58. Значение молитвы в деле борьбы со страстными помыслами. Примеры

Last time I depicted to you the whole process of how one goes from a simple thought to a passionate wish and from there to action. In reality, the flow of action is not always as drawn out as depicted on paper. Often, if not most of the time, all the stages go through very quickly, so that before the thought has time to appear, the action, and especially the word, follows. There is no need to analyze and distinguish all these accidents. This will not provide any help in the fight against passions. Stick to one thing: when you notice something passionate, immediately arm yourself against it with anger and hostile anger. This anger in mental warfare has the same meaning as when an evil person attacks you, hitting him hard in the chest. But just as in such an attack a blow to the chest does not always put an evil person to flight, so in a mental battle, anger at a passionate thought, feeling and desire does not always drive them out of the soul and end the fight with them. According to the natural order, it should be this way - and it happens, but not always. This is because demons are often involved in arousing thoughts, and they are shameless. No matter how angry you are at them, they still stand with their own thoughts. It is obvious that after anger one must resort to another means. Which one is it? What does someone who is attacked by an evil person do? Holding it in the chest, he shouts: “Guard!” When he calls, the guards come running and save him from trouble. The same must be done in mental warfare with passions. Having become angry at something passionate, one must cry out for help: “Lord, help! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, save me! “God, come to my help, Lord, strive for my help!” (Ps. 69:2)." Having turned to the Lord in this way, do not turn away from Him and pay attention to what is happening in you, but still stand before the Lord, begging Him for help. The enemy will immediately run away from this, as if scorched by fire. One of the saints said: in the name of the Lord Jesus, kill the warriors. Nothing can stand against the Lord, but He is near: “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth: He will do the will of those who fear Him, and He will hear their prayer, and I will save” (Ps. 145:18-19). He Himself gave this promise to those who in hope cry out to Him in the hour of need: “Because I have trusted in Me, I will deliver, and I will cover, because I have known My name. He will call to Me and I will hear him: I am with him in sorrow, I will destroy him and glorify him” (Ps. 90: 14-15). Don’t forget to do this - and you will always successfully defeat and drive away everything passionate that arises in you. Others did, and perhaps are still doing this: having noticed something passionate and indignant at it, they begin to expose its lewdness. For example, the thought of pride comes - they begin to read: “Pride is disgusting to God; You, earth and ashes, if you are not ashamed to be lifted up in thought, remember your sins” and the like. Everyone selects thoughts against pride, believing that this will drive away the proud thought. It happens that they drive away, but in general this method is wrong. While denouncing a passionate thought, we still keep it in our minds, and meanwhile it stirs the feeling and awakens desire, that is, it continues to defile the soul. And its mere presence in thought is already defilement. When, without entering into this verbal dispute with the passionate, we directly turn to the Lord with fear, reverence, hope and devotion to His all-action, then by this the passionate is already removed from the eyes of the mind, looking at the Lord. Being cut off from the soul by such attention, it moves away by itself if it is naturally so excited; and if the enemy is mixed in here, then he is struck by a ray of intelligent light emanating from the contemplation of the Lord. And it happens that the soul immediately calms down from passionate struggles as soon as it turns to the Lord and calls on Him. To present this to you more clearly, I will tell you one legend. An old man lived in a silent desert. Demons apparently attacked him and began to drag him out of his cell in order to drive him completely out of the desert. The elder himself began to fight them off, but they overpowered him and dragged him to the very door. A little more and they would have thrown him out. Seeing extreme misfortune, the elder cried out: “Lord Jesus Christ! Why did you leave me! Help me, Lord! As soon as he called, the Lord immediately appeared and drove away the demons, and said to the elder: “I did not leave you; but since you did not call on Me, but thought to deal with your enemies yourself, you did not begin to help you. It's your own fault for relying on yourself. Call on Me, and you will always find ready help.” Having said this, the Lord became invisible. Having enlightened the elder, this incident gives us all a lesson not to flounder with passionate thoughts through our mental bickering with them, but to immediately turn to the Lord with prayer against them. Everyone who intelligently wages a mental battle with passions does this. Saint John Kolov said about himself: “I act like a man sitting under a tree and carefully looking around. This man, as soon as he sees the animals approaching him to devour him, immediately climbs up a tree, and the animals, having approached, walk around and walk away. And as soon as I notice mental animals approaching me in passionate thoughts, my mind immediately flows to the Lord, and these mental animals do not even have time to approach me, as they are forced to scatter in vain.” Remember what I wrote to you before: that you need to establish yourself with the attention of your mind in your heart and there unceasingly look and cry out to the Lord. This is the same as what is now said: that one must turn to the Lord in prayer when passionate thoughts, feelings or wishes arise. One must turn to the Lord by focusing the attention of the mind on the heart and calling on Him there. If we strictly followed this little rule: having established our minds in our hearts, stand before the Lord with fear, reverence and devotion, then not only passionate desires and feelings, but also naked thoughts would never arise in us. But our misfortune is that we leave the Lord with our minds and our hearts and wander with our thoughts to distant places. It’s at this time that passionate thoughts invade, and just before you know it, you’ll see that passionate feelings have already begun, and the same desires have begun to stir. So fight. And who is to blame?! If you didn’t let your thoughts wander, there wouldn’t be any fighting. But even if we made a mistake, moving away from the Lord from our hearts and thereby inviting trouble upon ourselves, at least now, when the trouble has already been noticed, let us hasten to take refuge there again - in our hearts before the Lord, in order to cry out to Him for help. On this subject, the same Saint John Kolov said the following parable: in one place there was a beauty of faulty behavior. The ruler of that country took pity on her that such beauty was perishing, and, seizing the time, said to her: “Give up your pranks, I will take you to my house and you will be my wife and the mistress of many treasures. Just be careful, be faithful, otherwise you will be in such trouble that you cannot even imagine.” She agreed and was taken to the ruler's house. Her former friends, seeing that she had disappeared somewhere, began to search and search and found out that she was with the ruler. Although the ruler was a thunderstorm, they did not despair of luring the beauty back to themselves, knowing her weakness. “We just have to come up behind the house and whistle - she will understand what’s going on and will immediately run out to us.” And so they did. They approached the house from behind and whistled. The beauty, hearing the whistle, perked up. Something of the past began to stir within her. But she had already come to her senses and, instead of running out of the house, she rushed into the inner chambers in front of the ruler himself, where she immediately calmed down; new whistles were no longer heard there. Those friends whistled and whistled and walked away with nothing. The meaning of this parable is clear. This beauty depicts a fallen soul who turned to the Lord in repentance and united with Him in order to belong to Him alone and serve Him alone. Former friends are passions. Their whistling is the movement of passionate thoughts, feelings and wishes. Escaping into the inner chambers is hiding in the depths of the heart in order to stand there before the Lord. When this happens inside, the passionate thing that disturbed the soul, whatever it was, goes away by itself, and the soul calms down. Please confirm this legend and always act according to its meaning. See how quickly inner peace will be restored in you, disturbed by the appearance of passions. God's mercy be with you! Save yourself! You might be interested in: