56. Должно изгонять и малейшие движения страстей. Позволительный гнев

I want to praise you or not: I want to present the benefits of your position in relation to passions. You have lived little and have not yet had time to become deeply passionate. Although passions are all there in you, they are still like young children - weak and perhaps only annoying. This is a great benefit for you, because in many, many cases it is enough for you to just notice what is passionate in order to turn away from it or drive it away. Not like those who lived a long time and satisfied their passions a lot. There they roar like lions and rush at those who rise up against them with fierceness. But there is also a considerable disadvantage in this - namely, the one that, for the sake of the ease of passionate thoughts, feelings and movements, you can be indifferent to them, thinking: it’s not a big deal, it will pass by itself, you can’t catch up with every little thing! This thought, so natural in you, is dangerous. To act this way means to leave passionate feelings and movements to their will to grow and strengthen. They will grow stronger and from small ones they will become big. Then they will no longer turn back from one unfavorable glance of yours. From here, if you please, draw the following conclusion: no matter how small and weak the form of passion may appear, it should be treated as the largest and strongest. When you drink water, you take out even the slightest fly that gets there; when you splinter your finger, even if the splinter is barely visible due to its small size, you rush to get rid of the anxiety it causes; When the slightest bit of powder gets into your eye and clouds your eye, you go to great trouble to quickly clear it from your eye. So make it a law for yourself to act in relation to passions: no matter how small the form they appear, hurry to drive them out, and so ruthlessly that not a trace of them remains. How to kick out? By a movement of anger that is hostile to them, or by being angry with them. As soon as you notice something passionate, quickly try to arouse your anger at it. This anger is a decisive rejection of the passionate. Passionate things cannot be sustained otherwise than by sympathy for them, and all sympathy is destroyed by anger; passionate and moves away or disappears at its first appearance. And that’s only where anger is permissible and useful. I find among all the holy fathers that anger was given for this reason, so that they could arm themselves against passionate and sinful movements of the heart and drive them away. They also include here the words of the prophet David: “Be angry and do not sin” (Ps. 4:5), later repeated by the holy Apostle Paul (Eph. 4:26). Be angry at passion - and you will not sin, because when passion is driven away by anger, every reason for this sin is suppressed. So arm yourself with passion. Anger at passion must be ingrained in you from the moment you decide to work diligently for the Lord, doing what is pleasing in His sight. Here you have a covenant with God for all eternity. The essence of the union is this: your friends are my friends, your enemies are my enemies. And what are passions for God? Enemies. In all the word of God, God’s complete displeasure towards them is declared. “God opposes the proud” (1 Pet. 5:5); love of money - idolatry (Col. 3:5); “God scatters the bones of men” (Ps. 53:6) and so on and so forth. That is why the Apostle prescribed to Christians about the passions: “Let it be called lower in you” (Eph. 5:3). So, in order: anger at passions should be kindled in you as soon as they appear. But due to our damage, this is not always the case. Why does anger at passions require a special free, intentionally directed hostile action, effort, tension? In order to succeed in this, one must, after noticing what is passionate in oneself, hasten to recognize and recognize it as an enemy to oneself and to God. Why is there a need to hurry? Because from the first time the appearance of a passionate person always evokes sympathy for him. For self-indulgence still lives secretly in us for a long time even after we have clearly rejected ourselves and betrayed ourselves to God, and we do not want to violate this decision even one iota. This secret self-indulgence, or selfishness, is always met with favor by the passionate, which favor is expressed by greater or lesser sympathy for it. So we need to repel this sympathy and arouse anger. Both are mediated and promoted by the consciousness and recognition of the enemy in the passionate thought or movement that appears, no matter how flattering they may be. Once the hostility of passion is recognized, it is not at all surprising to become angry with it. This anger arises naturally. Consciousness in a passionate enemy does not require much puzzling work. It is enough to restore the conviction that God does not favor everything passionate, and therefore does not favor everyone who accepts and cherishes passionate things within themselves. Therefore, passionate God rebels against us and drives us away from Him. And this is our ultimate ruin. These thoughts and convictions instantly shine in the consciousness of the attentive person and immediately respond in the heart with hostility towards the passionate person, anger and anger towards him. But don’t flounder with a passionate person, coming up with various charges against him. The success of this is very doubtful. Meanwhile, while you go through all the indictments, the defendant - passion - sits right there, even in the dock, and still clings to his lawyer - sympathy. And this means holding in oneself arbitrarily uncleanness, which is dangerous. No, put it without any reasoning: as soon as you notice something passionate in yourself, immediately recognize it as an enemy - and get angry with him. You might be interested in: