Every time your free will is
acted upon and pulled on the one hand by the dumb sensory
will and on the other by the will of God, voiced through
conscience, each of them seeking to conquer it, you must, if
you are sincerely to strive for good, use suitable methods
on your part to assist God’s will in gaining victory. For
this purpose, then:
(a) As soon as you feel
impulses of the lower, sensory and passionate will, you must
immediately use every effort to resist them and not allow
your own will to incline towards them, however slightly.
Crush them, cut them off, drive them away from yourself by
an intense effort of will
(b) To achieve this more
successfully and with a better result, hasten to kindle in
yourself a wholehearted aversion to such impulses, as to
your enemies, who seek to steal and destroy your soul— be
angered with them.
(c) At the same time do not
forget to appeal to our Lord Jesus Christ, our Helper in all
endeavour, asking for His assistance and protection, and for
the strengthening of your better will; for without Him we
can succeed in nothing.
(d) If these three inner
actions are sincerely practised in your soul, they will
never fail to give you victory over evil impulses. But this
would mean only driving the enemies away.
If you wish to strike at
their very heart, then, if it is feasible, at once do
something opposed to the suggestion of the passionate
impulse and, if possible, resolve to do so always. This
latter practice will finally free you completely from the
renewal of the attacks you experience. I shall illustrate
this by an example. Supposing someone has offended you in
something whether great or small, and has aroused in you a
movement of displeasure and irritation, accompanied by a
suggestion of retaliation. Pay attention to yourself and
hasten to realise that these movements are bent on enticing
you towards evil.
Therefore take up the
attitude of a warrior on the defensive:
(a) Stop these movements, do
not let them penetrate any deeper and on no account allow
your will to take their part as though they were right. This
will mean resisting them.
(b) But they still remain in
sight, ready for a renewed attack. So rouse aversion against
them, as against your enemies, and be angry with them for
self protection, until you are able to say sincerely: ‘ I
hate and abhor lying” (Ps. cxix. 169), or: ‘I hate them with
perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies” (Ps. cxxxix. 22).
This will be a great blow for them, and they will retreat,
but not vanish. Then:
(c) Call to the Lord: “Make
haste, 0 God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, 0 Lord”
(Ps. lxx. 1). And do not cease calling thus, until not a
trace of the hostile movements remains and peace is restored
in your soul.
(d) Having thus regained peace,
do to your offender something which would show your kind and
conciliatory disposition towards him, such as a friendly
word, some timely favour, and so on. This would mean
following the advice of David: ‘Depart from evil, and do
good” (Ps. xxxiv. 14).
Such .actions lead straight
to acquiring the habit of the virtue opposed to the
passionate movements which had troubled you; and this habit
strikes them to the heart and kills them. Try to forestall,
or accompany, or conclude these actions with an inner
resolve, which would make such passionate impulses for ever
impossible in the future. For instance, in the foregoing
example, consider yourself worthy, of every insult and bring
yourself to welcome every kind. of insult and calumny:
welcome them and be ready to receive and accept them with
joy as the most salutary remedies. In other cases, try to
incite and establish in yourself other corresponding
feelings and dispositions. This would mean driving the
passion out of your heart and replacing it by the virtue
opposed to it, which is the aim of the unseen warfare. I
will give you a general indication, suitable for all
occasions, in accordance with the guidance of the holy
fathers. Our soul has three parts or powers—the thinking,
the desiring and the excitable. Owing to their corruption,
these three powers give birth to three corresponding kinds
of wrong thoughts and movements. The thinking power gives
birth to thoughts of ingratitude to God and complaints,
forgetfulness of God, ignorance of divine things,
ill-judgment and all kinds of blasphemous thoughts. The
desiring power gives birth to pleasure-loving thoughts,
thoughts of vainglory, love of money and all their numerous
ramifications, belonging to the domain of self-indulgence.
The excitable power gives birth to thoughts of anger,
hatred, envy, revenge, gloating, ill-will, and generally to
all evil thoughts. You should overcome all such thoughts and
impulses by the methods indicated above, trying on every
occasion to arouse and establish in your heart good feelings
and dispositions opposed to them: in place of unbelief –
undoubting faith in God; in place of complaints—a sincere
gratitude to God for everything; in place of forgetfulness
of God—a constant deep remembrance of the ever-present and
all-powerful God; in place of ignorance—a clear
contemplation or mental examination of all the soul-saving
Christian truths; in place of ill-judgment – faculties
trained to discriminate between good and evil; in place of
all blasphemous thoughts—praise and glorification of God. In
the same way, in place of love of pleasure – every kind of
abstinence, fasting and self-mortification; in place of
vainglory – humility and desire of obscurity; in place of
love of money—contentment with little and love of poverty.
Again, in place of anger—meekness; in place of hatred—love;
in place of envy—rejoicing with others; in place of
revenge—forgiveness and a peaceful disposition; in place of
gloating—compassion; in place of ill-will—well wishing. In
short, with St. Maximus, I shall condense all this in the
following propositions: adorn your thinking power with a
constant attention to God in prayer and knowledge of divine
truths; the desiring power—with total self-denial and
renunciation of all self -indulgence; the excitable
power—with love. If you do this, then, I assure you, the
light of your mind will never be dimmed and wrong thoughts
will never find place in you. If you arc active in setting
up such good thoughts and dispositions in yourself morning,
evening and at all other hours of the day, invisible foes
will never come near you. For then you will be like a
general, who constantly reviews his troops and disposes them
in battle order; and enemies know that to attack such a
general is impracticable.
Pay most attention to the
last point, namely, to actions opposed to those dictated by
passionate thoughts and to setting up feelings and
dispositions contrary to passions. Only by this means can
you uproot passions in yourself and achieve a safer
position. For so long as the roots of passions remain in
you, they will always bring forth their offspring and thus
cloud over the face of virtues, and at times completely
cover and banish them. In such cases we are in danger of
falling once more into our former sins and destroying all
the fruits of our labours.
Therefore know that this last
means should be practised nut merely once, but often, many
times, constantly, until you smash, disorganise and destroy
the passionate habit against which you tight. Since this
habit has acquired power over your heart through frequent
repetition of certain actions, which satisfy the passion
dwelling in the heart, opposing it in the heart is not
enough to weaken and destroy this power; you must use
actions which are contrary to your former ones, actions
opposed to the passion, smashing and destroying it. Their
frequent use will banish the passionate habit, kill the
passion which stimulates it and plant in the heart the
virtue opposed to it and a habit of corresponding actions.
Moreover—and I shall not
waste many words on this, , since it is self-evident – to
acquire good habits it is necessary to perform a greater
number of right deeds, than the number of evil deeds
required to establish bad habits; for bad habits take root
more easily, since they are aided and abetted by the sin
living in us, that is, by self-indulgence. Therefore,
however hard, however difficult it may seem to you, to
perform such actions, opposed to your passions, because your
will for good is still weak, and because of the resistance
of your passionate self-indulgent will, you must never
abandon them, but must compel yourself in every way to
practise them always. However imperfect they may be at
first, they will still support your steadfastness and
courage in battle, and pave the way to victory.
I shall add another thing:
stand wakeful and, collecting your attention within
yourself, fight with courage. And fight not only the great
and strong, but also the small and weak stirrings of’ your
passions. For the small open the way to the great,
especially when they have become a .habit. Experience has
many tunes confirmed the fact that when a man pays little
attention and care to repulsing small passionate desires
from the heart, after he has overcome the great, he is
subjected to sudden and unexpected attacks of the enemy, so
impetuous that he is unable to hold his ground in battle and
his downfall is more grievous than those of old.
Moreover I remind you of the
fact that you should cut off and kill every passionate
attachment to things which, although permissible, are not
indispensable, as soon as you notice that they weaken the
intensity of your will for good, distract attention away
from yourself and disorganise the good order you have
established in your life. Such are, for instance, taking
walks, evening parties, conversations, new acquaintances,
meals, sleep and other such things. You will gain much
profit from this, by thus training yourself to self-mastery
in all other things as well; you will become stronger and
more expert in struggling against temptations and will avoid
a great many snares of the devil, who knows how to spread
his nets on these inoffensive paths, and, I assure you, your
actions will win God’s favour.
So, beloved, if you follow my
advice and undertake such holy tasks with alertness, be
assured that in a short time you will achieve success and
will become spiritual in truth and actual deed, instead of
deceitfully and only in name. But know that to oppose
yourself and to compel your self is here an immutable law,
which excludes all pleasing of yourself even in the
spiritual order of life. If you introduce into it, or choose
exclusively deeds which please you, even if they belong to
the spiritual order of things, you will ruin your work. You
will labour, but in place of real fruit, you will get a
sterile flower, and you will not be firmly established in
anything spiritual. You will seem to have something
spiritual, but in actual fact it will not be so. For all
truly spiritual things are produced by the grace of the Holy
Spirit; and this grace descends only on those, who have
crucified themselves in sufferings and voluntary privations,
without any self-pity, and have thus become united with our
Lord and Saviour, crucified for their sakes.
