Tuesday, February 20, 2024

St. Barsanuphius of Optina

 


The Jesus Prayer is the most necessary weapon in the matter of our salvation. But whoever takes it up must expect temptations and prepare for an internal struggle, for a struggle with thoughts. Demons do not like the Jesus Prayer and take revenge in every possible way to the person who beats them with this whip. They begin to whisper to him (of course, with immaterial lips) all sorts of doubts: how to prove this, what is the point in this, this is not true, no one believes this, this is a deception, and so on. How can an ascetic fight these thoughts? By not accepting them. But it’s easy to say – don’t accept thoughts. It is so difficult to accomplish this task that the Lord takes the struggle with thoughts as martyrdom.

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