Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY

  • Do not believe your flesh when it threatens to you with weakness during prayer; it lies. As soon as you begin to pray you will find that the flesh will become your obedient slave. Your prayer will vivify it also. Always remember that the flesh is lying.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • Psychological illnesses can be passed from one person to
    another just like contagious physical illnesses…

    Having too much to do with skeptics may make one start to
    doubt. And listening to the words of the fearful may bring
    on fear. The same goes for worry, anxiety and suspicions,
    jealousy and lust, which can all be passed on through being in close contact and association with others and exchanging facts and communicating with them.

    Therefore it is necessary for a person to choose his friends.
    And it is not only psychological illnesses which can be
    spread by contagion, but spiritual illnesses too!

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • “Temptations come so that hidden passions may be revealed and so that it will be possible to fight them, and so that the soul may be rid of them. They are also a sign of God’s mercy. So give yourself with trust into God’s hands and ask his help, so that he will strengthen you in your struggle. God knows how much each one can bear and allows temptations according to the measure of our strength. Remember that after temptation comes spiritual joy, and that the Lord protects them that endure temptations and suffering for the sake of His love.” 

    —Saint Nektarios of Aegina

  • St. Isaac the Syrian in his seventy-second homily tells us, “As soon as Grace sees that a little self-esteem has begun to steal into a man’s thoughts, and that he has begun to think great things of himself, She [Grace] immediately permits the temptations opposing him to gain in strength and prevail, until he learns his weakness…and seeks refuge with God in humility.”

    …

    Temptations come not to test us to see if we will be good; rather, temptations come to show us that we are not good and that we need to flee in humility to God for refuge.  Temptations come because we think we can make it through the day without God’s constant help.  Temptations come because we think a comfortable life is normal, rather than a gift from God.

    …

    St. Isaac tells us, “all thoughts that dismay and frighten you will take flight from you, since these are customarily engendered in men by thoughts that look to comfort.”  

    …

    The advice of St. Isaac is not the advice you get in the world.  The world teaches us the opposite.  The world teaches us that a comfortable life is normal, that it is normal to be fulfilled, content and satisfied.  And the world teaches us that if you are not experiencing such a happy life, it’s someone’s fault, and probably not yours.  And even though it’s not your fault, the world teaches us, that it is up to you to do something about it, to affix blame on someone, to fight for your rights, your right to a normal life as the world defines it.

    Overcoming Temptations Through Low Expectations
    Fr. Michael Gillis, Praying in the Rain

  • A wandering mind is made stable by reading, vigil and prayer. Flaming lust is extinguished by hunger, labor, and solitude. Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity, and mercifulness. All this has its effect when used at its proper time and in due measure. Everything untimely or without proper measure is short-lived; and short-lived things are more harmful than useful.

    —Abba Evagrius the Monk

  • Every time a fast comes…they [monks and saints] don’t know what it means to gratify the desires of the flesh and I don’t know what it’s like to deny the flesh. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m tempted, I look.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • Our desires are possible to gratify, but impossible to satisfy.

    —Jonathan Bailey, The Eternal Journey


  • I do not avoid movies that have ugliness or wickedness portrayed in them, I avoid movies that stir up my ugly and wicked passions. This distinction is essential. And it may be that a movie or novel that one person finds insightful and beautiful, another will have to avoid because some aspects of it stir up particular passions he or she may struggle with. Each person is different. I myself have found that I cannot at all listen to secular music without it causing terrible problems in my inner life, but I can watch a movie that some might consider inappropriate and it provide fodder for prayerful thought and contemplation for many days.Praying In The Rain,

    More Thoughts on Movies, Holiness, and Brownies
    Fr. Michael Gillis

  • Let all carnal sweetness be as bitterness to you; carnal loss, as gain.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it.

    —Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote