Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Part 6A, Part 6B, Part 7A, Part 7B
Part 8A, Part 8B, Part 9A, Part 9B
Part 10, Part 11, Part 12A
Photo: monastery.ru
Deception
One of the most terrible and difficult to treat types of pride is prelest (delusion).
Delusion means deception. The devil deceives man, taking on the form of an angel of light, of the saints, the Theotokos, and even Christ Himself. A deceived man receives strong spiritual experiences from satan; he can perform ascetic feats, even miracles, but it’s all just captivity to demonic powers. And at the heart of this is pride. Such a man is proud of his spiritual labors, deeds; he did them out of vainglory, pride, often for show, without humility, and thereby opened his soul to the work of hostile forces.
In his Patericon, St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) gives an example of what terrible consequences spiritual deception can lead to:
It is said of a certain brother that he lived as a hermit in the desert and for many years was seduced by demons, thinking they were angels. From time to time, his father according to the flesh would come to see him. One day, his father headed off to see his son and took an axe with him to chop some firewood to take back. One of the demons, anticipating the coming of the father, appeared to the son and told him: “Behold, the devil is coming to you in the likeness of your father in order to kill you. He has an axe with him. You must get to him first, seize the axe, and kill him.” His father came, as was his custom, and his son seized the axe and struck and killed him.
It’s very hard to bring a man who has fallen into deception out of this state, but there are such cases, such as St. Nikita of the Kiev Caves. Having fallen into deception, he was able to foretell certain events and learned the entire Old Testament by heart. But after intense prayer by the venerable elders of the Kiev Caves, the demon departed from him. After that, he forgot everything he knew from books, and the fathers just barely managed to teach him to read and write again.
Cases of demonic deception are also found in our day. There was a young man, my seminary classmate, who prayed and fasted intensely, but apparently with an improper, un-humble disposition of soul. The students began to notice that he spent whole days poring over books. Everyone thought he was reading the Holy Fathers. It turns out he was studying books about Islam and occultism. He stopped confessing and communing. Unfortunately, they couldn’t bring him out of this state and he was soon expelled.
The sin of pride, while starting something with petty vanity and pride, can grow into a terrible spiritual illness. That’s why the Holy Fathers called this passion the greatest and most dangerous of passions.
The Battle with Pride
How can we battle against pride, contempt for others, and self-aggrandizement? What counters this passion?
The Holy Fathers teach that the opposite virtue to pride is love. The greatest of passions is fought by the highest virtue.
How do we acquire love for others?
As they say, it’s easy to love all of mankind, but it’s very difficult to love a particular man with all his flaws and weaknesses. When the Lord was asked: Which is the great commandment in the Law? He responded: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Mt. 22:37–39).
Love is a great feeling that makes us kin to God, for God is love. In love is the only happiness; it can help us overcome all difficulties and conquer pride and egotism. But not everyone correctly understands what love is. Love is often mistaken for the pleasant feelings we get when we’re treated well; but that’s not love. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? (Mt. 5:46). It’s very easy and pleasant to love someone, to be with him when he only makes you happy. But when communication with our neighbor doesn’t suit us in some way, we immediately change our attitude toward him, often to the diametric opposite: “It’s just one step from love to hate.” But that means we didn’t love with real love; our love for our neighbor was transactional. We liked the pleasant feelings that we got, and when they disappeared, so did love. It turns out that we loved this person as a thing we needed. Not even as a thing, but like groceries, tasty food, because we take care of our beloved things—for example, we polish the body of a beloved car, regularly service it, buy various adornments for it, and so on. That is, we invest our care and attention even into something if we love it. It’s only food that we love for its taste, nothing else; when it’s eaten, we don’t need it anymore. So, true love gives but doesn’t demand. And this is where the real joy of love lies. Joy from receiving something is material, consumerist joy, but joy from giving to someone is true and eternal.
Love is service. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave us a great example of this when He washed the feet of the Apostles at the Mystical Supper, saying: If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you (Jn. 13:14–15). And Christ loves us not because of something we’ve done (because there’s nothing particularly to love us for), but simply because we’re His children. We may be sinful, disobedient, spiritually ill, but it’s precisely the sick, weak child that parents love the most.
The feeling of love can’t exist without effort from us. It needs to be nurtured in your heart, rekindled day after day. Love is a conscious decision: “I want to love.” And you have to do everything to keep this feeling from being extinguished, otherwise the feeling won’t last long—it will become dependent on many random causes: emotions, our mood, circumstances, someone else’s behavior, and so on. It’s impossible to fulfill the words of Christ any other way, because we’re commanded to love not only our loved ones—parents, spouses, children—but all people. Love is acquired by daily labor, but the reward for this labor is great—for nothing on earth can be higher than this feeling. But at first, we have to literally force ourselves to love. For example, you come home tired. Don’t wait for someone to do something nice for you, but help yourself, wash the dishes. A bad mood overcomes you—force yourself, smile, say a kind word, don’t take your irritation out on others. You’re offended by someone, you consider him wrong and yourself innocent—force yourself, show love, and be the first to reconcile. And pride is defeated. But here it’s very important not to become proud of your own “humility.” Thus, training himself day after day, a person will eventually reach the point where he can no longer live any other way: He’ll have an inner need to give his love, to share it.
A very important point in love is to see the value of every person, because there’s something good in everyone—you just have to change your often biased attitude. Only by cultivating love for our neighbor in our heart, changing our attitude toward him, learning to see the good sides in him, will we gradually conquer pride and arrogance within ourselves. Love conquers pride, for pride is a lack of love for God and men.
How can we learn to love God? By loving His creation—man. Man is the image of God, and it’s impossible to love the Archetype while treating the image of God without love, to disrespect the icon. It’s not without reason that the Apostle John the Theologian writes to us: If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also (1 Jn. 4:20–21).
The Kingdom of Heaven Suffereth Violence
The path of battling the passions is difficult and thorny. We often grow weary, fall, suffer defeat, and sometimes it seems we have no strength left, but we get up and begin to fight. Because this is the sole path of the Orthodox Christian. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other (Mt. 6:24). It’s impossible to serve God and remain a slave to the passions.
Of course, no serious business is done easily and quickly. Whether we’re rebuilding a church, building a house, raising a child, treating someone who’s seriously ill, it always takes a good bit of effort. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force (Mt. 11:12). Acquiring the Heavenly Kingdom is impossible without purifying yourself from sins and passions. In the Slavonic translation of the Gospel (which is always more precise and vivid than modern Russian), instead of the verb “take,” the word “force” is used. And indeed, spiritual work requires not simply effort, but compulsion, coercion, overcoming yourself.
A man who fights against the passions and conquers them is crowned for it by the Lord. Once, St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked: “Who in our monastery stands higher before God than all the rest?” And the saint answered that it was the cook from the monastery kitchen, a former soldier. The Elder also said: “This cook has a naturally fiery nature. He couldto kill a man in a fit of passion, but his unceasing battle within his soul attracts God’s great favor to him. For this fight, the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit is given him from above, for God’s word is immutable, which says: To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in my throne … and the same shall be clothed in white raiment (Rev. 3:21, 5). And, on the contrary, if a man doesn’t battle himself, he’ll reach a terrible hardening of heart, which leads to certain destruction and despair.”
