For the majority of the Orthodox reading public in the Belgorod region, the name of journalist Maria Gorodova is associated with two famous books, “The Ship of Salvation” and “Love is Long-suffering,” written in co-authorship with Metropolitan John of Belgorod and Stary Oskol. They contain interviews with the Bishop, given by him for the magazine “Peasant”. Currently, Maria Gorodova is a columnist for Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Here she maintains a regular column, answering questions related to attitudes towards Orthodoxy, faith, and moral values. The fruit of the work was the new books “Tenderness Wind”, “Garden of Desires” and “Flame of Fire”, which were written in the form of correspondence between the author and readers. The author has a huge mail from all over the country. Readers share their most intimate things, talk about everyday difficulties and family troubles, their weaknesses and failures, miraculous salvation and gaining faith in God. Responding to their letters, Maria Gorodova does not judge them for their mistakes, does not praise them for their deeds, but tries to turn their gaze to Christ, so that the authors of the letters, seeing themselves through the prism of Christian commandments, themselves evaluate their actions and answer their own questions.
On October 27 in Voronezh, in the bookstore of the Amital retail chain, with the participation of correspondents from Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a meeting of the writer Maria Gorodova with readers took place, at which her new works were presented.
The task of a journalist is to talk about what he saw, to present the events or interlocutor as fully and vividly as possible. But time passes, and some authors grow into publicists, with a personal level of perception of things and a deep disclosure of the essence of problems. And then their own civic position and originality of thinking find themselves in the spotlight of the press. This is exactly what happened with Maria Gorodova. Once upon a time, she did heartfelt, captivatingly frank interviews with popular artists and writers, with priests and bishops. Now she herself has become an object for correspondents. She generously shares her accumulated everyday, professional and spiritual experience with colleagues and readers of other publications.
As often happens, Maria Gorodova did not intend to become a journalist. She graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, got married, gave birth to two sons and was busy with household chores, as if this was her calling. But the tragic death of her husband in 1998, who died saving an unfamiliar young man, tore her out of her already established way of life. “My world, the world of my family, collapsed, and I had to learn to live again. Where how? It’s unclear,” - this is how Maria Gorodova writes her biography with naked pain in the article “Ship of Salvation.” God's providence forced her to move in a completely different direction. Work in the glossy magazine “Peasant Woman”, where they were invited more out of compassion than for professional skills that had not yet been demonstrated anywhere, provided material support. And she unexpectedly found spiritual support in communication with Bishop John, then still the Archbishop of Belgorod and Stary Oskol. Four years before the death of her husband, the bishop baptized her entire family in Kursk. Then he gave moral support during my husband’s funeral. The reason for the new meeting was the preparation of material for the issue for the Nativity of Christ.
“Vladyka John is an extraordinary person, smart, educated, tactful, sensitive to the interlocutor and the reader for whom the interview is intended,” says Maria Gorodova at the meeting. “I was amazed by the depth of thought and the ability to talk about complex things simply. I still needed to grow to such an understanding of things. I followed the bishop like a thread following a needle. There was a great response to the material. We decided to continue the topic, and interviews became regular. And then the editor suggested making a book out of the articles. 
These materials, as Maria Gorodova admits, became her salvation. “...Imagine, I could ask about what really interested me - about what sin is and how to come to repentance, what God’s providence is and how to recognize God’s will for oneself... I interviewed, then transcribed everything in detail, wrote, joyfully discovering a new world for yourself, immersing yourself in the space of Holy Scripture... You can sleep in the kitchen on the floor of a rented apartment, but feel absolutely happy if you wrote a wonderful material called “Ship of Salvation” (from the article “Ship of Salvation”).
In 2005, Maria suffered a new ordeal - her eldest son Peter was brutally killed. A woman can still accept the loss of her husband, but not all mothers can come to terms with the loss of a child. But by this time, Mary was already a different person: death did not seem to her to be the last resort of human existence. “And here, in the temple, at some point, when I was not so much praying as trying to pray, I suddenly realized with distinct clarity that my love for Petya, just like his for me, had not gone away. That I feel it, and with that primordial strength that we are rarely given the opportunity to experience in ordinary life... And it seems to me that it was from that moment in the temple that life began to return to me” (from the article “Ship of Salvation”).
Maria Gorodova speaks to the reader sincerely, frankly, sometimes even harshly, not sparing herself, exposing her own nerve of the soul, “pulling out a thread from her own destiny.” Maybe that’s why people don’t remain indifferent, respond, write, argue or agree. As the author admits, before each article she prays for the Lord to enlighten her. Metropolitan John commented on her book “The Garden of Desires”: “In modern literature, monologue books are most often found, and there are very few works that were born from dialogues between the author and the reader. This genre requires enormous tension and openness on both sides.
This book can be defined as a confession of people who survived trials, but did not lose the main Christian virtues - Faith, Hope and Love (1 Cor. 13:13). I hope that everyone who reads it will be strengthened in these virtues and will find their way to the temple for salvation.”
Maria Gorodova’s book “Ship of Salvation” can be found in the church shop at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. New works by the author are available in the Amital chain of stores.
For readers of “Orthodox Oskol” we offer the chapter “If the son is a thief” from the book “The Wind of Tenderness” by M. Gorodova.
Svetlana Vorontsova
"If the son is a thief"
Chapter from the book “Tenderness Wind” by Maria Gorodova
Dear readers, I cannot express how glad I am for the mail that arrived after the materials “The Ship of Salvation” and “Life after Happiness.” There is so much warmth and sincere desire in her to accept other people’s pain. You, dear readers, do not just empathize - you offer help. True feeling is always effective. Thank you. And now a new letter - a letter whose first lines puzzled me: “Maria, you write about your losses, and I envy you...”
"Hello Maria! Reading about your losses and how you wrote the book “Love is patient” with Archbishop John, I experienced different feelings, even envy. Yes, yes, don’t be surprised, I’ll try to explain now. I am 47 years old, and although I feel young, my life is already over. Or rather, it turned into a complete hell.
At the age of 30, realizing that the years were passing and family happiness was not developing, I decided to give birth to a child and raise him myself. I did not involve the child’s father in my plans, because I knew that he would not abandon his family, although he says that he is in love with me. This is how my Borenka was born.
My parents, now the most unfortunate people in the world, were able to understand me and helped me in everything. My Borenka was the most beautiful boy, he learned to read early, and grew up active and smart.
But five years ago I began to stray down a terrible path: I began to steal and behave very cruelly, including with my parents - modest and intelligent people. How many psychologists and law enforcement officers have I passed through? How many tears I shed! I remember how one employee of the children’s police room, unable to bear Bori’s shamelessness, exclaimed: “Why is there such a scumbag in such a family!”
In all the schools that Borya went to, at first they treated him well, but he ruined everything himself. I fought for my son: trying to hide the fact that he was stealing, I transferred him to home schooling, took him to theaters, tried to get him interested in sports. One day, a physical education teacher told him: “You should join the army, but they’ll kill someone like that!”
Having received the certificate, Borya completely got out of control and got involved with thieves who were older than him. He began to come home only when he needed something, and when he came, a nightmare began with his parents, who did not deserve this in their old age. But I'm still glad for him, and my heart breaks when I don't know where he is. Seeing your son dying before your eyes and not knowing how to help him - understand, Maria, this is scary.
In a moment of despair, I turned to Father Bori for the first time - I was already accustomed to humiliation. But he, having listened to me, renounced his son, saying that his children were all right: they were studying in England. Although I don’t blame him - I didn’t inform him when Borenka was born, relying only on myself. I came to God not through books, but through my heart; was baptized. Maria, I know that I am to blame for everything, but I still can’t help but ask myself the question: “Why me? Isn’t it cruel to punish like that?” Over the past six months there have been three courts, the last one made a decision on correctional work. My son is dying before my eyes, and I live and don’t know why...
Natalya V."
Hello, Natalia. Honestly, Natalya, I don’t know the answer to your question: “Why me?” “The ways in which God finds a person are inscrutable,” wrote F.M. Dostoevsky.
It's easy to love if your son is handsome, strong, the pride of the school and an Olympics winner. It is difficult, sometimes excruciatingly difficult, to love if your child is sick. Feel his pain more than your own; seeing the suffering of a loved one, experience this suffering more strongly than your own and, compassionate, love even deeper from this. It's difficult, very difficult.
But to love a daring, unscrupulous creature, related by blood, but with manners alien to you, is a wolf cub; to love, burning with shame for what he has done; to love, each time overcoming the wave of hatred, alienation and protest and still endlessly forgiving; to love, experiencing his sin as your own, is already a feat. The feat of Christian love. Not every heart is capable of this. “Brothers, do not be afraid of the sin of people, love a person even in his sin, for this similarity of Divine love is the height of love on earth.” This is Dostoevsky again, the words of Elder Zosima from The Brothers Karamazov.
The history of Christian holiness knows vivid examples when those whom human courts had long considered complete villains became saints.
The thief crucified with Christ and the first to enter heaven.
Theophilus, a young disciple of the Evangelist John the Theologian, who in his youth was left without a mentor and turned onto the disastrous path of robbery and yet, after meeting with his teacher, repented.
Moses Murin (Egypt, 4th century), the wild leader of a band of robbers who for a long time kept the entire area in fear, but suddenly repented, became a monk, became famous for the gift of healing and accepted martyrdom.
Our Nikita Stylite (XII century), a daring and ruthless collector of princely taxes, suddenly woke up from a continuous series of atrocities.
History does not always convey to us exactly what external event became the impetus for the awakening of the soul from its dark sleep. From the Gospel of Luke we know that the thief believed, seeing the suffering of Christ crucified next to him.
And Theophilus was ashamed of one look from John the Theologian, full of love and forgiveness. By the way, according to St. Theophan the Recluse, it is forgiveness and love that can turn a young, still unstable soul away from the so-called “falls of youth.”
Nikita the Stylite, entering the temple, suddenly, as if for the first time, heard the word of God, then he had a vision: in the cauldron where food for the feast was being cooked, he suddenly saw a stream of blood shed by him. I saw it and shuddered at myself.
Outwardly, these are all completely different events, and it is no coincidence that it is not always clear to others what exactly led a person to an internal revolution. Only the Lord knows both the disastrous abysses of our hearts and the heights of our spirit. But it is obvious that the awakening of conscience occurs only by the grace of God and out of the highest love for us. The finitude of any human sentence, Natalya, can only be contrasted with the infinity of love.
In Dostoevsky, in the same “The Brothers Karamazov”, Elder Zosima says how important it is for the soul to feel that “there is a human being left on earth who loves him”! This, Natalya, is probably the answer to your question: “I live, but why?..”
And finally, about hell. “What is hell? - asks Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. And he answers: “I reason like this: suffering is that you can no longer love.” And then he explains.
In an infinite existence, not measured by either time or space, a certain spiritual being was given the opportunity to appear on earth and with this appearance say: “I am, and I love.” That is, this is why we were called into this life, to love. Moreover, to love lively, effectively, sacrificially, giving all of ourselves to love - for this we were given life, and with it - both time and space. And if we are given such an opportunity, and it was granted only once, and we neglected this opportunity, rejected this priceless gift - “we did not love, looked mockingly and remained insensitive,” then, having already departed from the earth, having ascended to the Lord, how will we come into contact with His love, who themselves have not known love? We want to love, but we cannot. We will thirst for such love, when you give your life for another, but we will not be able to quench this thirst, “for the life that could have been sacrificed for love has passed away...” It was this suffering from the fact that you can no longer love like that that Dostoevsky called hell.
Fyodor Mikhailovich created the image of Elder Zosima after visiting Optina Hermitage in 1878: this trip summed up the writer’s spiritual quest. By the way, Optina Pustyn, the spiritual center of Russia, was founded in the 15th century by a certain Opta - before his sudden repentance, the ataman of a gang that was engaged in robbery in the Kozelsky forests.
Maria Gorodova
Maria Gorodova is a columnist for the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the presenter of the Correspondence column, which receives a huge amount of mail from all over the country. The story of her life and the letters of the readers themselves formed the basis of her books “Wind Tenderness” and “Garden of Desires.” Both books became bestsellers and are difficult to obtain, especially for people living far from the capital. Therefore, based on numerous requests from readers and the proposal of the author, the Pravoslavie.ru portal begins publishing chapters from the book "Wind Tenderness"Instead of a preface
This story began on a hot July day in 1998, when a telephone rang in our house and a man who introduced himself as a police officer from Ramenskoye near Moscow told me that my husband had died. My husband, Vasily Egorovich Babenko, a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, has already been working as a deputy editor at the Krestyanka publishing house for six months; We were finally preparing, as a family, to move from Kursk to Moscow when this call came. I didn’t get ready for long: I threw some things into my bag, took our boys - twelve-year-old Petya and seven-year-old Georgy - and boarded the first train to Moscow to bury Vasya.
As the husband’s friends later found out, he died trying to save an orphanage resident who was crossing the railroad tracks. Eighteen-year-old Dima had headphones in his ears, and he simply could not hear the roar of a rapidly flying train. My Vasya, walking behind, rushed to save the young man - the last thing the old women saw selling greens on the platform was this Vasya’s jerk... He didn’t save, he himself died. So I was left alone, with two children.
After the funeral, the editor of the magazine where Vasya worked, wanting to support me, invited me to write for them, and I, either out of despair or out of naivety, jumped at it. I was not a journalist at all, I was a housewife, I had a diploma from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, and the only thing I could boast of in the field of journalism were two tiny notes in the newspaper “Culture”, written because Vasya did not have time to write them himself. During the six months that Vasya worked at Krestyanka, almost everyone fell in love with him - for his decency, for his patience, for the fact that he was a hard worker. And this respect later helped me more than once. To this day, the name of my husband, who never held any special positions - never had time - opens the doors to me in the very serious offices of his comrades.This death, so unexpected, was a very strong blow. And not only for me - for the children. I remember there was a difficult moment before the funeral: my youngest could not accept his father’s death so much, his protest against what had happened was so strong that he refused to go to both the funeral and the funeral service. Then I, confused, not knowing what to do, called Bishop John, Archbishop of Belgorod and Stary Oskol, who baptized us and our children four years before. I called out of despair, in trouble, not knowing what to do. And the bishop, from the other end of the country, talked with Gosha for a very long time, comforting and convincing, until he convinced him that he had to go to the father’s funeral service.
I decided not to return to Kursk. Firstly, I understood that I wouldn’t find a job there, and secondly, because I simply wanted to escape from the pain. I repeat, for the last six months we were forced to live in two houses, and every time Vasya came, we waited for him from early morning, peering at how he hurried towards us along the long concrete road to the house... Looking from the window at the road, knowing that no one would come along it was unbearable.
My world, the world of my family, collapsed, and I had to learn to live again. Where how? Dont clear. But it immediately became clear that it was impossible to cry. My boys literally clung to me, not letting go of my hands for a minute; their eyes were absolutely confused, they peered into mine in fear. And I understood: the main thing now is to hold on. Because as soon as I lost control of myself and tears welled up in my eyes, they immediately burst out too. For them, the death of their beloved father was not just a loss - the foundations of their life were crumbling. The youngest started having spasms from crying and had a headache...
Everything was rapidly going to hell - there was no stopping it, so I firmly understood only one thing - I had to hold on. Those who remembered me at that time later said: everyone was surprised when, in response to condolences and sympathetic questions about how I was going to live further, I confidently reported that everything would be fine with us, that I had already been offered a job at “Krestyanka”, and I'm about to find a place to live. As one journalist later said: “Masha smiled all the time, and it was scary.” It's actually simple: as long as you smile, it's hard to cry.
I really very quickly rented some shack in Voskresensk near Moscow - I wouldn’t have had enough money to rent an apartment in Moscow. This is how my other life began.
I, until that day protected by the love of my husband, had a rather vague idea of how to make money. She raised children, wrote poetry, cooked borscht. Now my greatest fear was that I would not be able to feed my children. I remember how, during confession in the Ilyinsky Church, in Kursk, where I went immediately after the funeral, an old priest (I think his name was Luke) told me: “Pray and do not be afraid of anything, widows are in Christ’s bosom.” I remember how, sinfully, I thought: “It’s easy to say, but what do I need to live on?”, but there was some enormous truth in these words.
I remember how I was summoned to “Krestyanka” in order to give back the salary Vasya had not received and some other money owed. I remember well how the accountant Marina Borisovna, looking at me carefully and forcing me to recalculate the amount received several times, very accentuated, emphasizing every word, said: “Maria, hide the money away,” apparently, despite the smile and confident appearance, I still made her afraid. I remember how I left the gray high-rise publishing house and went to the metro, how a yellow exchange office board appeared before my eyes, how I almost automatically walked into the nook of the exchanger. I know for sure that without fully realizing what I was doing, for some reason I changed all the money given to me into dollars, leaving only change for transport. I know for sure that at that moment I didn’t understand well what I was doing, and I could have easily been deceived... A few days later the default occurred, and the dollars that I exchanged that day fed us for almost six months. The most difficult six months, when publications were closed, nothing was paid anywhere and even the most venerable journalists sat without work and money.
To be honest, some things that were akin to a miracle accompanied me for a long time. For example, without a residence permit or a permanent job, I easily got my boys to study at the best school in Voskresensk, and they were surrounded by such care as we had never encountered before or since. As it turned out later, the director of this school, Roza Nikolaevna Utesheva, once had her husband die under similar circumstances, and she did everything so that the boys would thaw out in the new place. The first year I went to work in Moscow from Voskresensk near Moscow, the children did not leave me alone, and I took them with me.
I think I was lucky in journalism too: even my first materials were immediately included in the issue. The very first was with Yan Arlazorov, and he liked him so much that Yan Mayorovich helped me take the next interview - with Gennady Khazanov. Those who have ever encountered glossy journalism know that it takes professionals years to reach such stars. I didn’t have this time, I had to feed my children every day and pay for a rented apartment.
Everyone says that I was lucky when Alla Pugacheva sang a song to my poems, written at the request of the very talented composer Sasha Lukyanov. The fact that the text “Caution, leaf fall!” fell into the hands of Alla Borisovna, it was an accident, a happy coincidence - call it whatever you like: after all, before, when I lived in Kursk, I wrote poems and even sent some of them to Pugacheva, but I never got into a hit " And that year, all autumn, every evening I returned home from work to the accompaniment of my song, which sounded from every window. I was not just glad, it was not a matter of the author’s vanity - although, of course, it was nice. Everything was much more prosaic: Alla Borisovna immediately paid very decently for my poems - it was real money, which allowed me not to have to get more and more work, and gave me the opportunity to sleep off once again. In general, that year both Masha Rasputina and Lev Leshchenko sang songs based on my poems; During that first year, I made a professional breakthrough - I interviewed Igor Krutoy, Laima Vaikule, Tatyana Tolstoy.
And then there were Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, Vakhtang Kikabidze, Nikolai Drozdov, Yuri Shevchuk, Edita Piekha, David Tukhmanov, Sergei Zhigunov, Tigran Keosayan, Kristina Orbakaite, Alla Pugacheva...
But perhaps the biggest miracle happened when I started writing religious materials. One day in “Peasant Woman,” just before the issue was due, some material fell out, and they hastily decided to give a text dedicated to Christmas on the free space. By that time, I had already established myself as a journalist, everyone knew that I was a believer, so they entrusted me with the task. With whom to make the material? For me there was no question here. I called the Archbishop of Belgorod and Stary Oskol, Bishop John. Luckily, on that day, November 9, 1999, he happened to be passing through Moscow, and we did our first interview. I liked the material: it contained the living, ardent faith of the Bishop, and tact towards readers who were just beginning their path to God, and depth of thought, and subtlety of feelings, and also the ability to speak simply about complex things. Therefore, the editors decided to continue the topic, and I very soon realized that for me these articles were salvation.
The fact is that glossy journalism is a rather tough thing for those who work in it. Intense competition between publications and authors, the high pace dictated by the constant kaleidoscope of celebrities - all this leads to the fact that a person working there quickly wears out and is used up. In addition, the so-called gloss is often a world without rules, screwed up by its very essence, because success becomes the measure of everything there - an extremely crafty category.
Here everything was different: imagine, I could ask about what really interested me - about what sin is and how to come to repentance, what God’s Providence is and how to recognize God’s will for myself... I could ask about all this, and not just anyone - an archbishop! I interviewed, then transcribed it all in detail, wrote, joyfully discovering a new world for myself, plunging into the space of Holy Scripture. And then they printed it and even paid money! For me, living unsustainably - permanent rented apartments, working in several places - these materials, which had to be handed over every month, created the skeleton, the framework of my life. They became my support. Spiritual support.
You can sleep on the kitchen floor in a rented apartment, but feel absolutely happy if you wrote a wonderful material called “Salvation Ship.”
I still believe that the opportunity to write these interviews was some kind of amazing, unheard of gift for me. And then I was most afraid that for some reason this might end. Writing such materials is extremely difficult (every believer will understand me), because temptations constantly arise. And to be honest, for a long time I was offended by the bishop because he did not warn me what I would have to face - after all, the eldest child warns about what is dangerous. For some reason this was not the subject of our conversation. But on the other hand, when things got too complicated and I couldn’t cope with it, I could always call Vladyka John and ask something about the text, to clarify something, and usually everything calmed down. Sometimes, due to weakness, it was very difficult to write such materials. But if you nevertheless wrote, having licked the article to the last comma, the material has gone into the issue, then the feeling of flight, inner uplift, light and joy that overwhelms you inside can be compared with little.
Very quickly I felt that this was the most important thing I was doing. This incident was further proof of this. I remember I went into the editorial proofing department to ask the proofreader for the night “Symphony” - a book where I found exact biblical quotes by keyword. I didn’t have time to do this during the day because I was writing other material at the same time, so I decided to ask for the book to take home. “Yes, take it, for God’s sake,” said our proofreader Zhanna. And she continued, surprised at what she was saying: “In all this time, no one in the editorial office has asked us for this “Symphony.” Only you and... your Vasya!”
My Vasya was not a churchgoer. Decent - yes, he was. He was, as they call it, “pure of heart” - for example, I never heard him condemn anyone or say anything bad about anyone. But he wasn’t a church member, he didn’t have time... But it turns out that in the last months of his life he needed this book... For me at that moment, a lot came together. If the feeling that someone was leading me had visited me before, then at that moment I felt that this was really so, with particular acuteness.
I lived both hard and surprisingly happily at the same time, and for some reason it seemed to me that nothing bad would happen to me. Bishop John and I were already planning to make a book from our materials - everyone convinced us that it was time, when my eldest son, nineteen-year-old Petya, died.
Petya was a second-year student at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the Moscow Aviation Institute, having entered there on his own, and was already becoming a real support for me. He helped in all my endeavors, typed my materials on the computer, and many of the questions and topics included in the interview were suggested by him. That day, after passing the exam, Petya went with the guys to sunbathe in Serebryany Bor, left his family and disappeared.
We searched for Petya for four days - calling hospitals, morgues, and the police. On the fifth day they found him, beaten, in the river. For what, who? So it’s unclear. From my pure, childishly open Petya, who, apart from his mathematics and physics, naive youthful poems and guitar, still knew nothing in life, and there was nothing to take. When they found him, beaten, he was wearing only panties and a cross...
I remember I’m standing near the morgue where my child lies, I have to go, do something, sign some papers, but I can’t move, and it seems like life itself is flowing out of me. Moreover, it’s scary that you don’t even resist this anymore - you can’t, because this life itself is devalued by what happened. And I still remember the funeral service. Petya was a believing boy; he had been going to church on his own for a long time, without me, obeying his inner impulses; a week before that terrible day he confessed and took communion. And either because they loved Petya, or because they knew that he was a believer, a lot of his friends came to the funeral service; I didn’t even suspect that he had so many of them.
Of course, because so many people have come to share your pain with you, it becomes easier. But all the same, it’s very hard, even just physically hard, to stand at the coffin of your child, and only the fact that your youngest son’s hand is in your hand, and there’s also mom and dad, that’s the only thing that makes you hold on. And here, in the temple, at some point, when I was not so much praying as trying to pray, I suddenly realized with distinct clarity that my love for Petya, just like his for me, had not gone away. That I feel it, and with that primordial strength that we are rarely given the opportunity to experience in ordinary life.
And it suddenly became obvious that for this love there are no boundaries that exist between our world and that world, that love really “never ceases,” and this love is more obvious than the reality of the coffin standing in front of you. It seems to me that it was from that moment, in the temple, that life began to return to me.
One Optina elder compared sorrows to a drill of God, which opens a source of prayer in a person. This is true. When this happens, you pray - constantly, simply because otherwise you will not survive, this is a necessary condition for survival. When I got a little stronger, the question “what to do?” He wasn’t even standing in front of me. I took our 58 interviews and sat down with the book “Love is patient,” plunging into the space of the Bible, the bishop’s stories, prayers and Christian poetry. This book, I believe, saved me twice. Can I forget about this?
Prayer for grace
Lord our God! All my good is in You. How can I endure all the troubles and misfortunes of this life if Thy mercy and Thy grace do not support me? Do not turn Your face away from me, do not delay Your visit, do not take away Your consolation, so that my soul does not turn into a parched desert! Teach me, Lord, to do Your will! Teach me to stand before You with dignity and humility. For You are my wisdom!
(To be continued.)
“Hello, Maria! Maria, I’m not a believer, but with curiosity I go to the website of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta and read your articles there, among other things. And you know, I’ve been wanting to ask you this question for a long time. You constantly talk about God, but Where is he, your God, when there is so much injustice around? I won’t go far with an example: in our entrance, in our Khrushchev-era building, there lives a woman - a good, kind, friendly woman - and a few years ago her daughter got sick - she got so sick. , that now she is disabled. Her husband left them, and it is clear that the neighbor is literally exhausted with her disabled girl - only her old mother helps her. When I think about this, I am tempted to ask: “How can we understand evil. what happened to these people?" So, Maria, what do you answer to this?"
Gennady Ivanovich
Hello, Gennady Ivanovich! The question you are asking me has tormented humanity for thousands of years. The German poet Heinrich Heine formulated it this way:
"Why under the burden of the godmother
Is the one on the right wallowing in blood?
Why is everyone dishonest
Greeted with honor and glory?"
Indeed, looking at a sick child or the inconsolable grief of a widow, it is difficult not to ask: why, if God is good, does He allow suffering? Why do not those who, in our opinion, deserve it with their sins, suffer, but the innocent? And if such injustice is possible, then it turns out that He is not good? And if He is able to look indifferently at the tears of the innocent, maybe He doesn’t exist at all?
Terrible news
All these questions are posed with extreme urgency in the biblical Book of Job. In a book that reveals to people the secret of suffering. In a book that attracts not only theologians, philosophers and writers, but also millions of ordinary people. Because each of us, at a certain moment in our lives, is “a little Job,” and in a moment of pain, suffering and loss, a cry breaks out from our heart: “For what?”
“There was a man in the land of Uz, his name was Job; and this man was blameless, just and fearful of God, and shunned evil” - this is how the Book of Job begins. Job, who lived in the East at least two and a half thousand years ago, was not just righteous: God's favor visibly extended over him. Job had three daughters and seven sons, his home and the homes of his children were famous for their abundance, and the Bible details the livestock he owned. All this made Job, in the eyes of his fellow tribesmen, not just a respected man, but also “more famous than all the sons of the East.”
“And there was a day,” the Bible continues its story, “when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; Satan also came among them.” Thus, the action of the “Book of Job” is transferred from the eastern land of Uz, where the righteous man lived, to another plane of existence - to heaven, to where the destinies of people are decided. And here, in heaven, Satan, justifying his name - and translated from Hebrew it means “adversary, enemy,” starts a dispute with the Lord. Satan asks the Lord: “Is it for nothing that Job fears God? Haven’t You fenced him around and his house and everything that he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his flocks are spread throughout the earth; but stretch out Your hand and touch everything that he has "Will he bless you?" A slanderer by nature, Satan hints that there is a “negotiable point” in Job’s relationship with God: Job is righteous only because the Lord favors him - as if God’s mercy can be bought! And in response to this, in fact, very daring slander not so much against Job, but against God Himself, the Lord answers Satan like this: “Behold, everything that he has is in your hand; only do not stretch out your hand against him.” The Lord, as it were, removes His cover from Job, allowing the enemy of the human race to act, but shows Satan the boundaries: “Just don’t touch him!” In this dialogue, it is very important to understand the following point - nothing happens without the will of the Lord, without His permission.
What happens next is scary. One after another, messengers come to Job with frightening news. Before the first one has time to announce that his herds were attacked by nomads, the animals were kidnapped, and the shepherds were “struck with the edge of a sword,” when the next one is at the door with a story about lightning that destroyed the remaining cattle... “This one was just speaking,” when he enters the new one - with the news that when the sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their brother's house, a great wind from the desert blew against the house, and "the house fell on the youths, and they died; and only I was saved, to tell you ".
God gave - God took
And Job stood up. And “he tore his outer garment,” and “shaved his head, and fell to the ground.” And he uttered words to which only a truly believing person can rise in a moment of grief: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I will return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Thus ends the first chapter of the Book of Job. It would seem that Satan has been put to shame and will now leave the righteous man alone - but that was not the case. The second chapter begins with a dialogue between the Lord and the enemy of the human race. “And the Lord said to Satan: Have you turned your attention to My servant Job? For there is no one like him on earth: a blameless, just, God-fearing man who shuns evil, and is still firm in his integrity; and you stirred Me up against him. to destroy him innocently. And Satan answered the Lord and said: “Skin for skin, and for his life a man will give everything that he has” - barter trade was accepted in the East of that time, and the words “skin for skin” mean “equal.” for equal." Satan hints that Job is afraid of losing his life, and that’s the only reason he humbles himself before God, that’s the only reason he doesn’t complain. And Satan again incites the Lord: “Stretch out Your hand and touch Job’s bone and his flesh, will he bless You?” “And the Lord said to Satan: Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his soul.” This limitation that the Lord puts on Satan: “just save his soul” is fundamentally important. Look, God considers it possible to allow the enemy to touch Job’s property, even the lives of his loved ones, then the Lord, as it were, takes away his protection from the health of the righteous, but his soul is something where the enemy of the human race cannot be allowed under any circumstances! Think how often we ourselves, voluntarily, recklessly give our souls into the hands of the devil.
This time, the touch of Satan turned into a terrible disease for Job - leprosy, Job begins to rot alive - “from the sole of his foot to the very top of his head.”
bow down in front of the cross
Suffering severely, Job, according to the custom of that time, leaves the village - despised by everyone. "And he took himself a tile to scrape himself with it, and sat down in the ashes [outside the village]. And his wife said to him: You still stand firm in your integrity! Blaspheme God and die." Most likely, the wife, seeing Job’s unbearable suffering, considered that the death that awaits everyone who “blasphemes” God is better than continued torment. But what does Job answer? “You speak like one of the madmen: will we really accept good from God, but not evil?”
The severity of poor Job's physical suffering, as often happens, is aggravated by moral suffering. Friends come to the righteous man: at first they are silent, shocked by what they saw, and then they begin to loudly express their versions of the reasons for what happened. “Perhaps Job is not so righteous after all, since the Lord punished him.
Surely he sinned - and he sinned secretly, so that even we, friends, did not know about it, but the Lord sees everything, and this is the result..." These reasonings are quite logical if we consider that suffering is a punishment for sins. And just as Job lives in each of us, in the same way we often become like Job’s friends in our thoughts about the causes of evil.
But Job is unshakable: he knows for sure that he is not guilty of anything before the Lord. It is this feeling of injustice of what is happening, more than his own suffering, that oppresses him. He grieves, seeing the triumph of evil in this world: “A man born of a woman is short-lived and full of sorrows: like a flower, he comes out and falls; he runs away like a shadow and does not stop. And to him You open Your eyes... " - he reproaches the Lord. Job is bitterly aware that the Lord is far away, that He is alien to him, that the heavens are silent when mortals cry out to them: “Oh, if only I knew where to find Him and could approach His throne!.. Has He really become in full power? would he compete with me? Oh, no! Let Him just pay attention to me... But behold, I go forward - and He is not there, back - and I do not find Him,” bitter words escape from Job’s heart. And then the Lord Himself appears to Job, who is desperate and seeking God...
It’s a strange thing: in the “Book of Job” there is no logical, rational explanation of the meaning of suffering, but Job, who saw the Lord with his own eyes, no longer needs it. Suffering and calling on God in his suffering, he meets Him and learns the main thing - that he is not alone in this cold world. These are the highest moments in a person’s life - moments of awareness of closeness to Him. The secret of suffering is that by seeking the Lord, we find Him. Because the Lord is not alien to man, because the Son of God also suffered - crucified for us all.
Gennady Ivanovich, there is no need to think about evil, there is no need to understand evil. “We must fight it,” wrote Father Georgy Chistyakov. “To overcome evil with good, as the Apostle Paul calls us: to heal the sick, to clothe and feed the poor, to stop the war, etc. Tirelessly. And if it doesn’t work out, if you don’t have enough strength, then bow before Your cross, then grasp its foot as the only hope.” And to these words of the priest, who devoted many years to serving children with cancer, I, Gennady Ivanovich, have nothing to add.
Journalist and writer Maria Gorodova is well known to readers. Her books, including “Tenderness in the Wind,” evoke a strong response from a variety of people. Now her new book is being published - “The Cradle of Fire”, which talks about love. A conversation with her about this book, about the letters that come to the editorial office of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, on the pages of which Maria has been answering letters from readers for several years now, about the topics that concern many today.
– Maria, how did the idea for your new book come about? Is this the same inspiration?
– Everything is much more prosaic. About two years ago, the editor-in-chief of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Vladislav Aleksandrovich Fronin, called me and asked what could be done to ensure that more young people read us. I thought: the audience for the “Correspondence” section is people 27 years old and older. But there were a lot of letters in my mail about teenage children. Moreover, they were all written as carbon copies, although they came from different cities and their authors were people of different professions, different social strata. But everywhere there was the same pain, expressed in almost the same phrase: “I raised my child, but now he is a stranger to me...”
And further variations: “The computer has taken my child away from me: he looks up from the monitor just to see what they put on his plate...”, or “American TV series are more valuable to her than a family; I grew up as a rag-picker, in her head only the names of fashion boutiques and recommendations from women’s magazines on how to seduce a man...”, or “My girl decided that she was an emo, and the company of people like her was closer to her own mother...”
Letters about youth suicides are a separate story. The hardest topic! Your heart breaks when you read confessions from mothers or peers of the unfortunate person. Unfortunately, there are too many such letters, and often the cause of the tragedy is the teenager’s isolation, the fact that at a critical moment in his life no one cared about him and he was left alone with the obsessive whirling of a harmful thought.
It seems to me that this is generally a global problem of our time: with all the diversity of means of communication - a diversity that civilization has never known before - man is more alone than ever. Of course, the reason here is isolation from God.
In general, I was thinking, I was thinking about how to hook teenagers, where to start a conversation, and then my son says to me: “Mom, why bother? We need to talk about love! Every girl will be interested! And the guys too. Maybe they won’t show it.” , but they will definitely read it. Otherwise, it’s a strange thing! It’s all about sex, there’s nowhere to escape from porn, even to the ends of the earth: in the “box”, and on the Internet, and on every corner, in any magazine kiosk - it’s terrible! But no one explains about love!” And that’s it – I realized that we need to start the conversation with the topic of love.
And an avalanche of letters from teenagers came...
– What discoveries awaited you?
– The terrible, frightening illiteracy of the bulk is the first thing. The second is the inability to distinguish where is good and where is evil - that is, indeed, “those who do not know how to distinguish their right hand from their left.” You read the letters, start communicating with the guys - and you understand that they have purity, chastity, conscience, a thirst for truth, and a rejection of falsehood, lies, a sense of where evil is. All these gifts of God are there, they haven’t gone anywhere. They were young thirty years ago, and three centuries ago. But modern society so aggressively corrupts, so aggressively imposes sin as a norm, or even an example to follow, that it simply disfigures an unformed personality.
She is not ready to counteract such pressure, because this requires criticality, will, the ability to think independently, firmness, and the ability to withstand pressure not just from her environment, but from the whole world. Not every teenager can do this. It's easier for us adults. Remember the epitaph of Grigory Skovoroda: “The world caught me, but did not catch me”? An adult will find ways to at least, if not confront the environment, then minimize contact with it: throw away the TV, pass by a mocking, foul-smelling headline, “ban” someone who sends out porn advertisements, find like-minded friends, try to avoid situations where you have to bend your soul, will find application in that field of activity where this soul does not need to be sold... In general, an adult has the opportunity to “set up filters”... Now I am deliberately not talking about the Church - the only force that can really resist moral I'll fall apart...
In a word, an adult can protect himself, but a child is defenseless, the world will catch the child. Moreover, this is not a tragedy of one individual or his family - this is a tragedy of society. It’s bad that we haven’t realized it yet and we, like blind people, are leading our children to the slaughter. By the way, in my new book “The Cradle of Fire” there are several chapters exploring this problem: how to protect a child from the modern world, what values to instill in him.
- So, “Cradle of Fire” is about youth?
- A book about love. For young people, but not only. The book is simply a must-read for adults: mothers, fathers, those whose children are still small, and those whose offspring have already grown up. The Cradle of Fire contains the most modern stories, they allow us to see not only what we are today, but also look into the future - a book for the thinking reader. I also wanted it to unite generations so that the whole family could read it.
– You said that the book “explores a problem.” Is this journalism?
The book contains real stories of today's life, and using their example, we, together with the readers, think and explore the problem. I receive a huge number of letters, and as soon as I decided that I would start a conversation about love, I selected letters that talked about the early puberty of modern girls. And you know, it was as if a dam had broken: 15-year-old girls wrote, signing themselves “Stasya TrEshKa” or “Zlyuchka-Kalyuchka,” and their mothers, and high-brow intellectuals who tried to lead our common conversation into the philosophical jungle. Thanks to my editors Igor Chernyak and Vladislav Aleksandrovich Fronin - there were no taboo topics. We talked about the secrets of gender, about sex as an idol of our time, about virginity, about chastity, about types of love, about how to distinguish what kind of feeling a person experiences, about the destructive power of passions, about the power of eros and the weakness of man...
You know, the biggest difficulty was to write in such a way that it would be understandable both to a teenager who reads nothing but posts on the VKontakte wall, and to more enlightened people. Losing intellectuals who are always ready to challenge the point of view of N.A. Berdyaev (or V.S. Solovyov, Professor B.P. Vysheslavtsev, Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern), Christos Yannaras), I didn’t want to. I am proud that I have educated readers, much more educated than me. It makes you grow. Therefore, each time I came up with ways to captivate both young people and people who already have a taste for words, who know a lot about both literature and life. I specifically questioned Professor V.A. Voropaev, a reviewer of the book, a man of the highest culture, was he interested? And he answered in the affirmative.
– Which letters do you remember most?
– I try to select the sharpest, brightest ones. I was personally surprised by a letter from a 20-year-old guy who sincerely believed that yes, love exists (he experienced it; sometimes, as he wrote, “it lasts two days, sometimes two months, sometimes two minutes”), but love, as he thinks, “not at all.” “It was invented so that there would be something to describe in novels or poems, and then a whole industry revolved around it: “Valentine’s Day,” movies, TV series, songs, advertising, and so on.
And since such a business has already revolved around this, no one now admits that love is a deception.” The letter surprised me with its approach: he noticed that love had been turned into a commercial brand, he noticed the commercialization of everything in our world. Even love. How his peers argued with this young man! And this very open, honest letter helped me understand the psychology of a man, his perception of a woman, there are many subtle, purely male observations.
There are letters that are sarcastic. I intentionally included one of these in the book “Cradle of Fire” - it came to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta website as a comment after the article: we have complete democracy on our website. A certain lady who signed herself “Samantha-and-even-Jones (90-60-90)” was indignant: “What, have you all fallen out of the woods? I am outraged by the hypocrisy of your articles, Maria Gorodova. To sell the words of some holy fathers to young children when they promised to talk about love... well, this is too much! Since when are they the authorities in this matter?”
– Do you publish such letters in your book?
- Definitely! Such a letter is an occasion to talk about what Christianity knows about love. And by the way, who, if not the saints, can you trust in this matter? People who have learned that God is Love, not from books, know much more about love as a feeling, about love as a movement of the heart, about love as about the structure of the soul than the scriptwriters of the series “Sex and the City” - the name of the heroine of this television project the author of the letter and chose it as her nickname. This is all I explain to the author of the message. And at the same time I talk about the signs of love, its classification, how to distinguish what feelings you experience. Or they feel for you.
I remember one very typical story described by a 15-year-old girl who began her letter with the question: “Tell me, who needs virginity today?”
- And you answered?
“I wasn’t the only one who answered.” The message gave rise to a new wave of letters, a new twist on the topic: together with the readers, we thought about what virginity, chastity is, what dignity is and - most importantly! – how a girl can learn to keep these qualities within herself.
– Why did you choose such a name – “Cradle of Fire”?
– Of course, the name is not accidental. And there are many meanings there, these are very polysemantic images in themselves - both “cradle” and “fire”. And together they create a new, even deeper image. But I won’t reveal it yet - read the book and decide for yourself what this name means and what meanings it gives rise to. You can even write to me about this, the address is the same - [email protected]. I think the publishing house and I will find ways to reward those who come closest to the truth.
You can purchase the book in the online store: www.blagovest-moskva.ru
Anton Leontyev talked to Maria Gorodova
“Do curses affect our lives? If so, how to get rid of them? I would like to know specifically, without speculation. Here my sister visited the city of her childhood and was told that our father’s first wife cursed both my mother and us for a long time. Now Olya spends her nights doesn’t sleep, remembers everything that happened to her: illnesses, losses, although what is our fault?” Oleg N.
Oleg, the curse entered the life of humanity so long ago that if every evil word and wishes for troubles were fulfilled, we would not be having conversations with you now due to the fact that the human race would definitely have ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of curse exists - both the human curse and the divine curse. But we must clearly understand that the blessing did not just arise earlier, it was more primary. Which means stronger. Just as good is primary and stronger than evil, and the Lord only allows evil to triumph for educational purposes towards man, and not as punishment. The saints believe it’s the same with a curse. Now let's look at it in detail.
1. Let's start with the curse of God. As Saint Philaret of Moscow writes, this is the condemnation of sin by the righteous judgment of God. Just don’t attribute vindictiveness to God: they say, by cursing, He punishes a person because he dares to violate His will, expressed in the commandments given to man. Sin is self-destructive. By committing a sin, a person alienates himself from God, because God is light, there is no darkness in Him, therefore nothing dark, sinful, evil can be in the presence of God, be in communion with him. The first curse against a person comes from the mouth of God for the sin of fratricide: the Lord curses Cain. But - and this is extremely important! - the curse does not sound immediately after Cain kills Abel, but after the embittered Cain rejects the opportunity to repent to the Lord for his deed. The saints teach that the purpose of God's curse is not revenge, but a chance to correct a person through humility and bring him to repentance. Let's think about why, cursing Cain, excommunicating him from His Face, the Lord placed a sign on Cain, a “seal” that forbade anyone to kill the first fratricide of the human race.
2. The curse of God is a reaction to flagrant violations of spiritual laws given to us in the form of commandments. Arising later than God’s blessing, God’s curse is a kind of negative echo of the blessing, its formidable echo, but both of them, blessing and curse, from different sides outline for us the line beyond which a catastrophe happens to us, the line beyond which a person’s self-exclusion can occur from God as the Source of life. For example, the fifth commandment reads: “Honor your father and mother, so that it may go well with you and your days may be long.” Before us is the condition of God's blessing: “honor your father and mother.” And in another book of the Bible there is already a warning: “Cursed is he who curses his father or his mother!” This is the line - attitude towards parents, elders, old age. Be careful here, be attentive, otherwise you will break the global spiritual law, and that’s it, your days are numbered. It is no coincidence that the fifth commandment is also interpreted this way: “As long as you honor your parents, you live; if you stop, you die.”
3. That is, with all the menacingness of God’s curses, it is not the words of the curse that make a person cursed, but the sin itself, committed by him, defiles, destroys, curses. It is not God who throws the sinner into the abyss of destruction, but the person himself, by violating spiritual laws and commandments, alienates himself from God's mercy and blessing. Sometimes only death can stop both the sinner and the spread of evil; it would seem that this is the cruel irreversibility of retribution. But a person’s life is not limited to a short period of stay on earth. And the posthumous fate of even the most inveterate sinners is in the hands of God's mercy. Another thing is that repentance can only be brought in this life. But only sincere repentance can save us both from our sins and from the malice of others.
4. But what happens if a person curses? It is clear that such a curse is subjective; man, unlike God, is not always capable of administering righteous judgment and is certainly not as powerful as the Creator of the Universe. And yet, as the saints teach, cursing a person can also have consequences. In which cases? For whom? The one who curses or the one who is cursed? As Saint Paisius the Holy Mountain explained, a curse is valid if it is a reaction to injustice. That is, when we do evil to someone and in a fit of resentment they curse us, this can come true. God allows such curses to have power. However, if there was no injustice, then the curse returns back to the one from whom it came. The one to whom the curse is directed suffers in this life. But the one from whom the curse comes is tormented in this life and will be tormented in the next life, because if he does not repent and confess, then there he will be punished by God as a criminal. After all, when you curse someone who has offended you, it’s like you’re taking a gun and killing him. It’s especially scary if people do this on purpose. After all, if a person curses someone contrary to God’s law, he himself breaks the law. In this case, the curse irreversibly falls on the head of the curser himself: “You are inexcusable, judging another, for by the same judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself...” - we read from the Apostle Paul.
Both the curse and the evil eye lose their power over those who repent of their sins
5. How to free yourself from the curse? Confession. “If people who have suffered from a curse, realizing that they were cursed because they were guilty of something, repent, then all their troubles will stop. If the one who is guilty says: “God, I did such and such That's injustice. Forgive me,” and with pain and sincerity he will tell the priest about his sins in confession, then God will forgive him, because He is God. This applies to innocent victims of someone else’s malice, and to those who have been touched by an envious glance, popularly called the evil eye.” , - teaches Saint Paisius the Svyatogorets.
6. “Those suffering from envy are considered even more harmful than poisonous animals. They let poison in through the wound, and the bitten place gradually rots; those who are envious are thought to be causing harm with one glance, so that from their envious glance they begin to wither away, as if from a destructive, harmful stream flows from envious eyes. I reject such a belief,” teaches St. Basil the Great and explains: when demons who hate goodness find in a person the will for evil, that is, the tendency to commit it, they begin to use the unfortunate envious person as a puppet, thoughtless and insane. conductor of his evil will. In this case, envy, concentrated in a look or a caustic word, can both embarrass the other person and harm him. But only if the victim of the envious person is not protected by firm faith and the Sacraments of the Church - Confession, Communion. And of course, when trying to protect yourself from the malice of others, you should not run to magicians and other proliferating swindlers from superstition.
7. The Old Testament warned about the harmfulness of superstitions, witchcraft and sorcery. And even in New Testament times, the Church punished extremely strictly for following superstitions. Because, by trusting magicians and other possessors of “supernatural abilities,” we are actually entrusting the most valuable thing, our immortal soul, into the hairy paws of the enemy of the human race. It turns out that we are running in a circle: frightened by the supposedly omnipotent damage and the evil eye, we, like foolish children, voluntarily rush into the arms “carefully” opened for us by the devil. But salvation can only be found in God. And isn’t He stronger than any envious people, no matter whose evil will they relay?
To be continued
Prayer for the well-being of the family to the Blessed Virgin Mary
“Do not be afraid, little flock! I am with you and no one else is against you.” Most Blessed Lady, take my family under Your protection. Instill in the hearts of my husband and our children peace, love and non-questioning of all that is good; Do not allow anyone from my family to experience separation and difficult parting, to premature and sudden death without repentance. And save our house and all of us living in it from fiery ignition, thieves’ attacks, all evil of the situation, various types of insurance and devilish obsession. Yes, we too, collectively and separately, openly and secretly, will glorify Your Holy Name always, now and ever, and forever and ever. Amen. Most Holy Theotokos, save us!
First hand
Saint Paisius the Svyatogorets on the power of parental curse and blessing
Know that the curse and even just the indignation of parents are very powerful. And even if the parents did not curse their children, but simply became indignant because of them, then the latter do not have a single bright day afterwards: their whole life is sheer torment. I remember one mother had four children. None of them got married or got married. The mother cried: “I will die of grief, none of my children got married. Pray for them.” She was a widow, her children were orphans. I felt bad for them. I prayed for them, but to no avail, and then I asked the children, maybe your mother cursed you. “That’s right, father,” they answer, “in childhood we played pranks, and from morning to evening she repeated: “Yes, may you be stumps!” - “Go,” I say, “to your mother and tell her the true reason for your disorder, so that she came to my senses. Tell her to repent and from today on, without ceasing, bless you." And within a year and a half, all four started families.
The greatest treasure for people living in the world is parental blessing. Just as in monastic life the greatest blessing is the one with which your elder blessed you. That’s why they say: “Don’t miss your parent’s blessing.”
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