Warning Against the Devil’s Evil Counsel Under the Guise of Good

When the crafty devil sees that we are traveling the path of the virtues rightly, with living zeal and in good order—and fails to draw us away to his side through overt temptations to evil—he transforms himself into an angel of light, and then through seemingly good thoughts, or through passages of Holy Scripture, or through examples of the saints, he untimely and beyond our strength urges the taking up of immoderate ascetic labors for spiritual perfection—so that when we imagine we stand at the summit, he may cast us into the abyss of ruin. Thus he teaches one to exhaustingly afflict his body through fasting, scourging, sleeping on bare ground, and other such mortifications of the flesh—intending that he should either fall into pride, imagining he performs great deeds, or fall ill from extreme exhaustion and become incapable of fulfilling even minor acts of piety, or grow weary under the weight of the ascetic labors and become indifferent to all spiritual activities and even to salvation itself, and thus, having little by little grown cold toward good, throw himself with stronger desire than before upon fleshly pleasures and worldly delights.

And how many souls have already perished through this cunning of the enemy—souls that, giving way to the impetus of foolish zeal and, in their self-mortifications, exceeding the measure of their own strength, were ruined by their self-devised ascetic schemes and became a laughingstock for the evil demons! None of this would have happened to them if they had held to sound discernment and counsel and had not forgotten that these self-mortifying labors, although praiseworthy and fruitful where sufficient bodily strength and humility of soul are present, must always be governed by prudence and employed only as a means to spiritual progress—not elevated to the rank of ends—and must at times be diminished, at times increased, at times altered, and at times altogether suspended for a season.

Those who cannot live so strictly and undertake such labors as the saints may imitate their life in another way—namely, by stirring up and implanting good dispositions in the heart, by practicing warm prayer, by the unrelenting overcoming of passionate thoughts and desires, by keeping purity of heart, by love of silence and solitude, by humility and meekness before all, by doing good to those from whom one has suffered something, and by guarding oneself from all that is wrong, even when it is insignificant. Such virtues of the heart are more pleasing to God than immoderate labors of bodily mortification, when those are not required by our moral condition.

Then I counsel you, in undertaking such bodily labors when they are truly needed, to act with discernment. Do not take on higher measures, but begin with lower ones; for it is better to ascend gradually than to take on what is high all at once and then be obliged to come back down, to your own shame. But I also counsel you to avoid the other extreme, into which men who are considered spiritual sometimes fall. Being governed by self-indulgence and self-pity, they display too great a concern for the preservation of their bodily health and become such zealous guardians of it that at the encounter of the smallest labor or deprivation they tremble, afraid of losing their health; and there is nothing they think about so much, nothing they speak of with such pleasure, as the preservation of their life. Yet, in devising for themselves delicate foods that satisfy their pleasure-seeking taste more than they are healthful, they weaken and often undermine their own health—depriving themselves of what they count their great good, through the inability to employ the proper means for attaining it.

Although they put forward as their motive a desire to serve the Lord in the best possible way, in reality this is nothing other than an attempt to reconcile two irreconcilable enemies—spirit and flesh—not only without any benefit to either, but, on the contrary, with evident harm to both; for by this the body loses its health and the spirit loses its saving disposition. Therefore, a moderate manner of life governed by prudence is safer and more beneficial for both body and soul—one that takes into account both the needs of the soul and the particular constitution and state of health of the body, for in this regard there is not one measure for all, though for all there is one law: to keep the body in the service of the spirit. Recall also what was already said earlier, that in acquiring not only bodily virtues but also spiritual ones, it is necessary to observe gradualness, ascending in them little by little.