How the Enemy Keeps in His Snares Those Who Have Recognized Their Wretched State and Wish to Be Freed From It Yet Do Not Set to Work. And Why Our Good Intentions Often Come to Nothing

Those who have recognized the wickedness and wretchedness of the life they are living, the enemy most often succeeds in keeping in his power by a simple yet all-powerful suggestion: “Later, later; tomorrow, tomorrow.” And the poor sinner, deceived by the appearance of goodwill that such a suggestion presents, resolves: “Indeed, tomorrow; today I will finish my business and then, with complete freedom from care, I will commit myself into the hands of God’s grace and follow without wavering the path of the spiritual life; today I will do this and that, and tomorrow I will repent.” This is the enemy’s snare, my brother, by which he catches very many—a great many indeed—and holds the whole world in his hands. The reason this snare so easily encircles us is our sloth and blindness. Nothing but sloth and blindness can explain why, in a matter of such importance—one on which our entire salvation and all the glory of God depends—we fail to take up at once the simplest and easiest thing: to say to ourselves with full resolution and energy, “Now! I will begin the spiritual life now, and not later; I will repent today, and not tomorrow. ‘Today’ and ‘now’ are in my hands, but ‘tomorrow’ and ‘later’ are in God’s hands. And even if it please the Lord to grant me tomorrow and later, can I be certain that tomorrow this same good and urgent thought about reforming my life will come to me again?” Besides, what folly it would be to say, for example, when a certain cure for an illness is offered: “Wait—let me be sick a little longer”? And yet one who postpones the work of salvation resembles exactly such a person.

Therefore, if you wish to be delivered from the enemy’s deception and to defeat him, take up at once the reliable weapon against him—at once obey in deed the good thoughts and God’s promptings calling you to repentance; allow not the slightest delay, and do not permit yourself to say, “I have formed a firm intention to repent a little later and will not depart from this intention.” No, no—do not do this. Such resolutions have always proved deceptive, and very many people, having relied upon them, have remained unrepentant until the end of their lives for various reasons.

1) The first reason is that our own resolutions are not grounded in distrust of ourselves and in firm hope in God. Therefore we are not free from proud self-opinion, the inevitable consequence of which is always the withdrawal from us of God’s gracious help and, together with that, unavoidable failure. For this reason, one who resolves within himself, “Tomorrow I will certainly leave the path of sin,” always encounters the opposite—not a rising but a worse fall, and then fall after fall. God sometimes permits this providentially, in order to bring the self-reliant person to awareness of his weakness and to urge him to seek God’s help—the one reliable help—rejecting and trampling every hope in himself. Do you wish to know, O man, when your own resolutions will be strong and reliable? When you hold no hope in yourself and when they are grounded in humility and firm hope in God alone.

2) The second reason is that with such resolutions the mind is fixed primarily on the beauty and radiance of virtue, and it is this that draws the will—however weak and feeble it may be; naturally, the difficult side of virtue escapes attention in the process. But today it escapes attention because the desire for virtue’s beauty powerfully draws the will; tomorrow, however, when the usual affairs and concerns have intervened, that desire will no longer be so strong, though the resolution taken is still remembered. With a weakened desire the will also weakens or falls back into its natural feebleness, and at the same time the difficult side of virtue comes forward and stands before one’s eyes—for the path of virtue is by its very nature difficult, and it is most difficult at the first step. Let the person who yesterday resolved to enter that path today actually try to approach it: he will find in himself no support whatsoever for fulfilling this resolve. The desire is not intense, the will has weakened, and before him lie only obstacles—within himself, in the usual order of his life, and in his habitual dealings with others. He resolves: I will wait a while, gather my strength—and so he goes on waiting day after day, and it would not be surprising if he waits his entire life. But had he set to work the day before, the very moment the inspiring desire to reform arose, had he done something or other in response to that desire and introduced something into his life in its spirit—today both the desire and the will would not have been so feeble as to retreat before obstacles. Obstacles are unavoidable, but having a support within himself, he would have overcome them, though with difficulty. Had he spent the whole day overcoming them, the next day they would have been far less keenly felt, and on the third day less still. Further and further along—and he would have established himself on the good path.

3) The third reason is that good awakenings from the sleep of sin not only are reluctant to return once they have been left unfulfilled, but when they do return they no longer produce the same effect upon the will that they produced the first time; the will does not incline so readily to follow them, and consequently any resolution toward that end, if it appears at all, is weak and lacking in energy. But if a person was able to postpone a stronger impulse until tomorrow and then lose it entirely, he will do the same all the more easily with a second impulse, and still more easily with a third. And so on: the more often the fulfillment of good impulses is postponed, the weaker their effect becomes; eventually they become entirely without effect, coming and going without leaving a trace; and finally they cease to come at all. The person gives himself over to his fallen state; his heart hardens and begins to feel aversion to good impulses. Thus procrastination becomes the direct path to ultimate destruction.

I will note further that procrastination occurs not only when one feels an inward urge to change an evil life for a good one, but also when one is already living a proper life—specifically, when an opportunity presents itself to do good and one postpones it until tomorrow, or indefinitely until some other time. To this second kind of procrastination everything said about the first kind applies, and the consequences may be similarly grave. Know that one who lets pass an opportunity to do good not only loses the fruit of the good he might have done, but also offends God. God sends a person in need to him, and he says, “Go away—later.” Though he says this to a human being, it is the same as saying it to God who sent him. God will find another benefactor for the needy person—but the one who refused is not without answer.