Watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, as I have said, mutually reinforce each other, for close attentiveness goes with constant prayer, while prayer goes with close watchfulness and attentiveness of intellect.
I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'
Whenever we are filled with evil thoughts, we should throw the invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ in their midst. Then, as experience has taught us, we shall see them instantly dispersed like smoke in air. Once the intellect is left to itself again, we can renew our constant attentiveness and our invocation. Whenever we are distracted, we should act in this way.
He stands, then - but not alone, for before Him go angels, saying: 'Lift up the gates, O ye the princes.' What gates? Even those of which the Psalmist sings in another place also: 'Open to me the gates of righteousness.' Open, then, thy gates to Christ, that He may come into thee - open the gates of righteousness, the gates of chastity, the gates of courage and wisdom. Believe the message of the angels: 'Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in, the Lord of Sabaoth.'
Pray before your body takes rest on your bed... If you are tempted, make the Sign (of the Cross) on your forehead reverently… for this is a known and tested weapon against the Devil.
Learn to desire humility, for that will cover all your sins. All sin is hateful to God, but the most hateful of all is pride of heart. Do not consider yourself learned or wise, or all your toil will be lost and your ship will arrive empty at the shore.
It is impossible for the soul to attain anything spiritual and pleasing to God, or to be free of inner sin, without guarding of the mind and purity of heart, in other words, without sobriety... If with God's help we gain something daily through our sobriety, we should take care not to enter into communication with other people without discrimination, lest we suffer loss through our converse with them and are led into temptation.
The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack him saying 'You are insane because you are not like us.'
Though you pray to God every hour, though you have such faith that you can move mountains, even though you give away all of your belongings to the needy, and give your body to be burned, - if you do not practice forgiveness and do not wish to forgive your enemy, then all is in vain, for in such circumstances neither prayer, nor faith, nor charity, will save you, in short, nothing will save you.
Continuity of attention produces inner stability; inner stability produces a natural intensification of watchfulness; and this intensification gradually and in due measure gives contemplative insight into spiritual warfare. This in its turn is succeeded by persistence in the Jesus Prayer and by the state that Jesus confers, in which the intellect, free from all images, enjoys complete quietude.
God's Scripture gives proof in numerous passages that man must undergo many disturbances in this life; and also that many consolations are at hand. With these, a spirit of sufficient vigor and awareness of the right should overcome present discomforts and look to those things that promise everlasting joy.
A truly intelligent man has only one care -- wholeheartedly to obey Almighty God and to please Him. The one and only thing he teaches his soul is how best to do things agreeable to God, thanking Him for His merciful Providence in whatever may happen in his life. For just as it would be unseemly not to thank physicians for curing our body, even when they give us bitter and unpleasant remedies, so too would it be to remain ungrateful to God for things that appear to us painful, failing to understand that everything happens through His Providence for our good. In this understanding and this faith in God lie salvation and peace of soul.
Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.
Our Lord and God made flesh has offered us the image of all virtue, as an example to the human race; and to recall us from the ancient fall, has set before us, as in a picture, His all-virtuous life in the flesh. Among many other good examples, He has shown us how, after His baptism, when He went out into the wilderness, it was with fasting that He began His mental wrestling with the devil, who came against Him as an ordinary man. And through this manner of His victory, our Lord has taught us, His unprofitable servants, how we must practice our wrestling against the spirits of evil, that is with humility and fasting and prayer and sobriety: which He observed though He Himself had no need of such things, being God...
