Category: Ignatius Brianchaninov

Insensibility or deadening of the soul consists in the deprival and loss of a sense of repentance and mourning from our spirit, and a loss of that salutary pain called contrition from our heart. Painlessness of heart or illusory peace is a true sign of a wrong outlook, wrong struggle, self-deception. “However great may be the life we lead,” says St John of the Ladder, “it we have not acquired a suffering and painful heart, we may count it stale and spurious.” Painlessness comes from an inattentive life…from gluttony…from vainglorious thoughts, from presumption and pride. “If you are without compunction,” says the Fathers, “know that you have vainglory; for it does not allow the soul to come to compunction.”

The way to attain compunction is an attentive life. “The beginning of repentance comes from the fear of God and attention,” as the holy martyr Boniface says. “The fear of God is the father of attention, and attention is the mother of inner peace, which gives birth to a conscience which enables the soul to see its deformity as in a kind of clear and still water, and so are born the beginnings and roots of repentance.”

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

The greatest of the holy Fathers admitted that repentance was their sole occupation. Having given themselves up to this activity, they more and more widened its scope for themselves, since repentance not only cleanses a person from sins but also sharpens his sight so that he sees himself more clearly.

When some spots of sin are removed by repentance from the garment of the soul, then suddenly the existence of other spots is discovered, less coarse but no less important, which have remained unnoticed till now on account of the dullness of our sight.

Finally repentance leads a person who practices it to the most profound spiritual visions; there is disclosed to him his own fall and the fall of all mankind, his suffering and the suffering of mankind under the yoke of the prince of this world, the wonderful work of redemption and the other mysteries, with which the reader must become acquainted by experience, for human speech is quite inadequate to tell of them.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

In order to approach Christ and enter into union with Him by means of holy baptism, it is essential first of all to repent. And after holy baptism, we are given freedom either to stay in union with the Lord or to break this union by intercourse with sin. Not only that, but in our fallen nature holy baptism does not destroy our aptitude for producing evil mixed with good, so that our will and pleasure may be constantly tested, so that our choice of divine good and our preference of it to evil and our corrupted good may be free, proved positively by our submission to all the sorrows and sufferings of the way of the cross.

By holy baptism, original sin is expunged, as are also sins committed before baptism. It also eliminates the violent power sin has over us till our rebirth; it gives us the grace of the Holy Spirit by which we are united with God in Christ, and we receive power to subdue and conquer sin. For the simple reason that we are not delivered from the struggle with sin, we cannot be entirely free from sin during the whole of our earthly life, and even “a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again” by repentance, says scripture….

Repentance becomes his secure possession, his constant weapon, his invaluable treasure. By repentance, the righteous man maintains his fellowship with Christ. He is healed by repentance from the wounds caused by sin.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

The Savior of the world has said, “The lamp of the body is the eye.” By lamp the Savior meant the spiritual power of the human soul, the spirit of man; by body the Savior meant all man’s activity and the quality of his life that is formed by and depends on this activity….

“When your eye is good,” that is, when the spiritual power is unconfused by sin or fellowship with Satan, then “your whole body also is full of light,” that is, your activity will be right and will be holy in quality. “But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.” See to it that your spirit, which is your natural light and the source of light for  your life, does not become dark and a source of darkness.

This eye becomes evil through accepting falsehood. A result of this acceptance is wrong activity, while the quality of life becomes a state of sinfulness and self-deception. By accepting false thoughts the mind is corrupted, the conscience loses its reliability, and all the spiritual feelings of the heart are likewise infected with abnormality and sinfulness. Man becomes useless, an enemy of his own salvation, a murderer of his own soul, an enemy of God.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

The Savior of the world has said, “The lamp of the body is the eye.” By lamp the Savior meant the spiritual power of the human soul, the spirit of man; by body the Savior meant all man’s activity and the quality of his life that is formed by and depends on this activity….

“When your eye is good,” that is, when the spiritual power is unconfused by sin or fellowship with Satan, then “your whole body also is full of light,” that is, your activity will be right and will be holy in quality. “But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.” See to it that your spirit, which is your natural light and the source of light for  your life, does not become dark and a source of darkness.

This eye becomes evil through accepting falsehood. A result of this acceptance is wrong activity, while the quality of life becomes a state of sinfulness and self-deception. By accepting false thoughts the mind is corrupted, the conscience loses its reliability, and all the spiritual feelings of the heart are likewise infected with abnormality and sinfulness. Man becomes useless, an enemy of his own salvation, a murderer of his own soul, an enemy of God.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

The devil employs all his efforts to hinder prayer or to make it powerless and ineffective. For this spirit–cast down from heaven for pride and rebellion against God, infected with incurable envy and hatred for the human race, burning with thirst for the destruction of men, sleeplessly engaged day and night in man’s ruin–it is intolerable to see weak and sinful man detach himself by prayer from everything earthly, and enter into conversation with God Himself and go out from this conversation sealed with the mercy of God, in hope of inheriting heaven and seeing even his frail body transformed into a spiritual body.

This spectacle is unbearable for a spirit who is forever condemned to creep and crawl, as in mud and stench, in thoughts and feelings exclusively carnal, material, sinful, and who must finally be cast down and confined for all eternity in the prisons of hell.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

The devil converses with a person without using a voice, yet with words; because thoughts are the same as words, only not uttered by a voice, not clothed in sounds without which men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other. In the same word, Makarios the Great says, “The devil acts so cunningly that all evil appears to us as if it were born of itself in the soul and not from the extraneous action of an alien spirit acting maliciously and endeavoring to remain hidden.”

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

If during his earthly pilgrimage a person does not break his connection with evil spirits, he will remain in fellowship with them even after his death, more or less belonging to them, depending upon the degree of intercourse. Unbroken intercourse with fallen spirits consigns one to eternal perdition, while insufficient broken relations render one liable to severe torments on the way to heaven.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

Brethren, let us be alarmed at our weakness. Let us be alarmed at sin which so easily deceives us, so easily slinks into us, captures and fetters us. Let us be alarmed at our fallen nature which never ceases to produce the tares of sin. We must constantly watch ourselves, check our conduct and spiritual state with the Gospel, and on no account allow any sinful tendency to grow strong and propagate in our soul by regarding this tendency as unimportant….

We must never neglect tares that spring up from the heart, or sinful thoughts that appear to the mind. Thoughts should at once be rejected and banished, and sinful feelings uprooted and destroyed by opposing them with the commandments of the Gospel and by having recourse to prayer.

Tares are easily got rid of when they are young and frail. But when they take root with time and habit, then their removal calls for the greatest efforts. A sinful thought when accepted and appropriated by the mind enters into the composition of the mind or understanding and deprives it of soundness; while a sinful feeling that lingers in the heart becomes, as it were, a natural property and deprives the heart of spiritual freedom.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

A profound and hidden mystery is the fall of man. It is quite impossible for a person to understand it by his own powers. This is because among the consequences of the fall is mental blindness, which prevents the mind from seeing the depths and darkness of the fall. Our fallen state deceptively appears to be a state of triumph, and the land of exile seems to be an exceptional field of progress and enjoyment. Gradually God discloses the mystery to those ascetics who serve Him sincerely and with all their soul.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov