On Purity (Part 2)

Discoursing on purity, we find it essentially necessary to address a humble word to the ignorance of our time, which prides itself so greatly on its knowledge, and to extend a helping hand to those who are drowning and languishing in confusion, despondency, and grief by reason of their ignorance. Very many who desire to lead a devout life fall into complete bewilderment when thoughts and sensations of carnal desire arise in them. They regard this as something strange, something that ought not to be, and are thereby brought to spiritual prostration and disorder, often resolving to abandon the God-pleasing life, reckoning themselves incapable of it. A most erroneous view of oneself! Our nature is in a state of fall. In a state of fall, carnal desires are natural to it and cannot but arise from it. Therefore one must not be surprised or fall into bewilderment at the appearance of thoughts, fantasies, and sensations of desire: this is a natural necessity. Every human being is subject to it; all holy persons were subject to it.

This is not all. For progress in the spiritual life it is absolutely necessary that our passions should arise and thus become manifest.[1] When the passions become manifest in the ascetic, he enters into struggle with them. One who has entered the struggle and fights courageously can gain victory and be crowned with the crown of victory by the Holy Spirit. We offer our beloved brethren the counsel to examine attentively the lives and writings of the holy Fathers: we shall see that all the servants of God were subjected to the trial and labor of this struggle, passed through the fire of passions and the water of tears, and entered into the rest of dispassion. The Venerable Abba Dorotheus, upon entering a monastery, was greatly tempted by carnal desires, and had recourse in this struggle to the counsel and guidance of the Venerable Barsanuphius the Great. The answers of the Great Father contain excellent guidance for courageous resistance to the mad and corrupt demands of fallen nature.[2] In one of these answers the Venerable Barsanuphius speaks of himself, saying that he was warred upon by the passion of fornication for five years. “The warfare raised by the flesh”, he said, “is ended by prayer with weeping.” The Venerable Anthony the Great, as is related in his Life, was urgently assailed by thoughts and fantasies of fornication. Many of the saints, even after being renewed by the Holy Spirit and having attained the haven of blessed dispassion, suddenly experienced unseemly impulses and movements of nature, and an onslaught of impure thoughts and fantasies—as happened to the Venerable Macarius of Alexandria, the Venerable Joannicius the Great, and others.[3] For this reason the holy Fathers said that one’s flesh can be trusted only when it has lain down in the grave.[4]

We enter a monastery for this very purpose: to uncover the passions that live hidden within us, and to understand our nature’s relationship to the spirits of malice, to which it subjected itself voluntarily.[5] We sever our ties with the world, leave the society of men, of relatives, and of possessions, so that we may see our inner bonds and break them by the right hand of the Lord. The second cannot take place unless the first has been accomplished beforehand. Only then can we come to humility of spirit, when we see within ourselves the fall of humanity, its captivity, the fierce dominion over us of demons and of eternal death; only then can we cry out to God in prayer and weeping from the depths of the heart, with our whole soul, and by such a cry, such an acknowledgment of our perdition and helpless weakness, draw to ourselves Divine grace as a helper. For this reason the warfare that rises within ourselves contributes to our spiritual progress, if we fight courageously and do not submit to defeat with pusillanimity. The Venerable Abba Dorotheus relates that the disciple of a certain great elder was subject to carnal warfare. The elder, seeing the disciple’s labor, said to him: “Do you wish me to pray to God that He lighten the warfare for you?” The disciple answered: “Father, although I am laboring, I see fruit from the labor within myself: rather pray to God that He give me patience in the warfare.” “Such is one who truly wishes to be saved!” exclaims the Venerable Dorotheus at the close of the account. The Venerable Pimen the Great related, for the instruction and consolation of the brethren, concerning the great servant of God John the Dwarf, that he had besought God and was delivered from the action of desire, and on that account remained in unbroken peace. Then he went to a certain elder very experienced in the spiritual life and told him what had occurred. The elder replied:[6] “Go, pray to God that the warfare and that contrition and humility which you formerly had on account of the warfare may return to you; for through them the soul comes to progress.” Let us not, then, give ourselves over to confusion, despondency, pusillanimity, or prostration when fierce waves of desire rise up in us, and thoughts fall upon us like powerful winds! Let us resist sin: through this struggle we shall work out a living faith in God and a living knowledge of God.[7]

We harm ourselves greatly and frequently by requiring of ourselves what is not proper to our condition. For instance: those who have just entered the ascetic life, steeped and saturated, as it were, with desire, wish that in themselves there should be no sympathy with thoughts, fantasies, and sensations of the flesh. Such sympathy exists; it is natural; it cannot but be. It is senseless to seek the impossible. Desire must necessarily arise from a nature infected with it; but as soon as it arises in whatever form, we must immediately, with a forcing of ourselves, counteract it by the means described above. We must, contrary to the powerful will of the whole of nature, by the action of the feeble will of the mind alone (Rom. 7:23), guided by the Word of God, wrench ourselves free from our captivity, from our old self, from our fallen nature. “The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force”, the Lord said, and only those who compel themselves, overcoming their sinful will, “seize it” (Mt. 11:12[8]). When the grace of God begins to help us perceptibly, the first sign of its assistance is “the unsubmitting thought”, as St John of the Ladder says—that is, there appears little by little in the mind a lack of sympathy with thoughts and fantasies of fornication, in place of the former sympathy, which produced captivation and defeat at every occasion when no especial effort at resistance had been made.

Virgins—that is, those who have not tasted the death of the soul through the actual fall of the body into fornication—guard your virginity as a precious treasure: in the way of proper monastic life you will not be slow to experience what the holy Fathers call the spiritual action, or the action of the Holy Spirit upon the soul—an action which is communicated from the soul to the body, and assures us by experience that our bodies were created for spiritual enjoyment, that they descended to a sympathy with animal-like pleasures through the fall, and that they can return to a sympathy with spiritual pleasures by means of true repentance. Alas![9] Even knowledge of the existence of the capacity of the human body for spiritual sensation has been lost by those who trumpet their great learning. The announcement of this capacity is heard with incredulity, as a new and strange teaching. It is not new, and it is not strange! Examine the writings of the holy Fathers: you will find this teaching in them. Having acquainted yourself with it more closely, you will find it in Holy Scripture. The redemption granted to humanity by God is filled with inexpressible and substantive blessings and is attested by them; but we, content with superficial knowledge according to the letter, are unwilling to acquire knowledge by experience, which requires crucifixion (Gal. 5:24), and thereby deprive ourselves of living knowledge. The feeling of the heart is changed when it has partaken of spiritual enjoyment. Such a heart begins to feel aversion toward sensuality, and with zeal to resist its impulses and suggestions, and to cry out with weeping to God for deliverance from this foul mire.

You who have been brought by the providence of God to the state of widowhood, and who wish or are obliged to bear the yoke of this condition! Do not hesitate to have recourse with warm and humble prayer to God, and He will grant you victory both over nature and over your habit, which has strengthened and maintained the force and right of nature. Do not refuse to endure the brief sorrow of struggle with yourself: this sorrow is as nothing compared with the consolation that appears from victory; this sorrow is as nothing compared with the sense of freedom that arises in the soul immediately after victory.

You who are sunk in the abyss of adultery and debauchery! Hear the voice calling you to repentance, and receive from the all-powerful Physician, God, the all-powerful remedy of repentance that He offers. This remedy has already been tested. It has made adulterers models of chastity and the dissolute holy and righteous. It has transformed vessels of the devil into vessels of the Holy Spirit—and many who have repented have left far behind them on the path of spiritual progress ascetics who had never known mortal sin. The dignity of every Christian is constituted by the Redeemer, and that person among men stands highest in dignity who has most essentially made the Redeemer his own.

Many of the holy Fathers who lived a virginal life called themselves defiled and adulterers; more than that: some of them, having been slandered of the sin of fornication, offered no justification—though it would have been very easy for them to do so—and submitted themselves to punishment and sorrows as though genuinely guilty. Such conduct, at a superficial glance, may appear strange: it is explained by the nature of the ascetic effort by which holy purity is wrought. Through this effort, the fall of nature is so clearly revealed, and the ascetic is shown so tangibly the inescapable submission of his being to the demand of fallen nature—if the right hand of God had not snatched him out from the realm of nature—that he cannot but acknowledge himself personally an adulterer. His purity is the work of God in him, and by no means a property of his nature or the fruit of his own efforts. The length of time of the ascetic effort has a considerable influence on the formation and assimilation of such a view of oneself. One can assert with confidence that the Saints of God acknowledge themselves defiled by adultery incomparably more than those who, living a carnal life, continually sink in adultery. From such self-understanding, St Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a man filled with the Holy Spirit, uttered this saying of himself: “I have not known a woman, and yet I am not a virgin.” What a deep sense of weeping is heard in these words![10]

May the boundless mercy of God grant us to draw near to the holy purity of the Saints of God and to their holy humility. Amen.