Temptations and the Christian Battle—Part 2

The following in an excerpt from “Eros of Orthodoxy,” translated by Fr. Nicholas Palis and written by Mr. Pantelis Paschou.

If one wanted to investigate the deep causes of voluntary temptations, he would find much physical health, wealth, easy life, glory, while behind the involuntary ones he would see tribulations, abuses, punishments, sicknesses. These temptations hit us with many forms of pleasant trials (health, beauty, having many good children, money, glory, etc). So with saddening temptations we experience loss of children, a beloved, persons close to you, loss of money, wealth, glory. With these we also have pains and afflictions of the body (that is, with sicknesses, toils). It is natural for us to be saddened by these, but if we ask God, He would answer us with the Gospel, for the first two: “Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). And the third one he would tell us: “By your endurance, you will gain your souls” (Luke 21:19).

Temptations, of course, are bodily and spiritual. How many saints with pained feet walked on the thorn-strewn fields of temptations and left us their holy experience as a guide. So they say that temptations, which come by God’s concession, are for our pride, to bring us, in other words, to humility. They fight us and tempt us, sometimes warming up our “appetitive side,” sometimes shaking up our quick-temperedness, sometimes darkening our intelligent power and sometimes dressing our body with pains and afflictions. They come, however, like doctors: “Every temptation, is conceded as a healing from God, for the healing of the soul of the ill one” (St. Peter the Damascene).

Of course, they bring us sadness and bodily pain, but this happens for three very important reasons:

1. To uproot the old sins from within us
2. To pull us away from our present sins, with which we have friendships, and
3. To guard us from the sins which Satan will have us do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

But we must not murmur for the temptations that will come in any given moment. In any case, “Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?” (Job 7:1). “Blessed is the man who endures trial” (James 1:12). This is the weapon with which we shall defeat temptation. For us to pray that God give us patience and humility: “Make us glad as many days as Thou hast afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil” (Psalms 90:15). Let us not think that God will allow us to bear a temptation heavier then what we can stand: “God is faithful,” the Apostle Paul tells us, “and He will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (I Corinth. 10:13).

Here, St. Isaac the Syrian the most philosophical in spiritual matters tells us that prior to temptation the soul secretly receives the power of the Holy Spirit. But so that we do not sense bondage in independence, in our freedom, we first feel the temptation, then the grace of the Holy Spirit. Thus, it also happened with the Holy Apostles, whose great temptations found them after the descent upon them of the Holy Spirit.

We furthermore know, that the putting out of temptation depends upon our prayer and God’s desire. “And if temptation did not come,” says Anthony the Great, “we, in any case, must await it. This is the great work of man, that he put his fault upon himself before God, and await temptation till his last breath.” Even more so, he considers man unable to be saved without being tempted: “No-one untempted will be able to enter into the kingdom of the heavens”. This position of Anthony the Great is explained with the words of the nyptic St. John the Carpathian: “For the temptations are a bit, “able to bridle the human roaring” by the providence of God. Without temptations, pride drags us onto tall, and dangerous precipitous cliffs. While with temptations (always the involuntary, naturally) even the perfect become worthy of greater gifts, the more the temptations grow. And at the appropriate time, “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial” (II Peter 2:9). As long, however, as we show patience as He seeks it of us. Because while with faintheartedness in temptations, anxiety and frustration, the soul is filled with bitterness and foretastes the asphyxiating and suicidal atmosphere of Hell, with patience, on the contrary, he chases out the bitterness of temptation. Patience is the mother of consolation. It is power, which is born in a wide heart, with persistent prayer and warm tears, and there where pain compresses us and we anxiously cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 21:Gree 22, English 1). In a short while we cry out lightened and comforted: “Lord, Thou hast given me room when I was in distress!” (Psalm 4:1). And if before you calm down, you cannot but think of the temptation, try not to accuse him who appears to have brought you the temptation, but think of why this temptation came, and thus you will be corrected. Regardless of who brought you the temptation, you (one way or the other,) have to drink its bitter cup, which the unexamined depths of God’s judgments permitted to come to you.

Let us not murmur with the pains and the afflictions of the temptations that come to us. Just as we men know how much weight we must load on our animals, which ascend the cliffs or pass by the swampy areas. And just as the brick-maker who burns the clay pots, neither leaves them unbaked nor does he over-burn them -thus God also, who permits the temptations for our good: He burns the clay vessel of our flesh with the divine fire as much as is necessary, to hold our soul free from the death of sin till the end from the eternal fire of Hell. At the end of the temptations, there is the reward and the crown, which are given to whoever struggles and not to those who “lying on their backs snore”. In every temptation, let us turn tearful eyes to heaven and we will hear the sweet voice of revelation telling us: “Because you have kept my word of patient endurance I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world” (Rev. 3:10).

We will end with an expression of St. John Chrysostom: “So let us not be sad, with the toils of this world because if you have sins, affliction burns them and destroys them. And if, again, you have virtue, this will make you appear even brighter and even more joyful. The falls of Christian are not brought by the nature of temptations, but by the wickedness of those tempted”.