Source: Notes on Arab Orthodoxy
October 21, 2017
Photo: billygraham.org The chief passions are three: money, authority and pleasure. Authority is itself legitimate, but domination is not legitimate.
Saint John Climacus says in his book The Latter of Divine Ascent, "God did not invent evil. Those who claim that there are evil passions in the soul have erred, having missed the fact that we ourselves transformed the properties of our nature into passions." The ability to produce offspring, for example, is within us, but we have transformed it into fornication. We have within us desire for food, but we have transformed it into gluttony. We have within us the incensive faculty in order to be angry at evil, but we have turned it to harm our neighbor...
We combat the passions by acquiring the opposing virtue and practicing it. We combat gluttony with fasting, pride and selfishness with humility and brokenness of spirit. Love of sin is replaced with love of Christ: "Longing for Christ has extinguished longing for sin."
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