Orthodoxy about tobacco smoking. Is smoking a sin in Orthodoxy. Who are you if you deliberately destroy the gift of God

Everyone knows how dangerous smoking is for physical health. Is there a spiritual danger? Why is this addiction considered a sin? Look, in Orthodox Greece, even priests smoke. For clarification, we turned to the pastors of the Russian Church.

Nicotine smoke takes the place of God's grace in the soul

Undoubtedly, smoking is a sin. I will share my priestly experience: I communed the dying, attended funerals and saw that the death of many people was directly related to smoking. And it is very difficult to get rid of this evil. Once I gave unction and communion before her death to a woman who was dying of cancer of the larynx, and in this state she could not quit smoking. Even before Communion, I took a few puffs! But since she was dying, I could not help but give communion to her. And how many people die from lung cancer caused by smoking! But not only the respiratory organs are destructively affected by tobacco - others too.

If you get up at night to smoke, if you take a drag in the morning, then how will you go to Communion later?

The perniciousness of this habit, which causes serious addiction, is also in the fact that many smokers cannot take communion because of smoking. If you get up at night to smoke, if you take a drag in the morning, then how will you go to Communion later? Or even you endured, took communion, and then what? When you leave the temple, do you greedily inhale? So this sinful pleasure deprives the smoker of the Sacrament.

The inability to quit smoking is a myth. I personally know several people who, being smokers with serious experience - 30-40 years, managed to quit smoking. With God's help, everything is possible. If a person turns to God, He helps him to quit this infection.

Elder Siluan: “It’s better not to do any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer”

Even on the packaging of cigarettes they officially write: "Smoking kills." How is it not a sin that kills, that torments, deprives of health, causes suffering to the smoker himself and upsets people close to him?

All our sins are divided into three types: sins against God, against neighbors and against ourselves. So smoking is, of course, a sin against oneself, a conscious shortening of one's life, that is, the destruction of the priceless gift of God given to us for the salvation of our souls. But in a sense, it is also a sin against neighbors who are forced to inhale cigarette smoke in public places.

Smoking is an addiction. It enslaves the will of a person, makes him again and again seek his satisfaction. In general, it has all the signs of sinful passion. And passion, as you know, delivers only new torments to the soul of a person, deprives it of its already small freedom.

Sometimes smokers say that a cigarette helps them calm down and focus internally. However, it is known that nicotine acts destructively on the brain and nervous system. And the illusion of calm arises because nicotine also has an inhibitory effect on brain receptors. Not a single person has ever benefited from smoking even a minimal amount, and I am sure that there is no such smoker in the world who, at least once in his life, has not regretted that he was so addicted to nicotine.

To justify smoking, they often refer to Orthodox Greece, where even priests smoke. Indeed, Greece has the highest per capita consumption of cigarettes in the world. But there is nothing good in this. Perhaps smoking spread there under the influence of Islamic traditions that allow smoking. But if we look at Athos, this example of a strictly spiritual life both for Greece and for the entire Orthodox world, we will see that there is no smoking there. The Monk Paisios the Holy Mountaineer was unambiguously negative about smoking. And the venerable elder Silouan of Athos, too.

The Apostle Paul says: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible to me, but nothing should possess me” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Smoking is contrary to God's plan for man, like any nonsense

Of course, smoking is a sin. Like all meaningless things. What's the point of smoking? What good does a person get from him? No sense and nothing good. And the Lord created everything wisely and meaningfully. “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). This means that smoking is contrary to God's plan for a person, like everything that is senseless and unnecessary.

Let's not forget that smoking brings many different harms to a person. And everything that harms a person, torments him, is also displeasing to the Lord. What harm it is, we all know very well. This is the destruction of health, given by God for the work of saving our souls, and material damage when we spend money on nonsense, but we could spend it on good things, for example, give alms.

But the main harm of smoking, of course, is spiritual. “Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys bodily health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from smoking,” St. Ambrose of Optina teaches us. And yet we become slaves of this sin. “Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). And we are called to freedom in Christ: “And you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Gift of Love can only be accepted by a free person in Christ.

Therefore, help us, Lord, to get rid of everything harmful and unnecessary, so that we can be in joy and love, and not in torment here and in eternity. And they depended only on the Holy God, and not on cigarettes, sinful pleasures and, ultimately, on the devil, who is behind all this.

Who are you if you deliberately destroy the gift of God?

Each of us roughly knows what a pack of cigarettes looks like. It says in large letters: "Smoking kills." From this we can already conclude whether it is a sin to use something that kills us. Of course it is.

Often people turn to the Lord with a request for health. And most of our prayers are also about health to some extent. And we wish each other good health. And do we keep the health that the Lord has given us? How many of us go in for sports, do exercises in the morning? I think few. We eat before bed, although we know that this should not be done. We consume food in excess, realizing that this will lead to excess weight and health problems. And we must keep what the Lord has given. The health that is. Smoking will not improve your health.

If a smoker turns to the Lord with a request: “Lord, give me health!” Who will he look like in the eyes of God?

We all understand perfectly well what risks accompany a person who smokes: these are oncological diseases, and diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, and impaired brain activity ... Previously, smokers did not know about how tobacco undermines health. And if you know that smoking harms you, but you smoke, you are committing a sin: you are deliberately destroying your health. And if a smoker turns to the Lord with a request: “Lord, give me health!” Who will he look like in the eyes of God? And how to ask God for health with the same lips with which you just smoked a cigarette? This is some kind of nonsense. A glaring contradiction. And the Lord calls us to integrity, integrity of thinking above all. Why do we read the Gospel? So that our mind thinks according to the gospel, so that we are in Christ.

So smoking is a sin. Moreover, a terrible sin, causing damage to God-given health.

On the spiritual and physical harm of smoking ...

Articles under the heading "Spiritual space of Siberia" often receive responses from readers. Some of these responses are published in the "Feedback" section, others often become an occasion for subsequent articles. And sometimes articles on topics that journalists did not even think about ...

Sacrifice. You could be the next victim!

Dear editors! I have heard the words "sin of smoking" several times. I agree that smoking in itself is not a good thing. But why is it a sin?

Smoking does not violate any commandments of God. Nothing is said about the sinfulness of smoking in Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Smoking does not harm another person (subject to elementary rules of politeness). I repeat: of course, smoking is a very bad habit, but it's probably still wrong to call it a "sin." When I shared these thoughts with my friend, he said that the Bible even has the words: "smoking makes the heart happy." I checked it with a special computer program "Bible Quote", and made sure that this phrase is actually present in the book of Proverbs (27:9)!

A. Yu. Vorontsov, Biysk.

Here is a letter. We can safely assume that in a society where the vast majority of men and about half of women smoke, many will agree with the point of view of the author of the letter. Especially since these same "many" (according to opinion polls) consider themselves Orthodox Christians. And who wants to count the "extra" sin? Moreover, in some ways the reader seems to be right.

Nothing is really said about the dangers of smoking right in the Holy Scriptures. Tobacco appeared in our world many centuries after the creation of the Bible. The date of "discovery" of smoking is known very precisely. “On October 12, 1492, the expedition of Christopher Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador,” wrote Bishop Varnava (Belyaev). “The sailors were amazed by an unprecedented sight: the red-skinned inhabitants of the island let out clouds of smoke from their mouths and noses! The Indians celebrated their sacred holiday, on which they smoked a special herb whose dried and rolled leaf, like today's cigar, was called "tobacco" among them, whence the present name of tobacco comes from.

The natives smoked "tobacco" to the point of complete stupefaction. In this state, they entered into communication with certain "demons", and then they told about what the "Great Spirit" had told them. Smoking was part of the rituals of worship of the pagan gods of the Aztecs, who were brought, among others, and human sacrifices.

The sailors of Columbus took the mysterious herb with them to Europe. And very quickly the new "pleasure" became widespread. As Bishop Barnabas wrote: “And so, with the benevolent participation and secret prompting from demons, literally a general fever of tobacco smoking began throughout Europe and even Asia. Whatever the government and the clergy did to stop this evil, nothing helped!”

Not only Christians, but also Muslims tried to actively fight against smoking. In 1625, in Turkey, Amurat IV executed smokers, and flaunted severed heads with pipes in their mouths. In Persia, Shah Abbas the Great ordered to cut off lips and noses as a punishment for smoking, and burn tobacco dealers along with their goods. Even in always free Switzerland in 1661, the Appenzel magistrate considered the tobacco trade as a sin, tantamount to murder!

In Russia, smoking has become a custom since Peter I, who himself smoked and even dared to stack smoking pipes in the manner of the bishops' dikiriya (two candlesticks) and trikiriya (three candlesticks) and "blessed" the people with them during his drunken "assemblies". But this is Peter, and before him, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1634 ordered "smokers to be executed by death." Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649 ordered smokers to "smack their nostrils and cut their noses," and then "exile them to distant cities."

We will talk about the assessment of the patristic spiritual thought of the sin of smoking later, but for now we note that in fact, indirectly, the sin of smoking is still spoken of in Holy Scripture. God created the first people healthy and took care of their physical and spiritual perfection. "Love your neighbor as yourself," says one of the commandments of Christ. From this it follows that before loving your neighbor, you must "love yourself." To love and take care of the gift of life, which is given to all of us from God. And what kind of "careful attitude" to one's health as a smoker, if everyone knows that tobacco contains more than 30 harmful substances. The most dangerous of them is the nicotine alkaloid. There are especially many patients with bronchopulmonary diseases among smokers. And the most formidable consequence of smoking is cancer of the larynx and lungs. The fact is that tobacco smoke contains carcinogens that cause cancer. These are benzopyrene and its derivatives.

... It is no coincidence, as experts have calculated, that every minute in Russia three (!) People die from diseases caused by smoking ...

Everything that is given to man by God should be used for good. Bodily health is a priceless gift, and every action of ours that causes harm to health is a real sin before the Creator. Many holy teachers of the Church point to this. Here are the words of St. Nektarios of Aegina: “In order for a person to be blessed and worthy of his calling, it is necessary that he be healthy both in body and soul, because without the well-being of both, neither bliss nor capacity to fulfill the appointment can be acquired. take care of strengthening both the body and the soul, so that they are strong and strong.

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Read also on the topic:

• Medico-psychological types of assistance for smoking(the most extensive scientific review of treatment methods) - Alesey Baburin
• How to quit smoking: advice from St. Ambrose of Optina- Orthodox woman
• How to quit smoking: advice from St. Silouan of Athos- Orthodox woman
• Nothing is easier than quitting smoking...- Olga Mikhailova
• Man quitting smoking- Alexey Plotnikov
• smoking and pregnancy- Internet against drugs
• Tobacco self-hypnosis- Orthodox woman
• If you care about your fate: the truth about tobacco, alcohol and drugs(on the negative impact of drugs on the body and psyche) - Internet against drugs

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"Don't you know that you are the temple of God," said the Apostle Paul, "and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you." For a smoker, this temple is smoky and smoky, and Christ cannot move into this temple. It is not human nature to smoke. Breathe air, eat, drink, sleep - yes. But smoking, poisoning your body with poison, breathing fetid smoke is a requirement of sin, and not a requirement of nature.

Medicine says a lot about the dangers of smoking for bodily health. But nothing mentions that the fetid smell of tobacco covers up the smell of spiritual decay. It has been established that negative mental states lead to a change in the hormonal background of a person. Chemicals formed during stress and other internal conflicts are excreted from the body, and these secretions have a very heavy smell. Tobacco use makes it impossible to recognize the spiritual state of others at the deepest biological level. Smoking is licentiousness not only of the body, but also of the soul. This is a false calming of your nerves. Many smokers refer to the calming of the nerves after smoking a cigarette, not realizing that the nerves are the carnal mirror of the soul. Such reassurance is self-deception, a mirage. This narcotic sedation will be the source of soul torment. Now, while there is a body, this "calming" must be regularly renewed. And then it will become a source of hellish torment. It must be remembered that after death, after the separation of the soul from the body, the passions that manifested themselves in bodily life do not leave the human soul. Not freed from this or that passion, the soul will transfer it to another world, where in the absence of the body it will be impossible to satisfy this passion. The soul will languish and burn with an unceasing thirst for sin and lust. He who is insatiable in food will suffer after his death with the inability to fill his belly. The drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can only be soothed by alcohol. The fornicator will experience the same feeling. Selfish too, and a smoker too. If a smoker does not smoke for several days during his lifetime, what will he experience? Terrible torment, but torment softened by other aspects of life. But that is two days, and the deceased has eternity ahead. And eternal torment...

Meanwhile, the army of smokers is rapidly getting younger. The age of initiation to smoking in Russia has decreased to 10 years for boys and 12 for girls. Smoking has a particularly detrimental effect on children's bodies. Among other things, smoking adolescents form a complex of neuropsychic abnormalities. As a result, attention, memory, sleep suffer, mood "jumps". Teen smoking has a devastating effect on reproductive function. It is no coincidence that today more than 70 percent of boys and girls have serious problems in this "part" by the age of 15.

If we return to the "spiritual component" of the harm from smoking, then we should dwell on the lack of freedom of the smoker. Many of the smokers (especially in adulthood) would like to quit smoking. According to sociologists, 100 (!) percent of smokers after 30 would like to give up a harmful and sinful habit. Alas ... Smokers develop nicotine syndrome. This is the same dependence as on alcohol and drugs, only less damaging to health. Although, how to say: lung cancer, cancer of the larynx - the argument is not at all in favor of the harmlessness of such a harmful addiction as smoking.

It would be useful to mention that in the new classification of diseases that came into force in 1999, tobacco dependence is officially recognized as an illness. And we will add - a sinful disease. Smoking is self-indulgence, a form of self-indulgence. It is no coincidence that in Russia there has long been a saying: "To smoke - to incense for demons."

When a person smokes, Orthodox priests say, his soul is captured by demonic forces. And he adds another heavy link to the chain of slavish attachments; his will is weakened, and behind all the excuses for smoking, the voice of a weak-willed person is heard. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov: “I ask you: is such a person free? I knew one“ fighter for the idea ”who himself told me that when they deprived him of tobacco in prison, he was so exhausted by deprivation of strength that he almost went and betrayed his "idea" so that they would only give him tobacco. But such a one says: "I'm going to fight for humanity." Well, where will such a person go and what is he capable of?

Do you smoke? Realize your sin

Medical statistics have calculated that each cigarette smoked shortens a person's life by at least seven minutes. In general, smokers in Russia live five years less than non-smokers. Most smokers know this. Nevertheless, he cannot leave the sinful habit. Here is what the famous Orthodox writer S. A. Nilus wrote about the state of a smoker in the first part of the book "On the Bank of God's River."

"... July 7, 1909. Tonight I had a severe attack of choking cough. Serve it right! - this is all from smoking, which I cannot quit, and I have been smoking since the third grade of the gymnasium and now it is so thoroughly saturated with nicotine that it has already become, probably an integral part of my blood. It takes a miracle to wrest me from the clutches of this vice, and I don’t have enough will of my own. I tried to quit smoking, didn’t smoke for two days, but the result was that such melancholy and bitterness that this new sin was becoming worse than the old one. Father Barsanuphius forbade me even to make such attempts, limiting my daily portion of smoking to fifteen cigarettes. Before, I smoked without counting ... "

"Your hour will come," said Father Barsanuphius, "and the end of smoking will come." “Hope, do not despair: in due time, God willing, you will quit,” Father Joseph told me about the same smoking, from which I could not fall behind in any way. And a miracle, according to the word of both elders, happened to me. And it was so.

We live with my friend, my God-given wife, as they say, soul to soul, in the full sense of the Gospel word, so that we are not two, but one flesh. This great mercy of God, bestowed on us from above, is due to our deep and convinced faith in the Sacrament of Marriage, which we both at one time approached with fear and trembling. And so, in June 1910, my wife fell ill with some strange illness, which neither the Optina paramedic nor the invited doctor could determine: in the morning she was almost healthy, but in the evening she had a temperature of up to 40. And so the week, and another, and the third! I see my joy melting before my eyes, like a wax candle, and is about to flare up for the last time and go out. And then my orphaned heart was filled with great, immeasurable great sorrow and grief, and I prostrated myself before the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria of Smolensk, which stood in the corner of my office, and I wept before Her, and was horrified, and yearned, and spoke to Her as if she were alive. : "Mother Queen, my Blessed Mother of God! You, I believe, gave my angel's wife, You save her for me, and for that I give you a vow never to smoke again. I make a vow, but I know that I can’t fulfill it with my own strength, and not to fulfill is a great sin, so you yourself help me! So it was about ten o'clock in the evening. After praying and somewhat calming down, he approached his wife's bed. Sleeping, breathing is quiet, even. He touched his forehead: his forehead was moist, but not hot - my sweet dove was fast asleep. Glory to God, glory to the Most Pure! The next morning the temperature was 36.5, in the evening - 36.4, and a day later she got up, as she did not hurt. And I forgot that I smoked, as I never smoked, and I smoked for exactly thirty years and three years, and my whole body was so saturated with cursed tobacco that I could not live without it not only for a day, but even a minute.

In this whole story, I would like to focus not so much on the miracle that happened, but on the hero's awareness of sin itself. Without such awareness, a miracle would not be possible. And from here follows the first rule for those who want to quit addiction: one must realize the sinfulness of smoking. Actually, the overcoming of any sin begins with such a step ...

"Before you smoke, pray"

Now let's stop at the place in the reader's letter where he says that the church fathers did not say anything about the dangers of smoking. It's not like that at all. Another thing that you should know is that in the Russian Orthodox Church there are no boundaries of patristic instructions. Say, until some relatively old time - these are patristic instructions, and the instructions of those who, say, are ranked among the host of saints in recent years - this is something not authoritative enough. There are no such borders in the Russian Orthodox Church. Today's ascetics often absorb and develop the teachings of their predecessors, and every word of every holy ascetic is valuable in itself. Here are just some of the sayings of the Holy Fathers about the sin of smoking.

“Man has perverted the very pleasures of the senses. For smell and taste, and partly for breathing itself, he invented and burns almost incessantly sharp and odorous smoke, bringing this, as it were, a constant censer to a demon living in the flesh, infects the air of his dwelling and the external air with this smoke. , but first of all it is saturated with this stench itself, - and here you are, the constant coarsening of your feelings and your heart by constantly absorbed smoke cannot but affect the subtlety of the heart's feelings, it imparts to it carnality, rudeness, insensitivity.

Saint righteous John of Kronstadt: "Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys health by slow death. Irritability and longing are a consequence of the pain of the soul from smoking."

St. Ambrose of Optina: “In 1905, Elder Silouan of Athos spent several months in Russia, often visiting monasteries. On one of these trips on the train, he took a seat opposite the merchant, who, with a friendly gesture, opened his silver cigarette case in front of him and offered him a cigarette.

Father Siluan thanked for the offer, refusing to take a cigarette. Then the merchant began to say: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider it a sin? But smoking often helps in an active life; it’s good to break the stress at work and rest for a few minutes. life..." And then, trying to convince Father Siluan to take a cigarette, he continued to speak in favor of smoking.

Then, nevertheless, Father Siluan decided to say: “Sir, before you light a cigarette, pray, say one thing:“ Our Father. the answer remarked: “So, any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer, it is better not to do it.”

Now about the quotation from the Bible from the book of Solomon's parables "smoking gladdens the heart." Of course, we are not talking about smoking tobacco. Smoking in ancient times was called the burning of aromatic substances and fragrant oil. People in all ages have loved incense, and in ancient times fragrant incense was added to the sacrifices. Fragrant plants and exotic incense were highly valued in religious ceremonies. They were worth their weight in gold and silver. So, the Queen of Sheba brought aromatic substances to Solomon as a gift. Incense was kept in the royal treasury. This is the kind of "smoking" that the Bible talks about. Smoking pleases the heart, and a friend's heartfelt advice is sweet - this is how this quote from the book of Proverbs looks like. Today, "smoking" in the temple can be called censing - when the priest passes through the temple with a censer, from which incense is burned. “At Divine services they burn incense, how can the slaves of sin not invent a kind of incense?” said St. Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer. “The first is pleasing to God, the second should be pleasing to God’s enemy, the devil.”

Church warns: smoking harms your soul

Today, many experts say that in recent years the world center for sales of cigarettes is increasingly shifting to Russia. In the United States and Western Europe, thanks to the measures taken, the number of smokers is reduced by tens of millions every year.

What are these measures? Smoking bans in public places - in restaurants, airplanes, on the street, in clubs, offices, etc. No less effective is the promotion of the dangers of smoking. Posters about the dangers of tobacco are placed literally everywhere. Plus, the tobacco companies literally overwhelmed with lawsuits those who fell ill due to smoking. The claims amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the courts very often satisfy such claims. Perhaps even more important in the West is the high price of cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes in Europe costs at least five euros, that is, 160-180 rubles in terms of the Russian ruble. If such a pricing policy were in Russia, many people would think about whether it is worth putting such money into the smoke.

In Russia, it's a completely different matter. Due to the extremely low excise taxes, our cigarettes are quite inexpensive. They are accessible to everyone and, unfortunately, even to children. In Russia, global tobacco companies feel like a businessman. Having skilfully taken over almost all the country's tobacco factories (now there are only two (!) domestic tobacco companies operating in Russia), foreign firms have thrown huge amounts of money into smoking advertising. If almost everywhere in the world advertising of cigarettes is strictly prohibited, then in our country hundreds of billboards of tobacco products "decorate" the streets of almost all cities in the country. At the same time, Russian advertising legislation is violated roughly and everywhere (including in Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul). With the help of simple tricks, the inscription that smoking is harmful to health takes up a much smaller part of billboards than the law provides. This is done very simply. The percentage of the area is calculated according to the strip allocated for such an inscription, while the warning inscription itself is much smaller.

At the same time, foreign tobacco companies are trying in every possible way to create for themselves in Russia the image of companies that are extremely concerned about the negative impact of smoking on health. Abroad, this is impossible according to the laws. There, tobacco companies are legally prohibited from participating in charity events, sponsoring sports and all kinds of other events.

... In Los Angeles, on Santa Monica Boulevard, there is a scoreboard counting the number of deaths from addiction to cigarettes. In Russia, there is no such scoreboard in any city yet ...

It is not surprising that such a situation has caused serious criticism from both Russian public organizations and government officials. In particular, they propose to bring the inscriptions on cigarette packs warning about the dangers of smoking into line with Western standards. First of all, it is proposed to make this inscription (as well as abroad!) not in some inconspicuous size, but in half a tobacco pack. And here it makes sense to return to where we started, to the fact that smoking is not only harmful to health, but is a serious sin.

Warning labels on cigarette packs can be of very different content. Abroad, such inscriptions warn potential buyers that smoking is fraught with cancer. That smoking is extremely harmful to pregnant women. The fact that for young people smoking often turns into impotence. It seems that the Russian Orthodox Church will in every possible way support the proposal of the newspaper "Honest Word" that one of the inscriptions read: "The Russian Orthodox Church warns: smoking is a sin." The wording of such a warning can be specified, but there is no doubt that it is appropriate (and necessary!).

On the one hand, the voice of the Church today is very significant for many, on the other hand, very few (especially among young people) are aware of how (and why) the Orthodox Church treats tobacco smoking. And such a warning, no doubt, will bring positive results.

Alexander Okonishnikov

Honestly - 11/01/2006.

Prayer from the passion of smoking to the Monk Ambrose of Optina

Reverend Father Ambrose, you, having boldness before the Lord, begged the Greatly Gifted Vladyka to give me an ambulance in the fight against impure passion.

God! Through the prayers of your saint, Saint Ambrose, cleanse my lips, make my heart chaste and saturate it with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit, so that the evil tobacco passion will flee from me far away, to where it came from, into the womb of hell.

Boris, Smoking is a sin because it is:
1. Slow suicide, poisoning.
2. Smoking is addictive. If you succumb to addiction, then in a minute you will do at least 10 sins.
3. It's a legalized drug. All signs for the drug match.
So, we found out that the humble smoker has no faith, because he cannot fight sin, namely:
*"I am the Lord your God. May you have no other gods but Me."
<Курильщик!>Your god is cigarettes, not Trinity. They command you, and you obey them.
*"Do not pronounce the Name of the Lord your God in vain, for He will punish the one who pronounces His Name in vain."
<Курильщик!>How can you justify yourself by denying smoking? After death, there is no dependence, no brain that justifies you, but only your guilt remains, and faith with a soul is not inherited.
* "Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify.
edzhil?
*"Do not overdo it."
<Курильщик!>Are you holy when you worship your god?
*"Do not bear false witness."
<Курильщик!>Are you trying to interpret the Word of God to your advantage? And Christ said "Whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness either in this or in the next age." Repent before it's too late!
*"Don't steal."
<Курильщик!>There was a case when I was sitting in the subway and saw that the one who wanted you had lost his deity. One girl took one cigarette before leaving the car, and another man took it for himself. Everyone looked at him, including me. Won't you join the cheeky ones?
*"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house"
<Грешник!>Do you want and want? And your thoughts are directed against all commandments?
*"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, ... none of what he has."
<Курильщик!>Do you encroach on the murder of yourself, on disrespect, slander, and theft?
<Курильщик!>* Do you think that you will find peace after death?

vk.com

Priest Afanasy Gumerov, a resident of the Sretensky Monastery, answers:

The holy fathers define various diseases of the soul with the concept of passion. There are various classifications of passions. Man combines the carnal and spiritual principles. Therefore, in accordance with this, passions are divided into bodily and spiritual. The former have their ground in bodily needs, the latter in spiritual ones. It is difficult to draw a clear line between them, since the "epicenter" of all passions is in the soul. The most common bodily passions: “gluttony, gluttony, luxury, drunkenness, eating in secret, various kinds of voluptuousness, fornication, adultery, debauchery, impurity, incest, child corruption, bestiality, bad wishes and all sorts of unnatural and shameful passions ...” (Philokalia. T 2, Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1993, p. 371). Smoking belongs to an unnatural passion, for chronic self-poisoning is not rooted in the realm of the natural needs of the body.

All passions are stumbling blocks on our path to salvation. By its origin, human nature as a creation of the All-Wise God, as His image and likeness, has perfection. The goal of our entire Christian life is to unite with God and in Him alone to find the bliss of eternal life. Performing the work of salvation, we must restore in ourselves the image of God, distorted by various sins, and acquire the likeness of our Heavenly Parent.
When a person is in captivity of passion, his soul cannot restore the distorted image and return the original god-likeness. If a person is overcome by passions, then his soul becomes defiled, his mind becomes dead, and his will becomes powerless. The Holy Fathers call this state the second idolatry. Man worships his passions like idols. An idolater cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven (Eph. 5:5). “Without purity from passions, the soul does not heal from sinful ailments, and does not acquire the glory lost by crime” (St. Isaac the Syrian).

Any passion, being a disease of the soul, is linked by invisible links with other ailments. There are no impenetrable walls in the soul. Rooted passion contributes to the formation of other vices. Egoism is grossly manifested. A mother who smokes while walking over a stroller in which a baby sleeps puts the satisfaction of passion above the health of her child. Parents who smoke tend to teach it to their children. Children are not their property. When they infect them for the rest of their lives with this destructive habit, they act not only against the Christian conscience, but also contrary to universal morality.

If a person has realized the perniciousness of smoking, he often loses heart, seeing that he has become a prisoner of this habit and does not have freedom. The sin of self-justification, the dulling of the moral sense, is also closely connected with smoking. Having come to terms with this passion, a person forgives himself and other weaknesses, for the power of precedent is great.

Smoking is also a sin because it destroys health. According to the general teaching of the Holy Fathers, life and health are given to us by God as a gift. To shorten one's life by bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles is a serious sin.

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Henry Ford: " The world needs men today. Not those whose mind and will have been weakened or destroyed by the craving for alcohol or tobacco, but, on the contrary, men whose mentality has not been corrupted by habits that are often uncontrollable.».

"Smoking kills!" - Strictly warn inscriptions on cigarette packs. The anti-tobacco campaign has been going on for many years, and probably everyone has known since childhood that “smoking is dangerous for your health”, and now also that “smoking is the cause of chronic diseases”, and also that “smoking can cause infertility”. And, nevertheless, the people are somehow not particularly impressed by these frightening inscriptions on cigarette packs. My friend even collected a collection of the most terrible anti-tobacco inscriptions (which did not prevent him from continuing to smoke at all).

So, today we will talk about smoking - the most common bad habit on the planet - and why it is better for any person, especially a Christian, to stay away from it.

SMOKING SIN?

The most “advanced” ones say that the Bible does not say that smoking is a sin, so supposedly smoking is possible without a twinge of conscience. So after all, the Bible does not say that using heroin is a sin, however, drug addiction and Christianity are incompatible concepts, no one argues! Smoking, like drug addiction, is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible for the simple reason that in biblical times these harmful "addictions" did not yet exist! For example, tobacco was discovered on October 12, 1492 by the expedition of Christopher Columbus. When his expedition landed on one of the islands, the expedition members were astounded as they saw the islanders exhaling smoke from their noses and mouths. The islanders then celebrated their sacred holiday, on which they smoked a special herb called "tobacco". Hence the current name of tobacco. And here is our first argument that smoking is a sin:

1. The tradition of smoking originates from pagan rites
   The Indians on the island that Columbus visited smoked to the point of insanity. In this state, they entered into a trance and began to communicate with the demons, and then passed on to everyone what the “Great Spirit” had told them. So tobacco smoking was an integral part of demon worship rituals. Columbus took "tobacco" with him, and very quickly smoking became fashionable.
2. In different historical periods, it was understood that smoking is a pernicious habit.
   To overcome smoking, even extreme measures were applied.
   For example, in Switzerland in 1661, the tobacco trade was considered an act tantamount to murder. And in 1625 in Turkey, smokers were executed, and severed heads with pipes in their mouths were put on display. In Persia, as a punishment for smoking, lips and noses were cut off, and tobacco merchants were burned along with their goods. In Russia, Tsar Mikhail in 1634 ordered "smokers to be executed by death", and Tsar Alexei in 1649 commanded smokers to "smack their nostrils and cut their noses", and then "exile them to distant cities."

And only with the coming to power of Peter I, who himself smoked and ordered others, did smoking become widespread in Russia.

1. 3. Smoking is injurious to health
   According to the 1999 Classification of Diseases, tobacco dependence is officially labeled as a disease. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, many of which are highly toxic and cause cancer. When the smoke reaches the lungs, it settles there in the form of tar. As a result of all this, changes in the internal organs begin. First, the respiratory organs suffer, because they are the first to come into contact with smoking products, then the cardiovascular system and the gastrointestinal tract take the blow.

Just one cigarette leads to a significant increase in pressure, that is, the heart begins to work more actively, as a result of this, smokers with experience acquire the so-called “tobacco heart”. You can't buy a new heart, so why not take good care of the one you have?

Smoking increases the chance of a heart attack. Women have problems with childbearing, men have impotence. On average, a smoker's life expectancy is reduced by ten years. In addition, as a “bonus” to all of the above, you get yellow teeth, bad breath and hair.

Smoking destroys health, which means that a person who smokes violates the commandment of God: “Don't you know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). Smoking is a slow suicide, and suicide is called a terrible sin in the Bible.

1. Harm to the health of others
   But you are harming not only yourself, but also those around you. And since the most dear people - children, spouse, close relatives - surround you more often than others, you harm them especially strongly. The following data can illustrate how harmful passive smoking is: in the United States in the mid-1990s, three thousand people a year died from passive smoking ...
   So it is not surprising that in many countries smoking in public places is prohibited by law. If you decide to quickly go to the other world, then do not “take away” at least others with you. Scripture says, “Love your neighbor,” which means that you should not do anything that harms your neighbors – you should not expose them to the harmful effects of tobacco smoke.


2. On your health, someone is just making money!
   The World Health Organization claims that smoking is a contagious disease transmitted through advertising. Tobacco companies spend incredible amounts every year on sponsorship of sporting events. The advertising and sale of cigarettes during these competitions encourages young people to smoke.
3. The cigarette takes you into bondage
   Many would like to quit smoking. According to researchers, 99% of smokers among those who are over 30 years old want to give up this habit. But, alas, it is not easy to do this: cigarettes are taken prisoner.

Dostoevsky wrote the following about smokers in The Brothers Karamazov: “I ask you: is such a person free? I knew one “fighter for the idea” who himself told me that when they deprived him of tobacco in prison, he was so exhausted by the deprivation of strength that he almost went and betrayed his “idea” just to give him tobacco. But this one says: "I'm going to fight for humanity." Well, where will this one go, and what is he capable of?
Any addiction is a sin, because it controls a person's life, enslaves him. And the Bible in the First Epistle to the Corinthians says the following: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is lawful to me, but nothing should possess me” (6:12).

1. Smoking steals wealth
   Many families do not always have money for children for some educational games or courses, but for some reason there is always money for cigarettes. Still, as a familiar smoker said: “If I don’t smoke for a long time, my ears will swell.” But you have no idea that the habit of smoking steals from you ... millions!

Let's count. A pack of more or less high-quality cigarettes in Russia costs 75 rubles. An experienced smoker needs two packs of these cigarettes a day. A total of 150 rubles a day goes up in smoke. This is 1050 rubles a week, 4500 a month. But if these 4500 rubles are put aside every month to a bank account at 10% per annum, then in a year you will already have 56,000, in two - 119,000, in five years - 348,000 rubles , in ten years - almost 1 million, in fifteen years - almost 2 million rubles, in forty years - 28 million rubles. Since many people start smoking from their school years, it is not difficult to imagine how much money a person spends on cigarettes that kill his health. And if you really save "cigarette" money? After all, then you can retire as a millionaire and not worry about how to live when old age has come, and even help others! But all this will not happen, because every day you invest the money you earn not in creation, but in the destruction of your own body.

So smoking is a sin that makes you poor!

According to memo.im

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Yes it's sad.

Meditation on a cigarette http://www.pravmir.ru/mysli-o-kurenii-i-kuryashhix/ :

Everyone knows that smoking is dangerous to health. But there is another aspect of the problem - the moral one. Is smoking a sin - after all, neither the Gospel nor the Holy Fathers say anything about it? Should we fight this bad habit, or can we still afford a little weakness? Does it interfere with spiritual life? The psychologist-consultant of the Sobesednik center, priest Andrey LORGUS, answers

Is smoking a sin or not?

This is a matter of casuistry. Sin - from what point of view? After all, there are many more sins than are named in the Bible, and there is no such set of sins that would be accepted by the entire Orthodox Church. So, if we set ourselves the task of finding a loophole in the text, in the formal rules, we can easily prove that smoking is not a sin. Not prohibited means allowed. But the fact is that the spiritual position is not based on the points of the canonical rules. Genuine Orthodoxy is in the spirit. And from a spiritual point of view, smoking, of course, is completely unacceptable. It is a habit that hinders the spiritual life.

You can drink wine, but you can't get drunk. It's always about measure. How to define it? In Orthodoxy, the measure is the conscience and consciousness of a person. All Orthodox spiritual practice is aimed at a clear, precise consciousness, the holy fathers constantly spoke about sobriety, sober thinking. Any kind of chemical influence on consciousness from the point of view of Orthodoxy is unacceptable. So how much wine can you drink? As long as your consciousness is clear, pure and adequate. How much can you smoke? Not at all. After all, even a minimal amount of tobacco causes an altered state of consciousness.

Even one cigarette? One puff?

Yes, definitely. If a smoker inhales on an empty stomach against a background of severe stress, he may faint. What does it say? It is about the fact that even one puff greatly affects the human mind.

What is an "altered state of consciousness"?

This condition is unusual, atypical. For example, a person may fall into a trance, become euphoric, or feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed. In other words, inadequate. Moral values, family, kinship, friendship ties for some time recede into the background or disappear altogether. For example, a person in a state of passion, anger can commit any act, because in this case no norms are relevant for him. A drug addict in a state of withdrawal does not remember either his father or mother, or God, or the rules. This is the change of consciousness. In fact, the same thing happens with a smoker. Of course, not at all to the same extent as with a drug addict or an alcoholic. And yet every puff affects his consciousness. And how many such puffs from one cigarette? How many cigarettes a day? The effect on consciousness is barely noticeable, and therefore smoking is not recognized by everyone as dangerous from a psychological and spiritual point of view. But narcologists and Christian psychologists believe that smoking makes human thinking not quite adequate.

Some claim that smoking helps them focus.

What really helps - temporarily - is not smoking per se, but changing the breath. There are mystical-occult and parapsychological breathing practices. Their essence is in meditation, in achieving the same altered state of consciousness. When a person begins to breathe too intensely or in a certain rhythm, holding his breath, for example, he may experience visions, hallucinations, euphoria. Here, while smoking, a certain breathing ritual is also performed - the smoker uses breathing practice as meditation. In general, people think that the main thing in smoking is tobacco. Smoke, of course, affects consciousness, but changing breathing is also of great importance.

But the person does not even notice that he is meditating.

Well, in life we ​​use a lot of defenses and techniques without realizing them. It's the same with food. People do not notice that in a state of stress they eat more than their body needs. Or they eat too many sweets.

A novice smoker experiences a lot of discomfort, but still continues to rape himself. What for?

For a beginner, smoking is always stressful. He receives a dose of poison, to which the body reacts unequivocally - rejection. Yes, this is self abuse. But most often this violence helps a person to survive some kind of more severe violence - trauma, humiliation, chronic stress. The fact is that traumatized people are drawn to traumatic ways of life. Some psychologists call smoking "oral auto-aggression" - "harming yourself through your mouth." The beginning of smoking is somewhat reminiscent of masochism - to hurt yourself so as not to hear other pain. But the body quickly gets used to it.

Does this mean that some kind of mental trauma always becomes the initial cause of smoking?

There are a lot of reasons. Children, for example, may start smoking to appear "cool" or "adult". Women often smoke for show: a cigarette in beautiful hands - isn't it elegant! Therefore, manicure, rings, cigarette brand are very important for them. Even how lipstick is imprinted on a cigarette is important. In general, the motives can be very different, each case must be dealt with separately. To understand what a smoker lacks, one must understand what smoking means to him. Perhaps he lacks self-confidence, concentration, communication skills, psychological protection. And again, returning to the question of sin: in each case, this sin will be called in its own way. One thus escapes reality, the other does not want to sort out his mental problems and resorts to such pseudo-methods to solve them. You see, these are very different sins.

But if you are drawn to a cigarette, then you should always understand the reasons?

What does need mean? There are people who never understand themselves, and do not feel the need for it. But if a person sets himself even the smallest spiritual task - "to understand who I am, why I live" - ​​then sooner or later he will face the question "why and why do I smoke?".

And the question “why can’t I go without coffee in the morning?” stand in front of him too?

Quite possible. Even tea can become a destructive habit. People who are prone to addiction will find something to depend on - tea, smoking, tape measure.

Is smoking possible without addiction? I want - I smoke, I don't want - I don't smoke.

Then answer the question, why did you suddenly want to smoke? Nothing just happens.

For example, being in the company of classmates, among the smell of smoke, a person who has long quit smoking feels a desire to pick up a cigarette.

It is necessary to understand why it is in this environment that he has such a desire. Does it smell good? This means that the dependence on smoking lives in it, the body remembers it. Gravity is addiction: you see a bottle - and you want to drink, you hear the smell of smoke - and you want to smoke. And any dependence is the enslavement of the will. This is another aspect of spiritual passion. Smoking, from an Orthodox point of view, is a passion. If at the beginning the cigarette “calms”, then its absence can drive you crazy. For "experienced" smokers, it is a big problem to wait for communion without smoking a single cigarette in the morning. A sad sight when, having gone out of the gates of the temple, a man with trembling hands takes out a pack of cigarettes, inhales and his face breaks into a blissful smile...

Is quitting smoking always painful?

There are miracles when a hardened smoker quits and does not experience any withdrawal. But here we can rather talk about the intervention of God's grace. As a rule, it is not easy to overcome this passion.

At the same time, many become angry, irritable, sometimes inadequate. Is this not an altered state of consciousness?

Of course it's changed. But withdrawal is just the right time to ask the question “Why am I feeling so bad?” There is a physiological breakdown as a reaction of the body to the restructuring, and it passes quite quickly. But there is still a psychological breakdown: here I am sitting in a company without a cigarette and I feel awkward, uncomfortable, as if I have lost myself. Just at this moment, you can recognize the cause of the addiction and start working with it. With a cause - not a symptom! After all, when a person smokes and feels good, he is not ready to realize his spiritual problems. But when he feels bad - then it's time to figure it out.

They say that quitting smoking is easier if someone from relatives or friends has quit. So, by quitting smoking, a person not only takes care of himself, but, perhaps, helps someone else?

I think yes. The anti-advertising of smoking will not work as long as people significant to us smoke. And no restrictions will help. The state makes laws, but no one enforces them. And it will not perform further if the mood in society does not change. Remember, in the second half of the 90s, a fashion for a healthy lifestyle appeared in our country? And immediately everything changed! As soon as the elite of society began to visit gyms, jog, go to summer cottages, this instantly became the norm for the majority. The spiritual state of society is what we call social consciousness. Until it changes, the ranks of smokers will continue to grow. And if society understands that smoking is not a bad habit, but a manipulation of one's consciousness, then liberation from addiction will begin.

sretenie.forum2x2.ru

IS SMOKING A SIN? The inability to quit smoking is a myth. I personally know many people who, being smokers with serious experience - 30-40 years, managed to quit smoking, some gradually, others immediately and never returned to this passion. With God's help, everything is possible. If a person turns to God, He helps him to quit this infection. Sure, smoking is a sin. I will share my priestly experience: I communed the dying, attended funerals and saw that the death of many people was directly related to smoking. And it is very difficult to get rid of this evil. Once I gave unction and communion before her death to a woman who was dying of cancer of the larynx, and in this state she could not quit smoking. Even before Communion, I took a few puffs! But since she was dying, I could not help but give communion to her. And how many people die from lung cancer caused by smoking! But not only the respiratory organs are destructively affected by tobacco - others too. The perniciousness of this habit, which causes serious addiction, is also in the fact that many smokers cannot take communion because of smoking. If you get up at night to smoke, if you take a drag in the morning, then how will you go to Communion later? Or even you endured, took communion, and then what? When you leave the temple, do you greedily inhale? So this sinful pleasure deprives the smoker of the Sacrament. (Archpriest Pavel Gumerov) The impossibility of quitting smoking is a myth. I personally know many people who, being smokers with serious experience - 30-40 years, managed to quit smoking, some gradually, others immediately and never returned to this passion. With God's help, everything is possible. If a person turns to God, He helps him to quit this infection. I remember from the life of the Monk Silouan how he once visited Russia, rode in a train to some monastery, and opposite him a merchant took a seat, who offered him a cigarette. The elder refused, and the merchant began to insist, saying: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider it a sin? Smoking often helps in an active life: it is good to interrupt the stress of work and rest for a few minutes. It is convenient to have a business or friendly conversation while smoking…” The Monk Silouan gave him the following advice: “Before you light a cigarette, pray, say ‘Our Father’.” The merchant replied: “Praying before smoking somehow doesn’t work.” To this, Saint Silouan said: “It is better not to do any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer.” But the main harm of smoking, of course, is spiritual. “Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys bodily health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from smoking,” St. Ambrose of Optina teaches us. And yet we become slaves of this sin. “Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). And we are called to freedom in Christ: “And you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Gift of Love can only be accepted by a free person in Christ. If a person has realized the perniciousness of smoking, he often loses heart, seeing that he has become a prisoner of this habit and does not have freedom. The sin of self-justification, the dulling of the moral sense, is also closely connected with smoking. Having come to terms with this passion, a person forgives himself and other weaknesses, for the power of precedent is great. Smoking is also a sin because it destroys health. According to the general teaching of the Holy Fathers, life and health are given to us by God as a gift. To shorten one's life by bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles is a serious sin. A smoker harms his health and the health of those present. Is it possible to quit smoking? Can. In England, about 10 million people have stopped smoking over the past 10-15 years. Almost 2,000 people quit smoking every day! According to the general teaching of the holy fathers, a person with the help of God can overcome any passion. The great elder Ambrose of Optina gives advice in the fight against the ailment of smoking: “You write that you cannot leave tobacco to smoke. soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys bodily health by slow death.—Irritability and longing are the consequences of the sickness of the soul from smoking tobacco.I advise you to use spiritual medicine against this passion: confess all sins in detail, from the age of seven and throughout your life , and partake of the Holy Mysteries, and read daily, standing, the Gospel for a chapter or more; and when melancholy attacks, then read again until the melancholy passes; again it attacks and read the Gospel again. - Or instead, put, alone, 33 large bow, in memory of the earthly life of the Savior and in honor of the Holy Trinity. Why are so few people parting with the "gift of the devil"? Because most smokers don't want to quit this habit. And those who desire it and take steps towards it do not really have the inner determination. Despite impulsive efforts, people who repeatedly quit smoking, deep down, are related to this passion. God is always ready to help a person in this saving work, but he expects a feat from him. Therefore, help us, Lord, to get rid of everything harmful and unnecessary, so that we can be in joy and love, and not in torment here and in eternity. And they depended only on the Holy God, and not on cigarettes, sinful pleasures and, ultimately, on the devil, who is behind all this. priest Andrei Barabash

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Why is smoking a sin?

Here are the main pieces of evidence that characterize smoking as a sin.

Read, for example, biographies of the most talented rock musicians and actors. Many of them died precisely from alcohol, smoking, drug addiction and all the consequences of a depraved life. These arguments are enough to declare: the sin of smoking, drunkenness, drug addiction harm your not only physical, but also spiritual health.

Confession, communion and prayer are the cure for sin

But how to get rid of it? You will be advised some advertised pills, lollipops (carry a candy in your pocket and eat it when you want to puff on a cigarette), coding, psychological techniques. This is quite enough for those who want to quickly and effortlessly achieve the effect.

But quitters testify that it rarely works. Either it brings only a short-term result, and then a person can fall into the sin of smoking with even greater intensity. Why? Because this problem is not only physical, but also spiritual, and therefore requires appropriate treatment.

There is a saint in the Orthodox Church who gave a lot of valuable advice to those who want to get rid of the passion of smoking. This is the Monk Ambrose of Optina, to whom they just pray to get rid of the “smoke kite”.

1. Realize that this is a sin, and it harms your spiritual and physical condition, you want to get rid of it.
2. Start cleansing with a "general" confession. Analyze your own life, remember all your vices that only come to mind, and repent before God. Only not formally, but with the realization that you no longer want to return to what was before.
3. Communion. Establishing a connection with God will help break the chain of relationships with demons who specialize in this destructive passion.
4. Daily read the Gospel one chapter a day, interpretations, meditate on what you have read. Ambrose of Optina advises to read the Holy Scriptures in those moments when melancholy attacks. Demons can't stand the word of God. Or do 33 bows (so much Jesus Christ lived on earth).

In modern prayer books, one can find a separate prayer to St. Ambrose, on whose advice many overcame passion.

Reverend Father Ambrose, you, having boldness before the Lord, begged the Greatly Gifted Vladyka to give me an ambulance in the fight against impure passion. God! Through the prayers of Your saint, Saint Ambrose, cleanse my lips, make my heart chaste and saturate it with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit, so that the evil tobacco passion will run away from me far away, to where it came from, into the womb of hell

Daily reading of these lines, accompanied by hope for Divine help, really helps to get rid of the sin of smoking. But before quitting cigarettes, it is advisable to talk to the confessor and ask him for a blessing. One friend smoked for about 15 years and could not get rid of it on his own. But with the blessing and prayers of his spiritual father, as well as his own desire, for many years he got rid of the bad habit of "smoking - to incense for demons."

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The Bible never explicitly mentioned smoking. But still, there are several chapters that clearly relate to smoking. First, the Bible advises us not to allow our bodies to be subject to anything.

There is no doubt that smoking is a serious addiction. Further, in the same passage it says:

Smoking is undoubtedly harmful to our health. Smoking has been proven to damage the lungs and often the heart.

Can smoking be considered “healthy” (1 Corinthians 6:12)? Can we say that smoking is “the glorification of God in your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:20)? Can a person smoke “for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31)? We believe that the answer to all these three questions is one - "no". As a result, we believe that smoking is a sin and therefore should not be practiced by the followers of Christ.

Some people object to this opinion by referring to the fact that many people eat unhealthy food, and this is the same addiction and it affects their body just as badly. For example, many people are so hopelessly addicted to caffeine that they simply cannot function properly without a morning cup of coffee. Even if this is true, how does that justify smoking? Our point of view is that Christians should avoid gluttony and excessive junk food. Yes, Christians are often hypocrites, condemning one sin, and, at the same time, allowing themselves another ... but, again, does this not contribute to the glorification of the Lord through smoking?

Another argument against this view is the fact that many devout people smoke, such as the famous British preacher Spurgeon. Again, we do not believe that this argument has any force. We believe Spurgeon is wrong about smoking. Was he otherwise a devout man and an excellent teacher of God's Word? Definitely! Does this make all his actions and habits praise the Lord? Not!

By saying that smoking is a sin, we are not saying that smokers will not be saved. Many believers in Jesus Christ smoke. Smoking does not prevent a person from being saved later. Smoking is forgiven in the same way as any other sins, and this does not depend on whether a person is just going to become a Christian or whether a Christian already admits his sin before God.

At the same time, we firmly believe that smoking is a sin that we must get rid of and, with God's help, overcome it.

www.bibleonline.ru

Orthodox layman Aleksey Kulaev shares with us his personal experience of getting rid of smoking. His pamphlet describes every step of this difficult struggle. Here are collected excerpts from the Fathers of the Church and ascetics of piety about smoking.

How I Quit Smoking (An Orthodox Layman's Experience of Combating the Sins of Smoking)

Moscow 2004
Blessing of the Counseling Center in the name of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt
The confessor and head of the Center is Hieromonk Anatoly (Berestov), ​​Doctor of Medical Sciences,
Professor

Text, compilation - Alexey Kulaev, all rights reserved, 2004

Foreword

The reason for the appearance of this small book was that sometimes you have to tell those who want to quit smoking the same thing. And that's pretty boring. In addition, you can’t remember everything in a conversation and you can miss something important. Therefore, if this work helps someone get rid of this slavery (which oppresses more and more over the years) and the forgotten joy of being the “non-smoking era” returns to the person, then it will become clear why I shared my experience. You still have to quit smoking, not in “this” world - so in “the other”, and a person has to choose what is better: either do it voluntarily here (breaking with this stupid habit forever) or suffer forever from the inability to satisfy his passion “there”

So, let's begin.

Behind you are several attempts to quit smoking “immediately”, maybe some other “coding”, different nicotine patches, etc. Therefore, it is time to stop and seriously think about the fact that the war is going to be hard and long. But the reward is great for that, i.e. the return of bodily and spiritual health, a feeling of freshness, an increase, as they say, in the “general tone”, efficiency, creative forces, and much more. In my case, this is the disappearance of headaches and heartaches. And my friends told me that I became more friendly. In my opinion, the lost qualities simply return to those who quit smoking.
This is worth fighting for.
Waking up in the morning, without bad breath, with completely restored strength during the night, with gratitude in the heart, the thought appears: “Glory to Thee, Lord!”

STEP #1 How to “firmly” decide to stop smoking.

Once, in 1991, a pious woman who publishes Orthodox literature surprised me very much in a conversation with a message that she had once smoked, and for a long time, for twenty years. (I smoked “seriously” for the same amount of time, from the age of 15 to 35). And in the end, she decided to quit. Coming to the service in the temple, she prayed something like this: “Lord, I don’t want and I can’t quit smoking, but I will still come to You and ask that this happen. You, Lord, you yourself, please deal with this situation. By sharing such a peculiar prayer, she planted in me a seed of faith that the same thing could happen to me. But it took me another four whole years to become churched to such an extent that I began to fight seriously.

STEP #2 Where should the poor smoker go?

In 1995, in mid-April, my friend Anton and I got together and early in the morning went to the glorious city of Serpukhov, to the Vysotsky Monastery, where the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos “The Inexhaustible Chalice” is located. By that time, Anton (smoking experience of 6 years) had already quit smoking. It was already the fifth time he went to this monastery, and I for the first time. And, in general, for the first time I went to the miraculous icon. A bright morning with a bright sun forgotten during the winter, the breath of antiquity and the reverence that you already feel on the way to this monastery, when you see only its walls, everything disposed to prayer. That indescribable feeling of holiness that grips a person when he is near the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, the marvelous monastic service, the inexplicable genuine confidence that the Lord Himself is really present there, in the altar, then inspired in me the expectation of future changes. This expectation was, as it were, reinforced by the promise of the Most Pure One, born in my heart, that I would definitely receive not only what I asked for, but also many more wonderful gifts of God, which a person cannot even suspect.

After the Liturgy, on Sundays, a prayer service for health is served before the icon, and then holy water is distributed to everyone who wishes. Having stocked up with a large number of containers, all Orthodox are simultaneously eager to fill them, and therefore it is more prudent to wait a little on the sidelines. Since water is constantly supplied to the vats through a hose, there will still be enough for everyone. There you can also order a commemoration of health at the liturgy and prayers even for a whole year, for yourself and for your relatives and friends suffering from addictions to alcohol, drug addiction and smoking.

Even then, the monastery had already collected two bags of letters from thousands of grateful pilgrims who received healing from these, alas, the most common ailments, after fervent prayers at the holy image. There are cases when prolonged commemoration of health brought amazing results. Those of little faith and atheists, detractors and scoffers of Christianity, became believers and forever parted with destructive passions through the prayers of their loved ones and the monks of the monastery.

I tried to drink the holy water brought from Serpukhov every morning for the entire time I quit smoking. The instant miracle I was expecting did not happen and I did not succeed in quitting smoking right away. But for that, a dislike for strong drinks soon appeared, with which I sometimes had problems, and since then I have not consumed anything stronger than Cahors.

On Sunday, at about 7 o'clock, by train from the Kursk railway station to the station "Serpukhov" (travel time 1 hour 50 minutes). Bus number 5 stops right behind the station building on the square (10-15 minutes).

STEP #3 First norm. The speed of running towards death decreases.

After a trip to Serpukhov, I had another conversation with my confessor about smoking, and, quite unexpectedly for me, the priest gave me an obedience - to smoke no more than 10 cigarettes a day. Having a habit of smoking at least a pack, and sometimes one and a half, 10 cigarettes a day seemed like some unrealistic figure. But there is nothing to do, and for a start I refused the first cigarette. It was a ritual morning cigarette on the way to work from the entrance to the bus stop. After some time, I managed to exclude the second morning cigarette on the way from the metro to the place of work. But then problems began, sometimes I managed not to exceed the norm, but more often it turned out the other way around. Only after three months was it possible to fix success on this figure of 10 cigarettes a day.

STEP #4 It turns out there is such a prayer

At the very beginning of the "throwing" I was very lucky. On the radio "Radonezh" one respected priest read a prayer to the Monk Ambrose of Optina "for getting rid of the passion of smoking", and I was just recording this program on a tape recorder. I quote it in full at the end of my story.
Every day I began to read it several times a day, especially when I really wanted to smoke, but it was too early according to the schedule.
Now about the schedule. I am convinced that it is better and easier to quit smoking with it than without it. Between cigarettes you make a certain interval and strictly adhere to it. I also advise you to include a prayer to St. Ambrose of Optina in the morning and evening rule, asking for a blessing from your confessor.

STEP #5 "Health Day"

Having read in one Orthodox book that it is generally forbidden to smoke on the day of Holy Communion, for the reason that particles of Communion may remain on a discarded cigarette butt, I thought hard and decided to try to arrange a “Health Day” on Sunday after Communion. Naturally, he asked for blessings from his father. After the service (unless, of course, you don’t just stand, but try to pray), you don’t really feel like smoking, but when you come home and have dinner, then it starts to “pull”. Here is the time to resort to prayer to the Monk Ambrose of Optina, to reading the Gospel and then do some all-consuming activities or outdoor activities, creativity, reading, etc. At the same time, you can gnaw all sorts of crackers or seeds (pumpkin seeds, in my opinion, are better) .
When for the first time “Health Day” was a success and I went to bed without smoking from sunrise to sunset, the first experience of a new (long-forgotten old) life appeared, a long-forgotten feeling of purity. Although drawn to a cigarette, but purchased was more expensive.

STEP #6 Schedule (on the wall or on the cabinet)

When I stopped going beyond the "hot ten", the next obedience from my father was the transition to the norm of 5 cigarettes a day. But since I knew that I had no strength for such a feat, I asked for a blessing for at least 7 cigarettes. And then he continued to fight. It took another 2 months to get used to this norm. Gradually increasing the intervals between cigarettes, I came to the conclusion that it is best to keep the norm at 7, and then at 5 cigarettes, if the first cigarette is smoked as late as possible.

Fathers of the Church and ascetics of piety about smoking

Saint Theophan the Recluse

SMOKING
1. How to look at it
Smoking is a stupid business; there is as much moral here as there is empty predilection and perceived harm. The last two features are difficult for smokers to recognize and difficult to explain to non-smokers.
Strongly indecent, but decency and indecency, the same as people, change.
Tolerate a bad habit, but don't turn it into a sin.
Praying that your daughter will wean is a good thing. But this need not be put in a special form. Whenever you pray, call on God. And He will arrange as His holy will pleases. (Issue 8, pis. 1230, p. 12)
2. Harm from him
Good to quit smoking. It is not only empty, but gradually erodes health, spoiling the blood and clogging the lungs. This is a gradual self-animation.

But there is no advice for this, and there never is, except to decide more strongly. There is no other way.
To smoke or not to smoke is an indifferent matter, at least our and common conscience considers it so.

But when non-smoking is bound by a promise, then it enters into the moral order and becomes a matter of conscience, the failure of which cannot but trouble it. Here is the enemy and salted you. That's right, you did a good job. The enemy advised you to put a decision, and then knocked you down to violate this word. That's the whole story! Please study and continue to look both ways. What to bind yourself with a vow? You need to say: wait, let me try to quit. God willing, and I will. Have you met the advice of the holy elders: do not bind yourself with a vow? That's exactly the sort of thing it's about. (Issue 2, pis. 369, p. 240)

Rev. Ambrose of Optina

“You write that you cannot stop smoking tobacco. What is impossible from man is possible with the help of God: it is only worth firmly deciding to leave, recognizing harm from it for soul and body; for tobacco weakens the soul, multiplies and intensifies the passions, darkens the mind, and destroys bodily health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from tobacco smoking. I advise you to use spiritual medicine against this passion: confess in detail all your sins from the age of seven and throughout your life, and partake of the Holy Mysteries, and read daily, standing, the Gospel by chapter or more, and when melancholy sets in, then read again until longing will not pass; attack again - and read the Gospel again. “Or instead, put 33 big bows in private, in memory of the Savior’s earthly life and in honor of the Holy Trinity.”

Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from tobacco smoking.

Elder Paisios the Holy Mountaineer

Once a father visited the Elder, who had a very sick daughter, and asked for his prayers. Father Paisios said: “All right, I’ll pray, but do something for the health of the child, if you can’t pray properly. At least give up smoking, make at least this compulsion for yourself. And he readily left cigarettes and a lighter right on the stasidia in the church of the Elder.

Saint Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer

“If some consider tobacco smoking as not violating the norms of decency and good manners, then let them at least listen to modern ethical philosophers who very strongly condemn such opinions, rightly asking, in what way is politeness and good manners manifested here? Has anyone seen a rational living being smoking a pipe filled with smoking and foul-smelling grass, and emitting whole clouds of fetid tobacco smoke, as if it were a burning furnace? In this form, a person is likened to a dragon, and this mythical beast allegorically depicts the devil "(...).

Smoking is a spiritual passion: by nature, it is unusual for a person to smoke in the same way as, say, eating, drinking, having a family. Perhaps we can say that smoking is a kind of antipode of prayer. Prayer is called by the holy fathers the breath of the soul. Concentrating a person's mind in himself and in God, she gives him true peace, purification of the mind and heart, a feeling of spiritual strength and vigor. Smoking, associated with the breath of the body, causes surrogates for these feelings. And the very symbol of prayer - smoking fragrant incense, very clearly expresses the opposite of the fragrance of incense - the use of a fetid devil's potion.
“During the services of God they burn with incense, how can the slaves of sin not invent a kind of incense? The first is pleasing to God, and the second should be pleasing to God's enemy, the devil."

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt

“Instead of the fragrance of the censer in the temples, the world has invented its own tobacco fragrance, and diligently fumigates itself with it greedily, almost eats and swallows it, and breathes it, and smokes its insides and its dwellings with it, produces disgust for the blessings

Man has perverted the very pleasures of the senses. For smell and taste, and partly for breathing itself, he invented and burns almost incessantly pungent and odorous smoke, bringing this, as it were, a constant censer to a demon living in the flesh, infects the air of his dwelling and the external air with this smoke, and first of all is saturated with this stench himself, — and here you are, the constant coarsening of your feelings and your heart by the constantly swallowed up smoke cannot but affect the subtlety of the heart’s feelings, it imparts to it carnality, coarseness, sensuality.

Oh, how carefully the devil and the world sow with their tares the field of Christ, which is the Church of God. Instead of the Word of God, the word of the world is zealously sown, instead of incense, tobacco. Poor Christians! They have completely fallen away from Christ.

Reverend Lev of Optina

... Once among those present there was a man who confessed that he had not fulfilled the senile order. He did not quit smoking, as the Elder ordered him to. Father Leo sternly ordered the man to be taken out of his cell.

Saint Silouan of Athos

In 1905, Elder Silouan of Athos spent several months in Russia, frequently visiting monasteries. On one of these train journeys, he took a seat opposite the merchant, who, with a friendly gesture, opened his silver cigarette case and offered him a cigarette.
Father Siluan thanked for the offer, refusing to take a cigarette. Then the merchant began to say: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider it a sin? But smoking often helps in an active life; it is good to break the tension in work and rest for a few minutes. It is convenient when smoking to conduct a business or friendly conversation and, in general, in the course of life ... ". And then, trying to convince Father Siluan to take a cigarette, he continued to speak in favor of smoking.

Then, nevertheless, Father Silouan decided to say: “Sir, before you light a cigarette, pray, say one “Our Father”. To this the merchant replied: "Praying before smoking somehow doesn't work." Father Siluan remarked in response: “So, it is better not to do any deed before which there is no undisturbed prayer.”

Saint Philaret of Moscow (Drozdov)

"Quit your smoky habit! It will not be easy for you, but do not rely on yourself: call on God for help and for God at once - by all means immediately - cut off evil!

“Did A. give up his smoky habit? And if even secretly follows it, it will not be good. I wish that he won victory over the worthless grass and smoke.

“Is it permissible for a servant of the Christian altar to bring a stench to it at the unnatural whim of consumed poisonous grass, and should not one preparing for this service first beware so as not to leave in himself a habit that is inconsistent with the dignity of service?”

Priest Alexander Elchaninov

From letters to youth
The baseness and vulgarity of motives for beginners to smoke is to be like everyone else, the fear of ridicule, the desire to give yourself weight. At the same time - the psychology of a coward and a swindler. Hence the alienation from family and friends. Aesthetically, this is vulgarity, especially unbearable for girls. Psychologically, smoking opens the door to everything forbidden, vicious.

Smoking and any anesthesia overshadow our sense of purity, chastity. The first cigarette is the first fall, the loss of purity. It is not false puritanism, but a direct feeling and a deep conviction of this that prompt me to tell you this. Ask any smoker - undoubtedly, the beginning of smoking was for him in some sense a fall.

Metropolitan Macarius (Nevsky) of Moscow

“An addiction to one will entail an addiction to another: from smoking tobacco, a young man passes to wine; from one glass of wine - to drunkenness; from wine to cards and other passionate games; from here - to idleness, to theft, to robbery; and from here the road to the prison.

We, approaching the new century, are we already standing on an inclined plane to roll down it irrevocably? Have we children of the nineteenth century gone so far in disregard for the good old and holy customs that the twentieth century will not give us or our descendants a return to these good customs? Is it possible that the zealots of piety have lost the hope of ever seeing the progressive people of our Christian society living the same life with a simple, but kind and, for the most part, devout people, with their churches, with their posts, with their holy antiquity?

***
The patristic tradition tells of an ascetic of piety who labored during the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. This schemer once had a vision of an unclean spirit who said that soon people would incense with his (unclean) mouths. The ascetic wrote: “Will people put coals in their mouths?” The demons testify to the same thing now: “Smokers have not only my smoke, but also fire” - From the notes of Hieromonk Panteleimon.

Archbishop John (Shakhovskoy)

Apocalypse of petty sin

But I have against you that you left your first love. (.)

A petty sin, like tobacco, has become such a habit of human society that society provides him with all sorts of conveniences. Where can you not find a cigarette! Everywhere you can find an ashtray, everywhere there are special rooms, cars, compartments - "for smokers". It would not even be an exaggeration to say that the whole world is one huge room, or rather one huge car in interstellar spheres: "for smokers." “Smoke” - everyone sins petty and calmly: the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, the scientists and the simple ... Before the execution, the criminal is allowed to smoke a cigarette. As if there is not enough air in the earth's atmosphere, or it is too insipid, one must create for oneself some kind of smoky, poisonous air and breathe, breathe this poison, revel in this smoke. And everyone gets drunk. To the point that "non-smoking" is almost as rare as "never lying", or "not exalting above anyone" ... The tobacco market is one of the most significant in world trade, and every year millions of people work to deliver an opportunity other millions and millions - to inhale the caustic smoke, to anesthetic their head and entire body with it.

Is it in the nature of a person to sin petty, narcotic - “to smoke”? The very question seems strange. Is it in the nature of man to go against nature? Is it natural to drug yourself? Indulgence in cocaine is banned by governments, but encouraged by tobacco. Minor sins are allowed by human law, they do not lead to prison. Everyone is guilty of them, and no one wants to throw stones at them. Tobacco, like "little cocaine", is allowed, like a little lie, like an imperceptible untruth, like killing a person in the heart or in the womb. But that is not what the Revelation of God says—the will of the Living God. The Lord does not put up with a little lie, or with a single murderous word, or with a single, adulterous look. The little grass of iniquity is as wretched before the Lord as the great tree of crime. A multitude of small sins is undoubtedly more difficult for the soul of a person than a few great ones, which are always remembered and can always be removed in repentance. And a saint, of course, is not one who does great things, but one who abstains from even the smallest crimes.

It is easier to start a fight against a great sin, it is easier to hate its approach. There is a well-known case with the righteous Anthony of Murom. Two women came to him: one lamented about her one great sin, the other self-satisfiedly testified of her non-participation in any great sins[1]. Having met the women on the road, the elder ordered the first to go and bring him a large stone, and the other to pick up more small stones. A few minutes later the women returned. Then the elder said to them: "Now take and put these stones exactly in the places where you took them from." The woman with the big stone easily found that place; from where she took the stone, the other circled in vain, looking for nests of her small pebbles, and returned to the old man with all the stones. The perspicacious Anthony explained to them that these stones express ... In the second woman, they expressed numerous sins to which she was accustomed, considered them for nothing and never repented of them. She did not remember her petty sins and outbursts of passions, and they expressed the bleak state of her soul, incapable even of repentance. And the first woman, who remembered her sin, suffered from these sins and removed it from her soul.

A lot of small, unworthy habits are mud for a person’s soul, if he affirms them in himself or realizes them as an “inevitable” evil, against which it is “not worth it” and “impossible” to fight. This is where the soul falls into the trap of the enemy of God. “I am not a saint”, “I live in the world”, “I have to live like all people” ... - the aching conscience of a believer calms himself. Man, man, of course, you are not a saint, of course, you “live in the world”, and “must live like all people”, and therefore - be born like all people; die like them, look, listen, speak like them, but why would you transgress the Law of God — “like them”? Why don't you morally smell so fragrant, "like them"? Think about it, man.
How difficult it is for the soul to move from a false, but habitual thought. The psychology of this atheistic world has become so firmly ingrained in the mental world of modern man that with regard to sin and crime against God's Laws, almost all people act in the same way - "according to the stamp." The saddest thing is that evil has inspired people to call the demands of sin "demands of nature".

The requirement of nature is to breathe, eat in moderation, keep warm, devote part of the day to sleep, but not drug your body in any way, it is pointless to become attached to a mirage, to smoke.
After all, one has only to honestly think about this question, as evil itself emerges on the surface of conscience. But the fact of the matter is that modern man has no time to think about the only important question concerning not this small 60-70 year life, but the eternity of its immortal existence in new, great conditions. Absorbed by the completely misunderstood "practice", modern man, immersed in his practical earthly life, thinks that he is in fact "practical". A sad delusion! At the moment of his inevitable (always very close to him) so-called death, he will see with his own eyes how little practical he was, reducing the question of practice to the needs of his stomach and completely forgetting his spirit.

In the meantime, a person really “has no time” to think about the elementary moral laws of his life. And, unfortunate man, he himself suffers inexpressibly from this. Like a child constantly touching the fire and crying, humanity is constantly touching the fire of sin and lust, and weeps and suffers, but touches it again and again ... not understanding its state of spiritual childishness, which in the Gospel is called "blindness", and there is a real blindness of the heart in the presence of physical eyes.

Mankind kills itself through sin, and every person does the same. Overwhelmed, agitated by evil, unbridling the lower instincts, humanity is preparing a terrible fate for itself, like every person who follows this path. Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. And over this, over the only important thing - “there is no time” to think ... “Live in the moment”, “what will be, will be” - the soul brushes aside the very truth, which inside her says that she needs to enter into herself, concentrate, examine the attachments of her heart and think about your eternal fate. The Creator of the world ordered man to take care only of the day; the world orders to take care only of “the moment”, plunging a person into a sea of ​​worries about the whole life!

The topic of the morally small is not at all petty. Here is a reflection of God's apocalyptic reproach to the Christian world that he "forgotten his first love." How much purer and morally higher than a man is now even that shattered nature from which his body was created. How pure is a stone, ready to cry out against people who do not give glory to God, how pure are flowers, trees in their wonderful circle of life, how magnificently animals are submissive to the Law of the Creator in their purity. God's nature does not smoke, does not take drugs, does not debauch, does not corrode the God-given fruit. Wordless nature teaches a person how to carry the Cross of obedience to God amid all the storms and sufferings of this life. One needs to think about this.
Some people think that everything that happens here on earth will not have any consequences. A person with a bad conscience, of course, is more pleasant to think like that. But why deceive yourself? Sooner or later one will have to see the dazzling mystery of the purity of the universe.

We feel like "life". Do we really regard ourselves so shallowly and so shallowly understand Him Who created the worlds in order to think of this earthly vanity of life as a human being? We are much more and higher than what we are used to here, on earth, to consider not only our life, but even our ideals. But we are the grain planted in the ground. And that is why we cannot see the surface of the universe, that true picture of nature, which will be revealed to Our eyes at the moment of the so-called death, i.e. for everyone very soon.

What is death? Death is not a coffin at all, not a canopy, not a black armband, not a clay grave. Death is when the sprout of our life crawls out to the surface of the earth and stands under the direct rays of God's sun. The seed of life must die and germinate while still here, in the earth. This is the so-called "birth of the spirit" in the Gospel, the "second birth" of man. The death of the body is the sprout leaving the earth, the exit from the earth. Any person who has received even the smallest spiritual leaven, even the smallest gospel pearl "inside himself", will not expect death at all, and even far from death. For the dead in spirit, of course, coffins, graves, black bandages are all realities. And their spirit will not be able to come to the surface of true life, for they did not die on earth for themselves, for their sins.

Like an egg, we are closed from the other world by a thin shell of the body. And our shells are beating one after another… Blessed is the person who turns out to be a living organism formed for the future life. Worthy of lamentation is the state of one who turns out to be a formless liquid ... and even can be disgusting in its moral smell!

Here, on earth, we are truly in the darkness of the spirit, in its “womb”. And is it really not criminal, being in such a state, not to prepare for your real birth, but to consider your darkness as either an ideal, ultimately joyful place of life (as optimistic atheism believes), or an incomprehensible place of senseless suffering (as pessimistic atheism believes)?
Of course, the meaning is not visible to physical eyes, but it is very easy, more than easy to believe in it, after thinking about yourself and the Gospel. All nature screams about this sense; every awakened soul of man begins to cry about him.

How carefully all of us, “non-germinated” people, should treat each other… How carefully we need to protect this germination in each other, this exit to the free air, under God's sun!
A person is terribly responsible for everything, and it is difficult to theoretically imagine the misfortune of that person who, having lived atheistically on earth “as if there were nothing”, suddenly finds himself face to face with a reality that is not only brighter than our earth, but even surpasses it. all our notions of reality… Didn't the Lord suffer for these souls in the Garden of Gethsemane? In any case, he accepted the suffering of the Cross for them.

If the visible heaven did not separate us from the invisible heaven, we would shudder at those discrepancies of the spirit that exist between the angelic triumphant church and our earthly church, almost non-militant, flabby human souls. We would be horrified and understand clearly the truth that we do not understand now: what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us and what He does for each of us. We imagine his salvation almost theoretically, abstractly. But when we would see, on the one hand, the snow-white hosts of lightning pure spirits, fiery, fiery, burning with unimaginable love for God and striving for the salvation of all creation, and, on the other hand, we would see the earth with its hundreds of millions of half-humans, half- insects, with hearts directed only to the earth, people devouring each other, conceited, voluptuary, money-loving, intractable, obsessed with dark forces adhering to them, we would be horrified and tremble. And we would see a clear picture of the absolute impossibility of salvation by "natural" ways.

The arguments of the occultists about the evolutionary upward movement of reincarnating humanity would seem to us, at best, insane. We would see that the darkness over humanity is not thinning, but thickening... And we would understand what the Creator, who has become incarnate on their land, has done for people. We would see how even one grain of wheat is taken by heavenly reapers to heaven, that the slightest spark of Christ already saves this person. All the dark ones littered with unimaginable love for God and striving for the salvation of all creation, and, on the other hand, would see the earth with its hundreds of millions of half-humans, half-insects, with hearts directed only to the earth, people devouring each other, selfish, voluptuous, money-loving, intractable, obsessed with dark forces adhering to them, we would be horrified and tremble. And we would see a clear picture of the absolute impossibility of salvation by "natural" ways.

The arguments of the occultists about the evolutionary movement of reincarnating humanity in man - like a single grain in a spikelet, it nods, is cut off, only one spark is taken, and it becomes the eternal life of man. Glory to the salvation of Christ! Verily, we have nothing in ourselves except our human dignity lying in the dust. And from this dust we arise by the grace of Christ and are carried away by a spark into heaven. But we are carried away if this spark of love for God is kindled in us, if we are able to push our soul away from everything mortal in the world, we are able to notice this mortal in the smallest, and also push it away from us. Sensitivity to the smallest thing in ourselves will be an indicator of the health of our soul for us. If atoms really contain exact solar systems, then these are the ti of every sin, small and large.
Talking about the need to reject even the smallest sin leads us to the most important issue of human life: the question of life after death.

The Revelation of the Church affirms that a soul that has not been freed from one or another passion will transfer this passion to the other world, where, due to the absence of a body (until the resurrection), it will be impossible to satisfy this passion, which is why the soul will remain in the unceasing languor of self-combustion, the unceasing thirst for sin and lust without ability to satisfy her.
The grocery store, who only thought in his earthly life that he would undoubtedly suffer about food after his death, having lost carnal food, but not having lost his spiritual thirst to strive for it. The drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can be satisfied by flooding with alcohol, and thereby calming the tormented soul a little for a while. The fornicator will experience the same feeling. Money lover too ... Smoker too.

Easy to make experience. Let the smoker not smoke for two or three days. What will he experience? A well-known torment, still softened by all the relationships and entertainments of life. But take away life with its amusements... Suffering will be aggravated. It is not the body that suffers, but the soul that lives in the body, accustomed through the body to satisfy its lust, its passion. Deprived of satisfaction, the soul suffers. So, of course, the soul of a rich sinner suffers, suddenly deprived of wealth, a peace-lover, deprived of peace, the soul of a self-lover, having received a blow to self-esteem ... How many suicides were on this basis! All this is experience, the bare experience of our earthly life. Already here, on earth, we can make experiments on our souls. Every person should be far-sighted. You need to protect your house from digging ().

Feeling this, is it really possible to calmly indulge in passions or even divide them into serious and “innocent” ones? After all, fire is still fire - both a blast furnace and a burning match. Both are painful for the person who touches them, and can be fatal. It is necessary to understand this undoubted truth that every passion, every malice, every lust is fire.

God's Law put the instincts of the human body into frames, and gives the true direction to the strong-willed and irritable energies of the soul, so that a person can conveniently and easily go to spiritualization. How to call that person who, understanding all this, calmly and frivolously treats his passions, excuses them, lulling all signs of saving sensitivity in his soul.
First of all, we must stop justifying our lust, even the smallest, we must condemn it before God and ourselves. We must pray for deliverance, for salvation. The Savior The Lord is called the Savior not in the abstract, but in reality. The Savior saves from all weaknesses and passions. He delivers. He heals. Absolutely visible, palpable. Healing, forgiving. Forgiveness is the healing of what needs to be forgiven. It is given only to those who are hungry and thirsty for this truth. Just wanting, smoldering in their own desire, healing is not given. But with a burning, flaming, imploring, striving heart, it is given. For only such people are able to appreciate the gift of God's healing, not to trample on and give thanks for it, to sensitively protect in the Name of the Savior from new temptations of evil.

Of course, smoking is a very small lust, just like a match is a small fire. But even this lust is spiritually repugnant, and it is impossible to even imagine any of the Lord's closest disciples smoking cigarettes.

“Destroy the little lust,” say the saints. There is no such acorn that does not contain an oak tree. So it is with sins. A small plant is easily weeded out. Great things require special tools for their eradication.

The spiritual meaning of smoking and all the petty "justifiable" iniquities of the spirit is licentiousness. Not only bodies, but also souls. This is a false calming of oneself (of one's "nerves", as they sometimes say, not fully realizing that the nerves are the carnal mirror of the soul). This "calming" leads to ever greater distance from true peace, from the true consolation of the Spirit. This peace is a mirage. Now - while there is a body - it must be renewed constantly. Afterwards, this narcotic sedation will be the source of painful captivity of the soul.

It is necessary to understand that, for example, “tearing off”, for example, his anger also “calms down”. But, of course, only until a new fit of anger. It is impossible to comfort oneself with the satisfaction of passion. You can calm yourself only by resisting passion, by holding back from it. You can calm yourself only by bearing the Cross of struggle against any passion, even the smallest one, the Cross of its rejection in your heart. This is the path of true, firm, faithful and - most importantly - eternal happiness. Rising above the fog, he sees the sun and the eternally blue sky. The one who has risen above the passions enters the sphere of Christ's peace, an indescribable bliss that begins already here on earth and is accessible to every person.

Mirage happiness is a cigarette. The same as getting angry with someone, being proud of someone, painting your cheeks or your lips for people, stealing a small piece of sweetness - a small penny from the church dish of God's nature. There is no need to look for such happiness. Their direct, logical continuation: cocaine, a blow to a person's face or a shot at him, a fake of value. Blessed is the man who, finding such happiness, repels it with righteous and holy anger. This demonic happiness reigning in the world is a harlot who invaded the marriage of the human soul with Christ, the God of Truth and pure blissful joy.
Every consolation outside the Spirit of the Holy Comforter is that insane temptation on which the organizers of human paradise build their dreams. The Comforter is only the Creative Spirit of the Truth of Christ.

It is impossible to pray in the spirit while smoking a cigarette. It is impossible to preach while smoking a cigarette. Before entering the temple of God, a cigarette is thrown away... but the temple of God is us.
Whoever wants every minute to be a temple of God will throw away the cigarette, like any false thought, any impure feeling. The attitude to a small spiritual movement in oneself is a thermometer of the ardor of a person's faith and his love for God.

One can imagine such a life example: tobacco, like a plant, does not have any evil in itself (like golden sand, like cotton, from which banknotes are made). Apricot is God's plant. Alcohol can be very useful to the human body at certain moments and in certain doses, not in the least contradicting the spirit, like moderate tea or coffee. Wood, matter from which furniture is made, everything is God's... But now let's take these terms in the following combination: a man is lying in an easy chair and smoking a Havana cigar, every minute sipping from a glass of apricotine standing near him... Can this person in such a state carry on a conversation? about the Living God - to pray to the Living God? Physically yes, spiritually no. Why? Yes, because this man is now dismissed, his soul has sunk in an armchair, and in a Havana cigar, and in a glass of apricotine. At this moment he has almost no soul. He, like the prodigal son of the Gospel, wanders "in distant lands." This is how a person can lose his soul. Loses her man all the time. And it’s good if he finds her again all the time, fights not to lose, trembles over his soul, as over his beloved baby. The soul is an infant of immortality, defenseless and miserable in the conditions of the world around us. How one must press one's soul to one's chest, to one's heart, how one must love it, destined for eternal life. Oh, how it is necessary to clean off even the slightest speck from it!

Now an example was presented of the impossibility of preserving one's soul by voluptuously distributing it among surrounding objects: armchairs, cigars, liquor. The example taken is especially colorful, although there are even more colorful ones in life. But if you take not colorful, but gray, but of the same loose spirit, everything will remain the same atmosphere, in which it will be a lesser sin to keep silent about Christ than to talk about Him. This is the key to why the world is silent about Christ, why neither in the streets, nor in salons, nor in friendly conversations do people talk about the Savior of the Universe, about the One Father of the world, despite the multitude of people who believe in Him.

It is not always ashamed to talk about God in front of people; Sometimes before God it is a shame to talk about Him to people. The world instinctively understands that in the situation in which it finds itself all the time, it is less of a sin to keep silent about Christ than to speak about him. And now people are silent about God. Terrible symptom. The world is flooded with legions of words, the language of man is possessed by these empty legions, and - not a word, almost not a word about God, about the Beginning, End and Center of everything.

For to speak about God is to convict oneself and the whole world at once. And if the word about God is nevertheless said, it is difficult to finish it - both in front of oneself and in front of the world.

If a person does not have an aversion to his little sins, he is spiritually unhealthy. If there is disgust, but “there is no strength” to overcome weakness, then it is left until the person shows his faith in the fight against something more dangerous for him than this weakness, and she is left to him for humility. For there are many people who look blameless, do not drink or smoke, but are similar, in the words of the Ladder, to a “rotten apple”, that is, filled with obvious or secret pride. And there is no way to humble their pride, as soon as some kind of fall. But the one who, for one reason or another, “permits” petty sins will remain outside the Kingdom of God and its laws. Such a person, “lulling” his conscience, becomes unable to cross the line of the true life of the spirit. He always remains like a young man approaching Christ and immediately departing from him with sadness, or even sometimes without sadness, but simply to ... "smoke"!

Rigorism and puritanism are alien to the evangelical spirit. Pharisaic righteousness without love is more obscure in the eyes of God than any sin. But the lukewarmness of Christians in fulfilling the commandments is just as dark. Both Pharisees and those who trade and smoke in the temple of God are equally expelled from the temple.
For the will of God is “our sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). A sensitive conscience will itself sharpen the eyesight to detect that alien dust that lies on the wounds of the soul.
The Son of God and the Son of Man gave us one commandment for thirst: "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." In it, the Lord seems to say: People, I do not give you a measure - determine it yourself. Determine for yourself the measure of your love for My purity and your obedience to this love.

Prayer Saint Ambrose of Optina

About getting rid of the passion of smoking

Reverend Father Ambrose, you, having boldness before the Lord, begged the Greatly Gifted Vladyka to give me an ambulance in the fight against impure passion.
God! Through the prayers of Your saint, St. Ambrose, cleanse my lips, make my heart wise and saturate it with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit, so that the evil tobacco passion will flee from me far away, to where it came from, into the womb of hell.

Troparion, tone 5

Like a healing spring, we flow to you, Ambrose, our father, you truly instruct us on the path of salvation, protect us from troubles and misfortunes with prayers, console you in bodily and spiritual sorrows, and even more than teach humility, patience and love, pray to the Lover of Christ and Intercessor Diligently save our souls.

Kontakion, tone 2

Having fulfilled the covenant of the Chief Shepherd, thou hast inherited the grace of the elders, aching heart for all those who flow to you with faith. In the same way, we, your children, cry out to you with love: Holy Father Ambrose, pray to Christ God that our souls be saved.

Nothing is really said about the dangers of smoking right in the Holy Scriptures. Tobacco appeared in our world many centuries after the creation of the Bible. However indirectly the sin of smoking is still spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. God created the first people healthy and took care of their physical and spiritual perfection. Everything that is given to man by God should be used for good. Bodily health is a priceless gift, and every action of ours that causes harm to health is a real sin before the Creator.

The date of "discovery" of smoking is known very accurately. " On October 12, 1492, the expedition of Christopher Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador.- wrote Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev). - The sailors were amazed by an unprecedented sight: the red-skinned inhabitants of the island released clouds of smoke from their mouths and noses! The Indians celebrated their sacred holiday, where they smoked a special herb. Her dried and rolled leaf, like today's cigar, they called "tobacco", from which the current name of tobacco came from.

The natives smoked "tobacco" to the point of complete stupefaction. In this state, they entered into communication with certain "demons", and then they told about what the "Great Spirit" had told them. Smoking was part of the rituals of worship of the pagan gods of the Aztecs, who were brought, among others, and human sacrifices.

The sailors of Columbus took the mysterious herb with them to Europe. And very quickly, the new "pleasure" became widespread. As Bishop Barnabas wrote: And so, with the benevolent participation and secret prompting from demons, a literally general fever of tobacco smoking began throughout Europe and even Asia. Whatever the government and the clergy did to stop this evil, nothing helped!»

Not only Christians, but also Muslims tried to actively fight against smoking. In 1625, in Turkey, Amurat IV executed smokers, and flaunted severed heads with pipes in their mouths. In Persia, Shah Abbas the Great ordered to cut off lips and noses as a punishment for smoking, and burn tobacco dealers along with their goods. Even in always free Switzerland in 1661, the Appenzel magistrate considered the tobacco trade as a sin, tantamount to murder!

In Russia, smoking has become a custom since Peter I, who himself smoked and even dared to stack smoking pipes in the manner of the bishops' dikiriya (two candlesticks) and trikiriya (three candlesticks) and "blessed" the people with them during his drunken "assemblies". But this is Peter, and before him, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1634 ordered "smokers to be executed by death." Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649 ordered smokers to “smack their nostrils and cut their noses”, and then “exile them to distant cities”.

We will talk about the assessment of the patristic spiritual thought of the sin of smoking later, but for now we note that in fact, indirectly, the sin of smoking is still spoken of in Holy Scripture. God created the first people healthy and took care of their physical and spiritual perfection. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” says one of the commandments of Christ. From this it follows that before you love your neighbor, you must "love yourself." To love and take care of the gift of life, which is given to all of us from God. And what kind of “careful attitude” is there to a smoker’s health, if everyone knows that tobacco contains more than 30 harmful substances. The most dangerous of them is the nicotine alkaloid.. There are especially many patients with bronchopulmonary diseases among smokers. And the most formidable consequence of smoking is cancer of the larynx and lungs. The fact is that tobacco smoke contains carcinogens that cause cancer. it benzopyrene and its derivatives.

... It is no coincidence, as experts have calculated, that every minute in Russia three (!) People die from diseases caused by smoking ...

Everything that is given to man by God should be used for good. Bodily health is a priceless gift, and every action of ours that causes harm to health is a real sin before the Creator. Many holy teachers of the Church point to this. Here are the words of St. Nektarios of Aegina: In order for a person to be blissful and worthy of his calling, it is necessary that he be healthy both in body and soul, because without the well-being of both, neither bliss nor capacity to fulfill the appointment can be acquired. A person should take care of strengthening both the body and the soul so that they are strong and strong.».

« Don't you know that you are the temple of God, - said the Apostle Paul, - and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you". For a smoker, this temple is smoky and smoky, and Christ cannot move into this temple. It is not human nature to smoke. Breathe air, eat, drink, sleep - yes. But smoking, poisoning your body with poison, breathing fetid smoke is a requirement of sin, and not a requirement of nature.

Medicine says a lot about the dangers of smoking for bodily health. But nothing mentions that the fetid smell of tobacco covers up the smell of spiritual decay. It has been established that negative mental states lead to a change in the hormonal background of a person. Chemicals formed during stress and other internal conflicts are excreted from the body, and these secretions have a very heavy smell. Tobacco use makes it impossible to recognize the spiritual state of others at the deepest biological level. Smoking is licentiousness not only of the body, but also of the soul. This is a false calming of your nerves. Many smokers refer to the calming of the nerves after smoking a cigarette, not realizing that nerves are the carnal mirror of the soul. Such reassurance is self-deception, a mirage. This narcotic sedation will be the source of soul torment. Now, as long as there is a body, this “calming” must be regularly renewed. And then it will become a source of hellish torment. It must be remembered that after death, after the separation of the soul from the body, the passions that manifested themselves in bodily life do not leave the human soul. Not freed from this or that passion, the soul will transfer it to another world, where in the absence of the body it will be impossible to satisfy this passion. The soul will languish and burn with an unceasing thirst for sin and lust. He who is insatiable in food will suffer after his death with the inability to fill his belly. The drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can only be soothed by alcohol. The fornicator will experience the same feeling. Selfish too, and a smoker too. If a smoker does not smoke for several days during his lifetime, what will he experience? Terrible torment, but torment softened by other aspects of life. But that is two days, and the deceased has eternity ahead. And eternal torment...

Meanwhile, the army of smokers is rapidly getting younger. The age of initiation to smoking in Russia has decreased to 10 years for boys and 12 for girls. Smoking has a particularly detrimental effect on children's bodies. Among other things, smoking adolescents form a complex of neuropsychic abnormalities. As a result, attention, memory, sleep suffer, mood “jumps”. Teen smoking has a devastating effect on reproductive function. It is no coincidence that today more than 70 percent of boys and girls by the age of 15 have serious problems in this “part”.

If we return to the "spiritual component" of the harm from smoking, then we should dwell on the lack of freedom of the smoker. Many of the smokers (especially in adulthood) would like to quit smoking. According to sociologists, 100 (!) percent of smokers after 30 would like to give up a harmful and sinful habit. Alas ... Smokers develop nicotine syndrome. This is the same dependence as on alcohol and drugs, only less damaging to health. Although, how to say: lung cancer, cancer of the larynx - the argument is not at all in favor of the harmlessness of such a harmful addiction as smoking.

Lungs of a smoker and a non-smoker

It would be useful to mention that in the new classification of diseases that came into force in 1999, tobacco dependence is officially recognized as an illness. And we will add - a sinful disease. Smoking is self-indulgence, a form of self-indulgence. It is no coincidence that in Russia there has long been a saying: "Smoking - demons incense".

When a person smokes, Orthodox priests say, his soul is captured by demonic forces. And he adds another heavy link to the chain of slavish attachments; his will is weakened, and behind all the excuses for smoking, the voice of a weak-willed person is heard. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov: I ask you: is such a person free? I knew one “fighter for the idea” who himself told me that when they deprived him of tobacco in prison, he was so exhausted by the deprivation of strength that he almost went and betrayed his “idea” just to give him tobacco. But this one says: "I'm going to fight for humanity." Well, where will he go and what is he capable of?»

Do you smoke? Realize your sin

Medical statistics have calculated that Every cigarette smoked shortens a person's life by at least seven minutes.. In general, smokers in Russia live five years less than non-smokers. Most smokers know this. Nevertheless, he cannot leave the sinful habit. Here is what the famous Orthodox writer S. A. Nilus wrote about the state of a smoker in the first part of the book “On the Bank of God's River”.

«… 7 July 1909 I had a severe attack of choking cough last night. Serves right! - this is all from smoking, which I cannot quit, and I have been smoking since the third grade of the gymnasium and now it is so thoroughly saturated with nicotine that it has probably already become an integral part of my blood. It takes a miracle to pull me out of the clutches of this vice, and I don't have the will to do it. I tried to quit smoking, I didn’t smoke for two days, but the result was that such melancholy and bitterness came over me that this new sin became bitterer than the old one. Father Barsanuphiy forbade me even to make such attempts, limiting my daily portion of smoking to fifteen cigarettes. I used to smoke without a bill…»

« Your hour will come- said Father Barsanuphius, - and smoking will end». « Hope, do not despair: in due time, God willing, you will quit”, - about the same smoking, from which I could not fall behind in any way, Father Joseph told me. And a miracle, according to the word of both elders, happened to me. And it was so.

We live with my friend, my God-given wife, as they say, soul to soul, in the full sense of the Gospel word, so that we are not two, but one flesh. This great mercy of God, bestowed on us from above, is due to our deep and convinced faith in the Sacrament of Marriage, which we both at one time approached with fear and trembling. And so, in June 1910, my wife fell ill with some strange illness, which neither the Optina paramedic nor the invited doctor could determine: in the morning she was almost healthy, but in the evening she had a temperature of up to 40. And so the week, and another, and the third! I see my joy melting before my eyes, like a wax candle, and is about to flare up for the last time and go out. And then my orphaned heart was filled with great, immeasurable great sorrow and grief, and I prostrated myself before the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria of Smolensk, which stood in the corner of my office, and I wept before Her, and was horrified, and yearned, and spoke to Her as if she were alive. : “Mother Queen, my Most Blessed Mother of God! You, I believe, gave my angel's wife, You save her for me, and for that I give you a vow never to smoke again. I make a vow, but I know that I won’t be able to fulfill it on my own, and not to fulfill it is a great sin, so You Yourself help me!” So it was about ten o'clock in the evening. After praying and somewhat calming down, he approached his wife's bed. Sleeping, breathing is quiet, even. He touched his forehead: his forehead was moist, but not hot - my sweet dove was fast asleep. Glory to God, glory to the Most Pure! The next morning the temperature was 36.5, in the evening - 36.4, and a day later she got up, as she did not hurt. And I forgot that I smoked, as I never smoked, and I smoked for exactly thirty years and three years, and my whole body was so saturated with damned tobacco that I could not live without it not only a day, but even a minute».

In this whole story, I would like to focus not so much on the miracle that happened, but on the hero's awareness of sin itself. Without such awareness, a miracle would not be possible. And hence it follows the first rule for those who want to quit addiction: you need to realize the sinfulness of smoking. Actually, the overcoming of any sin begins with such a step ...

"Before you smoke, pray"

Now let's stop at the place in the reader's letter where he says that the church fathers did not say anything about the dangers of smoking. It's not like that at all. Another thing that you should know is that in the Russian Orthodox Church there are no boundaries of patristic instructions. Say, until some relatively old time - these are patristic instructions, and the instructions of those who, say, are ranked among the host of saints in recent years - this is something not authoritative enough. There are no such borders in the Russian Orthodox Church. Today's ascetics often absorb and develop the teachings of their predecessors, and every word of every holy ascetic is valuable in itself. Here are just some of the sayings of the Holy Fathers about the sin of smoking.

« Man has perverted the very pleasures of the senses. For smell and taste, and partly for breathing itself, he invented and burns almost incessantly pungent and odorous smoke, bringing this, as it were, a constant censer to a demon living in the flesh, infects the air of his dwelling and the external air with this smoke, and first of all is saturated with this stench himself, - and here you are, the constant coarsening of your feelings and your heart by the constantly absorbed smoke cannot but affect the subtlety of the heart's feelings, it imparts to it carnality, rudeness, insensitivity».

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt: Tobacco relaxes the soul, multiplies and intensifies passions, darkens the mind and destroys health by slow death. Irritability and melancholy are a consequence of the sickness of the soul from smoking».

Saint Ambrose of Optina: In 1905, Elder Silouan of Athos spent several months in Russia, frequently visiting monasteries. On one of these train journeys, he took a seat opposite the merchant, who, with a friendly gesture, opened his silver cigarette case and offered him a cigarette.

Father Siluan thanked for the offer, refusing to take a cigarette. Then the merchant began to say: “Isn’t it because, father, you refuse because you consider it a sin? But smoking often helps in an active life; it is good to break the tension in work and rest for a few minutes. It is convenient when smoking to conduct a business or friendly conversation and in general in the course of life…” And further, trying to convince Father Siluan to take a cigarette, he continued to speak in favor of smoking.

Then, nevertheless, Father Silouan decided to say: “Sir, before you light a cigarette, pray, say one thing: “Our Father.” To this the merchant replied: Pray before you smoke, somehow does not go". Father Siluan remarked in response: “ So, it is better not to do any work before which there is no undisturbed prayer.».

Now about the Bible quote from the book of Solomon's Proverbs, "Smoking makes the heart happy." Of course, we are not talking about smoking tobacco. Smoking in ancient times was called the burning of aromatic substances and fragrant oil. People in all ages have loved incense, and in ancient times fragrant incense was added to the sacrifices. Fragrant plants and exotic incense were highly valued in religious ceremonies. They were worth their weight in gold and silver. So, the Queen of Sheba brought aromatic substances to Solomon as a gift. Incense was kept in the royal treasury. This is the kind of “smoking” that the Bible talks about. Smoking pleases the heart, and a friend's heartfelt advice is sweet - this is how this quote from the book of Proverbs looks like. Today, "smoking" in the temple can be called censing - when the priest passes through the temple with a censer, from which incense is burned. " Incense is incense burned at Divine services, how can the slaves of sin not invent a kind of incense?- said Saint Nicodemus the Holy Mountaineer. - The first is pleasing to God, the second should be pleasing to the enemy of God - the devil».

Today, many experts say that in recent years the world center for sales of cigarettes is increasingly shifting to Russia. In the United States and Western Europe, thanks to the measures taken, the number of smokers is reduced by tens of millions every year.

What are these measures? Smoking bans in public places - in restaurants, airplanes, on the street, in clubs, offices, etc. No less effective is the promotion of the dangers of smoking. Posters about the dangers of tobacco are placed literally everywhere. Plus, the tobacco companies literally overwhelmed with lawsuits those who fell ill due to smoking. The claims amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the courts very often satisfy such claims. Perhaps even more important in the West is the high price of cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes in Europe costs at least five euros, that is, 160-180 rubles in terms of the Russian ruble. If such a pricing policy were in Russia, many people would think about whether it is worth putting such money into the smoke.

In Russia, it's a completely different matter. Due to the extremely low excise taxes, our cigarettes are quite inexpensive. They are accessible to everyone and, unfortunately, even to children. In Russia, global tobacco companies feel like a businessman. At the same time, foreign tobacco companies are trying in every possible way to create for themselves in Russia the image of companies that are extremely concerned about the negative impact of smoking on health. Abroad, this is impossible according to the laws. There, tobacco companies are legally prohibited from participating in charity events, sponsoring sports and all kinds of other events.

... In Los Angeles, on Santa Monica Boulevard, there is a scoreboard counting the number of deaths from addiction to cigarettes. In Russia, there is no such scoreboard in any city yet ...

It is not surprising that such a situation has caused serious criticism from both Russian public organizations and government officials. In particular, they propose to bring the inscriptions on cigarette packs warning about the dangers of smoking into line with Western standards. First of all, it is proposed to make this inscription (as well as abroad!) not in some inconspicuous size, but in half a tobacco pack. And here it makes sense to return to where we started, to the fact that smoking is not only harmful to health, but is a serious sin.

Warning labels on cigarette packs can be of very different content. Abroad, such inscriptions warn potential buyers that smoking is fraught with cancer. That smoking is extremely harmful to pregnant women. The fact that for young people smoking often turns into impotence. It seems that the Russian Orthodox Church will in every possible way support the proposal of the newspaper "Honest Word" that one of the inscriptions read: "The Russian Orthodox Church warns: smoking is a sin." The wording of such a warning can be specified, but there is no doubt that it is appropriate (and necessary!).

On the one hand, the voice of the Church today is very significant for many, on the other hand, very few (especially among young people) are aware of how (and why) the Orthodox Church treats tobacco smoking. And such a warning, no doubt, will bring positive results.

Alexander Okonishnikov
Orthodox View

Prayer from the passion of smoking to the Monk Ambrose of Optina

Reverend Father Ambrose, you, having boldness before the Lord, begged the Greatly Gifted Vladyka to give me an ambulance in the fight against impure passion.

God! Through the prayers of your saint, Saint Ambrose, cleanse my lips, make my heart chaste and saturate it with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit, so that the evil tobacco passion will flee from me far away, to where it came from, into the womb of hell.