choice yourself: He no longer insists. The time of the rigid framework of the Old Testament is over. Now everyone decides for himself, and He does not punish for choosing not in His favor. He only hopes that someone will come. And he waits.

So who doesn’t have a desire to pull out his hand and run away - to run away and hide from his aching conscience, from the understanding of His sacrifice and pain. Because - what is the answer from me? It is scary to admit your unworthiness and almost impossible to suddenly realize that He gives not according to works, but according to His love, because there are no such works...

Give, give us the Old Testament! Give up the distant and formidable God, the God who punishes and fights with His people. Give the commandments of obedience and punishment for them. At least they are understandable. Even though You came and died and rose again, I want to live in the Old Testament, where you have to obey and not love. A world built on obedience is simple and understandable.
Because if I am careful in my life and commandments, I will shield myself from You with my righteousness.
Well, don't look at me It's impossible with yours with loving eyes. Look here - here is the list of my good deeds, here is my alms to Your poor, here is my decency, here are my donations to Your temples, here are my fasts, here are my Saturdays... Don’t look at me like that, I don’t want to understand that You don’t need everything it's that you only need my love.

Let's go to court, Lord, I don't want Your mercy and love, I don't want Your sacrifice - I don't want You, because I don't want to give myself in return. Give me back the Old Testament, where You punished for sin and rewarded for righteousness.
Let's bargain with You, Lord. But don’t lean towards me - after the scourges and the crown of thorns, blood will drip from You onto me. Well, after the denials and general laughter, after the resounding slaps in the face, I will spit at Your feet. You will endure... You have endured so much...

Because I love you such- and not the great, distant and incomprehensible - mortally scary. Relaxed love for a distant God has nothing in common with the crazy whirlwind that love for You will spin. Because it’s time to cry, it’s time to fall at Your pierced feet and not remembering to kiss Your wounds, it’s time to clutch your head, remember your sins and die of shame.

Do you want anything for yourself, Lord?
Something with which I could earn Your love and salvation! Even a shadow of reproach in Your eyes, Lord, a shadow of discontent, which can be dispelled by all efforts and entreaties. Yes, to what poverty are you stooping, Lord, from what ashes are you raising... and my pride needs to survive this and come to terms with it...

No, let there be a deal again - I give you repentance, atonement and apology, You give me forgiveness. I don't need all of You, I don't need cleansing of shame, happiness mutual love with You - but only the confidence that in any case everything will be fine with me. Again and again - I want Your gifts, not You. That which is from You - and not from You. I don’t need Your sacrifice, I don’t need Your blood - I want to enjoy Your gifts and that’s the only way I will accept You. Without Your gifts, I do not need Your sacrifice or Your love.

Give me gifts, arrange my little world with pierced hands - and I will try not to see the wounds. Take care of my comfort, Lord, and stand aside yourself: when everything is fine with me, I won’t even look at You, but if trouble comes, You will be the first to blame. And I don’t even want to think about how much you love and how much it aches Your heart about my indifference and my reproaches.

Are Your gifts placed higher and valued more than Your blood and Your death?!!

Who, except the Lover, could so humble himself and humiliate himself so much in order to make his sacrifice optional a choice for everyone free choice?

Your blood is dripping onto the ground, You stand and silently listen to me, and I mutter these bargainings of mine, calculating what Your forgiveness and a quiet life will cost me. What should I give up, and what should I be allowed to leave in order not to have problems later... Come on, lower Your outstretched hand, lower your all-loving eyes. Hide Your wounds from me, obscure the memory of them.

I don’t believe in You, I don’t believe in You - so that with the same ease I can throw reproaches and insults into the sky. Where have you been? Well, where have you been? And I retreat into a cozy, lived-in world where You cannot go.
Because if I fall in love with You, my questions, of course, will disappear, and the abyss between us will disappear. I will understand everything too well, looking into Your eyes. I will understand so much that I won’t even glance at the cooled joys and values, at the sweetness of sin, at the pleasure of resentment, at the delight of reproach. You are the answer to all questions, and I so want to ask them - and not receive an answer. Either there is no God, or He is guilty before me. To love, what else... It’s so difficult to give all of yourself and leave nothing for yourself.

Who wore the crown of thorns - of course You can give everything. But how scary it is to admit to yourself that, in fact, I don't need anything but You. Crucified on the cross - how to ask You for something other than Yourself?
Ask for the Kingdom of Heaven - You said - and the rest will be added to you. We translated this as “give us everything and more, and you will somehow add to it.”
And how can we learn to understand that Your Kingdom, for which You called to pray, is awareness of Your love in the heart. Constant, enduring memory of this love, and joy about it. This means complete trust in You, which means love.

You cannot love only with your heart, without the consent of your mind.

Mikhail Cherenkov

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30)

Complete love for God is the first commandment of the Torah, confirmed by Christ for the era of the New Testament. They teach a lot about love with all your “heart” and “strength” (“strength”), although I still have little understanding of what it means to “love” with “heart” and “strength.” Behind these words there is always a lot of emotion and very little clarity.

But I have heard extremely rarely about love with all the “understanding” (“all thoughts”), although here, in my humble opinion, it is easier to understand, and therefore it is better to start from this point, that is, start with the understanding, so that later you can include others “ organs."

For some reason, Christians neglect “understanding”, “thoughts”, preferring to love “with the heart”. It seems to me that the commanded love for God is only possible if it is together, whole, united - with heart, mind and strength. And when we talk only about the heart, we create a veil of mystery, romance, emotionality, reassuring ourselves with ignorance and misunderstanding.

You cannot love only with your heart, without the consent of your mind. Unreasonable, reckless love is not only dangerous, but also unnatural, absurd, because it tears the personality apart and does not unite it; lives in pleasant self-deception, and does not “rejoice in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6); makes a slave, not frees.

Contrary to popular “spiritual” reasoning, it turns out that one cannot love and talk about love without the participation of the mind. But how often do we hear about God’s love with understanding? How dedicated is our mind to serving Him? Are we depriving ourselves of great blessings by neglecting reason as a gift from God? How to show love to God through caring for the mind and “reasonable service”? These questions are so rare that they should cause alarm - here we have lost sight of what is really important, here we have suppressed not the additional, but necessary condition our relationship with God.

Reason is part of our likeness to God. We know so little about the “heart” and “soul” that we speak quite seriously about heartfelt love or spiritual affection for domestic dogs and cats. But if we talk about love seriously, then only with the participation of the mind as a cognizer, an understander, a decision-maker, and a giver. If we talk about love for God, then only about reasonable love.

The Apostle Paul begs – i.e. He humbly asks and begs to treat God and serve Him wisely, consciously, not formally, not blindly, not recklessly. “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service; and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good will of God, acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2).

“This age” produces unreasonable people, formats people’s minds to suit itself, to suit its own perverse logic, its own imaginary values. The easiest way is to go with the flow, “conform,” adapt, become the same as all the people of “this world.” But the apostle calls to “be transformed,” to change, to live and think contrary to the “world,” to go against the flow.

Transformation is possible through “repentance” as a “change of mind”, and then through the process of “renewing the mind” and knowing the “will of God” with a renewed mind. If God wants “reasonable service,” then He will not be satisfied with our references to dead tradition (“this is how it has always been,” “this is how we were taught”) or the spirit of the times (“now it is impossible otherwise,” “this is how everyone does it”). God expects a conscious, meaningful, reasonable attitude.

Reasonable service to God and knowledge of His will are associated not with emotions, spiritual impulses, passion, but with efficient work mind as an organ of thought and an instrument of cognition. We are responsible not only for the health of the body and spirit, but also for the health of the mind, its hygiene, prevention, treatment, strengthening, development.

“To love God with all your mind” means to see God in the mind and to see God with the mind, to gratefully accept reason as a gift and revelation, to responsibly use the fullness of its capabilities.

God likes smart people, but even more - loving ones. If we want to love God, we must make our mind loving and our love intelligent.

The entire fullness of our personality must rush towards God in order to be transformed in His presence, in His love. By aspiring to God, the mind is renewed. Near God, conflict, contradictions of the heart and mind are healed. The love of God and the love of God unite all aspects of the personality together so that God will be all in all. "What to do? I will begin to pray with the spirit, I will also pray with the mind; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding” (1 Cor. 14:15).