You must set about rooting out the very desire to have things pleasant, to get on well, to be contented. You must learn to like sadness, poverty, pain, hardship. You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else. For all these biddings are given us not in order for us to act as if they did not exist, but for us to follow: otherwise the Lord of mercy would not have burdened us with them. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, He said (Matthew 16:24), thereby leaving it to each person's own will ... and to each person's endeavor: let him deny himself.
Faith is the sincere confession that God, Who is worshipped in the Trinity, Who created all things and provides for all, saves us who are fallen, through the power of the death on the Cross of the incarnate Son of God, by the grace of the Most Holy Spirit in His Holy Church. The beginnings of renewal, which are established in this life, will appear in all their glory in the future age, in a way that the mind cannot comprehend nor the tongue express.
Since the enemy watches you constantly, waiting for an opportunity to sow evil in you, be doubly watchful over yourself, lest you fall in the nets spread for you. As soon as he shows you some fault in your neighbor, hasten to repel this thought, lest it take root in you and grow. Cast it out, so that no trace is left in you, and replace it by the thought of the good qualities you know your neighbor to possess, or of those people generally should have. If you still feel the impulse to pass judgment, add to this the truth that you are given no authority for this and that the moment you assume this authority you thereby make yourself worthy of judgment and condemnation, not before powerless men, but before God, the all-powerful Judge of all.
Always keep this in mind: you are not doing anything virtuous by your continence. Or can it be considered a virtuous act when a man who, out of his own carelessness, has been trapped deep down in a mine shaft, takes a pick and shovel and tries to work his way out? Is it not, on the contrary, quite natural for him to make use of the tools given him by a higher authority to make his way up out of the choking air and darkness? ...From this picture you can gain wisdom. The tools are the implements of salvation, the commands of the Gospel and the holy Sacraments of the Church, that were bestowed upon every Christian at holy baptism. Unused, they are of no profit to you. But used in the right manner they will open your way to freedom and light.
This reading with prayer preceding strengthens the soul and gives it strength for the entire day. Doctors say you should not leave the house on an empty stomach. With respect to the soul, this is fulfilled by morning prayer and reading. The soul is fed by them, and sets out on the business of the day nourished.
If you examine your life well, you will find many instances when God showed His unmistakable mercy to you. Trouble was brewing, but it passed you by for some reason. God delivered you. Acknowledge these and thank God, Who loves you.
The holy Fathers' counsel is to begin with small things, for, says Ephraim the Syrian, how can you put out a great fire before you have learned to quench a small one? If you wish to set yourself free from a great suffering, crush the small desires, say the holy Fathers. Do not suppose that the one can be separated from the others: they all hang together like a long chain or a net.
The day will come when you are toiling at self-observation and self-constraint, and the adversary will come up and mumble in your ear, 'This will all happen eventually. You’ve been working hard, now take it easy a little bit!' This is such a tempting suggestion that it does not immediately occur to you that you should counter it, or that it is so bad that however little you give in to it, it will cause such inner disturbance. Indulging yourself is just like a tiny hole in a dam. Once a hole has formed, the dam cannot hold; the water will inevitably destroy it. Indulgence does the same thing inside of us; everything will be dispersed, so it will be necessary to start all over again to restore ourselves. Fear this as your most evil enemy, although he speaks with the sweetest words.
To more conveniently become accustomed to remembering God, the fervent Christian has a special means, namely, to repeat ceaselessly a brief prayer of two or three words. Mostly this is 'Lord, have mercy.' or 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' If you have not yet heard of this, then hear it now, and if you have not done it, then begin from this hour to do it.
Our prayer reflects our attitude towards God. He who is careless of salvation has a different attitude toward God from him who has abandoned sin and is zealous for virtue but has not yet entered within himself and works for the Lord only outwardly. Finally, he who has entered within and carries the Lord within himself, standing before Him, has yet another attitude. The first man is negligent in prayer, just as he is negligent in life, and he prays in church and at home merely according to the established custom, without attention or feeling. The second man reads many prayers and goes often to church, trying at the same time to keep his attention from wandering and to experience feelings in accordance with the prayers which are read, although he is seldom successful. The third man, wholly concentrated within, stands with his mind before God, and prays to Him in his heart without distraction, without long verbal prayers, even when standing for a long time at prayer in his home or in church.... Every prayer must come from the heart and any other prayer is no prayer at all. Prayer-book prayers, your own prayers and very short prayers, all must issue forth from the heart to God, seen before you.
In preparing for battle, however, do not think that you will always be victorious. Often there will be only hardship that will bring nothing but affliction... Provide yourself with only one thing, strong courage: no matter what happens, stay with what you have begun... No matter how life goes, whatever successes and failures there are, you should give all of this over to God's will.
The simplest means for confining the will within its proper bounds lies in disposing children to do nothing without permission. Let them be eager to run to their parents and ask: May I do this or that? They should be persuaded by their own experience and that of others that to fulfill their own desires without asking is dangerous; they should be put in such a frame of mind that they even fear their own will.
The kingdom of God is within us when God reigns in us, when the soul in its depths confesses God as its master, and is obedient to Him in all its powers. Then God acts within it as master ‘both to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (Phil. ii. 13). This reign begins as soon as we resolve to serve God in our Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Then the Christian hands over to God his consciousness and freedom, which comprises the essential substance of our human life, and God accepts the sacrifice; and in this way the alliance of man with God and God with man is achieved, and the covenant with God, which was severed by the fall and continues to be severed by our willful sins, is re-established. This inner alliance is sealed, confirmed, and given the strength to maintain itself by the power of grace in the divine sacrament of baptism, and for those who have fallen after baptism, in the sacrament of repentance: and afterwards it is constantly strengthened by holy communion. All Christians live thus; and consequently they all bear the kingdom of God within themselves, that is to say they obey God as King and are ruled by God as King.
It is vain that some unenlightened people seek the greatest evil for man somewhere else, rather than in sin. Some consider disease to be the greatest evil, others - poverty, and others - death. But neither disease, nor poverty, nor death, nor any other earthly disaster can be such a great evil for us as sin is. These earthly misfortunes do not separate us from God if we are seeking Him sincerely, but, on the contrary, they bring us closer to Him.
