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Without anger a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy.
The conscience is called an 'adversary' because it opposes us when we wish to carry out the desires of our flesh; and if we do not listen to our conscience, it delivers us into the hands of our enemies.
If your intellect is freed from all hope in things visible, this is a sign that sin has died in you.
The demons cunningly withdraw for a time in the hope that we will cease to guard our heart, thinking we have now attained peace, then they suddenly attack our unhappy soul and seize it like a sparrow. Gaining possession of it, they drag it down mercilessly into all kinds of sin, worse than those which we have already committed and for which we have asked forgiveness. Let us stand, therefore, with fear of God and keep guard over our heart, practising the virtues which check the wickedness of our enemies.
Stand guard, then, over your heart and keep a watch on your senses; and if the remembrance of God dwells peaceably within you, you will catch the thieves when they try to deprive you of it. When a man has an exact knowledge about the nature of thoughts, he recognizes those which are about to enter and defile him, troubling the intellect with distractions and making it lazy. Those who recognize these evil thoughts for what they are remain undisturbed and continue in prayer to God.
Once you have begun to seek God with true devotion and with all your heart, then you cannot possibly imagine that you already conform to His will. So long as your conscience reproves you for anything that you have done contrary to nature, you are not yet free: the reproof means that you are still under trial and have not yet been acquitted. But if you find when you are praying that nothing at all accuses you of evil, then you are free and by God's will have entered into His peace.
Examine yourself daily in the sight of God, and discover which of the passions is in your heart. Cast it out, and so escape His judgment.
The first virtue is detachment, that is, death in relation to every person or thing. This produces the desire for God, and this in turn gives rise to the anger that is in accordance with nature, and that flares up against all the tricks of the enemy. Then the fear of God will establish itself within us, and through this fear love will be made manifest.
His disciple St John Cassian, while abandoning the suspect theories that Evagrios derived from Origen, transmitted the 'practical' aspect of Evagrios' teachings to the Latin West. In the Greek East the technical vocabulary devised by Evagrios remained thereafter standard: it can be found, for example, in the writings of St Diadochos of Photiki, St John Khmakos and St Maximos the Confessor, as also within the Syriac tradition, in the Mystic Treatises of St Isaac of Nineveh. The works included by St Nikodimos in the Philokalia all belong to the 'practical' side of Evagrios, and contain little if
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If you need food or clothes, do not be ashamed to accept what others offer you. To be ashamed to accept is a kind of pride. But if you have more than you require, give to those in need. It is in this way that God wishes His children to manage their affairs. That
When buying or selling you can hardly avoid sin. So, in either case, be sure you lose a little in the transaction. Do not haggle about the price from love of gain, and so indulge in actions harmful to the soul - quarreling, lying, shifting your ground and so on - thus bringing our way of life into disrepute. Understanding things in this manner, be on your guard when buying and selling. If possible it is best to place such business in the hands of someone you trust, so that, being thus relieved of the worry, you can pursue your calling with joy and hope.
Of the demons opposing us in the practice of the ascetic life, there are three groups who fight in the front line: those entrusted with the appetites of gluttony, those who suggest avaricious thoughts, and those who incite us to seek the esteem of men.
the thought occurs to me to give hospitality and it is for the Lord's sake; but when the tempter attacks, this thought is cut off and in its place he suggests giving hospitality for the sake of display. Again, the thought comes to me of giving hospitality so as to appear hospitable in the eyes of others. But this thought in its turn is cut off when a better thought comes, which leads me to practice this virtue for the Lord's sake and not so as to gain esteem from men.
In the whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem; for it is to be found almost everywhere, and like some cunning traitor in a city it opens the gates to all the demons. So it greatly debases the intellect of the solitary, filling it with many words and notions, and polluting the prayers through which he is trying to heal all the wounds of his soul. All the other demons, when defeated, combine to increase the strength of this evil thought: and through the gateway of self-esteem they all gain entry into the soul, thus making a man's last state worse than his
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The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions to absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he
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A monk should always act as if he was going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it was going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self control well balanced.
Prayer is communion of the intellect with God.
If you do shed tears during your prayer, do not exalt yourself, thinking you are better than others. For your prayer has received help so that you can confess your sins readily and make your peace with the Lord through your tears.
Whatever you do to avenge yourself against a brother who has done you a wrong will prove a stumbling-block to you during prayer.
Prayer is the flower of gentleness and of freedom from anger. 15. Prayer is the fruit of joy and thankfulness. 16. Prayer is the remedy for gloom and despondency.
If you patiently accept what comes, you will always pray with joy.
Do not pray for the fulfillment of your wishes, for they may not accord with the will of God. But pray as you have been taught, saying: Thy will be done in me (cf Luke 22:42). Always entreat Him in this way - that His will be done. For He desires what is good and profitable for you, whereas you do not always ask for this.
What is good, except God? Then let us leave to Him everything that concerns us and all will be well. For He who is good is naturally also a giver of good gifts.
When you pray, keep close watch on your memory, so that it does not distract you with recollections of your past. But make yourself aware that you are standing before God. For by nature the intellect is apt to be carried away by memories during prayer.
If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.
Whoever loves true prayer and yet becomes angry or resentful is his own enemy. He is like a man who wants to see clearly and yet inflicts damage on his own eyes.
A man who is tied up cannot run. Nor can the intellect that is a slave to passion perceive the realm of spiritual prayer. For it is dragged about by impassioned thoughts and cannot stay still.
Prayer is the energy which accords with the dignity of the intellect; it is the intellect's true and highest activity.
Try not to pray against anyone in your prayer, so that you do not destroy what you are building, and make your prayer loathsome.
There is too the case of that great monk, John the Small. He lived the hesychastic life in a pit, and his communion with God was not interrupted even when a demon in the form of a serpent wound itself round him, chewed his flesh and spat it out into his face.
I shall speak first about control of the stomach, the opposite to gluttony, and about how to fast and what and how much to eat. I shall say nothing on my own account, but only what I have received from the Holy Fathers. They have not given us only a single rule for fasting or a single standard and measure for eating, because not everyone has the same strength; age, illness or delicacy of body create differences. But they have given us all a single goal: to avoid over-eating and the filling of our bellies.
It is not only too much wine that besots our mind: too much water or too much of anything makes it drowsy and stupefied. The Sodomites were destroyed not because of too much wine or too much of other foods, but because of a surfeit of bread, as the Prophet tells us (cf Ezek. 16:49).
Our initial struggle therefore must be to gain control of our stomach and to bring our body into subjection not only through fasting but also through vigils, labours and spiritual, reading, and through concentrating our heart on fear of Gehenna and on longing for the kingdom of heaven.
Even if we make bad use of these passions, nature itself is not therefore sinful, nor should we blame the Creator. A man who gives someone a knife for some necessary and useful purpose is not to blame if that person uses it to commit murder.
If we want to follow the gospel commandment and the practice of the whole Church as it was founded initially upon the apostles. we should not follow our own notions or give wrong meanings to things rightly said. We must discard faint-hearted, faithless opinion and recover the strictness of the Gospel; In this way we shall be able to follow also in the footsteps of the Fathers, adhering to the discipline of the cenobitic life and truly renouncing this world.
If you want to correct your brother when he is doing wrong or to punish him, you must try to keep yourself calm; otherwise you yourself may catch the sickness you are seeking to cure and you may find that the words of the Gospel now apply to you: 'Physician, heal yourself (Luke 4:23), or 'Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye, and not notice the rafter in your own eye?' (Matt. 7:3).
When we are angry with others we should not seek solitude on the grounds that there, at least, no one will provoke us to anger, and that in solitude the virtue of long-suffering can easily be acquired. Our desire to leave our brethren is because of our pride, and because we do not wish to blame ourselves and ascribe to our own laxity the cause of our unwillingness. So long as we assign the causes for our weaknesses to others, we cannot attain perfection in long-suffering.
The blood of a man who has been slain by the sword can be seen by men, but blood shed by the hatred in the mind is seen by God, who rewards each man with punishment or a crown not only for his acts but for his thoughts and intentions as well.
The vice of self-esteem, however, is difficult to fight against, because it has many forms and appears in all our activities - in our way of speaking, in what we say and in our silences, at work, in vigils and fasts, in prayer and reading, in stillness and long-suffering. Through all these it seeks to strike down the soldier of Christ. When it cannot seduce a man with extravagant clothes, it tries to tempt him by means of shabby ones. When it cannot flatter him with honor, it inflates him by causing him to endure what seems to be dishonour. When it cannot persuade him to feel proud of his
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He should not do anything with a view to being praised by other people, but should seek God's reward only, always rejecting the thoughts of self-praise that enter his heart, and always regarding himself as nothing before God. In this way he will be freed, with God's help, from the demon of self-esteem.
the passion of pride darkens the soul completely and leads to its utter downfall.
the old man replied: 'The goal of our profession, as we have said, is the kingdom of God. Its immediate purpose, however, is purity of heart, for without this we cannot reach our goal. We should therefore always have this purpose in mind: and, should it ever happen that for a short time our heart turns aside from the direct path, we must bring it back again at once, guiding our lives with reference to our purpose as if it were a carpenter's rule.
If, however, some necessary task pleasing to God should keep us from our normal fasting and reading, we should not on this account neglect purity of heart. For what we gain by fasting is not so great as the damage done by anger: nor is the profit from reading as great as the harm done when we scorn or grieve a brother.
It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God.'
When we meditate wisely and: continually on the law of God, study psalms and canticles, engage in fasting and vigils, and always bear in mind what is to come - the kingdom of heaven, the Gehenna of fire and all God's works - our wicked thoughts diminish and find no place. But when we devote our time to worldly concerns and to matters of the flesh, to pointless and useless conversation, then these base thoughts multiply in us.
what am I to say about those two brethren who lived beyond the desert of the Thebaid, where the blessed Antony once lived? Impelled by a thought the real nature of which they could not discern, they decided to go into the vast, uncultivated inner desert: and they even made up their minds to refuse food offered them by man, and to accept only what the Lord would give them in a miraculous fashion. Finally they were seen in the distance wandering about the desert, weak with hunger, by the Mazikes who, though fiercer and wilder than almost all other savage peoples, now providentially exchanged
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'It is a good thing, as I said, not to hide your thoughts from the fathers. But you should not tell them to just anyone, you should confess them to spiritual masters who have discrimination, not simply to those whose hair has grown white with age.
God is the beginning, middle and end of everything good; and it is impossible for us to have faith in anything good or to carry it into effect except in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
When reading the Holy Scriptures, he who is humble and engaged in spiritual work will apply everything to himself and not to someone else.
Do not grow conceited about your interpretations of Scripture, lest your intellect fall victim to blasphemy.
