How the Enemy Diverts One From Good Deeds and Corrupts Them

The wiles of the enemy described above disrupt the whole of the good life. Against one who, having withstood them, continues steadfastly on the good path, the enemy constructs different wiles and different stumbling blocks. Here he does not arm himself against the whole of life, but acts piecemeal, against each particular deed that a good Christian begins and carries out for God’s sake.

From the moment our eyes open in the morning after sleep to the moment they close again at night, we are surrounded by deeds that follow upon one another without pause, leaving not a single empty moment—if we are attentive to ourselves and are not afflicted by sloth and negligence. And in this regard not only the work of prayerfully directing the heart to God, not only our proper duties in our dealings with others in righteousness and love, not only the work of ordering the balance within ourselves between body and soul in acts of self-mortification, but even our everyday and civic affairs must all be directed toward the working out of our salvation, with strict attention, vigilance, and zeal. God helps those who are zealous in this, directing everything rightly, cooperating with them by His grace, with the guardianship of angels and the prayers of the saints. But the enemy does not sleep. He lurks beside every deed and busies himself to see whether he can somehow muddy the course of our affairs and, instead of what is proper, draw or knock us toward what is improper: at times he rushes to hinder the very beginning of our deeds; at times, when they have been begun, he tries to cut off their course; at times, when he cannot succeed in this, he labors to make their fulfillment and completion worthless; and when he is put to shame in this as well, he cunningly contrives to rob them of all value before God by arousing vainglory and self-conceit.

St. John Climacus speaks of this as follows: “In all our actions by which we try to please God, demons dig three pits for us: first, they fight to hinder our good work; second, when they are defeated in this first attempt, they try to ensure that what is done is not done for God’s sake; and if those thieves do not succeed in this plot either, then quietly approaching our soul, they praise us as those who live in all things according to God’s will. The first temptation is resisted by burning zeal and the remembrance of death, the second by obedience and humiliation, and the third by constant self-reproach. ’This is a labor before us until the time when we enter the sanctuary’ and that divine fire enters our sanctuary (Ps. 73:16-17). Then the violence of evil habits will no longer be in us, for ’our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb. 12:29)—consuming every igniting and movement of lust, every evil habit, every hardening and darkening of the inner and outer, of the visible and the mental” (Step 26, 8).

No pen can describe everything that happens in this connection. Be attentive to yourself, keeping in mind one single measure—to please God alone in everything, great and small; and life itself will teach you to see clearly and discern the enemy’s wiles. I will, however, offer you two or three examples of the kinds of disturbances the enemy raises in our soul, in order to ruin our deeds when they must continue for a set period of time.

When, for example, a sick person has resolved to bear his illness with serenity and is bearing it, the enemy—knowing that in this way the person will become established in the virtue of patience—moves to disrupt this good disposition. To this end he begins to bring to the person’s mind many good deeds he could perform if he were in a different situation, and tries to convince him that if he were healthy, how well he could serve God and how much benefit he could bring to himself and to others: he could attend church, engage in edifying conversations, read and write for the edification of his neighbors, and the like. Noticing that such thoughts are being received, the enemy brings them to mind more and more often, multiplies and embellishes them, brings them down to the level of feeling, evokes desires and stirrings toward those activities—representing how well this or that work would go—and arouses pity that he is bound hand and foot by illness. Gradually, with frequent repetition of such thoughts and movements in the soul, the pity turns into dissatisfaction and irritation. The former serene patience is thus disrupted, and the illness now appears not as a medicine from God and an arena for the virtue of patience, but as something hostile to the work of salvation; the desire to be freed from it becomes irresistible, ostensibly in order to gain through that freedom more room for doing good and pleasing God in every way. Having brought matters to this point, the enemy steals from his mind and heart this noble goal of the desire for recovery and, leaving only the desire for health, causes him to look with irritation upon the illness—not as a hindrance to good, but as something hostile in itself. From this, impatience—unchecked by good thoughts—gains strength and turns into grumbling, and it robs the sick person of the former peace he had from serene endurance. And the enemy rejoices that he has succeeded in disrupting him. In exactly the same way the enemy disrupts the poor person who is patiently bearing his lot, painting for him what good deeds he could perform if he had means.

In a similar way, the enemy frequently disrupts those who are engaged in the work of obedience in a monastery or under some elder, managing to convince them that by remaining in this manner of life they will not soon reach the perfection they desire, and inflaming in them a longing for seclusion or life in the wilderness. And it often happens that they follow these suggestions of his. But having attained this, they surrender there in solitude to negligence and lose what had previously been acquired with effort in the life of obedience.

And the reverse also happens: the enemy succeeds in driving someone out of solitude and seclusion by convincing him that he is sitting there without any benefit to himself or others, whereas in a monastery beneficial deeds would flow abundantly like a river day and night. But when the one who listened makes the move to the monastery, he fails to accomplish the good works he had hoped for, and quickly spends what he had acquired in the wilderness, ending up with nothing.

And there are many other similar cases in which the enemy succeeds in diverting a person from one kind of activity by enticing him toward another, supposedly more beneficial one, and disrupting both.

From all such temptations one who has an experienced guide, counselor, and companion is easily delivered if he follows their direction with humble submission. But one who is deprived, for whatever reason, of this blessing must be attentive to himself and learn rigorously to distinguish good from evil by the Christian principles that ought to govern all our lives. If the circumstances that seem, as we suppose, to prevent us from extending our activity in good works are not of our own choosing but are sent by God, accept them with submission and do not heed any suggestion that would draw you away from such submission. In sending such a circumstance, God expects nothing from you except that you hold yourself and act as that circumstance—which has come upon you—requires and allows. Whether you are sick or poor, endure. Nothing but endurance is required of you by God. By enduring with serenity you will be continuously engaged in a good work. Whenever God looks upon you, He will see that you are doing good, or abiding in good, if you are enduring with serenity—whereas for the healthy person good works come only at intervals. Therefore, in desiring a change of your situation, you would be desiring to exchange the better for the worse.

But if the circumstantial situation in which you find yourself—one which you suppose is limiting the scope of the good deeds possible for you—depended on your own will, then since you presumably chose it not without deliberation, hold to that deliberation; do not allow your thoughts to wander through various possibilities, but direct and fix all your attention on the one thing that lies before you in your situation, and calmly perform the deeds bound up with it, in full confidence that if you are devoting them all to God and not to self-pleasing, they do not fill all your time in vain and are accepted by God as a fully sufficient offering from you. And remain at peace.