How the Soldier of Christ Should Prepare Himself for Battle in the Morning

As soon as you wake in the morning and have prayed a little—saying: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me—your first proper task is to enclose yourself, as it were in a certain place or arena, within your own heart. Having settled there, then raise yourself to the awareness and feeling that at your left already stands that enemy of yours and that passionate impulse with which you are at that time in conflict, ready to attack you at once—and as a result rouse within yourself the resolve either to conquer or to die, but not to yield. Recognize also that at your right, invisibly present, stands your victorious Commander-in-chief, our Lord Jesus Christ, together with his most holy Mother and a multitude of holy angels with the Archangel Michael at their head, ready to help you—and as a result be filled with good courage.

Then the prince of the underworld, the devil with his hordes of demons, will rise against you and begin to inflame the passionate impulse within you, also urging you with various flattering promises to your self-gratification to cease struggling against this passion and to submit to it, assuring you that this will be better and more peaceful. But heed yourself—at the same time you should hear a warning and encouraging voice from the right side, which your guardian angel will not fail to suggest to you on behalf of all who stand at your right hand, saying: “Now a battle lies before you with your passion and your other enemies. Do not be dismayed, do not be afraid, and do not flee from this fear away from the field of battle. For the Lord Jesus himself, your Commander-in-chief, stands close at hand, surrounded by thousands and hundreds of the Bodiless ones and all the hosts of holy angels, ready to fight alongside you against your enemies and not to allow them to overcome and defeat you, as is promised: ’The Lord will fight for you’ (Exod. 14:14).” Therefore stand firm, compel yourself not to give in, and strain with all your might to endure this trial that has come upon you—crying from the depths of your heart: ”Do not give me over to the will of those who trouble me” (Ps. 26:12). Cry out to your Lord, to the Lady Theotokos, to all the angels and saints. Help will come and you will conquer, for it is written: ”I write to you, young men,” — emboldened and zealous warriors — ”because you have overcome the evil one” (1 Jn. 2:13). Though you are weak and bound by evil habits, and your enemies are strong and numerous, yet far greater is the help prepared for you by the one who created and redeemed you, and incomparably stronger than all is God your Defender in this warfare, as it is written: ”The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle” (Ps. 23:8)—who moreover has a far greater desire to save you than your enemy has to destroy you. Therefore fight, and never be wearied by the labor of this warfare. For it is by this labor, by this self-compulsion and merciless tearing of oneself away from sinful habits despite the pain, that victory is acquired and that great treasure is stored up with which the Kingdom of Heaven is purchased—and for the sake of which the soul is united with God forever.

So each day begin from morning, in the name of God, the battle against your enemies, armed with distrust of yourself and bold hope in God, with prayer and merciless compulsion of yourself to the fitting labors and spiritual struggles—and above all with the weapon of the prayer of mind and heart: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me! This awesome Name, like a two-edged sword, when wielded in the heart, wounds and drives away demons and passions. Hence John of the Ladder said: “With the name of the Lord Jesus, scourge your adversaries.” We shall speak of this prayer further on, in a special chapter. With such weapons, I say, strike the enemy, that passion, and that evil desire which is assailing you, in the order I indicated in chapter 13—namely, first by resisting the passion, then by hating it, and finally by acts of the virtue opposed to it—performing all of this, as it were, in an atmosphere of prayer. Acting thus, you will be doing a work pleasing to your God, Who, together with the whole Church triumphant in Heaven, stands invisibly watching your combat.

If such combat is laborious and wearying, do not grieve and do not give up, reflecting, on the one hand, that we have a duty to serve and to please our God, and on the other, that as was said above, we inevitably must do battle if we wish to live—for as soon as we cease to fight, we shall at once be struck down mortally. Do not let the enemy deceive you with the suggestion: “Yield just for one hour.” Suppose it is only for one hour. But what will you become if you step back from life according to God and give yourself over to the world and its pleasures and fleshly delights? An apostate from God—and to become such even for one hour, let alone for a single moment, is terrible. Besides, is it ever a simple matter that this should last only one hour? Will not hour follow hour in that God-opposing life, and then day follow day, and year follow year? And then what? If the Lord in His mercy still grants you to come to yourself, to rise up from that diabolical snare and awaken from the sleep of sin, you will nevertheless have to enter the very combat from which you now flee in search of an easy life—with the sole difference that then it will be incomparably more burdensome, sharper, and more painful for you, and what is more, far less fruitful.

But if the Lord should leave you in the hands of your own will and your enemies, what then? I will not repeat myself; I will only say: recall—for who does not know this? After a life in the tormenting bonds of evil passions, sometimes in the intoxication of sensuality, but always without true joys, the hour of death will suddenly overtake you—a terrifyingly agonizing state of the soul that even the word of God could not fully describe, but only said: then they will cry out, ”mountains… fall on us” (Rev. 6:16). This cry, which begins at the hour of death, will go on ceaselessly throughout the entire time after death until the end of the world, and will be heard at the moment when the Dread Judgment arrives—and always in vain. Do not be so foolish as to knowingly cast yourself into eternal hellish torments by fleeing the momentary labors and struggles of ascetic life. But as a prudent man—and, I will say it plainly, a calculating one—better now take on the brief labors and pains of the spiritual struggle, so that by conquering your adversaries you may receive the crown and be united with God both here and there, in the Kingdom of Heaven.