A helpful and wonderful word about passions and virtues

In the essay “The Word that is beneficial to the soul and worthwhile about the passions and virtues,” St. John of Damascus writes about the dualistic nature of man, consisting of soul and body, and classifies in detail the virtues and passions corresponding to them. At the beginning of the essay, the author identifies 5 mental and 5 bodily feelings, and then proceeds to list the virtues (wisdom, courage, chastity, truth, etc.) and bodily exploits (abstinence, fasting, vigil, poverty, silence, handicraft, etc.), which he calls “tools of virtues.” The main part of the work is devoted to the analysis of mental and physical vices (passions). The spiritual ones include laziness, anger, envy, vanity, pride, love of money, self-love, etc. Among the bodily passions: gluttony, fornication, drunkenness, theft, murder, idleness, etc. St. John calls “the roots of all passions” - voluptuousness, love of fame and love of money. Particular attention is paid to the mechanism of the occurrence of sin, which goes through 6 stages: preposition (thought), combination (acceptance of a thought), struggle, addiction (inclination to passion), captivity (involuntary attraction) and action (committing a sin). The author points out that it is within the power of a person to stop sin at the earliest stage - preposition. To mortify the 8 main passions (gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride), specific spiritual means are offered. The author examines the passions and virtues in the context of the three-part division of the soul (verbal/rational, irritable and desirable), explaining which vices correspond to each part and by which virtues they are healed. He emphasizes that spiritual virtues are superior to physical ones, while spiritual passions are much more harmful and deserve more severe punishment, although they are often ignored by people. The work ends with a reflection on the “image” and “likeness” of God in man: the “image” (rationality, immortality, autocracy) is given to everyone, and the “likeness” (God-imitating deeds, such as love and mercy) is acquired only by a few saints through grace and deed. See also: A soul-helping word about the virtues and passions of the soul and body, trans. St. Feofan (Recluse) Let it be known that man is pure, i.e. consists of soul and body; and therefore has strong feelings and strong virtues. Five senses of the soul, and five of the body. The spiritual feelings, which the wise call forces, are as follows: mind, thought, understanding 2, imagination 3 and feeling. These bodily senses are: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. Therefore, their virtues are great, their passions are great. So, every person needs to know clearly: what are the spiritual and what are the bodily virtues, and again, what are the spiritual and what are the bodily passions. First of all, we call the most important four spiritual virtues, i.e. wisdom, courage, chastity and truth. From these other spiritual virtues are born: faith, hope, love, prayer, humility, meekness, long-suffering, kindness, kindness, lack of anger, divine reason, non-irritability 4, simplicity, indifference, unhypocrisy, modesty, lack of pride, lack of envy, truthfulness 5, lack of love of money, compassion, mercy, charity in word and deed 6, fearlessness, carelessness, tenderness, shame, reverence, desire for future blessings, desire for the kingdom of God and the desire for sonhood. The bodily virtues, and especially the instruments of virtues, performed in reason and according to God, without any hypocrisy and people-pleasing, guiding a person to success in humility and dispassion, are the following; abstinence, fasting, hungering, thirst, vigil, all-night standing, frequent genuflection, insanity, contentment with one's clothes 7, dry eating, late and moderate consumption of food, drinking water, sleeping on the ground, poverty, non-covetousness, simple and unkind attire 8, lack of self-love, solitude, silence, staying in a cell, poverty, contentment with the most necessary things, silence, exercise in handicrafts, enduring all kinds of suffering, and all kinds of bodily exploits. All this is very necessary and useful when the body is healthy and struggling with carnal passions, but the weak and with the help of God, who has overcome, do not need them so much as holy humility and gratitude, which replenishes everything. Now we must talk about mental and physical vices, that is, passions. These spiritual passions are: oblivion, laziness and ignorance. From these three passions, the eye of the soul, that is, the darkened mind, becomes possessed of all the passions that are: wickedness, unbelief, i.e. all heresy, blasphemy, rage, anger, bitterness, hot temper, hatred of neighbors, maliciousness, slander, condemnation, reckless sadness, fear, fear, contentiousness, jealousy, envy, vanity, pride, hypocrisy, lies, unbelief, greed, love of things, addiction, attachment to earthly things, despondency, cowardice, ingratitude, grumbling, arrogance, conceit, arrogance, arrogance, desire to boss, people-pleasing, flattery, impudence, insensibility, caressing, sneakiness, mockery, double-mindedness, mental consent to those sins to which the passionate part of the soul bows, and frequent reflection on them, wandering thoughts, the parent of evil is self-love, and the root of all evil - love of money, malice and deceit. The bodily passions and vices are the following: gluttony, delicacy 9, pleasure, drunkenness, secret eating, various voluptuousness, fornication, adultery, sodomy, uncleanness, incest, child molestation, bestiality, sinful lusts and all unnatural and shameful passions: theft, sacrilege, robbery, murder and all rest and bodily joy, especially if the body is healthy; witchcraft, magic, bird fortune telling, charm, amorous adornment, vain utensils, effeminacy, the use of embellishment, rubbing faces, condemnable idleness, absent-mindedness, spending time in empty games 10, biased use for evil of everything pleasant in the world, a carnal life, which, clothing the mind, makes it earthly and bestial, and never allows rise to God and to the practice of virtue. The roots of all these passions, and, so to speak, the first causes of them are: voluptuousness, love of fame and love of money, from which all evil arises. But a person does not commit any sin unless first, as the wisest of the ascetics, Mark says, he is defeated and these strong giants do not prevail over him: oblivion, laziness and ignorance. They grow from the fact that a person indulges in bodily pleasures and peace, loves human glory and is entertained by everyday worries. And the first guilt of all these passions, and as it were the worst mother, as stated above, is self-love, that is, reckless love for the body and sinful addiction. Absent-mindedness and relaxation of the mind with blasphemy and foul language are the cause of many evils and downfalls, just like insolence and laughter. Besides all this, one must know how varied and varied the voluptuousness of the passions is, and how many passionate desires 11 deceive the soul when it is not awake before God, and is not strengthened by Divine fear and love for Christ, and is not diligent in doing virtues. For countless passionate desires are brought that attract the eyes of the soul: love of bodily beauty, wealth, the pleasures of glory, a tendency to laziness and anger, love of power, love of money and covetousness. All this, when seduced, seems to have a bright and desirable appearance, capable of attracting those who are surprised by this and do not really care about virtue, and do not endure its difficulties. Any attachment to earthly things and addiction to anything material in those who are partial to this produce pleasure and joy that is useless and even harmful; and when deprived of the desired object, the one overcome by passion is subjected to irritability and anger, sadness and remembrance, which is where the passionate action of the desired part of the soul turns out to be. If, with addiction, even a small skill is strengthened, alas, it insensitively and incurably encourages the one who is caught up in the innermost passion to hold on to the reckless addiction until the end of his life. For the sweetness of desires is manifold, as was said above, and is fulfilled not only in fornication and in any other bodily pleasure, but also in other passions; because chastity does not consist only in avoiding fornication and carnal passion, but in being free from other passions. Therefore, the one who is enslaved by covetousness, love of money and avarice is a fornicator. For just as he seeks bodily pleasure, so does this wealth, or rather, this latter is considered more of a fornicator, since his nature does not attract him to the love of money with such compulsion (as in carnal passion). Truly, that horseman is considered especially unskillful, who not only cannot tame an indomitable and unbridled horse, but also cannot hold a quiet and meek one. From this it is clear that the desire for a lot of property is not natural, but comes from the outside, since the compulsion to have it is not from nature, but from evil will. Therefore, the one who is voluntarily overcome by this sins unforgivably. So, we must know clearly that voluptuousness consists not only in pleasure and sin of the flesh, but also in every image and thing that the soul loves by will and passion. In order to understand the passions even more clearly according to the tripartite nature of the soul, we decided to briefly add the following. The soul is divided into three parts: verbal (reasonable), irritable 12 and desirable. The sins of the verbal part are the following: unbelief, heresy, madness, blasphemy, ingratitude and consent to those sins to which the passionate part of the soul is prone. The healing and healing from these evils are: undoubted faith in God, firmness and steadfastness in the truth of the dogmas of Orthodoxy, frequent teaching in the Divine Scripture 13, pure and unceasing prayer and thanksgiving to God. The sins of the irritable part of the soul are: unmercifulness, hatred, lack of compassion, remembrance, envy, murder and constant thinking about this. The healing and healing of these passions: philanthropy, love, meekness, brotherly love, mercy, kindness and goodness. The sins of the desirable part of the soul are the following: gluttony, delicacy 14, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, uncleanness, adultery 15, covetousness, desire for vain glory, gold and wealth and other carnal pleasures. The healing and healing of these passions is as follows: fasting, abstinence, suffering, lack of longevity, distributing property to the poor, the desire for these future immortal blessings, the desire for the kingdom of God and the desire for sonhood. Now we should also point out to you the difference in passionate thoughts through which every sin is committed. There are eight main sinful thoughts: the thoughts of gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity and pride. It is not in our power whether these eight thoughts disturb us or not; but whether it remains in us or not, whether it arouses passions or not, it depends on us. There is another pretext, another combination, another struggle, another passion, another copulation (or consent) that comes close to committing a sin, another commission of sin and another captivity. The pretext is simply a suggestion given by the enemy: do this or that, as he said to Christ the Lord and our God: “Let these stones be the bread of stone” (Matthew 4:3). This, as has been said, does not depend on us. The combination is the acceptance of a thought inspired by the enemy, a thought and, as it were, a conversation with him, combined with pleasure, which depends on our will. Passion is a skill born from combination with a passionate thought, invested from the enemy, and, as it were, some incessant reflection and imagination of it. Struggle is the resistance of the mind, which leads either to the destruction of passion in thought, that is, passionate thought, or to agreement with it, as the Apostle Paul says about this: “For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these things oppose one another” (Galatians 5:17). Captivity is a forced and involuntary attraction of the heart, forcibly possessed as a result of the previous acceptance of thoughts and long experience. Subjugation is the inclination of thought to passion. The action is the very fulfillment of the passionate thought with which there was conflict. So, whoever thinks of the first (i.e. the preposition in thought) dispassionately, or rejects it with contradiction and courage from the very beginning, cuts off all the last at once. The mortification of the eight passions happens like this: gluttony is destroyed by abstinence, fornication - by Divine love and the desire for future benefits, love of money - by compassion for the poor, anger - by love for everyone and goodness, worldly sadness - by spiritual joy, despondency - by patience, firmness and gratitude to God, vanity - by the secret practice of virtues and frequent prayer with the heart. contrition, pride - by not judging or humiliating anyone, like the arrogant Pharisee, but by considering oneself the last of all. Thus, the mind, freed from the above-mentioned passions and elevated to God, henceforth lives a blessed life, accepting the betrothal of the Holy Spirit, and, having separated from all earthly things, with dispassion and true reason stands before the light of the Holy Trinity, being illuminated with the divine angels for endless centuries. So, the soul, according to the above, is tripartite, and its three parts are these: verbal, irritable and desirable. If the irritable part contains love and philanthropy, and the desirable part contains purity and chastity, then the verbal part, i.e. the mind is enlightened. If the irritable part is hatred of man, and the desirable part is intemperance, then the mind becomes darkened. So, the verbal part – i.e. the mind is then healthy, chaste and enlightened when the passions are subdued to it, and it spiritually contemplates the essence of the 16 creations of God, and is elevated to the blessed and Holy Trinity. Again, the irritable part then acts by nature when it loves all people and has no grief or resentment towards anyone. The desirable part is then healthy when it mortifies the passions through humility, abstinence and non-covetousness, i.e. carnal passion and desire for possessions and transitory glory, and will turn to divine and immortal love. For desire is directed to three objects: either to carnal pleasure, or to vain glory, or to the deception of wealth, and because of this perverse desire, a person despises God and His divine commandments, forgets his divine nobility, becomes bitter against his neighbor and so darkens his mind that he can no longer view the truth. Whoever has acquired a higher way of thinking regarding this 17, before leaving this life, as it is said, he becomes a partaker of the heavenly kingdom, and lives a blessed life, in anticipation of the bliss promised to those who love God, which we too may be deemed worthy to receive by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. One should also know that it is impossible to achieve the measure of any virtue unless one strives with all his might throughout his life to acquire it, with intense feat and constant labor, such as, for example, the acquisition of mercy, or abstinence, or prayer, or love, or any other of the most important virtues. For everyone also partially undergoes one or another of these virtues: over time, for example, another gives alms, and because he gives it occasionally, we still do not call him actually merciful, and especially if what is done is not done as it should and is not pleasing to God. For even good itself is not good if it is not done as it should; but then it is truly good when it is not deprived of compensation for one reason or another, for example, for the sake of man-pleasing, for the sake of human praise and for the capture of glory, or for covetousness and violation of the truth; because God does not seek from us the deed itself, which is apparently good, but the intention for the sake of which it is done. The God-bearing Fathers say that when the mind forgets the goal of piety, then the visible work of virtue is useless; for what is done without reasoning and without purpose not only does not bring any benefit, although it is good, but also harms. So, on the contrary, it happens with what is apparently evil, but is done with a pious intention, for the sake of God; how one of the fathers entered a fornication and saved a harlot from death. Hence it is clear that he is not merciful who occasionally shows mercy, and not he who is temperate who occasionally shows self-control, but he who constantly, throughout his entire life, fully adheres to this virtue, with infallible reasoning. For reasoning is greater than all virtues; it is the queen of virtues and the virtue of virtues. It also happens the other way around: we do not call someone who has once been exposed to one or another of these vices a fornicator, or a drunkard, or a liar, but who constantly falls into it and remains without correction. In addition to what has been said, one must especially know the following, which is most necessary for everyone who wants to acquire virtue and tries to evade evil: as much as the soul is without comparison better than the body and in many ways and great, in every possible way superior and more honest, so much the spiritual virtues, and especially the God-imitating ones (i.e., love, mercy, etc., as it is said at the end of this word) and the God-named ones are superior to the bodily ones; and on the contrary, it must be understood that spiritual passions are just as fierce as physical passions, according to their actions, and deserve the most severe punishment and torment, although this, I don’t know why, is hidden from most people. For drunkenness, fornication, adultery, theft, and what comes close to this, people are ashamed, and afraid, and avoid, and punish for these vices, since they are clearly disgusting to everyone; and yet they are much indifferent to these worse and most painful spiritual passions that lead people into a demonic dispensation, and plunge those who adhere to them without correction into eternal torment determined by demons. I am talking about envy, maliciousness, wickedness, hard-heartedness and love of money, which, according to the Apostle, is the root of all evil, and about other similar passions. We, as simple people, have stated all this simply, having clearly and clearly outlined the word about virtues and passions and vices, so that everyone, through such an explanation, could conveniently recognize and understand the division and difference between them. Therefore, we examined all this in detail and from different sides, so that no kind of virtue or passion, as much as possible, would be unknown to anyone, and so that we diligently strive for virtues, and especially spiritual ones, with which we approach God; passions and vices should be averted and avoided in every possible way. For truly blessed is he who seeks virtue and adheres to it, and carefully tests what virtue consists of; because through it he approaches God and spiritually unites with Him. For in this lies wisdom and courage, wisdom and true reason and inalienable wealth, so that through active virtue one can ascend to the contemplation of the Creator. Virtue (ἀρετὴ) is what is chosen at will (αἱρεῖσθαι), for it is desirable (αἱρετὴ) and arbitrary, since we do good according to our will and desire, and not against our will and compulsorily. Wisdom (φρόνησις) 18 is called that which is to carry or contain useful things in the mind. If you wish, let us attach to this simple word, like a golden seal, something about the image and likeness of God, the most honest of all (visible) creatures of God. A rational and verbal animal is man, one of all (visible creatures) created in the image and likeness of God. “In the image of God” (Gen. 1:26) it is said about every person, for the sake of the dignity of his mind and soul, i.e. that the soul is incomprehensible, invisible, immortal, autocratic; also for the sake of his dominion (over other creatures), for the sake of childbearing and the ability to create. “In the likeness” is said in relation to virtues and to God-named and God-imitating deeds, i.e. to have a humane disposition towards your own kind, to have pity, to have mercy and to love slaves like yourself, and to show all kindness and mercy. “Be ye,” says Christ God, “just as your heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36; Matt. 5:48). As for the image of God, every person has it: for “the essence of the gift of God is unrepentant.” (Rom. 11:29). But what is said “in the likeness” is rare, and only the virtuous and saints, who by the grace of God and, as many people as possible, imitate Him. May we also be worthy of His most kind love for mankind, having pleased Him with good deeds, and becoming imitators of those who have pleased Christ from time immemorial. For His is mercy, and to Him is due all glory, honor and worship, together with the beginningless Father and the Most Holy and His good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Translated from the Greek Philocalia, (published in Venice in 1782) and glories. manuscripts of Paisius Velichkovsky. According to Greek φαντασἱα, according to Slav. "dreaming" According to another reading, ἔυθυμον means “compassion.” In glory "teaching" In glory "brown and unfertilized." In glory “guttural madness,” that is, when a person loves to eat, although not much, but pleasant and tasty. According to Slav. “costs”, in Greek. κνβεῖαι, i.e. dice game. That is, zealous, or, as the saints express it. fathers, anger by nature is against the devil and against everything evil, so as not to sin, according to what was said: “Be angry and do not sin” (Ps. 4:5). According to Greek Τῶν λογίων τοῦ πνευματος, that is, in the words of the Spirit. In glory “words,” that is, the purposes for which all creations were created. According to Rev. John: from φέρω - I bring and ὂ νησις - benefit. You might be interested in: