What is neglect? How does it affect a person’s life? We will consider these and other questions in the article. Negligence is a careless attitude to one’s duties. The Church Fathers claimed that carelessness, negligence, and inattention do more evil in people's lives than certain sins.
Sin can amaze us with its ugliness, its horror and its vulgarity. And neglect, the oblivion that the fate of mortals is deep, that the human share goes into the abyss of God and opens to eternity, it strikes us fundamentally and sometimes absolutely: so that the individual is small and can no longer grow or straighten to the best of his or her value . And by vocation, man is deep and great.
Schiarchimandrite Abraham
Schiarchimandrite Abraham often recalled the gospel story of how Jesus Christ last night before his torment after the Last Supper offered a prayer in Gethsemane. This prayer itself was the beginning of the torment of our Lord. The Evangelist Luke said that Jesus sent prayers to a bloody sweat. Other evangelists also testify to the struggles he experienced.
In the God-man Jesus, two wills functioned: human and divine (that is, afraid of torment and hesitant). As a result, the Savior, although not without the support of the angel who strengthened him, prevailed over himself, the will of the mortal obeyed the will of God.
But Jesus on this terrible night remained a perfect, real person. In this case, impeccability does not mean the highest step in the evolution of a being, but the fullness of the human nature of the Savior.
Feeling fear and struggle during the reading of the prayer, Jesus asked his immediate disciples - John, Peter and James - to ask for human assistance. Those who, as it is written in the Gospel, showed the greatest zeal, albeit sometimes unreasonable, but still sincere.
And so the Savior, returning to his disciples after his first prayer, found that they were sleeping. He rebuked them for not being able to beat even a single hour. As you see, the most zealous disciples of Jesus, having lost their spiritual vigor, succumbing to bodily weaknesses, could not stand the test that awaited them in the future.
Neglect
So, negligence is a terrible misfortune. It is known that the apostle Peter was compassionate and renounced the Savior three times. All other apostles set off. Until the end, only John the Evangelist remained with Jesus .
Pray and watch, lest you go into trouble: for the spirit is vigorous, but the body is weak. The apostles showed what we would call neglect today. They probably had some good reason: fatigue, sorrow, fear, lack of understanding of what was happening.
The Evangelist Mark says: “Byakhu is more burdensome for them” (Mark 14:40). Why were their eyes weighed down? Maybe from crying? Be that as it may, in the end the apostles showed neglect, which led to a monstrous difficulty.
Apostle Peter
Few know that neglect is a sin. So, the apostle Peter very acutely experienced the above moment. When the Lord looked at him with mute reproach in the priest’s yard, he burst into tears. According to legend, throughout his life the apostle Peter, hearing a rooster singing, began to sob. He burst into tears even when he was already pardoned and again received the rank of apostle, became one of the most important messengers - a pillar, as the Evangelist Paul said about him.
On the icons of the preacher, Peter is recreated with grooves on the cheeks, which in iconographic custom is a sign of repentant tears.
Trouble
The Holy Fathers talk a lot about negligence. This sin can lead to terrible misfortune! This is especially necessary to remember for those who leave this world. Probably, it seems to them that, having shown some kind of jealousy and changing their way of being, they left behind all the dangers and temptations, and they had little left to do to save them.
But Scheme Archimandrite Abraham writes that the change of position and clothing on the air of salvation does not provide. We can internally remain the same or even become much worse.
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) reports with bitterness that he saw many people leading the life of a monk and having already acquired in a monastery of passion, which they did not have in the world. He believes that these people did not have repentance.
Sin
What does neglect mean? Irresponsibility, negligence, idleness, neglect and insensibility in the affairs of faith. That is, when a person neglects not only everything that surrounds him, but also the cause of his salvation.
When fasting begins, it would seem that someone who is worried about fasting is somehow prepared. Many people enter the post slowly, gradually, they also sin, live without any changes, which should not be. Abba Isaiah says this: “Negligence and laziness are the repose of this age.” That is, when a mortal indulges in negligence and laziness, he wants to relax, find peace in the things, in the energies and thoughts that belong to this world. There is a pacification of the flesh, bodily wondering, when a person tries to find in his essence such a point that he never strains, just wants to do nothing, to be relaxed, and for this to receive various benefits.
And now the very philosophy of modern life, in principle, is as follows: maximum profit, minimum labor. Accordingly, this leads, of course, to tremendous spiritual imbalances.
Old Testament
How is negligence interpreted in Orthodoxy? What kind of action is this? What does the Old Testament say about him? In the book of Proverbs (in the Old Testament), the wise Solomon claims that negligence and laziness are stupidity, and every stupidity, according to the teachings of the book of Ecclesiastes, the book of Proverbs, is evil. It is very bad to be stupid, there is nothing good in it.
In a remarkable parable it is said: "It is better to meet a bear, devoid of cubs, on the road, than a fool with his stupidity." Think what a comparison! If you meet a bear, deprived of cubs, then you will surely die, there is no other way. After all, she will certainly kill a person, since her children were taken away from her, she takes revenge on people. Every person who comes across a bear on the way is subject to inevitable death. And Solomon declares that it is better to meet her than to face a fool and his stupidity, so it was considered evil.
New Testament
Now you know that neglect is a negative phenomenon. The Lord in the New Testament specifically says that laziness is a negative feature of human life: “lazy is the slave of the evil one”, then lazy and negligent virgins who did not take care of the purchase of oil and other are also mentioned.
The Lord himself claims that the lazy in life do not gain anything good, and this is terrible. And the Holy Fathers report that laziness and negligence is not even an ordinary sin, it is a real disaster for a person’s life, which makes some kind of log, weak, limp, unreasonable creature from a mortal.
Parables
In the Proverbs it is written: “He who does not care about his ways will perish” (Prov. 19:16). This saying applies to spiritual life. If we do not care about our ways, we, of course, will disappear if the Lord does not forgive us. If we are not happy about studying at school, at the university, can we get anything? If we do not care about raising children, then the children will grow up uncouth. Accordingly, everyone perfectly understands that negligence and laziness are real death for a person, especially the collapse of a spiritual being.
Correlation of sins
Where does laziness and negligence come from - which of the passions comes from the other? In the Holy Fathers, in various materials it is written that as laziness is born from negligence, so negligence arises from laziness - mutual help works for these sins. That is, they nourish each other and encourage.
If a person is lazy, then he becomes indifferent to everything. If a person in some business is overjoyed - after that laziness visits him, he loses his strength, becomes unfit for any good deed.
There is also a prayer created especially for people suffering from inattention, scattering, and neglect in prayer. It has the following content: “Lord, gather my mind scattered and cleanse a frozen heart, give me like Peter repentance, like a harlot - tears, like a tax collector - a sigh, but with a great voice I call Ty, God, save me, like One Good and Man-Loving” .
Detrimental effect
It is known that demons and demons on lazy and negligent increase their pressure. Rev. Sirin Ephraim said that demons like to disturb those who love laziness and are not careless in prayer. Since there is someone to bother — he is resting, he has approached whatever you wish — he has put this mortal in his mind, in his soul, and everything will fall on the plowed, fertilized soil. Man does not resist at all. Accordingly, evil people like these people and like to attack.