Consent is the deed of the soul. As the body commits a sin in the same way the soul sins by consent. That is why our Lord says in his holy Gospel:
`But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.`[1].
Someone sees a thing or person and falls into deceit. He immediately must focus his attention and turn his eyes from that image to erase it from imagination and afterwards he should start to pray to impede the evil from the start.
When is a house clean? When it is tidied daily or when the housekeeper sweeps it after 10-20 days? We all know that the more she take care of it, the cleaner it is from all points of view. In the same way the soul of man, his heart, which is the house of God, the altar of the Holy Spirit, must be purified very often because the man is a temple of God and he lives in that temple.
`Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy.`[2].
Meaning that by the Holy Baptistm we received our heart becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit and we were given the spiritual rebirth through the Holy Spirit who descended during the Sacrament of Baptism. That is why Baptism is necessary.
This Holy Spirit, this Grace received by the baby inside himself makes him holy in an instant. But because of his age he doesn`t know what he was given. And the devil who has his schemes tries very artfully to throw him into sins by carelessness to create in this way for him such conditions so that when reaching a older age after the passing of time, the multitude of sins creates him a wretched inner state. And all this trash of the sin bury the grace of the Holy Spirit Who doesn`t enlighten the mind anymore. Thus the man walks in the dark.
But when the divine breeze blows by repentance, return and confession then everything brought by sin is erased, the heart is purified of that tumor, the divine enlightenment comes into our mind and the man returns to it. And as the bee passes by all flowers but it doesn`t stop at all of them and ignores some of them and goes and sits on those with nectar, in the same way the Holy Spirit overflows everywhere. And any heart is prepared, pure and welcoming there He rests, He descends into it and gives it joy, gives it merriment, gives it wings for heaven, unites it with God. And a soul like this is permanently in spiritual communion and he becomes holy in this way.
In the world the men can`t understand well how important is this work of vigilance. They don`t know that by its action they free themselves of passions and they reach the purification of their soul. Of course in the world we can practise the prayer to a certain extent.
But what will help us enough and give us the possibility to go forward is to entrust ourselves to God in any problem and entrust ourselves completely to His divine Providence. Meaning that we should not be enslaved by the problems of our min and worry about what is going to happen here or there. All this worry occupies the mind and doesn`t allow it to pray. Let us think:
`God will help, He won`t let me alone, He will escape me and I won`t suffer any harm.` And when we free our mind of worries let us dedicate to prayer some of the time we keep for chores. Let us calm ourselves for half an hour, or an hour of prayer and spiritual study. The more someone calms himself the closer he gets to God.
`Stop and know that I am God.` This `stop` means to calm down freed of the worries of life as much as possible. Because the too many worries harm us as tuberculosis. Tuberculosis destroys the man slowly and leads him to death. In the same way the too many worries of life destroy the man slowly and he reaches death completely sick spiritually.
These are very well known by the hermits because no hermit left the world in a pure spiritual state. They did not descend from heavens. They all left the world full of passions and weaknesses and went into the desert to struggle ascetically. Due to calming their soul, to prayer and communication with God the slowly freed themselves of irrational passions brought from the world and reached a close relationship with God, their Creator. And close means nothing else than that they got acquainted with God in secret. At the mere uttering of the name of God tears of love flowed from their eyes. If a sinful layman hearing the name of his beloved changes in a passionate way inside himself, imagine how the men of God who love Him to such a great extent reach a high state of divine bliss and love when uttering His name.
[1] Matthew 5, 28.
[2] I Corinthians 3, 16-17.
Excerpt from the book The Art of Salvation published by Evanghelismos.
