St. John of Kronstadt · 48 of 49

Part II · Part 24

During prayer, do not allow the flesh and the enemy, acting through it, to conquer you; speak the truth from your heart, and use no deceit in your tongue. Think and feel what you say in the prayer, and do not let there be honey on your tongue and ice in your heart. Once you are conquered by the enemy, you will have to defend yourself and your freedom against him, as a piece of ground already conquered by the enemy, and your heart will withdraw itself from the Lord. Do not neglect anything in the spiritual life; do not consider anything unimportant, unworthy of great attention: it is through little sins that the Devil leads us to great ones. Above all, endeavour to be always truthful in your heart. When it is most difficult to fight against the flesh, then is the time to show your firmness, then is the time not to grow weak in the conflict, but to fight like a good soldier of Christ.

When you feel in your heart that the Lord "makes as though He would go further" from your heart, from your thoughts, then constrain Him, the Merciful One, saying sincerely: "Abide with me: for it is toward evening and the day" of my spiritual life "is far spent; and He shall come in to tarry with thee"; for He is merciful, and lets Himself be constrained.

Do not sit down to table with a spirit disturbed by any passion, lest the enemy turn your food and drink to your harm, and not to your health; for he uses his craft through everything, and ever seeks to injure man. Always sit down to table in peace, thanking the Lord, and the food and drink will be for your good and health, because the blessing of God will rest both on the food and on you yourself.

"Whosoever will save his life shall lose it " --that is, whosoever wishes to save his old, carnal, sinful man, shall lose his life: for the true life consists in crucifying and mortifying the old man, together with his deeds, and putting on "the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him."Without the mortification of the old, carnal man, there is no true life or eternal blessedness. The more complete and more poignant the mortification of the old man is, the more perfect will his renovation and regeneration be, the higher his cleansing, the more perfect his life, and the greater his bliss in the future world. Mortify yourself, and you shall obtain new life. Ah! I myself feel that when I am in perfect health, and do not keep under my body by labours, I die in spirit, the kingdom of God is no longer in me, and my flesh and the Devil overpower me.

Do not ascribe weakness to the omnipotent power of the Lord's cross, and still less to the holy, life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ because of the weakness of your own heart in faith. They are ever the one same life-giving Power; for they are Christ Himself, the eternal Power, That creates everything, That keeps everything and vivifies everything. The cross is likewise always omnipotent by the power of Him Who was crucified upon it, is always life-giving for the sake of the Life That hung upon it.

Let all carnal sweetness be as bitterness to you; carnal loss, as gain; that which is precious, as cheap; that which is wholesome and nourishing, as unwholesome and not nourishing, because it can easily be unwholesome and harmful to your soul. Let your only sweetness be Christ, your one hope He That created all things from nothing.

O that we might all land happily on the shores of the heavenly country!

"They straightway left their nets and followed Him." The Apostles did not grudge leaving their nets for the Lord's sake, although they were perhaps their only property, and precious to them because they lived by them; and we, likewise, for the Lord's sake, ought to leave everything that hinders our following Him—that is, all the many and various nets in which the enemy entangles us in this life. But it is but little only to leave these nets; we must follow Christ, as the Apostles left all and followed Him. And he Who wishes to follow Christ and to come there where He went must deny himself and take up his cross, like Christ and the Apostles, and follow after Him, Christ our God, in accordance with His commandments, not sparing himself in great deeds for the glory of God and the salvation of his soul. Applying this Gospel story about leaving the nets to ourselves, we involuntarily represent to ourselves everything earthly, beginning with our body and ending with the last thing that occupies as a net that can easily be torn.

It is impossible not to wonder at the simple-heartedness and indifference to earthly blessings of the Galilean fishermen, and at their absolute obedience to the voice of the Lord. A few words of the Saviour were enough; they left their nets, their sole wealth, their greatest treasure, and followed Him, without reasoning why and wherefore they went. What simplicity of heart! What detachment from earthly blessings! What childlike obedience! How easy is the access of the word of the Divine Messiah to simple hearts! It is spoken—and done! There are many such simple people living in labour and low estate, but there are no such men amongst the rich. What do we see in one of them when the Lord told him to sell his possessions and follow Him? He followed not the Lord, but his riches. " He went away," it is said, " sorrowful."

It is well to place candles before the icons. But it is still better if you bring as a sacrifice to God the lire of your love for Him and your neighbour. It is well that the one should be accompanied by the other. But if you place candles before the icons and have no love for God and your neighbour in your heart, if you are avaricious, if you do not live in peace with others—then your sacrifice to God is in vain.

Do not be disturbed at the malice of others, but always triumph over it by the elevation of your spirit; let it bend and fall down before you in the dust, and not you before it. Any evil is in itself a fall; whilst virtue, though it may be mocked at, always stands upon an eminence—provided it does not fall itself through being conquered by evil.

When there is any unpleasant or unhealthy odour in the air we endeavour to get away from this unhealthy part, or to somehow destroy the unhealthy elements which have entered into the pure air. Similarly when you feel in your heart anything disturbing or oppressing it, endeavour to immediately drive away the injurious element disturbing your soul—the passions, for instance—knowing that it comes from the abyss of hell. There is a great analogy between the bodily and spiritual lives, and the wise Christian possesses as cultivated and refined spiritual feelings as the carnal man bodily ones. Besides, it is absurd to cultivate bodily feelings in every way, and to leave spiritual ones neglected. The spiritual feelings or organs are concentrated in the heart. It is necessary to refine and cleanse it by every means, in order that it should turn away from the least evil odour of sins and passions, and instantly banish them from itself.

Do not be afraid of human talk and mockery about yourself. This is diabolical fear; think of what the Lord God says of you, what the angels and saints say of you.

In your relations and intercourse with men, keep in your heart the word "love," and, being attentive to it, converse with all with hearty love and goodwill. Never let this precious word out of your heart in your intercourse with men; it powerfully assists the strengthening of your heart in love. Of course it is necessary to bear this word in your heart not separately, not by itself, but together with hearty faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You, sinner, who have fallen into the depths of evil, when you represent to yourself the multitude of your sins and fall into despair and hardness of heart, remember that the heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world for your salvation from sins and from eternal condemnation for them. Turn then with faith to this Mediator before God for men, imploring Him from the depths of your soul to wash away by His all-cleansing Blood, shed for us on the cross, your iniquities too; turn zealously to repentance, confessing your sins before His priest as before Himself, that you may be justified, after which, if the minister of the sacrament of penitence finds you prepared and fit, draw nigh to the holy cup and you shall be cleansed of your sins: peace shall flow into your soul like a river, and you shall be the son of the heavenly Father, "who was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found."

Do not be irritated with him who bears malice against you and often wounds you by finding fault with yon, but be compassionate to him, love him, saying: It is not he or she that is so full of malice against me, but it is the Devil who rages against me through them, and they themselves, poor creatures, are only tempted by him. As soon as this temptation ceases they will be kind again. We are all often worthy of pity as the tools of the bodiless enemy. We must pity mankind, so violently persecuted by the enemy.

There is sometimes such hardened unfeelingness in the soul that you do not perceive and do not feel your sins. You do not fear either death or the Judge, or the terrible judgment-seat; you do not care a jot, as the saying is, about anything spiritual. O cunning, proud, evil flesh! It is not without reason that even the saints complain: " I am overcome by the slumber of sloth, and the sleep of sin oppresses my heart. Avail thyself, my soul, of the time for repentance; shake off the heavy sleep of sloth, and hasten to watch." Sometimes your soul is filled with such terrible slothfulness and hardened unfeelingness that you completely despair of being able to drive away this slothfulness and unfeelingness. It seems as if bodily sickness would be preferable to such spiritual slothfulness.

"Thy will be done." For instance, when you wish and by every means endeavour to be well and healthy, and yet remain ill, then say: "Thy will be done." When you undertake something and your undertaking does not succeed, say: " Thy will be done." When you do good to others, and they repay you by evil, say: "Thy will be done." Or when you would like to sleep and are overtaken by sleeplessness, say: " Thy will be done." In general, do not become irritated when anything is not done in accordance with your will, but learn to submit in everything to the Will of the Heavenly Father. You would like not to experience any temptations, and yet the enemy daily harasses you by them; provokes and annoys you by every means. Do not become irritated and angered, but say: "Thy will be done."

Everything, the merest trifles, even the smoke of a candle blowing on him, irritates and angers the impatient man, because he is very self-loving, and cares much for the welfare and comfort of his carnal man, which he ought oftener to crucify in different ways. When the soul is sullied by sins and passions, seeing this, he does not see; knowing it, he does not know; feeling it, he as though does not feel; but, as soon as the face of the same man is sullied by smoke, however little, he at once notices it, and begins to pity himself, though there is nothing for him to trouble about, for the smoke does not strike, does not sting, does not vex, but only blows in the face like a light breeze.

If you wish to live long on the earth, do not hurry to live in a carnal manner, to satiate yourself, to get drunk, to smoke, to commit fornication, to live in luxury, to indulge yourself. The carnal way of life constitutes death, and therefore, in the Holy Scripture, our flesh is called mortal, or, " the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." If you wish to live long, live through the spirit; for life consists in the spirit: "If ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live," both here on earth and there in heaven. Observe temperance and simplicity in food and drink; preserve chastity; do not foolishly squander the balsam of your life; do not seek after riches, after luxury; strive to be contented with little; keep peace with all, and do not envy anyone—respect and love all; and, above all, strive ever to bear Christ in your heart, and you shall live in peace and felicity for many years.

My brothers and sisters who are zealous after piety! it may happen to you to hear, perhaps not seldom, and mostly from the members of your household, that you are a disagreeable, intolerable person. You will meet with serious dislike, enmity, on account of your piety, although those who are inimical to you would not acknowledge that their enmity is directed against you on account of your piety. Do not be disturbed at this, do not fall into despair; because the Devil can in reality exaggerate to an enormous extent some of your infirmities, from which you, being human, are not exempt; but remember the words of the Saviour: "A man's foes shall be they of his own household." Correct yourself of your faults and hold fast to piety. Commit your conscience, your life, and deeds unto God, Who knows our hearts. However, look upon yourself impartially. Are you not indeed difficult in your character, especially to those of your household? Perhaps you are morose, unkind, unsociable, taciturn. Expand your heart for sociability and kindness, though not to over-indulgence and connivance; be gentle, not provoking, calm in reproof. "Let all your things be done with charity," said the Apostle. Be patient; do not find fault for everything. Bear some things, passing them by in silence and appear not to see them. " Charity beareth all things . . . endureth all things." Sometimes through an impatient reproof enmity arises because the reproof was not made in the spirit of meekness and love, but in the spirit of self-loving pretension to the submission of others.

Sometimes younger people, or those of equal station, or older ones, teach you by means of hints which you cannot endure, and you are vexed with your teachers. We must endure and listen with love to everything useful coming from anyone, whoever he may be. Our self-love conceals our faults from us, but they are more visible to others. This is why they remark them to us. Remember, that " we are members one of another," and are thus even obliged to mutually correct each other. If you do not bear being instructed by others, and are vexed with those who teach you, it means that you are proud, and this shows that the fault of which others hint that you should correct yourself is really in you.

As God is an all-righteous Spirit, therefore His laws and commandments are the same as He Himself, for His right- eousness is expressed in them. It is because of this that the Lord says: "If a man love Me, he will keep My words" (My commandments). "He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings. If ye love Me, keep My commandments."

Pray for the departed as though your own soul were in hell, in the flame, and as though you yourself were in torment; feel their torments with your whole heart and pray most fervently, most ardently that they may rest in peace in the place of light and green pastures, in the place of refreshing.

Call upon the saints with faith unshamed and love unfeigned if you wish them to hear you and fulfil your prayer. Remember that like seeks after like. The saints have themselves pleased God by their faith and love, and wish to see the same in you. To faith and love add also the reverence due to them.

A self-loving man spares himself for the good of others. He even grudges his throat for the instruction of others, if he is a teacher or a priest. He grudges his whole heart, because he, so to say, serves his neighbour only with half his heart, and sometimes even quite without any heart. He grudges his physical powers, too; he is as frightened as a hare, and, being afraid of falling ill from work, prefers to take rest.

Faith in God, as in Him Who exists, is the source of life for the soul. How can we represent Him Who exists to ourselves? Count everything visible and invisible as nothing, and represent to yourself that the Lord alone is.

In order to petition the king or any other illustrious personage, or anyone else, it is necessary to reach him, to see him, and to stand before him face to face. But here on earth persons are often at a distance, places are at a distance; sometimes it is necessary to pass many persons to go a long way. But in order to reach the heavenly King or the heavenly Queen, the Mother of God, or the angels and saints, it is only necessary to pass by and put aside a mass of unbelief; to vacate the soul of the passions; to take as companions lively faith, zeal and love—and then we shall reach and can boldly pray to the Lord, or to the most pure Mother of God, or to the angels and saints.

No mental work can be accomplished without some preconceived plan, after the likeness of the All-creating Lord, Who first conceived the world and its plan, and afterwards created the universe through His Son, and accomplished it by the Holy Ghost. It would be presumptuous to write a work without a certain plan. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" It is necessary to see beforehand with the eyes of the understanding the whole of the work, with all its principal ideas. To do the reverse would be to go by an unknown road with our eyes voluntarily bound.

Pray to the Lord for the repose of the souls of your departed forefathers, fathers and brothers, daily in the morning and in the evening, in order that the remembrance of death may live in you, and that hope in the future life, after death, may not be extinguished in you, and that your spirit may be daily humbled by the thought of the transitoriness of your life.

Also daily invoke the glorified saints, that they may enlighten your way by their prayers, and that they may intercede for the forgiveness of your sins; and that you yourself may remember that after death there is eternal glorification and bliss for good deeds, and eternal condemnation for evil ones.

Sometimes during prayer you feel a kind of estrangement from God, and despair. Do not be carried away by such a feeling; it proceeds from the Devil. Say in your heart: "I despair not of salvation, reprobate as I am; and emboldened by Thine immeasurable compassion, I come unto Thee. If there is any hope of salvation for me, if Thy loving mercy can overcome the multitude of my transgressions, be Thou my Saviour."

When during oral prayer the Devil gnaws at your words by a multitude of most subtle thoughts, say: "The power of the Saviour is in every word and in every sound."

"Hast thou not known, . . . believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" Do you not know that during prayer the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are in you and you in Them?

When, during the reading of the canons and Acathistos to the Saviour, to the Mother of God, and to the Guardian Angel, or during the reading of other prayers, the Devil whispers to your heart: "This is untrue, untrue this is—strained, forced," and thus robs your heart of the power (the truth) of the words of prayer, then be " like a deaf man . . . that heareth not; a fool, that he may be wise." Do not for a moment agree in your heart with the falsehood of the enemy, or reason with his infernal reasoning, but believe firmly in the truth of all the Church prayers and hymns of praise in all their fulness, knowing that they are the words of the Holy Ghost, proclaiming through the mouth of holy men the praises due to the Saviour, to the Mother of God, and to the saints. Bear in mind also our infirmities and ungodliness. Remember that " the Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the truth."

Every priest is an apostle in his village or parish, and ought to go about to the different houses preaching the Kingdom of God, instructing the ignorant, awakening the careless, who are living in the passions and carnal desires, to a Christian life; encouraging and stimulating, by the hope of future recompense, those who are pious and sober-minded; strengthening and comforting the discontented. This ought specially to be the object of processions with the cross on festivals. Sometimes we priests allow ourselves to eat and drink when going about with the cross. This should not be. We must preach with the cross in our hand that " Christ came upon earth in order to raise us up to heaven"; that it is not right to attach ourselves to anything earthly; and that we must value time in order to win eternity; to cleanse our hearts from every impurity, and to do as many good works as possible: "My meat is to do the will of Him That sent Me, and to finish His work."

What means the heavy sleep of slothfulness and hardened unfeelingness of heart during prayer, or during the preparation of some sermon, or during the teaching of religion? It means that the grace of God is leaving us, by God's wise and good intention, in order to strengthen our hearts for our own free spiritual exertions. Sometimes grace carries us like children or guides and supports us as though by the hand. Then it is twice as easy for us to do works of virtue; whilst sometimes it leaves us alone to our weakness, in order that we should not become slothful, but should labour, and by our labour become worthy of the gift of grace. At such times we ought, as free beings, to spontaneously show our amendment and zeal to God. It would be foolish to murmur against God for depriving us of His grace; for when the Lord pleases He takes away His grace from us, fallen and unworthy creatures. At such times we must learn patience and bless the Lord: "The Lord gave [His grace], and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

During times of slothfulness and hardness of heart, men, sometimes through their faintheartedness and impatience, become too familiar with God, and allow themselves various eccentricities in their voice and movements signifying impatience, dissatisfaction, murmuring, and even insolence towards God. Guard against this by every means, and endeavour to overcome your slothfulness. You must conquer the enemy and your passions.

If you wish to be humble, consider yourself worthy of all malice and hatred on the part of others, and of every calumny. Do not grow irritated, and do not nourish malice against those who bear malice against you, slander you, or falsely blame you. Say: "Holy Father, Thy will be done! "Remember the words of the Lord: " The servant is not greater than his Lord; if the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you." If the world hated Him, the Most-righteous, the Most-merciful, then why should it be wonderful if other people hate you, a sinful and evil man?

When you ask the Lord to enlighten your mind and warm your heart so that you may write a sermon, or a letter to your parents, relations, or friends, and the Lord does not seem to hear you, and you remain in darkness and coldness, do not grow fainthearted, do not despond, do not be indignant, do not murmur at the Lord's inattention to you; for the Lord only tests your patience, your faith and hope, your devotion to Him, the Almighty. Remember that it is easy for Him to instantaneously illuminate and enlighten you, and in a few minutes you will be able to write an excellent sermon or a letter, ardent with warm feeling, full of light and elevated thoughts.

"We would have come unto you once and again, but Satan hindered us." From this we see that it is Satan who sometimes hinders our seeing each other or writing to our relations, friends, or acquaintances. How infirm is man of himself! How limited he is! It is not only God Who does not allow him to do what he wishes, but even Satan forbids him.

Indulgence of the flesh, hardened unfeelingness to everything spiritual, sacred, is the oppression of the enemy, although the carnal man does not consider it to be oppression, because he favours it; but those who desire to live a spiritual life look upon it as oppression, because it does not admit God into their hearts, does not allow the grace of God to be poured into the heart, quickening and enlightening it, because such oppression makes the soul unfruitful for deeds of faith, hope, and love. At such times we become somehow carnal, as though having no spirit. O, how manifold are the various persecutions of the enemy! How truly we should grieve from the depths of our hearts at this hardened unfeelingness; how we should lament before the Lord: it will thus pass away, and the heart will be warmed and softened, and become capable of spiritual contemplation and holy feelings.

When you pray either aloud or to your yourself for others— for instance, for the members of your household or for strangers, even though they may not have asked you to do so—pray for them with the same ardour and zeal as you would pray for yourself. Remember the commandment of the law: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Observe this rule upon all occasions—that is, love your neighbour as yourself. Do not try to deal cunningly with the Lord, "that triest the reins and the heart," lest He should despise your prayer as vain and lying.

Love does not suffer self-justification, does not exalt itself, is not puffed up.

When we read any prayers for the first time, or read them seldom, then, on account of their novelty, we read them willingly, with deep feeling, but afterwards the more often we repeat them, the less we care for them; they cease to interest us, and it is with difficulty that we constrain ourselves to read them with the previous feeling. In reference to prayer, the following are the measures to be taken against this:—We must represent to ourselves that we are for the first time saying these beautiful prayers to which we have grown accustomed, but which so deeply interested us when we first read them; we must think with our whole heart over every word of the prayer, and value every word. This phenomenon in our soul is the consequence of original sin—the consequence of our original instability in the truth. And until now we cannot be firmly stablished in the truth: as soon as we stand we begin to. waver again. As this often happens in regard to prayer, so it does also in regard to faith, to our friendship with other men, to our love for God and our neighbour, and in general to virtue: everywhere we show ourselves unstable in truth.

Also it sometimes happens during prayer that our heart becomes impiously ashamed before men of the words of the prayer or of the Lord God Himself, and we pronounce the words of the prayer listlessly, not from the whole heart. We must vanquish this ungodly, man-pleasing, diabolical shame and fear, and say the prayers from our whole soul loudly, in all simplicity of heart, representing God alone before us, and counting all else as not existing. " Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." If you consider anything visible to be important and great except the Lord God, and neglect Him, Who alone exists, Who alone is great, then you are most impiously arrogant. Reckon everything as nothing in comparison to the Lord, and cling to Him alone.

Man is dear to the Lord, the whole world is obedient to him. The Son of God Himself came down from heaven on earth to save him from everlasting torments, to reconcile him with God. All fruits, the various flesh of animals, were given to him for food, and various drinks were given to him to please his taste—but not to excite his passions, not for his only enjoyment, for the Christian has great, spiritual, Divine enjoyments. Carnal delights must be always made subject to these higher ones; they must be restrained or completely suppressed when they hinder spiritual delights. This signifies that it is not to afflict man that food and drink are temporarily forbidden him by the Church, not to limit his freedom, as worldly people say, but it is done in order to afford him true, lasting, and eternal delights; therefore meat or flesh food, and wine and spirits, are forbidden (during Lent), specially by reason of the fact that man is very dear to God, and in order that his heart should cling to God alone, and not to anything perishable, unworthy of him. But man, perverted by sins, easily attaches himself to earthly pleasures, forgetting that his true enjoyment, his true life, is the eternal God, and not the pleasant excitation of the flesh.