Theophan the Recluse on Combating the Passions

 “Keep to one thing: When the passionate is detected, immediately arm yourself against it with wrath and hostile anger. This anger in spiritual warfare has the very same significance as when an evil person is assaulting you; you have to strike back at him hard. . . . What does the victim of an assault by an evil person do? After striking the person, he calls for help. The watchmen answer his call and save him from trouble. This is also what must be done in spiritual warfare with the passions. Once you have become angry at the passion, you have to call out for help: Be attentive to my help, O Lord of my salvation! O Lord, be attentive unto my help, make haste to help me! When appealing to the Lord in this manner, do not fall away from Him through attention toward what is going on inside of you, but keep standing before the Lord, imploring Him for help. Run at once from this enemy as from a blazing fire.

 There is something others have done, and perhaps do even now. That is, once they have detected the passionate and become filled with indignation toward it, they begin exposing its obscenity. For example, if the thought of pride has occurred, they begin reciting, ‘Pride is contrary to God; you who are earth and ash, are you not ashamed to become puffed up with this thought; remember yours ins,’ and the like. They select thoughts against pride, supposing that by this they will drive out the prideful thought. Sometimes they drive it out, but this method is for the most part unreliable. By exposing the passionate thought, we are still keeping it in our mind, and in the meantime it stirs up feeling and arouses desire; that is, it continues to defile our soul. Whenever we appeal directly to the Lord with fear, reverence, hope and faith in His complete activity without entering into a verbal battle with the passionate, the passionate the moves away from the mind’s eye, which is fixed on the Lord. When it is cut off from the mind through such attention, the passionate departs of its own accord, if it has been naturally stimulated. If the enemy is involved, however, then a discerning ray of light that comes from contemplation of the Lord strikes him. It happens that the mind immediately calms down from passionate violations as soon as it turns to the Lord and calls on Him.”[1]

 


[1] The Spiritual Life: And How to Be Attuned to It, St. Theophan the Recluse (St. Paisius Monesary:2017), p.232, 233, italics in original.

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