“Oh, if only I could / At least to some degree, / Write eight lines I would / About passion’s properties. / About the / transgressions and the sins, / The running and the chasing, / The hasty inadvertences, / The elbows, my palms”1 — thus wrote Pasternak, aware that a precise, accurate word on the passions is difficult to give, and there can be few such words. Precise words on the passions slip out of your hands, like a wet and lively fish, and the passions themselves are interwoven together, knit together one with another, forming a repugnant unity. Obviously the word “passions” in the this case is used as a synonym for “disease of the soul,” and not as romantic longing or a noble fire in the blood.
That of which Pasternak confessed himself powerless
was done long ago by Abbot John, called Climacus. This
servant of God wrote not just eight lines, but an entire book on the passions
and the battle with them. This book was born out of the experience of the
struggle and victory, inasmuch as man, in his usual state, is found in
backbreaking labor for sin, and, O woe!—he does not notice its evil. Only when
man frees himself or begins to free himself is he given a view of himself from
outside, and, therefore, the possibility of describing the process of inner
healing.
So, not leaving the world in our body, we should be
free from a worldly spirit to some degree. St. Symeon the New Theologian tells
us that, “The world is neither silver nor gold, nor horses, nor mules, nor
food, nor wine, nor bread. It is neither house, nor fields, nor vineyards, nor
country homes. What is it? Sin, addiction to things, and passions.” If it is
“the world which lies in evil,” then you can run, but you won’t get anywhere.
And the words of the wise better expose the sin living
in man than those of others. The words of the wise put everything in its proper
place, and give an exact value to those radiant forgeries that we ourselves are
inclined to call virtues.
These are barbed words, such as is becoming of words
of genuine wisdom. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails
fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd (Ecc.
12:1). The horror of the final and righteous Judgment may be not so much in
that we sinned, and sinned a lot, but in that even our best impulses and
efforts were deeply poisoned by sin and are unworthy of blessed eternity.
That’s where the real trouble is, and I don’t know where healing might come
from, if not from those salted with the wisdom of words of spiritual
experience. One of those having love in themselves said that the books of the
saints are worthy of the same honor as the relics of the saints, and maybe even
more.
Or another example:
That’s how it is. You suffer in secret in your heart
from the adulterous thorns for a day, two, and more. Then your boss suddenly
summons you, and sullies your good name, blaming you for all real and imaginary
shortcomings. Then the fornication will permanently depart from your soul,
giving place to bitter resentment, and God thereby delivers you from the chasm
at the edge where you were standing. The resentment will pass; resentment is
not so dangerous.
***
The so-called “mind of salvation” is necessary for
salvation, without which all our work risks turning out to have been a sowing
on asphalt and plowing in the swamp. The praying fool from the proverb really
does break his forehead doing prostrations, and besides this unnecessary trauma
he obtains no other fruit. Therefore, the crystallized experience of the Church
should be in demand by us, and we must find time to become attentively familiar
with it, with persistence, so we don’t run in the wrong direction and don’t
beat the air (cf. 1 Cor. 9:26).
Books such as The Ladder can be read
for an entire life and digested slowly, according to the measure of our
practical effort. In them breathes that wisdom which is first pure,
then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good
fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy (Jas. 3:17). nion
with God, a livetc. , so when said about oursleves feel free.the be even more.
. ideist, and hte rnce in the owrld..
Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
Translated by Jesse Dominick
Source: Pravoslavie.ru
27 / 03 / 2017
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