Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY

  • Some call men intelligent because they have the power of discernment on the sensible plane. But the really intelligent people are those who control their own desires.

    —St Mark the Ascetic

  • “Desire is a mystery, and sex is its funeral,” remarks Parthenope at one point. But longing for her beauty to remain closed off to others—a vision to be admired, not a spectacle to be consumed—leaves her as alienated from the human experience as the timeless deities to which she’s compared.

    —Roger Ebert

  • Your past and present torments and sufferings are poured down upon you to test your faith and steel it; they also work to curb your lusts and passions. Humble yourself. God succours the humble. Judgment of others, insistence on their shortcomings, can only increase the bitterness of your sorrow. Choose the better part.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina

  • He who accepts present afflictions in the expectation of future blessings has found knowledge of the truth; and he will easily be freed from anger and remorse.

    —St Mark the Ascetic

  • Desire and distress subsist in the soul; sensual pleasure and pain in the body. Sensual pleasure gives rise to pain, and pain to sensual pleasure (for, wanting to escape the wearisome feeling of pain, we take refuge in sensual pleasure); while desire results in distress. 

    —Ilias the Presbyter

  • Trials and temptations subject to our volition are chiefly caused by health, wealth and reputation, and those beyond our control by sickness, material losses and slander. Some people are helped by these things, others are destroyed by them.

    —Ilias the Presbyter

  • Distress checks sensual pleasure; the fear of punishment withers desire.

    —St. Thalassios the Libyan

  • The experience of suffering afflicts the senses; distress annuls sensual pleasure.

    —St. Thalassios the Libyan

  • Sometimes men are tested by pleasure, sometimes by distress or by physical suffering. By means of His prescriptions the Physician of souls administers the remedy according to the cause of the passions lying hidden in the soul.

    —St. Maximos the Confessor, Four-Hundred Texts on Love

  • Or perhaps God wants to give you a period of rest
    from the burden of sin, so that your soul is not swallowed
    up by despair.

    Since the continual succession of falls, drags the sinner to
    despair. That is why God’s mercies reach out to him, giving him rest, even if it is for a short while, and lifts the war from him. Grace protects and supports him, even if it is for some time. So he passes through a period of calmness, in which sin does not trouble him. Not because he has been purified, but because he is not fighting.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity