Hello, my dear ones! First of all forgive me for the background noise: the local fishermen have
just started their boats and it would take too long for me to wait them out, so I'm just recording
with this noise behind me. This video follows immediately after the one we posted last Tuesday
about the despondency that fights us as we begin to properly pray, and today we'll talk about the
waterfall of bad thoughts and this dreadful feeling of uncleanness, unworthiness which follows
once we've managed to deal with despondency. If you read the Holy Fathers, particularly if
you read from the Desert Fathers who are our best teachers on prayer, you'll see that they come again
and again back to this reality that the minute we approach God, every step we take towards God,
we are going to be fought; they talk about not picking up a fight with the devil if you want
to have a quiet life---in other words, if you are a soldier of prayer or if you want to become
a soldier of Christian prayer, don't expect grace immediately: grace may be given just to give us
a bit of courage at the very beginning, but once we enter the desert of prayer, once we enter the
desert of ourselves and we begin to see ourselves for the deserts that we are, expect nothing but
temptation for a very, very long time. And I'm here trying to help you not to give up; in fact, I'm here
trying to tell you that this is a good sign, this means that you've picked up a good fight which is
worth fighting, because at the end of it all, grace awaits you. Be blessed, dear ones, be blessed.
Once you've managed to fight despondency, what you will notice immediately is that this torrent,
this avalanche of horrible, terrible thoughts, the most ugly, disgusting blasphemous thoughts will
collapse over your mind, thoughts you have never had before or temptations, passions which you had
overcome years and years before are all coming back with a renewed power to fight against you:
that marks the entry into a new stage, and that new stage is perfectly normal and it is a spiritually
healthy way prayer is supposed to work in you, this is part of that normal, healthy
balancing act that prayer itself goes through in order to regulate itself, it's that balancing
act so that we don't fall either into pride or into despondency. Pride can come from the fact
that we become aware that we pray while other people don't pray, while two years ago we were
not praying and so on: these, these bad, negative acts of comparing ourselves to our past selves
or to other people around us can very easily push us into pride, but also in order to preserve
us and protect us from despondency which is the other temptation, prayer has this inner ability to
balance itself so we can keep on going on this--- I think you call it tightrope, and you do this
act of balancing yourself so you don't fall. These dreadful thoughts happen because you've
taken one step closer to the treasure of prayer, and prayer is a treasure and like any treasure it
is guarded by all these wild beasts that would do anything to prevent us from receiving this grace.
The closer we get to Christ through prayer, the more horrible these thoughts will become;
the lighter heaven gets as we get closer to its reality, the darker
our perception and understanding of our own hell becomes; because again, the greater
the offering of God, the greater the temptation
that comes with it. Remember that at the end of all of this, as Saint Silouan tells us as he
witnesses from his own experience within his heart: ‘Within a Saint's heart heaven and hell coexist’,
they, they exist at the same time and they burn at the same time, each with their own flame. The
deeper our prayer becomes, the closer we are to God, and God is like, like a powerful sun,
its light penetrates our being and we become increasingly more transparent to ourselves
if you want to visualize it that way, it is a helpful way that the Fathers are using, it is as if
we are travelling closer and closer to the sun, and the closer we get to the sun, that blinding light
penetrates our being and we get to perceive what lies in our being; we become transparent,
visible to ourselves and we get to see our own darkness, we get to see everything that lay hidden
in us: all the marks of our sinfulness, all the wounds of our passions that we had forgotten
or we had chosen to forget, all of those become increasingly visible and weighing heavier and
heavier on our souls as we get closer to God. And again, the same balancing act of the spiritual life
happens under the supervision, under the saving leadership of God: the more grace we are given,
the more we perceive our sinfulness, and we are balanced so we don't fall in the pride that could
come from the awareness of the grace we've been given while also not falling in the despondency
of being so fully aware of our sinfulness. That's why this awareness of our sinfulness grows as we
are being given more grace, because if we were to be given this awareness before we were given the
grace we would collapse into despondency and no one could ever save us; if we were given this grace
before we had the ability to deal with our sinfulness we would fall into such pride
that we would equal demons in our pride. Things can increase only together. The more you pray, the
more real and transformative your prayer becomes,
the deeper your experience of God and the deeper the experience of your own hell,
because of this closeness to God, because of His light making yourself transparent to yourself---
and don't forget that at the same time as we get closer to God, as we get transformed, changed
by the experience of prayer, because we fight our fallen nature and because the more we reject our
fallen nature, we, the more, we embrace our resurrected nature, then that means that the
closer we get to God, the more we advance in this experience, the more God-like we become,
the more that potential to be like God, that potential with which we have been
born, we have been created and which has been renewed in full force in us
through the Sacrament of Baptism and Chrismation, that potential is actualized and we become
God-like, and God is meek and loving and humble, so that means that the more we advance in our prayer,
the more humble and more loving, the more meek and like God we become, so even if our understanding
of our sinfulness were not to increase because of the extra grace that we have been given, if we were
to contemplate the same sins that we were aware of at the beginning of our growth through prayer,
the same sin that we looked at and we said, ‘Oh, actually that's not quite bad’, that same sin will
crush you one-two years into serious prayer, into a spiritual life because you are no longer the same,
even if the sin is the same and your perception of that sin is the same,
you have changed, you have become much more sensitive, more God-like, and the closeness of
dirt, the closeness of sin and foulness hurts you, brings you pain in a way that didn't happen before;
the reactions of those around you will hurt you and bring you pain in a way that didn't
happen before; your own reactions, not only visible through your acts or your gestures, through your
words, but also your inner reactions and actions towards the world and your brothers and sisters
will bring so much pain to you and will be such a horrible source of
disappointment and pain, spiritual pain, but that is part of the healthy,
spiritual transformation that takes place in yourself as we leave behind our fallenness,
our old Adam, our old self, and we embrace our resurrected self, the new Adam,
the new person that we are called to become by the end of our lives and into God's kingdom.
Do not despair when you stand in darkness before the icon of Christ or the Mother of God or the
Saints and nothing moves within yourself: the simple fact that you are there is proof that
within you the engines of prayer are working, it is proof that within you God is now acting,
and that means that you are slowly rejecting your fallen body and its needs, your fallen mind
and its tyranny, your fallen emotions and their trap, and you are embracing your new being
and your new body and mind and emotions; the more you do that, the stronger this new person becomes,
and the stronger this new person becomes, the more transparent you become to your own sinfulness,
and you will get to perceive yourself more and more as worse than anyone else, than,
worse than animals---at least animals when they do something bad, they don't have the awareness of
Christ's commandments, they don't purposely, in full awareness step upon Christ's love---
the more you become your resurrected self, the more heaven and hell become part of who you
are, and that means that you will perceive your sinfulness in a more abrupt, violent way.
Don't run away. Don't be scared by that. You are now a soldier in full battle. The fact that you
are being attacked simply is proof that you are doing the right thing in the right way and
that now your enemies perceive that God is with you, within you, praying for you, fighting for you.
Yes, you will perceive yourself as the last among anybody who has ever lived,
but that is the foundation of everything in the spiritual life: not condemning others, not fighting
wars on the outside, not identifying hell in your brother and your sister; hell is here---but
also here, increasingly so as we advance in our prayer, is heaven, and by the end of this blessed,
God-blessed, God-led process, heaven and hell will live in your heart at the same time as
Saint Silouan witnesses before us. May God bless you, dear ones. May God bless every pore of your being,
every pore of your bodies and your souls. Please keep me and the monastery in your prayers and you
are always in ours. Amen, dear ones, amen.
O my soul, why do you grow rich in sins? Why do you do the will of the devil? In what do you place your
trust? Leave all of this and turn to God, crying out: O long-suffering Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.