21. Sins Against one’s Own Soul.

The spiritual father continues his exhortations: “When you put yourself mentally before

the face of God and offer repentance for your sins, then, apart from your offences against

God and against other people, you will soon perceive how you have proved to be an

unworthy proprietor of your own soul, which was given to you by God so that you could

make it capable of fruitfully serving Him and your neighbours. A soul that has already

submitted itself to God is always dissatisfied with itself, and reproaches itself not only for

obvious infringements of God’s commandments, but also for having insufficient zeal in

fulfilling them. Our penitential prayers, such as are offered by people leading a Churchcentered

life, lament first of all the sin of laziness. In the prayer, ‘O Lord and Master of

my life...’, idleness (sloth) is mentioned first, and through nine penitential weeks we

make ourselves contrite over this very sin, as we sing in church: ‘and have wasted my

whole life in laziness.’xliii Aren’t you also guilty of laziness, brother — of our Russian

laziness? Do not make peace with it; even in worldly matters it is death for the soul and

the parent of all vices, and in spiritual life even less should you submit to it. Do not try to

go to the church where the service finishes earliest, do not cut your prayers short and

besides this, always give yourself some disinterested work to do for the glory of God:

either visiting the sick, or prisons, or sewing things for the poor or for the Church, or else

earn money for a good cause or go and read to those in homes for the elderly. Then you

will come to love labour in general, and a prolonged period of inactivity will always seem

burdensome to you. Restrain yourself from idle-talk — from having conversations when

it is time to work, from visiting houses where you do not obtain anything useful or joyful

for your soul, but only want to go in order to kill time and keep away from work or

profitable reading. From idle-talking one forms the habit of lying — of not trying to say

what is true, but rather what is pleasant to the ear. Do not think that it is not particularly

important if you are easily prepared to speak untruths: all the world’s foul deeds are

unfailingly seasoned with lies and slanders. It is not for nothing that Satan is called the

father of lies. Only lies and slander could poison the mind of the Jewish people when

they cried out with one soul, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ Without lies and slander the

French Revolution of the 18th century would neither have begun nor been brought to

completion, nor would the Pugachev rebellion in Russia, nor the contemporary (1920)

destruction of our fatherland. And then, how greatly a person is valued if he is known to

be truthful, unable ever to tell a lie. Keep a watch over your soul, so as always to speak

the truth, and if you catch yourself telling a lie, then try to correct the error you have

caused, and explain to those you were talking to that you spoke incorrectly at such a time

about such a thing. If you do this then you will estrange yourself from lying. But if you

give yourself up to it, then, quite apart from committing the sin of slander and the

discords about which we spoke earlier, you will also not avoid another shameful habit,

from which hardly anyone who calmly speaks untruths is free. By this I mean flattery,

either of the powerful or of the crowd. Elections are now won by flattery and it is through

flattery that illicit love is obtained from women and through them that people are thrown

onto the broad path — that leads to destruction. Haven’t you also committed this very

sin? This sinful flattery is particularly repulsive on the lips of contemporary man, who

boasts of his independence and love of freedom while he is in fact using these very words

to conceal his career of man-pleasing and flattery, changing his cast of mind and socalled

“convictions” several times a day, depending on the different social groups he

happens to be in. But if you are free from this sin, are you not guilty of one which is its

direct opposite, although it is often combined with flattery? I mean by this the habit of

abuse, which has now spread with horrifying force among the younger generation,

especially the revolutionaries. Many of them do not pronounce the word “and” as often as

vulgar words of abuse. This may be against the person they are talking to, in order to

make it clear to their opponents how shameless they are and so prevent their opponents

from trying to put them to shame; or else they simply sprinkle their speech with this

shameless invective to make their own souls become coarsened more quickly and so not

feel any pangs of conscience for their criminal condition. — Even if you do not abuse to

so great a degree and have not the least desire to smother your conscience, even so you

should restrain yourself from abusive words, because these will coarsen your soul and

grieve the people you talk to, even if you do not intend to offend them. The Lord is

especially angered by those who call their neighbour ‘devil’ or use the expressions ‘The

devil take you’ (or ‘him’, or ‘me’). No Christian who values his salvation will start

saying such words, even without anger.”

There is one more virtue which it is essential to acquire if you wish to move ahead

in spiritual life. This is the virtue of patience, about which our contemporaries so dislike

to hear, which is why they have destroyed both their souls and their country. However, it

is difficult to speak of the beauty of virtues at confession, since its most immediate

purpose is repentance of sins. So I will tell you about the sin of impatience. “Aren’t you

guilty of this sin? Probably a good half of the quarrels in your family have been caused

by the fact that you have not tried to restrain for a short time the feeling of irritation at

some carelessness or injustice, or at some offence you had been caused. Once there was a

monk who could not put up with life in his monastery and had definitely decided to leave

the community, but his elder advised him to write six words on a piece of paper: “I will

endure for Jesus Christ.” He told him to read them every time he was upset and felt the

desire to leave the monastery. The monk thought that no good at all would come of this,

but even so he decided to try it a few times. And what do you think happened? He was

calmed every time when he read these words, and after he had done it a few times he

stopped taking offense at the brethren altogether and understood that the very offenses

were for the most part only imaginary, and his brothers had not even wanted to offend

him. — If you prescribe yourself the podvig of patience, then you will also observe the

Church fasts, since the Councils excommunicate a Christian for two years if he does not

keep them. Observing the fasts is the best way, firstly, of acquiring the virtue of patience;

secondly. of not wasting all your earnings on your personal needs and so being able to

put something aside for charity and, finally, of keeping lustful passions in check and

having a greater inclination towards prayer and spiritual reading.”

When the priest has interrogated the sinner about everything that he found

necessary or at least about everything that he found possible in the short time of

confession, then besides giving specific advice about particular passions and sins, he

must give a short exhortation about preserving the soul from temptations. Here he must

without fail warn him of the moral agony which is caused by his terrible and sinful

habits.

“Anyone who commits a terrible sin and does not repent of it will become gloomy

and hopeless like Cain. Even before he realizes what a terrible thing he has done he

begins to feel a grief, which at first he does not understand, as Saul did. He becomes

irritable and starts finding fault with his near ones and those around him. The affection of

his children, wife and parents no longer makes him happy, but becomes burdensome for

him. If he has been engaged in some elevating occupation, either intellectual or social

work, it now seems quite foreign to his soul: he would like to get away from himself, but

there is nowhere to go. It is doubly burdensome for him to be with those whom he has

criminally deceived — his wife, for example, if he is deceiving her, or his employer, if he

is robbing him. He seeks either solitude or the company of corrupt people who have

nothing against such things as those which are weighing on his conscience. But in either

case he is seeking oblivion, and he can find this, although not for long, in drunkenness,

only to be crushed subsequently by his conscience redoubled in strength, and demanding

oblivion again and again, at the bottom of which he finds despair and often suicide, the

eternal destruction of the soul, after which even the Church’s prayers are powerless.

Blessed will be that sinner who is horrified in time at his fall, admits it to the priest and

asks forgiveness of those before whom he is guilty. But the deeper his fall has been, the

more hardened his soul becomes, and the harder it will be for him to humble himself and

repent. If you are now filled with feelings of repentance, then you should realize that

every time you repeat or aggravate your sin the feelings of repentance will grow dim and

flee from you like a morning shadow. It is not for nothing that even a sinner praying in

church grievously cries out, “No tears, no repentance have I, nor compunction. But do

Thou Thyself as God, O Savior, grant me these.”xliv If only people thought, before

resolving on committing a sin, what torment they would experience as a consequence of

it even while still here on earth, in the ordinary conditions of life, they would turn away

from temptations with as much resolve as they would from a tasty but fatal poison. “Sin

shows me sweet things, but ever makes me taste and swallow bitter.”xlv

And so, bringing his counsel to a conclusion, the spiritual father says: “Seek

spiritual joys, the joys of pure love and well doing. Force yourself to do at least

something in fulfillment of this commandment; prescribe at least some constant labour

for the glory of God and the salvation of your soul; then sin will continuously lose its

attraction for you and finally (or perhaps immediately) will become repulsive, as the

Apostle Paul writes, ‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh’ (Gal.

5:16).”

Bringing to an end our exposition of advice to guide people in their struggle

against the passions and in the healing of individual sins, we do not, I repeat, make any

claim either to completeness or to a strictly systematic arrangement; for this subject is

endless, just as the variety of human characters, situations and dispositions is endless. We

will be satisfied if even a few spiritual fathers will read this and say, “Yes, now I have

found out what is the essence of my task as a spiritual father, and I think I will be able,

with God’s help, to say what is necessary even when my parishioners come to me with

attitudes, deeds and admissions about which nothing has been said here.”

However, there is something else which we consider essential to add. We have

been speaking of the spiritual curing of sinners, but we should say at least two or three

words about the spiritual guidance of the righteous. By these we do not mean those

Christians who have already subdued their passions and could teach the spiritual father

himself how to be saved; but we mean rather those who are less confirmed in virtue, but

still occupy themselves with their salvation and struggle preeminently in prayer and

fasting. They must be protected from being carried away by mysticism of the Khlyst

variety, and warned that the Holy Fathers strictly forbid people to squeeze feelings of

prayerful exaltation or compunction out of themselves or to stimulate them artificially in

any way. A person who does this is mistaking a purely physical sensation for spiritual

exaltation; his heart palpitates, his breath comes in gasps, he has spasms and so on, and

then, satisfied by such sensations, he begins to think that he is a great man of prayer, a

spiritual person, and falls into proud self-delusion. While they forbid people to force their

feelings, the fathers command us to force our attention into all the words and thoughts of

a prayer — it is better to read fewer prayers, and pay more attention. Feelings do not

depend on our will, but are sent by God as a gift of grace, which we can and should value

very highly, but we must in no way deem ourselves superior to others or boast if we

receive it. If it is long withheld from a person who prays or is taken away at times, then

he should carefully think whether he is being hindered by some unrecognized sin, a

secretly conceived passion or sinful worry over some worldly matter, and, if so, start

struggling against it. But if his memory and conscience testify that this is not so, then he

should patiently continue laboring at prayer, and the Lord will send compunction when it

will be most useful for his soul — when he stops being impatient and presumptuous. Also

the priest should persistently warn the faithful not to ask for visions and miracles, since

Christians who begin asking for these are well on the way to spiritual delusion (prelest)

and superstitions. Also, they should not be in a hurry to see the machinations of demons

at work every time they experience some failure: we are too insignificant, in the spiritual

sense, for evil spirits to take much trouble over us, since even without this we do what

pleases them. We should consider attacks demonic only when we are set upon by an

onslaught of malicious hatred, or of despondency and despair, if they have no other

cause, or of unexpected and unself-induced attacks of lust. While restraining his spiritual

children from desiring miracles and visions and demanding them from God, the priest

should remind them that they should mentally place themselves before God during

prayer. Furthermore, and this is especially important, he should remind them that not only

do we look up mentally to God during prayer, but also the Lord, as ever, is looking down

upon us, looking into our hearts, reading our thoughts and attending to our petitions and

our words of praise. This thought always drives inattention and distraction away from a

person who is praying; for if a person talking to a king pays close attention to every word

the king says and penetrates into its meaning, concentrates and is respectful, then it

follows that someone talking to the Lord, feeling the gaze of the All-Seeing One directed

upon him, will be filled with reverent trembling and holy compunction.