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You yourself are the cause of your confusion; We have already written to you many times about sorrows, that they happen by God’s permission and that it is necessary, with submission to His will, to force oneself to patience and to the contemplation of one’s weaknesses and to humble oneself from this, and the Lord will look upon humility and send His help. We do not miss your letters and your explanations of your infirmities at all, but we heartily sympathize with you; We would like to help, but we do not have the strength and means; You are in a struggle, and God does not send battles beyond your strength; but if you suffer victory, it is because of your negligence and for abandoning the invincible weapon - humility, with which all the passions and snares of the evil one are crushed. The thought of sins that confuses you from the words of the nun, and drives you to despair, is because of the opposite. No one can argue against this, that sins require equally worthy repentance: but who can measure it, except the only one who knows the heart of God! We must repent of our sins and, always remembering them, descend into the abyss of humility; but not to believe that we have already atoned for our sins through our repentance, but to plunge ourselves into the abyss of God’s ineffable mercy and generosity, and hope, through the merits of our Savior, to receive forgiveness; just as it is evil to reassure oneself with one’s own merits, so it is equally to despair – it is evil, even if one has received the notification of the forgiveness of sins, but by their memory everyone should be aroused to humility, and when some sorrow or offense occurs, remembering one’s sins, we will forgive our neighbors, according to the word of the Savior: if you do not forgive men their sins, neither will your Father forgive you your sins (Matt. Ch. 6. v. 15), similarly the parable of the debtor with darkness teaches (Matthew 24:24). and how did the saints preserve their holiness, if not through humility? The closer they came to God, the more they saw themselves condemned: and those who were previously sinners and repented and already received what was holy, and did not forget all their sins, somehow: St. Mary of Egypt, etc.; Is this discussion about repentance enough for you? You can read for yourself from St. Isaac and St. Climacus, St. Ephraim, and others; all of them encourage sinners and lead them away from the abyss of despair. You need to confess those thoughts in which your will participates and deigns to act on them, becoming rigid and becoming a mental criminal before God. The tenth commandment shows us this clearly; all the commandments prohibit doing evil, and even desiring it mentally; but those thoughts that are only admired, but we do not agree with them, do not deign to them and reject them, do not need to be confessed. I.L. and I.M. February 21, 1839. You might be interested in: