Translated from Russian
Another level of salvific sadness, not despondency,
but love expressed this way – a higher one which is that you begin to cry not
for yourself, not for your forlorn life, not for yourself, or even for your
sins, which is already salvific in the stead of pity for yourself (this is very
difficult to overcome and it is difficult to move on to a higher, more purely
spiritual [level], to overcome your human mental anguish, and move on to
spiritual experience), not even for your relatives and friends [kin], – but to
cry for the human race, starting at least [and this is important] from your
country.
Unhappy and pitiful, such are the good, even cute,
in essence, and calm as if sleeping – you are all [fully] open before the Lord,
your whole life before Him, – what do you hope for, not seeing the terrible danger
that threatens you, and which you now in your condition cannot escape? Where
are you going, not realizing that you are passing by the most important thing
that could [possibly] save you? Not taking a thought, light-headedly, taking comfort
for yourself with some kind of consolation, fleeting consolations, and
self-deception? What is valuable in your life? – a moment shall pass, and you
will forget what you were chasing, what you ruined your priceless life for. Virtually
as if the winds are blowing and you take up away with them.
What's the point in this? There is no point!
Like little children, you – adults who consider
themselves super-smart, what are you doing? Well, indeed this is nothing ...
Miserable and blind - you cause only pain with your
emptiness and meaningless unwillingness for the Truth. Your condition causes
[the] endless sorrow of hell, exactly the same as all sinful souls see [it] there:
a hopeless, heartbreaking, never-saturable melancholy of which there is no
limit or end, [virtually] as if all these endless "no-nesses"
associated with what you consider to be life were united together ... The
desert, the icy wilderness as the gloomy kingdom of Tartar, and the scorched
land of the spiritual desert from where there is no return.
How to leave you, and what is to be with you? – this
is only an excruciating pain. How to live in this desert where there is no
place for anything truly living, fruit-bearing? Why is this so, O Lord? How to
pray for you if you do not hear a word or a sound of the prayer, and not a
single heart of yours would rise, would will heaven? How to ask for you if you
have already died and it is impossible to resurrect you?
Lord, what is this endless pain for when it comes? -
and it comes [quite] often. Where is the end to this, and will that be in something?...
