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...
He therefore, the God Who rules over all things, must stretch out a saving hand to the wandering sheep, whom the Supreme Shepherd has now in fact redeemed. For He looked for it as it wandered afar, and He has placed it in a secure sheepfold, safe against thieves and wild beasts: namely, His Church.
I shall indicate to you the most direct and simple method to acquire the habit of silence: ...reflect as often as you can on the pernicious results of indiscriminate babbling and on the salutary results of wise silence. When you come to taste the good fruit of silence, you will no longer need lessons about it.
Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast `that is agreeable' to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakeable against all the attacks of the evil one that are planned from that quarter. On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of the aforesaid passions, is like unto one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein.
Confess your sins not to the priest, but to the Lord Himself, only without hiding anything, from your whole heart. The priest is the mediator between you and God, and so the benefit of Confession depends on your open-heartedness.
Tedium is the granddaughter of despondency, and the daughter of slothfulness. In order to drive it away, labor at your work, and do not be slothful in prayer. The tedium will pass, and zeal will come. And if to this you add patience and humility, then you will be rid of all misfortunes and evils.
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.
According to St. Gregory the Sinaite there are three degrees in eating: temperance, sufficiency, and satiety. Temperance is when someone wants to eat some more food but abstains, rising from the table still somewhat hungry. Sufficiency is when someone eats what is needed and sufficient for normal nourishment. Satiety is when someone eats more than enough and is more than satisfied. Now if you cannot keep the first two degrees and you proceed to the third, then, at least, do not become a glutton, remembering the words of the lord: 'Woe unto you that are full now, for you shall hunger' (Lk. 6:25). Remember also that rich man who ate in this present life sumptuously every day, but who was deprived of the desired bosom of Abraham in the next life, simply because of this sumptuous eating.
If you love Christ God, then endure as He endured, and do all that is pleasing to Him. He taught and did. Unfailingly your love should be such as does good, endures, is disturbed by nothing present, and in everything ever thanks Him not with words and tongue, but with very deeds.
Do not by any means allow yourself to open both ears to the slanderers and to draw your conclusions and decisions on the basis of what they alone have to say, and thereby judging the case in absentia without the presence of the person slandered to defend himself. Oftentimes many unjust and irrational decisions have followed from such slanderous accusations.
The heart which is constantly guarded, and is not allowed to receive the forms, images and fantasies of the dark and evil spirits, is conditioned by nature to give birth from within itself to thoughts filled with light. For just as coal engenders a flame, or a flame lights a candle, so will God, who from our baptism dwells in our heart, kindle our mind to contemplation when He finds it free from the winds of evil and protected by the guarding of the intellect.
Repentance is real when afterwards you keep trying strenuously to live now as you ought; but without this it is not very effectual, if you repent just to say your sins & to keep on living as before.
In patience is the assembly of all the virtues by which our souls are saved, as St. Ephraim says: having acquired patience, one touches on every virtue; for one rejoices in sorrows, and is well-tried in misfortunes, is joyful in danger, ready for obedience, filled with love, glories in vexation, is humbled in reproaches, unwavering in misfortunes; he who has acquired patience has acquired hope, and such a one is adorned with every good work.
I must tell you that annoying incidents are unavoidable in this life. Those who are experienced in the spiritual life say that such incidents can even bring profit to the soul. Through annoying incidents we come to recognize that we are impatient - and if we are impatient, that means we are proud. And this awareness should dispose us to self-reproach and repentance, and to asking mercy from the Lord in prayer. But without annoying incidents a man is inclined to conceit.
In words of boastfulness and self-justification there always lie concealed contrariness and pride, from which God turns away. After sinning one ought immediately to 'flee.' But, you will say, where? To the calm haven of heartfelt repentance. Every night before you go to sleep, tell God, the Knower of Hearts, all the sins you have committed in deed, word, and thought, and believe that God receives your heartfelt repentance. At the same time try to render your heart contrite by the memory of sudden death.
