When we fervently remember God, we feel divine longing well up within us from the depths of our heart. The evil spirits invade and lurk in the bodily senses, acting through the compliancy of the flesh upon those still immature in soul. According to the Apostle, our intellect always delights in the laws of the Spirit (cf. Rom. 7:22), while the organs of the flesh allow themselves to be seduced by enticing pleasures. Furthermore, in those who are advancing in spiritual knowledge, grace brings an ineffable joy to their body through the perceptive faculty of the intellect. But the demons capture the soul by violence through the bodily senses, especially when they find us faint-hearted in pursuing the spiritual path. They are, indeed, murderers provoking the soul to what it does not want.
For the complete fulfillment of its [the intellect's] purpose we should give it nothing but the prayer 'Lord Jesus'...Those who meditate unceasingly upon this glorious and holy name in the depths of their heart can sometimes see the light of their own intellect. For when the mind is closely concentrated upon this name, then we grow fully conscious that the name is burning up all filth which covers the surface of the soul; for it is written: 'our God is a consuming fire' (Deut. 4:24). Then the Lord awakens in the soul a great love for His glory...This is the pearl of great price which a man can acquire by selling all that he has, and so experience the inexpressible joy of making it his own.
He who wishes to purify his faults purifies them with tears, and he who wishes to acquire virtues, acquires them with tears; for weeping is the way the Scriptures and our Fathers give us, when they say 'Weep!' Truly, there is no other way than this.
When the door of steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul in its desire to say many things, dissipates the remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
Do not neglect the practice of the virtues; if you do, your spiritual knowledge will decrease, and when famine occurs you will go down into Egypt (Genesis 41:57, 46:6).
