The Satan seized
Judas and taught him how to betray the Lord; Judas agreed and betrayed Jesus.
The Satan entered Judas’s heart because the door was open. Our innermost is
always locked; even the Lord always stands at the door and knocks. What is the
key that unlocks that door? It’s affinity, inclination, and kinship. A person
whose heart is inclined towards the Satan, opens his door for the Satan; a
person whose heart is predisposed towards the Lord, opens his door for the
Lord. The fact that it’s the Satan and not the Lord that enters your heart is
your own fault. Don’t allow thoughts that please the Satan. Don’t listen to
them. Don’t act on them. Don’t agree with them. The Satan will wander to and
fro, and finally leave you alone. He doesn’t have any power over anyone. If he
seizes a person, that’s only because that person yields to him.
Thoughts are the
root of all evil. Don’t tolerate bad thoughts; that’s how you can effectively
lock the door of your heart for the Satan. If you encounter bad thoughts, don’t
worry: there isn’t anyone in this world who doesn’t, and it’s not a sin to
actually have these thoughts. Drive them away, and that’s that; if they come
again, drive them away again. Repeat when necessary. If you allow those
thoughts to take root in your heart and begin to entertain them, it shouldn’t
come as a surprise that you’ll gradually feel affinity with them. That will
make them even stickier. Affinity will bring about bad intentions to do
something bad. Those intentions, which aren’t defined yet, will mold into a
certain shape and present a choice, agreement, and decision. That’s how a sin
is committed!
The door of one’s
heart is swung open. As soon as one agrees to sin, the Satan jumps in and
starts to boss that person around. The poor soul is like a slave or as a beast
of burden: it is driven to exhaustion doing obscene actions. If only that soul
didn’t tolerate the bad thoughts from the start! Things would have worked
out differently.
By St. Theophan the Recluse
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds
Source: https://azbyka.ru/days/2018-12-21
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