How to Pass From Sensory Impressions to Moral and Edifying Lessons

When you see things beautiful in appearance and prized on earth, reflect that all of them are worthless, like some kind of refuse, in comparison with the beauties and riches of heaven, which you will undoubtedly receive after death if you despise the whole world.

Turning your gaze to the sun, reflect that your soul is brighter and more beautiful than the sun, if it stands in the grace of its Creator; and if it does not, then it is darker and more loathsome than the very darkness of the abyss.

Gazing with your physical eyes at the sky, direct the eyes of your soul to the highest, supracelestial heaven and cleave to it with your mind, for it is prepared as an eternal and blessed dwelling for you, if here on earth you live blamelessly and in holiness.

Hearing the trilling of birds in the trees in springtime and other melodious songs, lift your mind to the sweetest heavenly songs and reflect how there the echo of “Alleluia” and other angelic doxologies resounds without ceasing on every side, and pray to God that He may count you worthy to praise Him eternally together with those heavenly spirits, of whom it is written in the Apocalypse: ”and after these things I heard a great voice of many people in heaven, saying: Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God” (Rev. 19:1).

When you feel yourself drawn by someone’s beauty, call to mind that beneath this attractiveness lurks the infernal serpent, ready to kill you or at least to wound you, and say to him: “Ah, cursed serpent! So it is you who stand here like a thief, seeking to swallow me! A vain effort, for the Lord is my helper.” Then, turning to God, say: “Blessed are You, my God, who have revealed my hidden enemy to me and have ”not given me as a prey to his teeth” (Ps. 123:6).” And then take refuge, as in a saving shelter, in the wounds of Him who was crucified for us, devoting yourself to them, with the thought of how much our Lord endured in His most holy flesh in order to deliver you from sin and to plant in you a loathing for fleshly passions.

I will remind you of one more thing as a means for repelling the enticements of fleshly beauty, namely: when you fall under its power, hasten to plunge your mind well into the thought of what this being that so captivates you will be after death—a foul corruption, teeming with worms.

When you walk somewhere, with every step and every footfall reflect that in the same way your approach to the grave also advances. Likewise, seeing birds soaring in the air, or rivers swiftly rolling their waters, reflect that with even greater swiftness your life is flying, hastening toward its end.

When stormy winds arise and on the sky, covered with dark clouds, all-shaking thunder begins to roll and blinding flashes of lightning to blaze, then remember the awesome Day of Judgment and, bending your knees, bow down before the Lord your God and pray to Him that He would grant you time and grace to prepare well for a blameless standing before the face of His fearful majesty on that day.

When various unpleasantries befall you, do not forget even then to exercise your mind with edifying reflections about them and prompted by them; and above all, do this: rise to the contemplation of God’s all-governing will and strive to establish within yourself the conviction that for your good and your salvation the all-good wisdom and righteous will of God has graciously ordained that you should endure what you are enduring at this time, and to the degree that you endure it. Therefore in such cases, rejoicing in the love that God thereby shows you, and in the opportunity He gives you to show how willingly and lovingly you submit to His will in all that He is pleased to send you, say from the heart: “Behold, the will of God is being fulfilled in me—the will by which from eternity, out of love for me, He ordained that I should endure this present unpleasantness, or sorrow, or loss, or injustice. Blessed be the name of my most gracious Master.”

When a good thought comes to your mind, turn to God and, recognizing that it was sent by Him, give Him thanks.

When you are occupied with reading the Word of God, imagine that God is secretly present beneath every word, and receive each word as though it were coming forth from His Divine lips.

If, while the sun reigns in the sky, you see darkness approaching and dimming its light, as happens during eclipses, be saddened and pray to God that He would not permit you to fall into outer darkness.

When you gaze upon the cross, keep in mind that it is the banner of our spiritual warfare, in which is hidden an all-conquering power, and that if you withdraw from it you will be handed over to your enemies, but if you remain beneath it you will reach heaven and enter it in glorious triumph.

When you see an icon of the Most Holy Mother of God, turn your heart to Her, the Queen of Heaven, and give Her thanks that She showed such readiness to submit to the will of God, that She gave birth to, nursed, and raised the Redeemer of the world, and that in our unseen warfare Her intercession and help to us never fails.

Icons of the saints should bring to your mind how many intercessors you have before God, who are always praying for you, and how many fellow combatants you have in your unceasing warfare—those who themselves fought courageously throughout their whole lives against the enemies and prevailed over them, and who have opened and shown you the field of battle; having run through it with their help, you too will be crowned with the crowns of victory in the eternal glory of heaven.

When you see a church, among other saving reflections recall also this: that your soul is likewise a temple of God, as it is written, ”you… are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), and that therefore you must keep it pure and undefiled.

Every time you hear the church bell, call to mind the archangel’s greeting: “Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos,” and rouse within yourself the following thoughts and feelings: give thanks to God for sending from heaven to earth this good news, which became the beginning of the ordering of our salvation; enter into rejoicing with the Ever-Virgin over that supernatural greatness to which She was raised by Her most profound humility; together with Her, the most blessed Mother, and the Archangel Gabriel, bow down before the Divine Fruit, who was conceived at that very moment in Her most holy womb. You will do well if you repeat Her song fairly often throughout the day, accompanying it with the feelings described above; but to repeat it three times—in the morning, in the evening, and at noon—make it your inviolable rule.

And I will say to you briefly: be always watchful and attentive with respect to your senses, and never allow what you receive through them to arouse and feed your passions; on the contrary, make such use of what you perceive that it does not turn you even a hair’s breadth from your resolution to show yourself pleasing to God, or standing in His will, always and in all things. To achieve this, besides the previously described lifting of the mind from the sensory to the spiritual, what can help most is the little rule spoken of in the first chapters—to be carried away by nothing immediately and to be repelled by nothing immediately, but by firm and strict reasoning to determine how in each given case one ought to relate to the impressions of the senses, so that this may accord with the will of God as known to us from His commandments.

I will also tell you, for your information, that the methods I have laid out here—how to turn the use of the senses toward spiritual benefit—have not been laid out for you so that you should exercise yourself in this without ceasing. No; without ceasing you must, having gathered all your mind into the heart, remain there with the Lord, having Him both as guide and as helper in overcoming enemies and passions—now by simple interior resistance to them, now by deeds of virtue that are opposed to them. What I have said has been said so that you may know it and make use of it when necessary. Nevertheless, to cover all that is sensory around us with a certain spiritual veil is, beyond any doubt, very beneficial for the purposes of our warfare.