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In general, all passions develop in a person from indulgence in them; increasing relaxation turns inclination into skill, and skill makes passion a violent ruler over a person. “Fear evil habits,” said the Monk Isaac of Syria, “more than demons.” When a sinful desire or attraction acts in us, we must refuse it. Next time it will have a weaker effect, and will finally subside completely. But when it is satisfied, it acts each time with new force, as it acquires more and more power over the will, and finally gives birth to a habit. The sins that we are accustomed to commit seem easy to us, no matter how serious they are. A new sin for the soul terrifies it, and it will not soon be decided to commit it. Passions are evil skills; virtues are good habits. 1.378 Decisive will, overshadowed and strengthened by the grace of Christ, can overcome the most ossified habits. The habit at first fiercely resists those who want to overthrow its yoke; at first it seems insurmountable; but over time, with constant struggle with it, with every disobedience to it, it becomes weaker and weaker. If during the continuation of the struggle you happen, due to some unexpected circumstance, to be defeated, do not be embarrassed, do not fall into hopelessness: start the fight again. The violent struggle against vicious habits is imputed by God to man as martyrdom, and the one who wins in this struggle is crowned with the crown of confessors, as one who strives for the sake of the Law of Christ. 1.379 (See Confession, Love of God). Think less. Trust in God. “Walk simply,” the holy fathers said, “walk in hope.” And God will cover you. 6.646 (See Tribulation, Will of God, Temptation). What an abyss! What a departure, what a fall from the Divine likeness! We fall into this deep abyss, terribly far from God, when we indulge in gross carnal pleasures, called falls due to their sinful severity. But less coarse carnal pleasures are no less harmful. For their sake, care for the soul is abandoned, God, heaven, eternity, and the purpose of man are forgotten. The ruler of the world is trying to keep us in constant entertainment, darkness, through bodily pleasures! Through the senses, these doors to the soul, through which it communicates with the visible world, he constantly introduces into it sensual pleasure, sin and captivity inseparable from it. Music thunders in famous earthly concerts, expressing and exciting various passions; these passions are presented in earthly theaters, excited in earthly amusements: man is led by all possible means to enjoy the evil that killed him. In his intoxication, he forgets the Divine good that saves him and the Blood of the God-Man, by which we have been redeemed. 1. 394–395 (See Resentment, Repentance, Fasting, Sorrow, Prosperity, baptism). “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ,” said the apostle. Before those who allowed themselves to condemn, the God-Man Himself seemed imperfect! The Holy Fathers command monks to remember the virtues of their superiors, to often reflect on their praiseworthy deeds, and not to pay attention to shortcomings as if they were twigs, in comparison with which our infirmities are logs. 6.234 (See Advice, Jesus Prayer, Heat). You ask, what is my opinion about human sciences? After the fall, people began to cultivate the land, began to need clothing and other numerous needs that accompany our earthly wanderings; in a word, they began to need material development, the desire for which is a distinctive feature of our century. Science is the fruit of our fall, the acquisition and storage of impressions and knowledge accumulated by people during the life of the fallen mind. Learning is the lamp of the old man, a lamp by which the darkness of darkness is kept forever. The Redeemer returned to people the Lamp that was given to them at creation by the Creator, which they lost during their fall. This Lamp is the Holy Spirit, He is the Spirit of Truth, instructs in all truth, tests the depths of God, reveals and explains mysteries, and bestows material knowledge when it is needed for the spiritual benefit of a person. The apostle bequeaths to a scientist who wants to learn spiritual wisdom: “If anyone thinks that he will be wise in you in this world, let him be so that he will be wise” (1 Cor. 3:18). Exactly! Learning is not wisdom itself, but only the opinion of wisdom. The knowledge of the Truth, which is revealed to man by the Lord, to which access is only by faith, which is inaccessible to the fallen human mind, is replaced in scholarship by fortune-telling and assumptions. The wisdom of this world, in which many pagans and atheists occupy an honorable place, is directly opposite, in its very beginnings, to spiritual, Divine wisdom. You cannot be a follower of one or the other together; one must certainly be renounced. Fallen man is a lie, i.e. a way of thinking, a collection of false concepts and knowledge, having only the appearance of reason, but in its essence - vacillation, delirium, madness of the mind, struck by the mortal ulcer of sin and fall. This illness of the mind is especially fully revealed in the philosophical sciences. 6. 425–426 The Holy Fathers call ignorance a great, initial evil, from which evil is born in full abundance. The Monk Mark the Ascetic says that ignorance is the first, main giant of evil. “Ignorance does not know its ignorance, ignorance is satisfied with its knowledge,” said another father. It is capable of doing a lot of evil, without even suspecting that it is doing it. 1.454 Your doubt is not such a light sin. If you internalize it and implement it with words, you will fall into mortal sin. One word of faith can save, and one word of unbelief can destroy a soul. The thief, at the hour of death, already on the cross, confessed Christ - and opened the doors to heaven for himself; The Pharisees, rejecting the Truth, blasphemed the Holy Spirit - and died. “You will be justified by your words, and you will be condemned by your words” (Matthew 12:37), declared the Savior. 6.400 Remembering the omnipresence and omnipotence of God keeps the heart from the hesitation into which thoughts of unbelief, based on vanity and wrong love for the body, intensify to lead it. 1.327 (See Passion, Death, Heresy, Confession of the mouth, Blasphemous thoughts, Doxology, Jesus Prayer, Action). Tenderness is a passionate (blood) feeling, a deception of oneself and others. 6.685 (See Love is natural). Recognizing oneself as a sinner is necessary for salvation, but condemning oneself and rushing in all directions because of sinfulness is very harmful. “Everything immoderate is from demons,” said the Monk Pimen the Great. 6.519 Be lenient with your soul in its weaknesses; excessive severity distracts from repentance, leads to despondency and despair. 6.169 The knowledge of one's weaknesses is an essential knowledge for a Christian. It leads to humility, and this leads to spiritual intelligence. To whom the Lord deigns to bestow His understanding, He especially reveals his infirmities. 6.581 You should not be embarrassed when mental and physical weaknesses are revealed in you; on the contrary, bear your infirmities with patience and generosity. There is a secret pride in you; you do not firmly remember that you are a sinner; If you remembered this as you should, then seeing weaknesses in yourself, you would not be embarrassed, but would say to yourself: “A sinner like me must have such shortcomings!” May the Lord teach you humility, from which all calm flows and peace and silence pour into your heart. 6.586 Elder Seraphim of Sarov, a great ascetic, said: we must endure our shortcomings in the same way as we tolerate the shortcomings of others and be forgiving of our soul in its weaknesses and imperfections. At the same time, one should not indulge in negligence: one should take diligent care to correct and improve oneself. 6.823 Do not be discouraged by the sight of your infirmities, because a single touch of Divine grace can heal all our infirmities in a single moment. Your condition is transitional: bear with it. 6.826 May the Lord comfort your grieving heart! While we are on the way, until we have ascended to the haven of unchangeable eternity, we must expect changes, upheavals, ordinary and unexpected sorrows in ourselves and in our circumstances. A certain reverend father said: “For everything, glory to God, for our very weaknesses; because it is better to be a sinner and see yourself as such, than to be outwardly righteous and consider yourself to be such.” These words of the holy father are extremely comforting for us, weak and sinners, for our time and tribe, which can boast only of their weaknesses. They do not give a reason to sin arbitrarily, but they console those who, with some attention to themselves, feel that their souls are in involuntary captivity of sin. 6.171 You are in sorrow because you are in struggle; in the struggle because the law of Christ is spiritual, it requires crucifixion. You will find consolation in the fact that humanity has never approached crucifixion without a struggle. The proof is the God-Man Himself. He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, that the cup might pass from Him, and His sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood. If you see that weakness overcomes you, then know that the Lord is able to give strength to His people, as St. David says. Those people are His own, He gives strength to those His people who remain faithful to Him in will, while their weakness results in a violation of fidelity in deeds. Remember that Christ came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. Stand in the ranks of sinners, fall in humility at the feet of Christ, surrendering to His will, entrusting your present and future to His will. And He will shed peace and tranquility into your soul, thereby showing that He is near you, that His providence is watching over you. A certain holy father said: “Blessed is the man who knows his weakness, because the righteous man who does not know his weakness is on a very dangerous path.” Another says: “If Christ did not come for the righteous, then I reject my truth as a sin that separates me from Christ, and in the fact that I am a sinner, I find another truth, the heavenly truth, which provides me with the means to approach Christ and be with Him.” I am writing all this to you as a consolation, so that you, seeing that you are in debt to Christ, will not fall into hopelessness and sorrow, but into humility and be content because of your trust in Christ, which will not put you to shame. He is omnipotent. 6. 361–362 In your patience, gain your soul, looking with magnanimous condescension at its weaknesses, at its involuntary hobbies. Demanding from oneself immutability and infallibility is an impossible demand in this transitory age! Immutability and infallibility are characteristic of man in the next century, but here we must generously endure the infirmities of our neighbors and our own infirmities. Avoid all sins if possible, and endure your inevitable weaknesses, into which your thoughts and hearts involuntarily fall. Acquire, because of your weaknesses, a deep and constant feeling of spiritual poverty, so favorable to God - not despondency and cowardice! - and complete the path of earthly life, walking before the Lord in contrition of spirit. 6.460 Are you saying that the desire for spiritual good in you is still shaky? In whom is it not shaky? With what ease does the heart betray goodness? What forgetfulness, blindness, what fads and falls are accompanied by these changes! What work is needed, what struggle with oneself is needed to return to goodness! And again we need work, and again we need a persistent bloody struggle in order to remain faithful to goodness! The ancient tempter, the experienced tempter, constantly offers to eat the fruit of the forbidden. To defeat evil, we need God's help. When this all-powerful help assists us, we win; when it moves away from us, we are defeated. In my abundance,” said Saint David, “I will not move forever: I turned away Your face, and I was confused.” When we are defeated, we feel our weakness so much that the state of the victors seems alien and impossible to us; in case of victories, if previous experiences had not assured us, we would not have believed that victory was so close to us - such an insignificant, disgusting enemy as sin. The wise Providence arranged it so that the ascetics of God were not always in a state of joy, triumph and victory. Such an incessant state could give rise to fierce pride in them: having never seen the experience of their own victory in weakness, they would imagine that the state of incessant triumph over sin belongs to themselves, and not the gift of God. That is why God dissolved for them, as St. Isaac of Syria says, “consolation and invasions, light and darkness, battles and intercessions, in short, oppression and space. And this is a sign that a person is prospering with God’s help.” From such a dissolution of victories and defeats, from transitions from one to another, a person becomes more and more aware of his weakness - God gradually becomes exalted before him and, finally, becomes everything for him, the object of all his love, hope and faith. This path, which God Himself leads man, in which man is kept in constant contrition of spirit, in spiritual poverty, in the sight of his sins, in crying about them, is called the path of repentance. All the Saints walked along it from sin to God. This path is illuminated by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, shining from the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers. 6.457–459 (See ATTITUDE TO THE PASSIONS). The Monk Isidore of Pelusia rightly wrote to St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria: “Prejudice does not see clearly, and hatred is completely blind.” 1. 474–475 (See Love for Enemies, Condemnation, Neighbor). In comparison made by the holy fathers, the inner life of an ascetic of Christ is like the weather: sometimes it is clear and warm, and sometimes cloudy, stormy and cold. In their comparison, this life is like grain harvests, which are sometimes very abundant and sometimes very meager. Experienced people do not rely on the constancy of good weather and are not embarrassed by bad weather, knowing that one is constantly replaced by another. Also, when the harvest is good, they do not rely on it and do not stop working, and when the harvest is bad, they do not become despondent and, likewise, do not stop cultivating the land. This is the law of nature. The law of asceticism is similar to it. Sometimes there is a visit of grace, and the soul is comforted, and sometimes waves of temptation arise, and it is put in a difficult situation. This was the path of all the holy fathers. They command everyone who wants to strive correctly to submit with obedience to this law of asceticism, established by God Himself for the earthly wanderer. Due to constantly clear weather, the earth dries out and worms and other harmful insects infest in abundance. In a similar way, prolonged calm, even produced by grace, affects the soul: arrogance, conceit, arrogance, contempt for neighbors, humiliation and condemnation of them, and similar ailments of the human spirit, the most dangerous and most terrible, arise in the soul. 6.538 (See VARIABILITY, COOLING). God leads a person to spiritual goals in ways that outwardly have the character of troubles and misfortunes. Glory to the Wisdom of our All-Good God. 6.706 (See attitude towards passions, Confession). The commandment about non-covetousness was given by the Lord Himself. “Do not hide for yourselves treasures on earth,” He commands us, “where worms and aphids corrupt, and where they break through and steal: but hide for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither worms nor aphids corrupt, and where things are not broken through nor stolen” (Matthew 6:19-20). Having established the commandment, the Lord also stated the reason for its decree. He said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). “You cannot work for God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). 5. 282–283 (See Love of Covetousness, Monastic Vows, Virtues, Perfection). “What kind of sin is this? We have never heard of him,” many will say. According to the definition of the fathers, insensibility is the death of spiritual sensations, it is the invisible death of the human spirit in relation to spiritual objects, with the full development of life in relation to material objects. It happens that from a long-term physical illness all the strength is exhausted, all the abilities of the body wither: then the illness, not finding food for itself, ceases to torment the physique; it leaves the patient, leaving him exhausted, as if mortified, incapable of activity due to exhaustion from suffering, due to terrible, silent soreness, not expressed by any special suffering. The same thing happens with the human spirit. A long-term careless life among constant entertainment, among constant arbitrary sins, with forgetfulness about God, about eternity, with inattention or with the most superficial attention to the commandments and teachings of the Gospel, takes away from our spirit sympathy for spiritual objects, mortifies it in relation to them. Existing, they cease to exist for him, because his life has ceased for them: all his forces are directed towards one material, temporary, vain, sinful thing. Anyone who wants to impartially and thoroughly examine the state of his soul will see in it the illness of insensibility, will see the vastness of its meaning, will see the heaviness and importance of it, will recognize that it is a manifestation and evidence of the deadness of the spirit. When we want to start reading the Word of God, what boredom will attack us! How everything we read seems to us obscure, unworthy of attention, strange! How we wish to be freed from this reading as soon as possible! Why is this? Because we do not sympathize with the Word of God. When we stand up for prayer, what dryness and coldness we feel! How we rush to end our superficial, entertainment-filled prayer! Why is this? Because we are strangers to God: we believe in the existence of God with dead faith, He does not exist for our perception. Why have we forgotten eternity? Are we excluded from those who must enter its vast realm? Isn’t death facing us face to face, just as it is facing other people? Why is this? Because we have attached our whole soul to matter, we never think and do not want to think about eternity, we have lost a precious foretaste of it, and have acquired a false feeling for our earthly journey. This false feeling represents to us earthly life as endless. We are so deceived and carried away by a false sensation that we arrange all our actions in accordance with it, sacrificing the abilities of soul and body to corruption, not caring at all about the other world awaiting us, while we must certainly become eternal inhabitants of this world. Why do idle talk, ridicule, condemnation of our neighbors, caustic ridicule of them flow from us, as from a source? Why do we spend many hours unburdened in empty amusements, do not find satiety in them, try to replace one vain activity with another, and do not want to devote the shortest time to considering our sins, to crying about them? Because we have acquired sympathy for sin, for everything vain, for everything by which sin is introduced into a person and by which sin is preserved in a person; because we have lost sympathy for all exercises that introduce, multiply and preserve God-loving virtues in a person. Insensibility is implanted into the soul by a world hostile to God and by fallen angels hostile to God, with the assistance of our will. It grows and is strengthened by life according to the principles of the world; it grows and strengthens from following one’s fallen mind and will, from abandoning the service of God and from carelessly serving God. When insensibility hardens in the soul and becomes its quality, then the world and the rulers of the world put their seal on the stone. This seal consists in the communication of the human spirit with fallen spirits, in the assimilation by the human spirit of the impressions made on it by fallen spirits, in submission to the violent influence and predominance of rejected spirits. 4. 152–154 Some, not doing or doing very little spiritual work, but practicing only bodily work, not without an admixture of pharisaism, (mere bodily work cannot do without pharisaism), do not at all feel the sting of conscience and its conviction of sinfulness, for this reason they recognize this state of their calm as worthy of approval. In their opinion, they are supported and confirmed by many of their obvious good deeds and human praise. On this basis, they combine such a state of calm as a direct consequence of godly activity, a virtuous, impeccable life. Calmness turns at times into unaccountable joy: they do not stop recognizing this joy as blessed. Woeful self-delusion! Soul-crushing blindness! Self-delusion here is based on conceit, and conceit is damage to the spiritual eye, born from wrong activity and giving rise to even more wrong activity. Beloved brother, the calm with which you are assured of the fidelity of your path is nothing more than unconsciousness and lack of awareness of your sinfulness, which occurred and continues to occur from a careless life, and the joy that is born in you from time to time due to outward success and human praise is by no means a spiritual and holy joy: it is the fruit of conceit, self-satisfaction and vanity. The Holy Fathers call this state of imaginary calm insensibility, mortification of the soul, death of the mind before the death of the body. Insensibility or mortification of the soul consists in the withdrawal and retreat of the feelings of repentance and crying from our spirit, in the retreat of saving pain, called contrition, from our heart. Painlessness of the heart, or imaginary calm, is a sure sign of an incorrect way of thinking, an incorrect feat, and self-delusion. “No matter how high our life may be,” said Saint John Climacus, “but if we have not acquired a sick heart, then this life is false (feigned) and vain.” Painlessness comes from an inattentive life, from untimely exits from the cell, from untimely conversations, jokes, laughter, idle talk and verbosity, from satiety and satiety, from addictions, from the acceptance and assimilation of vain thoughts, from arrogance and pride. 5. 373–374 The state of insensibility is so important for our invisible enemy that he tries in every possible way to keep us in it and strengthen us, without disturbing us with other passions or temptations from the outside, because conceit and self-satisfaction, which usually accompanies insensibility, self-delusion and pride, which are usually the consequences of deep-rooted insensibility, are sufficient to take away all spiritual fruits and cause destruction. Insensibility is all the more terrible because the person possessing it does not understand his distressed state: he is seduced and blinded by conceit and self-satisfaction. 5.377 As soon as a Christian wants to implement the Gospel Commandments in his actions, external and internal, he will see his damaged nature, rebelling against the Gospel, stubbornly opposing the Gospel. The Christian, in the light of the Gospel, sees in himself the fall of humanity. From this view a humble concept of oneself is naturally born, which is called in the Gospel poverty of spirit (Matthew 5:3). 1.518 Seek spiritual poverty. The search for this bliss is permissible and praiseworthy. It is the foundation, the giver of all other bliss. When the foundation is shaken, then the one who stood at the highest degree of spiritual success falls down and is often broken to death. Poverty of spirit is acquired by studying the Gospel, fulfilling its commands, comparing one’s actions and qualities with the commands of the Gospel, forcing one’s heart to generously endure insults, self-reproach, and prayer for a contrite and humble heart. 1.521 (See Prayer, Jesus Prayer, Benefits). You might be interested in: