What to Do if Impassioned Thoughts and Desires Break Through Even While One is Struggling Against the Passions. The Cleansing of the Heart

May the mercy of God be with you!

I assume that you have taken up the work as you ought and are zealously striving always to remember the Lord, to attend to your heart, and that you pursue every unrighteous movement in it with hostile rejection, turning at the same time to the Lord in prayer for help. But together with this I cannot at all assume that the moment you began you achieved complete success: that all your thoughts are pure, your feelings and desires holy. For that is how it is with no one. Thoughts will become more peaceful; the passionate movements of feelings and desires will become increasingly rare. But they will still break through, and sometimes with great force.

They break through—drive them out; they break through again—drive them out again. But that is already given. Now I want only to tell you how you ought to relate to these breakthroughs in the judgment of conscience. Should you be indifferent to them, or should you grieve that such things happen, and repent of them before the Lord? One cannot be indifferent to these breakthroughs; rather, after each time you have driven them out, you must grieve and repent before the Lord that it was so. Even when passionate thoughts, feelings, and desires break through suddenly, without any participation of the will, they still signify that the heart is unclean, and that from it ”evil thoughts proceed” (Matt. 15:19). And you are obliged to have a pure heart. So grieve that the heart is unclean, and repent before the Lord of this impurity, promising to labor at cleansing it and begging Him for help in this. But in practice the will rarely goes unmixed in all of this. Through inattentiveness you gave place to a passionate thought, and it managed to give birth to a passionate feeling—you are at fault for not being attentive. Through that same inattentiveness, or even through delight in the feeling, you did not hasten to arm yourself against it and drive it away, and it managed to give birth to a passionate desire—you are at fault for not arming yourself at once, but allowing yourself to take pleasure in what is sinful and passionate. I do not suppose that you would allow the desire to generate an inclination toward an act, but in any case you may allow the desire to linger and not arm yourself against it immediately. And this makes you still more guilty. Thus: a bad thought was permitted—one fault; a bad feeling was allowed to be born from it—a second; a bad desire was allowed to arise from the bad feeling—a third; the bad desire was allowed to linger—a fourth. How many faults that is!

And do not conceal yourself—do not cover yourself with fig leaves, and do not hide in the bushes from the Lord, who approaches you in conscience and convicts you. Blame yourself quickly in everything and ask forgiveness, laying the blame on no one. If, for example, you grew angry at the housemaid, and all the more if you said sharp words to her, do not lay the blame on the housemaid. Let the housemaid have done wrong, but the matter here is not about her—it is about why you grew angry. Was it really impossible to correct the mistake without anger? And even if the mistake could not be corrected, in general everything can be managed without anger. Here anger broke through, there condemnation, there envy, there vanity. For all of this there were, of course, external occasions. But the occasions are not at fault—you are at fault for allowing such bad feelings. And please, without concealing yourself, blame yourself directly before the Lord and ask forgiveness. Do this every time that, having noticed something bad, you drive it away. Through this repentance and contrition you will be reconciled with the Lord and with your conscience, and you will be able once again to look calmly toward the Lord. But if you do not repent, you cannot look that way—and that will be heavy and dangerous for you.

Do not let such passionate breakthroughs go uncleansed by repentance until evening; cleanse them at once, as soon as you have driven them out in the name of the Lord. The entire day may pass for you in repentance, because at first these breakthroughs will not be infrequent. And in the evening, before prayer, review in their proper turn all the passionate breakthroughs once more, grieve over them again with contrition, and repent. This is the business of daily repentance. Here is another lesson from the venerable Hesychius on this. “We must attentively weigh our daily deeds every hour and must necessarily lighten their burden in the evening through repentance, if we wish with the help of Jesus to overcome the passions. We must also look whether we perform all our visible deeds according to God’s will, before God, and for God alone, so that the (passionate) feelings do not steal upon you like the unreasonable” (paragraph 124).

If you act according to what has been set forth with a merciless resolution toward yourself, you will soon see the fruit: your heart will be pacified, and joy in the Lord will shine within it. Why is the heart unpeaceful? Because the passions gnaw at it. Beat down the passions—and it will receive peace. One of the fathers likens the heart to a den full of serpents. These serpents are the passions. When something passionate shows itself from the heart—it is as when a serpent sticks its head out of the den. Strike it on the head with the name of the Lord, and it will hide. Another will show itself—strike that one too. Strike every one. If you have to strike such a serpent-passion some ten times, it will forget to stick its head out, or else it will die off altogether. In any case, if you block the den or give the serpents no food, they will all die. So too will the passions die off, if you give them no nourishment by sympathizing with their suggestions, but instead drive them away with anger as soon as they appear.

This is the shortest path to the cleansing of the heart from the passions. If you have come to love this purity, hasten toward it by this path, for there is no other. If you refuse to act in this way, the passions will remain in the heart. You may correct your outward conduct and make it blameless even without this, but the heart will remain passionate and will not allow you to behold the Lord. Do not forget the foolish virgins (Matt. 25:1–13)!

God help you! Save yourself!