Open Door Days The general public can become participants in such events: from relatives of those who are involved in its organization to important people who arrived accompanied by the media. For example, arranging an open day in the diocesan

Example 6. The Tambov Regional Theological Seminary will host an Open Doors Day This year, the Tambov Regional Theological Seminary is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its revival. The main festive events on this occasion are planned for the Easter holidays,

“What is this sin? To do evil to a person, indeed, constitutes a sin ”Moral Theology (Sins against the 7th commandment, sin is an apology to other carnal sins with various pretexts):“ What kind of sin is this? To do evil to a person, indeed, is a sin. Not

They are lighter than down and more inconspicuous than a weak breeze. There are so many of them in a day, and they are so diverse, that it is hardly possible to track them all and give an account of their quality. We are talking about thoughts.

Everyone has them, and they are not only diverse. At times they are also ugly. And also empty, or unexpected, or phantasmagoric. Who will catch them with a net like a butterfly? Who will count them like grains of sand in a handful?

But is it worth paying attention to them at all, or can you give up on this mental moth, on this dust that misses a wet rag?

Well, a wet rag is really needed, but just shrugging off this dangerous small fry will not work.

In his First Catholic Epistle, the Apostle Peter reminds Christians of their former life, of that moral filth that they rejected with disgust:

“It is enough,” he says, “that in the past tense of your life you acted according to the will of the pagans, indulging in uncleanness, lusts (male sexuality, bestiality, thoughts), drunkenness, excess in food and drink, and ridiculous idolatry; therefore they (former companions in sin - approx. A.T.) and marvel that you do not participate with them in the same wantonness, and they revile you" (1 Peter 4:3-4)

The apostle's thoughts are in the immediate vicinity of such obvious nasty things as sodomy and bestiality

It is very important and no less surprising here that in the list of lusts of the apostle thoughts stand in close proximity to such obvious nasty things as sodomy and bestiality. If we were to make lists of sins and their classification, we would never place ephemeral (seemingly) thoughts next to flagrant carnal sins. Obviously, we do not fully understand some things of fundamental importance.

Here is Cain. Before rebelling against his younger brother and killing him, the firstborn of Adam and Eve was tormented by the relentless thought. The clear signs of this internal struggle, which Cain lost, are described in detail.

“Cain was very upset, and his face drooped. And the Lord God said to Cain, Why are you upset? And why did your face droop? If you do good, do you not raise your face? And if you do not do good, then sin lies at the door; he draws you to him, but you rule over him ”(Gen. 4: 5-7).

“Sin lies at the door, it attracts you to itself,” - here it is, a stubborn, relentless thought that deprives a person of peace day and night. This is still only a thought, but it is already a sin lying at the threshold. A person has the power to fight against it (it is said: "rule"). If she wins, and not you, then the sin is obvious, in space and time, it will happen with frightening inexorability.

An inveterate sinner, in fact, is a person who has been defeated by relentless thought. It attracted attention, crawled over the threshold, climbed into the heart and does not want to leave. So, a pathological jealous man, a sexual maniac, an insatiable thief, a person who is always dissatisfied with life, grumbling and envious, and so on, are people who have been defeated in an invisible struggle. And in this struggle, it is not surprising to lose, since the lion's share of people does not even suspect that such a struggle exists.

Biblical revelation before King David says little about the inner world of a person, including the thoughts of the heart. It can be seen that the person was not capable of such a turn of vision inward and attention to thoughts. Beginning with David and his Psalter, the conversation about the secret of the heart began to sound, and it is unlikely to be stopped.

Thought precedes sin

Sin is preceded by thought, and constant sinful behavior is preceded by the creation within a person of a whole mental system of sin, complexly branched, like blood circulation. We owe this revelation to the son of Jesse and the father of Solomon. Before him, the Holy Spirit had no one to talk to about subjects so subtle. Here are examples from the psalms.

In his arrogance, the ungodly neglects the Lord: "he will not seek"; in all his thoughts: "There is no God!" This is from Psalm 9. In the same place: he says in his heart: “I will not be moved; no evil will happen to me in generation and generation.” bends, fits, - and the poor fall into his strong claws; He says in his heart: "God forgot, He covered His face, He will never see." That is, in order to peel your neighbor like sticky, to devour him alive, to frame him, to bring him out of the world, you must first of all say within yourself: there is no God! And if there is, then He does not see, forgot, covered his face and so on. The villain needs a mental foundation of activity. And if it is necessary, then it is inevitable.

All these words-thoughts are pronounced inside the heart. These are the thoughts of the accursed daughter of Babylon: she says in her heart: “I am sitting as a queen, I am not a widow and I will not see sorrow!” And here is what will happen to her for this ingrained way of thinking: “For that, in one day, executions, death, and weeping, and famine will come upon her, and she will be burned with fire, because the Lord God who judges her is strong” (Rev. 18: 7 -eight).

“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God. They have become corrupted, committed vile deeds; there is no one who does good” (Ps. 13:1). These are already the words of a madman with an inexorable practical conclusion from them in the form of vile deeds and corruption. Scripture, as we see, leaves no room for secular humanism or godless kindness. It's pretty strict. Many believers are seriously frightened by this severity of the All-good God. There is something to be afraid of. And if we ourselves invented God, and not He revealed Himself, then we would invent Him as a model of tolerance. The real rigor of Scripture confuses the cards for us.

However, this is no stricter than the fire pouring on Sodom. And this is no more severe than the waters that flood everyone except those who sit in the ark. And after all, both Sodom and mankind under Noah had, it is necessary to build, their own strong mental constructions. Or rather, they seemed strong, until water came to some, and fire covered others.

And the Lord God made garments of leather for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

And the Lord God said, Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, no matter how he stretched out his hand, and took also from the tree of life, and ate, and began to live forever.

And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have got a man from the Lord.
And she gave birth to his brother, Abel. And Abel was a shepherd of the sheep, and Cain was a farmer.

After some time, Cain brought a gift to the Lord from the fruits of the earth, and Abel also brought from his first-born flock and from their fat. And the Lord looked on Abel and on his gift, but on Cain and on his gift he did not look. Cain was very upset, and his face drooped.

And the Lord God said to Cain, Why are you upset? and why did your face droop?

if you do good, do you not raise your face? and if you do not do good, then sin lies at the door; he draws you to him, but you rule over him.

Genesis 3:(21-24) - 4:(1-7)

Interpretation of the book of Genesis

Gen. 3:21. And the Lord God made garments of leather for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

In this brief biblical note, in the opinion of the best exegetes, a tacit indication is given of the divine establishment of the institution of sacrifice, which perfectly explains the connection of the context, through the assumption of which the very connection of the text is restored: as in the previous verse, the naming of the first wife of one’s own name was closely related to the messianic idea, so the slaughter of sacrificial animals symbolized the same idea; the skin of these sacrificial animals, the Lord also ordered a person to use as clothing. Such, according to the Bible, as well as the cultural history of mankind, is the second stage of development in the gradation of human clothes.

Gen. 3:22. And the Lord God said, Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, no matter how he stretched out his hand, and took also from the tree of life, and ate, and began to live forever.

It would be too rude and unworthy of God to see in these His words only one simple irony over the unfortunate fallen forefathers. Therefore, those who see in them a strong antithesis to one of the earlier verses of this story, which spoke of the flattering promise of the tempter to give people equality with God (Genesis 3:5), are more right. “Since,” Blessed Theodoret remarks, “the devil says: “You will be like gods, knowing good and evil,” and the death sentence was pronounced for those who transgressed the commandment, then the God of all reproachfully spoke this, showing the falsity of the devil’s promise. Thus, if there is some irony here, then the facts themselves, not words.

Gen. 3:23–24. And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

The conclusion of the entire paradise story is the fact of the expulsion of the fallen progenitors from paradise, with the main purpose of depriving them of the opportunity to use the fruits of the tree of life.

And he drove out Adam, and placed in the east near the garden of Eden the Cherubim and the flaming sword that turned to guard the way to the tree of life.

In order to finally block people's access to paradise, God delivers one of the celestials - "cherubim" as a guard at the entrance to paradise, and in addition - sends a special heavenly fire that came out of the bowels of the earth and sparkled like a shiny blade at a rotating sword.

Genesis 4:1. Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived

Here is the first biblical news about childbirth, on the basis of which many are inclined to think that communion did not exist in paradise and that it arose only from the time of the fall as one of its consequences. But such an opinion is erroneous, since it is in conflict with the divine blessing of reproduction, given by God himself to the primordial couple even at its very creation (Genesis 1:28). The most that can supposedly be deduced from this is that the state of paradise probably did not last long, so that the first people, always absorbed in higher spiritual demands, did not yet have time to pay tribute to the physical, lower side of their nature.

and she bore Cain, and said, I have gained a man from the Lord.

It is evident that Eve looked upon her firstborn son as a gift from God, or as an inheritance received from Him; thus, on the one hand, she confessed her faith in God, violated by the disobedience of the fall, on the other hand, she expressed the hope of receiving from God a blessed Descendant who had to crush the power of the devil.

Genesis 4:2. And she gave birth to his brother, Abel.

- the name of the second son of Adam, known from the Bible, is interpreted and translated differently: “breath, insignificance, vanity” or, as Josephus thinks, “weeping”. Like the previous name, it, in all likelihood, also had a connection with the idea of ​​the first promises. How much Eve rejoiced at the first son, from whom she expected to see great consolation for herself, she lamented just as much at the birth of the second, as can be seen from giving him the name Abel, which means "vanity, insignificance." Eve probably wanted to express by this name that, just as she did not find what she expected in her first son, she no longer cherishes joy from the second (Vissarion).

And Abel was a shepherd of the sheep, and Cain was a farmer.

Consequently, in the bowels of the primitive family, representatives of the two original occupations of mankind very early appear, the prototypes of the Bedouin (nomad - Abel) and fellah (farmer - Cain). “We completely reject the theory that mankind has passed through all the paths of the state of primitive occupations, i.e., that at first it was engaged in hunting, then it passed to the life of a shepherd, and finally, it became settled and took up agriculture. This theory is not supported by a single example, at least during those two thousand years about which we have reliable news” (Vlastov).

Gen. 4:3-4. Some time later;

This is how our Russian text is translated by the chronological indication of the Hebrew text, which literally means: "at the end of days." Penetrating into the thought of the biblical author, exegetes differently define the period of time at the end of which the described event occurred: some think that it means “year” (more precisely, “new year time”), others see an indication of the end of the month, or the end of the week , namely on the “Sabbath”, in particular, on the establishment of “liturgical times”, sanctified by the offering of a sacrifice.

Cain brought a gift to the Lord from the fruits of the earth,
and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock, and of their fat.

Although the significance of these sacrifices was determined, according to the interpretation of the Apostle Paul, not by the dignity of the offered, but by the internal disposition of the one who offered (Heb. 11: 4), however, since everything internal finds a corresponding expression on the outside, the gifts themselves, of course, remained not without significance. St. John Chrysostom remarks on this matter: “More insightful minds already from the very reading understand what has been said ... See how the Scripture shows us the God-loving intention of Abel and what he brought not just from the sheep, but from the “firstborn”, i.e. dear , choice: further - what is the most precious from these choice: and “from fats” it is said, that is, from the most pleasant, best. About Cain, however, Scripture does not notice anything of the kind, but only says that he brought a sacrifice from the fruits of the earth, which, so to speak, came across, without any diligence and analysis.

Gen. 4:4-5. And the Lord looked upon Abel and his gift, but he did not look at Cain and his gift.

Different in their dignity, character, and especially in the internal disposition (mood) of the one who offered, the sacrifices of the two brothers were accompanied by completely different success: the Lord “looked” on the sacrifice of Abel, that is, as John Chrysostom interprets this, “accepted, praised the intention, crowned location, was, so to speak, pleased with what was done ... "

And in another place, the same famous interpreter says: “since Abel brought it with a proper disposition and from a sincere heart, God “looked”, it is said, that is, he accepted, approved, praised ... Cain’s recklessness rejected” (John Chrysostom ).

The same coverage of this fact is given by the Apostle Paul (Heb. 11:4), who says that Abel's sacrifice was fuller (πλέιονα), more perfect than Cain's sacrifice, that is, it corresponded more to the basic idea of ​​the sacrifice, since it was imbued with a living and active faith, by which, first of all, is meant faith in the promised Messiah. Cain's sacrifice, on the other hand, carried within it a spirit of pride, vanity, arrogance, and outward ritualism, which created understandable obstacles to its success. Since, judging by the context, the various successes of these sacrifices became known to those who offered them themselves, it is undoubted that the above-mentioned divine attitude towards them was expressed by Cain by an obvious, external sign. Based on the biblical analogies suitable here, they think that such a sign was either heavenly fire rushing at the accepted sacrifice, or a high pillar ascending from it to the very heavens (Lev. 9:24; Judg. 6:21; 1 Chr. 21:26 ; 1 Kings 18:38, etc.).

Cain was very upset

Most accurately, the idea of ​​the Hebrew text is conveyed by the Latin translation, where instead of “grieved” is iratus - “angry”; namely, “he was angry both with his younger brother, whom God preferred before him, and with God himself, as if He had offended him, showing a sign of His favor not to him, but to his brother” (Bessarion).

and his face fell,

that is, his features, under the influence of envy and malice, acquired a gloomy and gloomy expression. It was not sadness, not repentant feelings, or heartfelt sorrow for sin that clouded Cain's face, but the spirit of restless envy and deaf, hidden enmity towards his preferred brother.

Genesis 4:6. And the Lord [God] said to Cain: Why are you upset?

Great is the mercy of God, not wanting the death of a sinner, but finding all ways and means for his admonition and instruction (Ezek. 18:23)!

Genesis 4:7. if you do good, do you not raise your face? and if you do not do good, then sin lies at the door;

This is one of the most difficult places in the Bible to interpret, mainly due to the fact that it is read completely differently in the Russian and Slavic Bibles. The latter, guided by the LXX translation, has this place in a form that gives it a completely new meaning, which has no support for itself in the context. This misunderstanding is explained, in all probability, by the fact that the Greek translators did not understand the meaning of the main term of the Hebrew verb naschat here sufficiently accurately and only then, having made one inaccuracy, had to adapt several of the rest of the phrase to it. The Russian translation is closer to the original, the thought of which can be more clearly expressed in the following phrase: since the face is a mirror of the soul, the gloomy appearance and downcast eyes serve as a reflection of dark thoughts and moods. When you do well and your conscience is clear, then you experience a pleasantly light state of mind, joyfully and cheerfully raise your face. When you do something bad, the feeling of spiritual burden oppresses your heart and makes you lower your eyes. Since the latter has happened, then know that sin lies at the door of your heart and you are close to falling; therefore, before it is too late, gather all your strength and try to ward off the coming sinful temptation.

he draws you to him, but you rule over him.

Finishing the previous admonition to Cain, God seemed to say to him like this: “You are tempted by an evil inclination, but you stay awake and suppress it, do not allow the malice that nests in you and personified here in the form of the beast lying at the door of the heart to ripen to the determination to commit a crime. ". In this entire biblical section, therefore, a deep analysis of human psychology and an artistically accurate depiction of his innermost secret processes are given with a dramatic struggle of various motives, the results of which are inevitably reflected in appearance person.

Explanatory bible
Professor Alexander Pavlovich Lopukhin

In contact with

Question #2179

How to fulfill the command of God - to rule over sin and its attraction?

Irina F , Minsk, Belarus
11/01/2006

Hello, dear father Oleg.

Please explain why the Lord God looked upon the gift of Abel and did not accept the gift of Cain?

And explain the meaning of the verse addressed to Cain: "If you do good, then don't you raise your face? And if you don't do good, then sin lies at the door; it draws you to itself, but you rule over it".

Thanks in advance.

Father Oleg Molenko's answer:

I have already had to answer this question about the gifts of Abel and Cain. You should look for this answer on the site. I repeat in the main point: Abel brought his gift from the bottom of his heart, with reverence and humility before God. Cain brought his gift with cunning and hidden protest against God. He brought this gift not at the behest of his heart, but for the sake of the existing custom, so that his parents and other people would not think badly of him. His protest and the theomachic beginning were expressed by the fact that he brought God a gift from the fruits of the earth. With this offering, he, on the one hand, boasted of himself and his work (which is why he was sure that God would accept his gift), and on the other hand, he reproached God with such an unvoiced thought: “You see how it happened - you, they say, cursed the earth for sin my parents, and what a fine fellow I am, for what a gift I have brought you from this accursed land! For this prideful deceit and the resistance to God it concealed, God rejected Cain's sacrifice. By this rejection, God called Him to repentance and reconsider his life and relationship to God. But Cain not only did not correct himself, but allowed God-opposing sin and envy to take possession of himself to such an extent that he moved to rise up against his brother and kill him, as the object of his "undeserved" humiliation, which seemed to him.

Thus, resistance to God always turns into rebellion against God in the person of His true servants and faithful sons and slaves. That is why behind any revolt of people that was on earth, there was the first rebellious fighter Satan and his demons, and this always led to bloodshed, murders and fratricides. Thus, all the murders committed on earth (except for the forced executions of God) come from the same motives as those of the first murderer Cain, the main of which are envy and theomachism. From the same motives, the Jewish high priests and members of the Sanhedrin killed the Lord Jesus Christ with their unjust condemnation and "washed" hands of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who was frightened by them.

As for the verse you quoted, it needs to be looked at in a slightly larger context:

Gen.4:
2 And she gave birth to his brother, Abel. And Abel was sheep shepherd and Cain was farmer.
3 After some time, Cain brought from the fruits of the ground a gift to the Lord,
4 And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord saw on Abel and on his gift,
5 but on Cain and on the gift did not respect him. Cain became very upset, and his face drooped.
6 And the Lord [God] said to Cain: Why are you sad? and why did your face droop?
7 if you do good, don't you raise your face? a if you do not do good, then sin lies at the door; he draws you to him, but you dominate him".

We see that even the difference in the chosen occupation affects people. Cain is more grounded, earth-loving and tied to the earth, through which he expresses himself and provides for himself, and also gives a gift to God. This disastrous trait - addiction to the land - we observe in the Russian peasants who have lost their inner faith. For them, the land (earth allotment), from which they hoped to receive all the benefits, became a god and an idol. At the same time, spiritual life became a hindrance, and they got rid of it with hypocritical Orthodox ritualism, mixed with elements of paganism that had gone into the shadows. That is why the devil easily caught them with the promises and promises of the atheist-revolutionaries to give land to the peasants. God was taken away from them even in external reverence, and in return they were given land, but only in the form of common or scattered graves.

Abel was a shepherd and a type of the shepherds of the verbal sheep of Christ. The way of his life helped him not to have attachment to the earthly and to a certain place (fatherland). Grazing cattle, he could well engage in a contemplative life and think about the true and enduring Fatherland already in heaven.

We see that Scripture tells us, first, that the Lord did not look upon Cain or looked upon Abel, and then we are talking about their gifts. Those. God first looks at the heart, disposition and inner disposition of a person, and then at his gift. The external gift of Cain and the external gift of Abel were only a way of expressing their inner disposition, which existed under the then conditions. If the inner arrangement was rejected by God, then the outer expression of this rejection was the rejection of the gift offered. It is appropriate to ask how at that time God accepted the gift of man, and how did he despise him? The answer to it is simple: if God did not touch the offered gift in any way, then this meant its rejection by God. If the gift was burned by fire from God, then the sacrifice was accepted by God. From this we learn that when the holy prophet of God, Elijah the Thesbite, offered to God a sacrifice drenched in water as proof of the truth of the God of Israel, he asked for precisely that ancient form of acceptance by God. God did not reject Elijah's petitions and burned the sacrifice, the altar, the wood and water with fire from heaven. Thus, in his dispute about the true God with the priests of Baal, Elijah used an ancient form of sacrifice and appeared in this case as Abel, while hundreds of priests turned out to be rejected by God and put to shame by Cain. Only the result was already different: the new Abel triumphed in the eyes of the frightened and astonished people, and the new collective Cain was slain by the new Abel. This slaughter of the priests by Elijah was not revenge, but a forced action to prevent the spiritual contagious disease that was destroying the Israeli people - the idolatry of Baal, otherwise called Wil.

Ulyanov, nicknamed "Lenin", deliberately chose a nickname for himself with the letter "l", so that from capital letters his compound name was the name of that ancient idol "Vila" (V.I.L.). That is why those who go to the mausoleum to bow or honor the memory of V.I.L., they, along with their attachment to all the sins and atrocities of this V.I.L. and his party, simultaneously partake in the sin of the ancient idolatry of Baal (i.e. prince of demonic Beelzebub), and through this to the sin of the Cainonites (i.e., to the damned descendants of Cain the first killer). So Russian cross-yane (or christ Ian) because of their passion for the earth, they descended from their life Cross on the advice of the Jews and turned into fratricidal Cainonites. They are the peasants on the land and the peasants who have lost their land, slave-ochie - and became the main driving force The "workers' and peasants'" Cainonite fratricidal revolution, which led in Russia to the uprising of the "cursed" ancient serpent ("branded by a curse").

Cain was grieved because of his great pride and extreme pride. For him, humility before God was unbearable, and he was greatly upset by the dishonor that had happened. The face of Cain, drooping to the ground, was a symbol of his evasion from the Most High God, his sin and servility to the earth, his slavery to demons. Calling him to repentance, God, by his question, pointed to these external signs of internal enslavement to sin: Why are you sad? and why did your face droop? Further, God, reproaching Cain for sin, explains to him the sign of the absence of sin or good deeds: if you do good, do you not raise your face?

Those. when a person does charitable good deeds, he is simple, whole, with a clear, open and heavenly (raised) face. He has nothing to fear from God or try to hide anything from Him. This expression can be compared to a similar but stronger and more elevated New Testament expression:

In.3:
19 And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world; but people loved the darkness more than the light, because their deeds were evil;
20 for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil,
21 a He who does what is right comes to the light, that his works may be manifest, because they are done in God.".

And the Theologian beloved by God addressed the theme of Cain-Abel:

1 John 3:
10 The children of God and the children of the devil are known thus: everyone who does not do what is right is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the gospel that you heard from the beginning, that we should love each other,
12 not like Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, but the deeds of his brother were righteous."

From this we learn what is hidden in the story of Genesis: that Cain was the son of the devil; was from the evil one (i.e. obeyed him); that his deeds were evil; that he did not love his brother Abel, but hated him for his righteousness. Their sacrifices and the conflict that took place, which ended in vile fratricide, were only the conditions for revealing the wickedness of Cain and the righteousness of Abel.

This law tells us that only a charitable creation of good makes a person free from the power of sin, which is reflected in his face and appearance. The failure to do such good deeds that bring God's favor and grace testifies that sin lies at the door of the heart of such a person, which separates him from God. How does sin separate man from God? The fact that draws you in. This is the attraction of sin, called on the part of man lust, and is his most terrible disastrous action, for it replaces God and His true blessings with sin and his imaginary, but immediately tangible "benefits". Why does the apostle Paul call us Ephesians 4:22"to lay aside the former way of life of the old man, who is decaying in seductive lusts" . And the apostle James describes the terrible consequence of lust: James 1:14-15:“But everyone is tempted, carried away and deceived by his own lust; lust, having conceived, gives birth to sin, and the sin committed gives birth to death" .

That is why God, in the person of Cain, immediately reveals to us this most important essence of sinful attraction and teaches us active repentance: you dominate him. What should a sin-loving but repentant person rule over? Over sin? But how to do it? Over the attraction of sin! Over his lust (lust)! Over his attack in the form of a passionate thought! How to dominate? And so, not to allow the sinful infection of the thought to penetrate into the mind, and the sinful attraction - into the heart.

That is why God said about the door to the soul, at which sin lies with its fights and lusts. How, then, should one not allow the attraction of sin and the infection of a passionate thought to work in oneself? Keeping the door locked for them! And how is it possible for us, who are weak and sinful? No way. This is why the Lord pointed to Himself for us: John 10:9: "I am the door Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture". So, the Lord invites us to replace our weak and worthless door (i.e., the ability to resist sin, not let it into our souls and not give in to its attraction (which is to dominate it), with His door, which for us is He Himself in His name! Invoking His name for every sinful challenge, we can only resist sin! Hence, the Fathers of the Church rightly defined repentance as: incessantly calling on the name of Jesus Christ(for even sin works upon us unceasingly) + purification of thoughts- i.e. the action of the Door-Christ, when you do not let in evil thoughts and drive them away in the name of Jesus, but you let in good thoughts and graze on them, as in the pasture of God + the patience of those who find for these two things sorrows and temptations. Thus, only through such patristic repentance can we fulfill God's command to rule over sin and its inclination.