What is necessary for salvation?

From the notes of the Athonite Hieromonk Arseny

Source: Appendix of Лествица до врат небесных : Как читать «Лествицу» мирянину [The Ladder to the Gates of Heaven: How a Layman Should Read the “Ladder”], by Igumen Herman (Osetsky) (+1895), Saint Ignatius of Stavropol Publishing House, Moscow, 2003.

 

1. To be steadfast in the Orthodox faith, as our mother the Holy Church teaches: not to follow any schisms or heresies, for they lead to perdition.

2. To attend the temple of God more frequently and to pray with fervor, remembering where we stand and why we have come. To make the sign of the Cross upon oneself correctly. Whoever stands in the temple of the Lord carelessly and performs every work of God negligently, such a one brings upon himself the wrath of God, according to what is said in the Holy Scripture: cursed is everyone who does the work of the Lord negligently. Likewise, those are subject to the wrath of God who in their deeds do not place their hope in God, but in themselves or in men: their heart, as the Holy Scripture says, has departed from the Lord.

3. To strictly observe the fasts or fasting days and to fear and abstain above all from the immoderate use of strong drinks and the fornication-inducing passion that proceeds from them, through which many people perish. Such as die without repentance will burn eternally in fiery Gehenna, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

4. Every year one must keep the fast during Great Lent, and whoever is able should also keep the fasts during the other fasting periods—this is a great help for the salvation of the soul and an inestimable gift of God.

5. To have love toward all, to live in peace and harmony; and with whomsoever one is in enmity, the prayer of such a one is not accepted by God. Even if you are not at fault, be the first to hasten to reconciliation, and for this you will receive a reward from God, according to the word of the Holy Gospel: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). If anyone does not have love for his neighbors, then neither his fasts, nor his prayers, nor anything else is pleasing to the Lord.

6. To judge no one, but to consider oneself worse and more sinful than all; to envy no one in anything; to honor one’s parents and all elders. When we see someone sinning, to feel sorrow for him and to pray to God for him, and not to judge. Whoever judges another lays his sins upon himself.

7. To take nothing that belongs to another and not to desire it, but to share one’s own with the needy according to one’s ability. The hand that gives shall not fail—it is said in the Holy Scripture.

8. Not to swear, not to lie, not to slander, not to speak idly, not to blaspheme—this leads to the ruin of the soul. Not to believe in dreams, divinations, and various omens—all this is demonic deceit.

9. To visit and comfort the sick and the sorrowful, to keep the lost from perishing, to admonish drunkards and libertines, warning them that they will burn eternally in the fire of Gehenna. If someone directs a perishing person to the path of salvation, great is the reward for such a one in this and in the future age.

10. To remember the hour of death more often and to ask God to grant a Christian end, for beyond the grave there is no repentance; here one must repent with tears, implore God while there is still time, placing no hope in any of one's own deeds, but in the mercy of God alone, for without God we cannot ourselves accomplish even a single virtue. If we do something good but attribute it to ourselves, to our own effort, then we become like the Pharisee mentioned in the Holy Gospel. All good done by us must be ascribed to God.

11. To pray to God more often and more fervently with tears, asking forgiveness for one’s sins, to recite inwardly each hour the prayer “O Theotokos and Virgin, Rejoice!” to the end, and every day, having appointed a convenient time for oneself, to reflect on one’s life: how we are living, and to bring to mind the hour of death—for it is unknown when that hour will overtake a person—and to be ready for it every day. Whoever will fulfill all this will save his soul.