How the Enemy Turns the Very Virtues Against Their Practitioners

But suppose you are steadfastly and consistently walking the path of virtue, turning neither to the right nor to the left—do not think the enemy will leave you alone. No—you have already heard what I quoted from St. John Climacus: that the enemy, when he sees that all his attempts to lead you into evil have failed, follows softly in your steps and praises you as one who lives in all things according to God’s will. This is his final temptation. The enemy’s flattery of us echoes within us as self-conceit, self-satisfaction, and complacency; from these spring vainglory and pride—vainglory consuming all the value of our deeds, if any are good, while pride makes us repugnant to God. Therefore take heed and repel these enemy flatteries with all your might, not allowing them to reach the heart, but driving them back from the very first moment they touch the hearing of your soul.

To avoid being struck by the danger that threatens you from this, always keep your mind gathered in your heart and be always ready to repel these enemy arrows. Standing there within, like a commander in the midst of a battlefield, choose a position convenient for battle and, having fortified it as it should be, never abandon it—take cover there and wage war from there. That position, its fortification, and its armament are a sincere and deep awareness of your own nothingness: that you are poor, blind, and naked, and rich only in weaknesses, failings, and unworthy deeds—unreasonable, vain, and sinful. Having established yourself thus, never permit your mind to go outside this stronghold—and especially refrain from wandering through what seem to you your own fruitful fields and gardens, that is, your good deeds. If you hold yourself in this way, the arrows of the enemy’s deadly flattery will not reach you; and if one does fall near you, you will immediately see it, repel it, and throw it out.

But just as soldiers sitting in a fortress do not spend their time in idleness but exercise themselves in military tactics and reinforce and strengthen their fortifications, so do likewise as you take cover in an awareness of your own nothingness. Namely, do this: however carefully the mind is held, it will keep straying; and it is not surprising that in these wanderings it may stumble upon your seemingly good deeds. The moment it stumbles upon them, the enemy immediately seizes it and strikes it with self-conceit—and in such a way that the mind willingly sides with the enemy, and when it returns to you it begins to pull you in that direction as well. The moment you notice this, call your mind to you and say to it: Listen, mind! You are telling me this is good and that is not bad. Perhaps so; but what then does this mean for me? You were surely about to praise me. Very well—praise me, I am listening. But know that justice requires you to praise me only for what you find in me and in my deeds that is properly mine; but what is in me from God and from His grace ought to be gratefully and praisefully referred back to its Source. Let us now sort out what belongs to you and me as our own, and what belongs to God; what is God’s we will set aside on God’s portion, and what is ours we will leave with ourselves. Then, whatever remains with us—if anything at all remains—by that we will determine our worth and merit and praise ourselves for it.

So let us begin. Let us look back to the time before our existence: what were we then? Nothing—and we could do nothing for which the Source of all being might, as a reward, have been pleased to grant us existence. Existence is an unconditional gift to us from God, a divine benefaction, the beginning and field of all the subsequent benefactions of His boundless goodness. Let us therefore set it aside on God’s portion. Then we began to live. How? We ourselves do not know. Many years passed in which you and I did not even know we existed—yet we did exist; and even when we came to know this, we could do nothing to sustain our own life. Other hands cared for us, and not of their own accord, but by the ordering of the Ordainer of all life and being. We were raised, educated, set on our feet. Nothing there was ours—set it all aside.

Then we began to live on our own. What there is ours? Let us separate out the vital forces and the means of existence that surround us. They are not ours—they are God’s gift.

God’s gift is the immediate knowledge of God; God’s gift is conscience; God’s gift is the thirst for heavenly life. These three constitute the spirit of our life, drawing us upward. You, my mind, are not mine—God has given you to me as a gift. The active powers in me are not mine, either—the will with all its energy. Not mine is feeling, capable of finding delight in life and in all that surrounds me. Not mine is the body with all its functions and needs, which determine our bodily well-being. All of this God has given. And I myself am not my own—I belong to God. Having given me existence, God clothed me in the complex of enumerated vital powers and, having granted me consciousness and freedom, appointed me to govern everything within me according to the dignity of each part of my being. In all this there are no grounds for self-glorification, but rather incentives to recognize the greatness and weight of the duty that rests upon you and me, and to fear the answer that awaits us to the question: what have we done with ourselves and with what was given to us?

Let us now turn to the means of life. There is in us a bodily life, a soul life, and a spiritual life. Each requires its own means, and we have all of them at hand—yet none of them is the fruit of our own acquisition; all are God’s gift. Air, fire, water, the earth with all its treasures—elements, stones, metals, plants, and animals—which supply us with everything needed for nourishment, clothing, and shelter: these were not arranged by us but were given. The sum of the concepts necessary for us about everything that surrounds us, the patterns of everyday, social, and civic life, the arts and crafts, and the rules for acting in all these spheres—we find these ready-made, without having to rack our brains to devise them, but merely assimilating them. Each person who comes into the world receives them as an inheritance from his forebears. And where did all of this come from among the forebears? God sends people with special gifts and special strength of will, and they make new discoveries and improve human life. But if you were to ask these discoverers how they arrived at this or that, they would say: we do not know ourselves—it came to mind, it developed, it was built and took shape. So it has always been, and so it will be until the end of the age: the means of soul-life are not ours but are given. This is all the more true of the spiritual-moral-religious life. God placed within the soul a knowledge of Himself in the mind and of His will in the conscience, overshadowing both with the expectation of an eternally blessed life. This is the seed of spiritual life. It has been sown in us and received at the moment God breathed His divine spark of life into us. Everyone, at birth, brings with him and within him this seed, which then develops and receives its definiteness from the surrounding human environment. What an indescribably great blessing it is to be born among those who live the true spiritual life! But look at yourself. We have knowledge of the one true God, worshiped in Trinity; we confess the Son of God, who was incarnate for our sake and arranged all things for our salvation; we believe also in the Holy Spirit, who by His grace gives us life and effectively re-creates in us the spiritual life; and being grafted onto the Church of God, we receive in her all that is needed to preserve and raise the spiritual life, and are enlivened by the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. All of this we have in the purest and unmixed form, and it is not from us—it is God’s gift. So you see how richly you are surrounded with means for the life proper to you—a life that is all-encompassing—and not one of them is the fruit of your own efforts; all have been given to you. You are called to a feast of life that is already prepared. If it is fitting for you and me to boast of anything in this regard, it can only be in how we have made use of all this. That, when it is strong within us, is our wedding garment. Should we take pride in it? Should we not rather be fearful that the merciful Arranger of the feast, when He comes, might say to us: You see what a feast it is! But what about your garment?!

Let us now look more carefully at this garment as well. The garment of the soul consists primarily of moral-religious dispositions and feelings that are rooted in it—not in deeds alone. But since these are hidden, they rarely occasion vainglory and pride; whereas deeds, being visible, force themselves upon the eye and seem to impel the doer involuntarily to admire himself and to praise himself within, while witnesses of his deeds praise him openly—which further strengthens and deepens the self-admiration and the blowing of one’s own trumpet. So then, let us examine our deeds to see whether there is in them, and what there is, about which one might boast without objection.

Let us remember that one can boast only of what proceeds directly from our own free will and is accomplished by us independently of anything else. But observe how our deeds actually come about. How do they arise? Circumstances come together and lead toward one deed or another; or sometimes a thought comes to do something—and we do it. But the convergence of circumstances is not from us, and the arising of a thought to do something likewise, as is evident, is not ours: someone places the thought in us. Thus the beginning or origin of the thought to do something in such cases cannot, and should not, be the object of self-praise. And how many of our deeds are of this kind? If we examine honestly—nearly all, without exception. So there is nothing to boast about.

If anything can be boasted of, it is only what we could have left undone yet did. For however strong the inward and outward promptings toward deeds may be, the decision to act is always a matter of our free will. But even here, the decision to do good is not always of good quality. It is of good quality when it is made in awareness of God’s will regarding this or that deed, and out of submission to that will. Whenever something extraneous enters—something self-serving or people-pleasing—the quality of the decision in such a case becomes dim and clouded. Sometimes we decide out of fear of what people will say if we do not act; sometimes in expectation of some satisfaction or benefit from the deed, now or later; and sometimes simply because there is no alternative—we would rather not, but it must be done. All such deeds cannot stand in the rank of purely good deeds, and though they appear praiseworthy outwardly, by their inner worth before God and conscience they do not merit praise. Let us now consider how many of our deeds are of this kind? And again it must be acknowledged: nearly all, without exception. Again, it turns out, there is nothing to boast about.

Thus our good deeds, if we examine them rigorously, will not permit us to open our mouths to praise ourselves before others or to blow our trumpets within ourselves before our own selves. And if we further call to mind all our unworthy deeds—empty, vain, useless, harmful, lawless, God-opposing—of which there will certainly be no small number, what then ought we to feel? Someone might say: weigh both sides and judge yourself according to whichever outweighs the other. But this kind of reckoning is inappropriate here. Deeds proceed from within. If there are bad deeds, it means our inner state is not in good order; and it is this inner state that determines our worth before God—the most essential worth. If the inner state cannot be approved, then the whole person is unworthy of approval.

I will add one more thing: all the deeds we visibly perform in the family, in society, and in our service constitute our conduct. If we look around, we cannot help but say that in general our conduct is for the most part proper. But whether our inner life is equally proper—this we cannot assert. The eyes of those around us exert a powerful pressure on our intentions. These witnesses compel us not to let the evil that arises in the heart take its course: we restrain ourselves from evil—and our conduct appears proper. Were they not there, our conduct would look quite different. And it often does look quite different whenever we are confident that no foreign eye will see us. It happens with some people that as soon as their external circumstances change and they are able to live more freely, everything that had previously been concealed from fear of others’ eyes bursts out—and a previously proper person turns out to be a drunkard, a libertine, even a thief. All these evil impulses did not arise just now. They were there, but had no outlet; now they have obtained freedom and have manifested themselves. But if all this was only within, then the whole person was such all along—a drunkard, a libertine, a thief—despite an outward appearance to the contrary. Examine yourself well: do you not also belong to this category, at least to some degree? If you do—even in some measure—then you have no right to boast and to accept praise.

I will conclude: if, following the example of all that has now been said, you examine your life more frequently, then when the enemy begins to trumpet in your ears how good you are, that trumpeting will find no echo within you of self-satisfaction and self-approval, but on the contrary, it will be repelled each time by the most humble and self-abasing thoughts and feelings.