How the Devil Keeps Sinners in the Slavery of Sin

When the devil holds someone in slavery to sin, his chief concern is to darken that person more and more with spiritual blindness, driving away from him every good thought that might bring him to an awareness of the destructiveness of his life. He not only drives away the good thoughts that could move him to repentance and turn him to the path of virtue, but in their place inserts evil and corrupt thoughts, and at the same time arranges convenient occasions for that person’s habitual sin and draws him to fall into it frequently—or into other, more grievous sins. As a result, the poor sinner becomes ever more darkened and blinded. This blindness roots in him a habit and a ceaseless urge to sin and go on sinning, so that he, the wretch, driven from sinful acts to greater blindness and from blindness into greater sins, spins as in a whirlpool—and will spin thus for his whole life until the very moment of death, unless some special grace of God intervenes to save him.

One who is in such a wretched condition, if he desires to be delivered from it, must without delay—the very moment a good thought comes to him, or rather an inner prompting calling him from darkness to light and from sin to virtue—receive it at once with full attention and willingness, and at once set eagerly to work, crying from the depths of his heart to the merciful Giver of every good: “Help me, O Lord my God; help me quickly and do not leave me any longer in this darkness of sin.” Let him be untiring in crying out in these or some other words; and at the same time let him seek earthly help as well, turning to those who know the matter for counsel and guidance on how most effectively to free himself from the oppressive bonds of sinful slavery. If this cannot be done immediately, let him do it as soon as the opportunity arises, without ceasing to turn to the Lord Jesus who was crucified for us, and to His most pure Mother, the Ever-Virgin Theotokos, begging them in their compassion to have mercy on him and not withhold from him the swift and proper help. Let him know that in this promptness and readiness to follow the good prompting without delay lies his victory and the overcoming of the enemy.