Precautions for One Who Has Entered the True Path. The Stirring of Life in Springtime. Why Many Who Have Fasted Do Not Amend Themselves Fully

Last time I indicated two or three small rules for you. Now I will indicate two or three small precautions.

The first: never think that you have already succeeded in something. Such is our infirmity that the moment any little good thing appears within us—we immediately cry out: “There it is, we have arrived!” Drive away such thoughts. For the good is never given all at once, and it is the enemy who suggests this. Give in to that suggestion, and your energy will immediately weaken—and then disorder is close at hand again. So as not to fall prey to this harmful thought, set yourself each day when you rise as though you were only just beginning to labor on this path for the very first time.

The second: on no account allow yourself indulgences. After a day or two of the labors of self-observation and self-compulsion, the enemy will approach and begin to buzz in your ears: “Come now, you have labored enough—give yourself a little ease.” This suggestion is so flattering that you will not at once think that you ought to resist it; and yet it is so malicious that the slightest yielding to it will throw everything within into turmoil. Allowing oneself a little ease is like a small hole in a dam. Once that little hole appears, the dam cannot be held—the water will inevitably break it apart. The same thing does indulgence within us: it scatters everything, so that the restoration of oneself must be begun all over again from the start. Fear this, therefore, as the most wicked of enemies—though it speaks with the sweetest of tongues.

Two occasions in particular lie ahead when you should be most on your guard against this. They are the time of Pascha and the spring. For during the Fast we all to some degree or another come to our senses. Why, then, do not all hold out afterward? Because some give themselves an indulgence at Pascha, and others after it—in the spring. At Pascha one thinks: it is a festive season, one may allow oneself a bit of freedom. Whoever heeds this thought is ruined in his good dispositions. For having allowed himself freedom, he afterwards no longer returns to restraining himself and begins as before to do ”the will of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph. 2:3).

Spring is a pleasant season, but how much harm it does in the moral respect! Have you observed how little lambs, when they are driven out onto the grass, leap and bleat and frolic? Why is this? Life is playing. People experience a similar stirring of life—not only the young, but the old as well. There is nothing sinful in this itself. It is an innocent feeling; but how people make use of it—that is not altogether without sin. The joy of life! Upon sensing it, one ought to thank the Lord that even on this earth, full of sorrow because of our sins, He has still left room for joy, so that we do not fall into despair. But what actually happens? They do not thank God; instead they set off to prolong this joy, they scatter themselves about and return to the old life. This joy, or this stirring of life, is pleasant, but it is entirely sensory and bodily, and the impulses it produces are likewise sensory and bodily. One wishes to look at what is pleasant to the eye, to hear what is pleasant to the ear, to smell what is pleasant to the nose, to breathe the open air, to let a pleasant breeze blow over one—in general, to multiply pleasant sensory impressions. Whoever follows these impulses will not stay within himself but will inevitably go outside; and then attentiveness to oneself ceases, thoughts, feelings, and desires begin to stir again and return to their former disorder. The thought of God departs, and inner peace is lost. The soul, tormented by conscience, says: “Tomorrow I will not act this way”—but tomorrow it is the same, and the day after tomorrow the same as well, and then one’s hands simply fall slack. Life will again go on “just as it goes.” All the fruit of the Great Lenten labors in the ordering of the soul will be lost. And all of this for the single reason that one was not a little more careful, did not know how to refuse the senses certain pleasures, and when some were admitted, did not take care to keep the inner life in due fear—being carried away by what is outward, and leaving the inner life without attention.

May the Lord preserve you from this! The anxious thought has already come to you: “What if I cannot hold fast?” If you truly cannot hold fast, whether you will return to such firm intentions—God knows. But know this: that having turned back, you will be far worse than you were before you began this new life. The Savior compares such backward relapses into disorder to the return to an abandoned house of the old demon—but not alone this time; he brings seven others with him. ”And the last state” — thus He concluded His parable — ”of that man becomes worse than the first” (Matt. 12:45).

May the Lord deliver you from this!

Having read this, do not say: “Ah, why did I ever begin!” No, no! Do not trouble yourself. You have resolved upon what is truly your duty—upon that manner of life in which alone you will be, as you first desired, keeping yourself at the level of human dignity. So do not abase your resolution, and do not offend the Lord by imagining that He will leave you alone. He is within you with His grace. But if the Lord is within you, who can be against you? (cf. Rom. 8:31). For ”greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Moreover, the life of attentiveness to oneself is not such that, while depriving one of certain consolations, it gives nothing in return. On the contrary, this life—with its remembrance of God and its following of one’s conscience—is in itself an inexhaustible source of spiritual joys, compared with which earthly joys are as wormwood beside honey. And from external things you will have to deprive yourself of very little. Everything must happen within. One may take part in everything outwardly while remaining inwardly a stranger to it all. Outwardly one thing is done, while inwardly something altogether different takes place.

So that is all (I mean the rules and precautions set forth in these two letters). Is there much here? There is nothing very much at all. And everything is so practicable and easy. And what fruit—what fruit! So take heart, and resolve ahead of time to hold yourself to what has been set down. Amen.