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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Knowledge of God and Self-Knowledge from Experience

Knowledge of God and Self-Knowledge from Experience

Of Kronstadt, St John

Paperback

Religion General Christian LivingGeneral Christianity

ISBN13: 9798193608219
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 19 2026
Pages: 76
Weight: 0.23
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
An early spiritual diary of St. John of Kronstadt, presented in English in a compact reader's edition.

Knowledge of God and Self-Knowledge from Experience gathers selections from the diary St. John of Kronstadt kept in 1861, only a few years after his ordination to the priesthood. The collection was later prepared for publication and appeared as a separate book in St. Petersburg in 1900 with his approval.

John returns again and again to the connection between knowing God and learning to see oneself truthfully. Prayer exposes distraction. Trials expose self-will. Encounters with other people uncover pride, resentment, impatience, and the desire for praise. Scripture, repentance, the Divine Liturgy, and the mercy of God continually bring the mind back to what matters.

The book is made up of 238 short reflections followed by A Look at My Past. Some entries are only a paragraph; others develop a thought over several pages. They were written from the middle of an active priestly life rather than as a formal theological treatise, and their subjects shift accordingly: prayer and watchfulness, anger and judgment, illness, temptation, the Eucharist, faith and unbelief, almsgiving, death, providence, the passions, humility, hope, and love of one's neighbor.

The reflections remain in their original order. A meditation on prayer may be followed by one on money, suffering, anger, Scripture, or the conduct of daily life. The result is closer to a priest's working record of repentance than a manual: observations written down as weaknesses were noticed, temptations were endured, prayers were made, and lessons were learned.

Readers familiar with My Life in Christ will recognize the same habit of close spiritual observation. John pays attention to the movements of the heart in ordinary situations and asks what they reveal about faith in God. His concern is practical. What happens when prayer becomes distracted? Why does a small insult disturb us so deeply? What do fear, irritation, comfort, sickness, success, or disappointment reveal about what we actually trust? How should a Christian respond when the heart is cold, proud, anxious, or unwilling to forgive? The voice is direct, often severe with himself, and grounded in the daily work of prayer, parish life, repentance, and self-examination.

These pages also show the young priest before he became one of the best-known figures of the Russian Church. John was serving at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Kronstadt when the diary was written. He would later become known throughout the Russian Empire for his celebration of the Divine Liturgy, preaching, confession, charitable work, prayer, and spiritual counsel. After his death in 1908, he was glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1964 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1990.

Because many entries can be read in only a few minutes, the book also works naturally for slow devotional reading: one or several reflections at a time, with the indexes available for returning to a particular subject.

This edition preserves the original sequence while giving the reflections clear numbering for reference. The back matter includes a glossary of Orthodox and ascetical terms, a Scripture index keyed to the numbered reflections, and a thematic index covering subjects such as prayer, repentance, humility, spiritual warfare, the Eucharist, providence, death, faith, watchfulness, and self-knowledge.

For readers of Orthodox spirituality, the Church Fathers, Russian saints, and books on prayer and the inner Christian life, this is a direct and unusually personal record of St. John of Kronstadt learning to examine the heart before God.

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