As soon as you wake up in the morning and pray a little, saying: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” the first thing you should do is to imprison yourself, as if in some place or disgrace, in your own heart. Having established yourself here, then raise yourself to the consciousness and feeling that that enemy of yours and that passionate attraction with which you are at that time in a struggle are already standing at your back, ready to immediately attack you, and as a result, restore within yourself the determination to either win or die, but not to give in; Realize also that at your right hand, invisibly standing before you is your victorious Archangel, our Lord Jesus Christ, with His Most Holy Mother, and many holy Angels, with Archangel Michael at their head, ready to help you, and as a result, be inspired by good faith.
Now the prince of the underworld, the devil, with his hordes of demons, will rise up against you and begin to kindle a passionate attraction in you, persuading you with various flattering promises for your self-indulgence to stop fighting this passion and submit to it, assuring that it will be better and more peaceful this way. But listen to yourself - at the same time, you should hear from the right hand of the country a warning and inspiring voice, which your guardian angel on behalf of all who are on your right hand will not fail to instill in you, saying: “Now you have to fight with your passion and your other enemies. Do not be afraid and do not be afraid and do not run away from the battlefield from this fear. For the Lord Jesus Himself, your Archangel, stands nearby, surrounded by the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds of the Bodiless and all the hosts of holy angels, ready to fight for you against your enemies and not allow them to overcome you and defeat you, as promised: the Lord will fight for you (Ex. 14:14).
Therefore, stand firm, force yourself not to give in and strain in every possible way to endure this test that has come upon you, crying from the depths of your heart: do not betray me into the souls of those who suffer (Ps. 26:12). Call on your Lord, on the Lady Theotokos, on all the Angels and saints. Help will come and you will win, for it is written: I am writing to you, young men, encouraged and zealous warriors, because you have overcome the evil one (1 John 2:13). Even though you are weak and bound by bad habits and your enemies are strong and numerous, but much greater help is ready for you from the One who created you and redeemed you, and God is your Defender in this battle incomparably stronger than anyone, as it is written: The Lord is strong and mighty, the Lord is mighty in battle (Ps. 23:8), Who, moreover, has a greater desire to save you than your enemy to destroy you. So, fight and never be burdened by labor from this battle. For through this labor, self-needing and merciless, despite the pain, tearing oneself away from vicious habits, victory is acquired and a great treasure is acquired with which the Kingdom of Heaven is bought and for the sake of which the soul is forever united with God.
So, every day in the morning, in the name of God, begin the struggle with your enemies, with the weapon of non-reliance on yourself and daring hope in God, prayer and merciless forcing yourself to perform appropriate labors and spiritual deeds, especially with the weapon of mental-heart prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me! This name is terrible, like a two-edged sword, when rotated in the heart, it strikes and drives away demons and passions. Therefore, John Climacus said: “In the name of the Lord Jesus, scourge your adversaries.” We will talk about this prayer below in a special chapter. With this weapon, I say, defeat that enemy, that passion and that evil attraction that is fighting, in the order that I indicated in the 13th chapter, namely, first by resisting the passion, then by hating it and, finally, by deeds of virtue that is contrary to it, doing all this, let’s say, in a prayerful atmosphere. By acting in this way, you will do a work pleasing to your God, who, with all the triumphant Church in Heaven, stands invisibly and looks at your struggle.
Such struggle is difficult and tedious, but grieve and do not give up, thinking that, on the one hand, we have a duty to work and please our God, on the other, that, as was said above, we inevitably need to struggle if we want to live, because as soon as we stop fighting, we will immediately be struck to death. Let not the enemy seduce you with the suggestion: “Just give in for an hour.” Let it be for an hour. But who will you become if you retreat from life according to God and indulge in the world and its pleasures and carnal pleasures? It’s scary to become an apostate, not only for an hour, but also for an instant. Besides, is it common for this to happen for an hour? Wouldn’t it be even worse if hour after hour, and then days after days and years after years, flows by in this godless life? What next?
If the Lord has mercy on you and allows you to wake up again, to emerge from this devil’s snare and awaken from the sleep of sin, you will still have to enter into the struggle from which you will now run away, seeking a preferential life, with the only difference that then it will be incomparably harder, sharper and more painful for you, and also less successful.
If the Lord leaves you in the hands of your will and your enemies, what then? I won’t repeat it, I’ll just say: remember, for who doesn’t know this? After living in the tormenting bonds of evil passions, sometimes in the intoxication of sensuality, but always without true joys, the hour of death will suddenly befall, a terribly painful state of the soul, which even the word of God could not depict, but only said: then they will cry: mountains, fall on us (Rev. 6:16). This cry, having begun at the hour of death, will silently continue throughout the entire time after death until the end of the world and will be heard at the moment of the Last Judgment, and is always useless. Don’t be so crazy as to deliberately throw yourself into eternal hellish torment, running away from momentary ascetic labors and struggles. But as a reasonable and, I will say, prudent person, it is better now to endure the short labors and pains of spiritual warfare, so that, having defeated those who fight, you will receive a crown and be in unity with God both here and there - in the Kingdom of Heaven.