Part 2

There is needed an urgent, unceasing struggle against all the passions that live and take root in us. Tell me, which passion have you overcome and killed? Are they not all still alive in you and do they not wound you and trouble you? Rise up and overcome all the passions, these invisible Amalekites living in you and dwelling with you. “What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial?” (2Cor 6:14-15).

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Some have become so accustomed to sins and have such a corrupted conscience that they do not even consider sin as sin, but as proper business and almost permitted, or as a matter of cunning, skill, and daring to deceive and seduce others and to profit from their oversight and ignorance to their advantage. You must keep your conscience healthy, clean, unstained, sensitive, tender, which immediately repels the touch of any kind of sin as if it were deadly poison. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). So in this evil present time, with various freedoms wrongly given and wrongly understood, some do not even consider murder a sin, nor adultery, nor robbery, and so on.

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Through repeated sinning habit is formed. Through repeated sinning the will toward good becomes weaker and weaker, and toward evil stronger, so that it becomes difficult to resist sin. You must become accustomed to every virtue so that it becomes as if a natural property in man.

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Every Christian soul must reach such a spiritual state that it always feels absolute abhorrence toward every sin, in whatever form it appears, and at the same time attains a complete disposition of the heart toward every virtue.

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In order to inherit heaven and eternal life and to be deemed worthy of eternal communion with the holy angels and all the saints, you must here, on earth, purify yourself beforehand, come to hate sin and to love righteousness, only righteousness, and thus become like God and His saints. “What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What does light have in common with darkness?” (2Cor 6:14). The saints prepared and purified themselves their whole life from all filth of flesh and spirit. Above all, you must learn humility, for the beginning of sin is pride. Lucifer fell through pride.

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All the saints felt and acknowledged themselves as sinners and all sincerely repented, wept, expressed as best they could their awareness of both voluntary and involuntary sins, ascended through the degrees of repentance and correction, exercised themselves in every virtue, and attained sanctity and likeness to God and unity with Him. We daily read prayers, are moved by them to tears, weep, and receive mercy from the Lord. Glory to His mercy, to His patience, to His obedience, and to His graciousness! How blessed we are to have such a God, “mighty in mercy and good in strength, to help and comfort all who hope in His mercy.”

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You read in the evening prayer: “Deliver me from the teaching of evil” (a prayer to the Holy Spirit). If you have learned to be gluttonous, to eat and drink excessively, to harbor lustful thoughts and desires, to covet gain, to be lazy at prayer, to envy, to be offended at trifles, to murmur against the difficulty of life, against sickness, misfortunes—then now learn to kill all this in yourself through fasting, prayer, and deeds according to your strength, and do not think this is necessary only for a monk—it is necessary for every Christian in every station and condition. If you were able to sin, you are also able to justify yourself and be cleansed, so as to become a child of light.

Let us all reflect on our pitiful, terrible fall and on the necessity of rising up and being corrected. Many do not realize this fall and therefore do not consider it necessary and right to rise up and cling to countless passions and bad habits. O Lord, open our spiritual eyes.

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A true Christian loathes every sin not only in words, but in deed he loathes it, in his thoughts, feelings, memory, and imagination, and loathing it, he loves God with all his heart and virtue. May this be with you always, servant of God.

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Every day, every hour, and every minute be a strict observer and judge of all your thoughts, desires, all the movements of your heart, your words and deeds, and do not allow yourself to be defiled by a single sinful thought, imagination, desire, sinful word or deed, knowing that the Lord is a righteous Judge, judging you at every moment and assessing your entire inner man. For God’s sake, keep yourself pure continuously—your end is near.

Watch yourself and see where the gaze of your inner eye is directed—toward God, toward heaven, toward the incorruptible homeland, toward the saints and the heavenly glory they received for their labors and struggles, for their firm devotion to the Lord and unfailing love? Or toward the earth, toward earthly pleasures, toward this captivity, toward these vanishing dreams?

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If you want to know yourself precisely—what you are like, what defects, habits, passions, vices you have—watch your dreams when you sleep day and night, notice them as much as possible—and you will get a picture, or an echo, of the direction of your soul, the bad and the good. And having known yourself, immediately strive to correct your defects and cut down the sinful weeds like grain.

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“If your right eye causes you to stumble… if your right hand causes you to stumble” (Mt 5:29-30)… Man was created righteous and ought to remain so, having abandoned the cunning of sin. You must cut off passions, not hands and feet; you must pluck out passions, not the eye. “From the heart come evil thoughts” (the lustful eye) (Mt 15:19). All of this must be cut off and plucked out by the root with the help of God’s grace.

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“If anyone… does not hate… his own soul… he cannot be My disciple” (Lk 14:26-27). Indeed, you must hate your own soul, for it is full of all kinds of passions that alienate you from God, from eternal Life—it is an instrument of the Devil, your irreconcilable enemy.

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The righteous Lord permits good and evil to grow and ripen in this world and is patient with it, not willing the destruction of sinners, and for the multiplication of punishment for the impenitent and those who abuse His patience. This patience of God is praiseworthy and wonderful, the fruit of His love for His creatures. Through this patience how many sinners and sinful women have been saved, who ought to have perished forever if the Lord had not been patient with us, foreseeing our conversion and correction. O wondrous patience! I glorify this wondrous attribute of God, grace and patience! Through you how many greatest sinners have been saved! Manasseh, king of Judah, that most wretched of kings, was pitied only through Thy patience. Read the prayer of repentance of Manasseh (2Chron 36:23), king of Judah, and learn the depth of repentance and self-condemnation and be corrected.

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God has given to us, the sinful, afflicted by countless passions, repentance as a spiritual healing, as life, like a merciful Physician. Every sincere soul longs for repentance as for life-giving nourishment, as for food strengthening body and soul, as the blind longs for light. The gift of repentance has been won for us from the Heavenly Father by the holy, blessed Jesus Christ, and by Him alone, for He alone fulfilled all righteousness, all of God’s law, which no one of men could fulfill by himself; He alone took upon Himself the curse with which the Heavenly Father righteous condemned disobedient mankind. He alone for us endured all torments and for us tasted “death,” which we ourselves incurred as the inevitable “wage of sin” (Rom 6:23). If the Lord Jesus Christ had not offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, repentance would not have been given to us, but because of His sacrifice it has been given to all believers, and all who truly understand use it eagerly, are transformed with divine transformation, become new people with new thoughts, desires, intentions, deeds, and are saved, enlightened, and united with God. Only the unbelieving, cunning, stubborn, and lazy perish.

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Is mankind responsible for that terrible hour of the ninth, in which our Redeemer gave up the ghost? It is responsible, each soul is responsible, for each soul the Savior suffered and died, for each soul was paid this infinitely precious price. We must not live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. Here is our responsibility, here is our duty toward Him who died for us on the cross, the God-Man. And since Christ also died for you, you too must sincerely always repent, for it was also for your sins that the Lamb of God suffered.

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“King of heaven, Comforter, Spirit of truth… filling all things…” (Prayer to the Holy Spirit). All, that is, filling heaven and earth. Does He, the Holy Spirit, fill your heart? Ask yourself honestly, and if not, why—through what attachment of yours, on account of what sin? And strive through sincere repentance to draw the Holy Spirit into your heart.

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O Christian man! Remember how great and wondrous a providence the Lord has shown toward your salvation, predestining to save you before the worlds were created, making His coming known through the prophets and through various righteous ones of the Old Testament. How He came to earth and fulfilled all His dispensation toward you, founded the Church with pastoral care and the Mysteries, gave it the saving word of grace upon grace, all the saving means to life and piety! Remember the sufferings for you of the Lord Jesus Christ, the death-dealing death on the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension into heaven and the promise to come again to earth in glory to judge the living and the dead. Tell me—what are you doing for your salvation? “For the kingdom of heaven” is taken by effort and those “who use effort” attain “it?” (Mt 11:12). Shame on yourself, repent, weep over your unbelief, your negligence, your dullness, your sloth, your vanity, your madness, and other passions, and quickly set about the work of your salvation. Read the Word of God, read how the saints, being subject to the same temptations as men, struggled.

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O renewing power of repentance, by God’s mercy! How great are God’s mercy and patience toward us sinners! Each day (pursuing repentance) we are renewed by the grace of repentance. In repentance the Lord grants the soul restoration. I am moved by the boundless compassion of God toward mankind. What boundlessly great a price He gave to the Heavenly Father for delivering man from Hell and eternal torment and for granting him holiness—as a ransom for us to God: He gave Himself, suffered and died for us! O lost drachma, created in the image of God, a soul! Bride of God! Child of God! “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5). Therefore we must suffer with Him and be crucified with Him so that we might live with Him.

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How holy, good, wise, eternal, and supremely blessed is God’s will toward us, men, and how we must constantly, with all our strength, strive to fulfill it for our own eternal and temporal well-being. And how sinful is our will, shortsighted, blind, erring, selfish, destructive, having in view only our own personal profit and gain. Do not forget that you have been corrupted in soul and body from youth, and humble yourself deeply and repent before God and give thanks that He has given you time for repentance and correction. O how much mercy the Lord has poured out upon you all the days of your life on earth! There is no counting them! Weep and give thanks.

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How many different passions, coldness and negligence about the soul and its eternal destiny beyond the grave, despair, murmuring, disobedience, and willfulness nest in the depths of our hearts—and how unclean we are before God, unworthy of Him almost every minute. We are worthy of Him only when we sincerely recognize our sins and weep over them, asking forgiveness and showing a firm resolve henceforth not to repeat sins, not to defile ourselves with them, not to enslave ourselves to them, but firmly to keep and fulfill God’s holy, righteous, and wise will.

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“Draw near to God, and” He “will draw near to you” (Jac 4:8). Through sin men have separated themselves from God, the Source of Life, and have given themselves to the Devil, the author of sin and of all evil and death. But by the power of the Crucified, even now signs and wonders of man’s salvation are wrought—for his sincere repentance, through which he becomes near to God or to the God-Man—in one Person, indivisibly and inseparably united.

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“He has filled the hungry with good things” (Lk 1:53). The deeper the repentance, the humility, the consciousness and feeling of one’s sins, the more abundantly is the grace of forgiveness poured out, the more blessings flow into the soul of man from the all-merciful Sovereign. Manasseh was the most lawless of the kings, but showed afterward great and deep repentance and was deemed worthy of great forgiveness and mercy from the Lord. Study closely the repentant prayer of Manasseh, king of Judah, how he humbled himself and repented; how he glorified the mercy and patience of God! His prayer is a model of repentance.