Month: August 2018

God deserts those engaged in spiritual warfare for three reasons: because of their arrogance, because they censure others, and because they are so cock-a-hoop about their own virtue. The presence of any of these vices in the soul prompts God to withdraw; and until they are expelled and replaced by radical humility, the soul will not escape just punishment.

It is not only passion-charged thoughts that sully the heart and defile the soul. To be elated about one’s many achievements, to be puffed up about one’s virtue, to have a high idea of one’s wisdom and spiritual knowledge, and to criticize those who are lazy and negligent–all this has the same effect, as is clear from the parable of the publican and the pharisee (Luke 18:10-14).

~Nikitas Stithatos

He who wholeheartedly hates and renounces ‘the desire of the fallen self, the desire of the eyes, and the false pretensions of this life’ (1 John 2:16)–that whole ‘world of iniquity’ (James 4:4)–has crucified the world to himself and himself to the world: he has destroyed in his flesh the enmity between God and his soul, and has made peace between the two (Ephesians 2:15). For he who has died to these things through effacing the will of the flesh has reconciled himself to God.

He has eradicated the enmity of this world by obliterating sensual pleasure through a life crucified to the world, and has embraced friendship with Jesus. He is no longer God’s enemy because of his love for the world, but is a friend of God, crucified to the world and able to say, ‘The world is crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Galatians 6:14).

~Nikitas Stithatos

The three most general passions are self-indulgence, avarice and love of praise; and three are the ranks of men that fight against them and overcome them: those newly embarked on the spiritual path, those in mid-course, and those who have attained its goal.

The battle waged by those in the three stages of the spiritual path against these three principles and powers of the prince of this world is not one and the same, but at each stage the battle is different. At each stage there is a different way of fighting against these passions, and each way makes lawful and natural use of the power of righteous indignation.

~Nikitas Stithatos

For those newly engaged in spiritual warfare the swift path to the recovery of virtue consists in the silencing of the lips, the closure of the eyes and the stopping of the ears; for once the intellect has achieved this kind of intermission and has sealed off the external entrances to itself, it begins to understand itself and its own activities.

It immediately sets about interrogating the ideas swimming in the noetic sea of its thought, trying to discern whether the concepts that erupt into the mind’s crucible are pure, alloyed with no bitter seed, and conferred by an angel of light, of whether they are tares, hybridized, trashy, emanating from the devil.

Standing thus like a masterful sovereign in the midst of its thoughts, judging them and separating the better from the worse, the intellect accepts those that are well-tested in the fire of the Spirit and saturated with divine water, absorbing them into its actions and practice and storing them up in its spiritual treasure-house; for by these thoughts it is nourished, strengthened and filled with light.

The other thoughts it casts into the depths of oblivion, eradicating their bitterness. This is the work only of someone who has spiritually embarked upon the path that leads unerringly to the heavens and to God, and who has stripped off the lugubrious cloak of the dark passions.

~Nikitas Stithatos

Ascetic toil is initially painful for all those newly engaged in spiritual warfare; but for those exercised in the growth of virtue and who have reached the mid-point of their path, such toil is pleasurable and produces a strange sense of relief. When the mortal will of the flesh is swallowed up by the immortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4) conferred through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those truly striving towards the perfection of virtue, they are filled with unspeakable joy and gladness, for a pure spring of tears has opened within them, and streams of sweet compunction flow down on them from above.

~Nikitas Stithatos