55. Продолжение о борьбе со страстями

Let's assume that you guard your heart. Will you be careful? First, I will say that you have the opportunity to be careful. When it’s dark, you won’t notice a big thing, but when it’s light, even a small one catches your eye by itself. It is dark in the soul until it turns to God, but lives in self-indulgence; when she turns to God, light enters her, and the thought of God, like the sun, illuminates everything in her. He who lives in self-indulgence has nothing to say: be careful that no passion creeps in, because self-indulgence is the den of all passions; it accepts them, and covers them, and justifies them, and does what pleases them without interference. But whoever turned to God and, denying himself, set out to please God, by this very fact he sees what is displeasing to God, and immediately notices it. Everything that is passionate is displeasing to God, because passions are all contrary to the commandments of God, which alone are pleasing to God, since they express His will. So you decided, without sparing yourself, to please God and thereby dispersed the darkness of your soul and received illumination in your spirit. If you do what is written to you about the memory of God, then the spiritual sun will shine in you. It has become very possible for you to see if something passionate approaches you. Secondly, I will say that you have prepared for this. When, before confession, you reconsidered yourself and clarified the appropriate course of action for you in the future, then in this action you outlined what you should avoid. What one should avoid is the realm of passions, which always oppose what one should do. One must be humble, but passion teaches pride and vanity; you have to be meek, but passion makes you angry and angry; one must rejoice in the well-being of others, but passion arouses envy; one must forgive an insult, but passion kindles revenge. Likewise, one’s passionate feeling and movement resists everything worthwhile. You have clarified all this for yourself and are sealed by the determination and vow to do one thing that should be done, and to reject everything that is not necessary, that is, passionate. I’m saying that for this very reason you are ready not only to watch over yourself, but also to watch out for (notice) any creeping passion. Unless this is why your guarding yourself will be unsuccessful, because passion is not always suitable in its crude form, but is often presented in such a plausible form that you will not even guess that it is passion, but will think that it is something good. Anger, for example, when it ignites, everyone can see that it is passion. But he does not always appear in his rude form, and often comes in the form of noble indignation. Likewise, every passion has the custom of dressing itself in appearance and presenting itself as noble. You are noble and can very easily be caught in this bait. Look! We must reject everything passionate, in its smallest manifestations and in its subtlest features. Reject? Therefore, notice and do not let inside. But how can that be?! After all, he will sneak under the guise of such plausibility! Firstly, if you unanimously turned to God and completely surrendered yourself to Him, then He will never leave you without admonition. His angel, your guardian, will always give you a warning thought. Pay attention to yourself and listen to the voice that denounces what is wrong. Secondly, when you begin to struggle with passions - and you have already begun it - you will begin (or have already begun) to develop spiritual experience: the ability to immediately distinguish right from wrong. Just be sure not to miss anything consciously passionate, no matter how small and conducive to indulgence it may appear. If you do this without pity, your experience will soon increase. St. Paul mentions in one place the senses trained “to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:14). This is what you get. Just as taste distinguishes between dishes, so the heart, trained by its feelings, will say what is good and what is bad. You will say: for now you will learn, but then everything passionate will slip and slip. It is true that this happens, and it will happen to you. But you, of course, will not allow any passion in its rough form. Stand firm on this. And if something passionate steals in, God will not punish you for it. He punishes only for what is deliberately omitted from the passionate, and what slips through unnoticed, he does not punish for it. Whatever passionate thing was unnoticeably missed, and then realized that it should not have happened, cleanse it with repentance before the Lord and together consider how it crept in and take measures for the future. And through this you will learn how to manage passions and everything passionate. But there is one technique that, if you adhere to with all attention, then rarely anything passionate will slip through unnoticed, namely: discuss your thoughts and feelings, where they are heading, whether to please God or to self-pleasure. This is not at all difficult to determine. Just pay attention to yourself. Know that as long as you do something contrary to self-indulgence, then there is no mistake. One elder told his disciple: “See that you do not keep a traitor.” "Who is a traitor?" - asked the student. “Self-indulgence,” answered the elder. And exactly. It is the cause of all troubles. If you take it apart, you will see that all the bad things that happened came from him. Therefore, if you go against him with unyielding determination, then you will probably not allow anything improper to happen. And I sincerely wish you: do not keep this evil traitor with you. From all that has been said, I conclude that you can easily take care of yourself if you do not become lazy, do not lose your attention and do not weaken your perceived jealousy (remember your phrase?) to keep yourself at the level of human dignity. Bless, Lord! You might be interested in: