To the beloved brothers Constantine and
John, I pray from my soul.
With great joy, I recently received
your two letters, which I read with great zeal and diligence. It is my duty that
I answer and guide you accordingly. I will, however, address my response to both
of you, since the two of you are God-loving brothers, and both of you have equal
need of spiritual guidance and education. You are therefore obligated not only
to ask, but to listen to what the Fathers have said.
It is true that I was distressed,
reading in your letter that you have been negligent in your obligations and have
fallen away into many childish foolishnesses. I was also overjoyed that you have
come to repentance and desire that I instruct you in which road of repentance to
take, in order that you may receive the mercy of Our Benevolent God, Whom you
have, by your childish misbehavior, seriously grieved.
To offend God and to stray from the
straight path of His commandments is not unusual; all human nature easily slips
and quite often falls into sin. However, to remain in evil is a grievous
mistake, and we must be very careful, for woe unto us if we are found
unrepentant at the time of our departure.
Among many of the methods which the
devil -- the enemy and destroyer of our souls -- uses to deceive those who
correctly practice Orthodox Christianity, particularly youth, is to present
another trap, by which he has been able to deceive many young men and completely
lead them to perdition.
The evil one first presents this trap
under a guise which appears to be good and sympathetic, making it appear as an
enticement to youth, and urging them to freedom, laughter, joking and
gesticulations, outspokenness, and finally to the use and misuse of alcohol, all
of which do not appear disastrous to the world, but which are characterized as a
means of “freedom”, by use of political and clever auspices. Thus, getting used
to bad habits, youth become filled with passions and are then mocked by demons
and men alike. The trap is covered with a heavy shadow and with abstract
justifications, making it appear that all these are very small sins and after
the passing of this age all of these will be averted; and after all, these are
things only hermits and monastics in the mountains should avoid.
If only they could fathom what great
slipping away is brought about by these claims, they would want to depart from
these pretexts and applicable excuses as from a deadly snake. It is the aim of
the baiting Satan to first instill in a youth all these small sins, and thus
paralyze his senses, inciting him to joking, indecent pictures, facetiousness
and drunkenness, which gives birth to all the passions.
I beg you to ask, with much
supervision, a passionate friend, lewd and unrepentant, to tell you how he was
driven to such abominable passions. In answer you will learn from him that the
main reason and beginning of passions were a result of his first beginnings in
carelessness and indifference to the above causes. Just as the carnal passions
come from negligence in small things, so also in the spiritual: from childish
foolishness a person comes to the level of unrepentance and despair.
It is true that Our Lord Jesus Christ,
seeing the slipping away of human nature, receives with open arms the returned
sinner. At the same time, however, He says: “Watch and pray, for ye know not the
day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh.” He thereby motivates us to be
always prepared and to have in our vessels the oil of repentance and every other
virtue, so as not to be excluded from the bridal chamber like the foolish
virgins. True, there exists repentance, and when a young man is pure and avoids
bad company and drunkenness, but deviates slightly, then repentance quickly
wipes out the young sins. When, however, through bad habits the body becomes a
slave to sin, it becomes very difficult, and out of many, only a few will be
able to be liberated from the [enemy’s] sophisticated snares.
Knowing these things, my beloved
Constantine and John, from henceforth do not, for God’s sake, surrender
yourselves to the paralyzing laxity of your senses, not to flirtations and
joking, nor drunkenness and bad companions, from which the fear of God is lost
and you are captivated by the demon of self-love and profligacy. But choose
rather the virtuous life according to God, imitating your spiritual father in
everything. He is the only one who will educate you in the state according to
God and will show you forth as heavenly citizens.
In order to travel firmly the path of
God you must:
1. Show great obedience, trust and
acceptance towards your Superior (spiritual father), always telling him the
truth.
2. Stop entirely talkativeness and
joking, because, as we have said, where there is talkativeness (outspokenness)
the fear of God departs.
3. Have a specific time each evening
for prayer, which your Superior will assign.
4. When you are in church, be entirely
concentrated on listening to the Divine Liturgy, so that the grace of the Holy
Spirit will enter your heart.
5. Keep without fail all the prescribed
fasts of the Church, and do not imitate the ruinous ways of today’s generation.
6. Whenever possible, avoid wine and
particularly alcoholic drinks which arouse the carnal passions.
7. When you have free time, spend it by
reading Patristic books.
8. Be careful of some spiritual fathers
and teachers, who pretend to teach you virtues and repentance but introduce
voluptuousness, by doing away with the fasts and discouraging youth from
asceticism, temperance and from reading Patristic texts, and also speak against
the monastic life. What harm this brings to pious young men is useless to
mention, for I have seen many, who were enticed by these deceptive exhortations,
become unwitting victims.
9. Have great reverence especially for
Our Lady Theotokos, who will always guide you on the path to your salvation.
In closing, I reverently kiss you,
Monk Daniel Katounakiotis
Katounakia,
Holy Mountain
June 19, 1902
Source-Orthodox Heritage
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