Just as it is an urgent duty for every Christian, when he loses the peace of the heart, to do everything in his power that can contribute to its restoration, so it is no less obligatory for him not to allow any accidents of the current life to disturb this world: I mean illnesses, wounds, the death of relatives, wars, fires, sudden joys, fears and sorrows, memories of past misdeeds and mistakes – in a word, everything with which the heart is usually agitated and troubled. It is necessary to avoid anxiety and agitation in such cases, because, having succumbed to them, a person loses self-control and is deprived of the opportunity to clearly understand events and correctly see the proper way of acting, and both give the enemy access to agitate him still more and direct him to some step that is difficult to correct or completely irreparable.

I do not mean to say: do not allow sorrow, because it is not in our power, but this: do not allow sorrow to prevail in your heart and agitate it, keep it outside, outside the heart and hasten to soften and tame it so that it does not interfere with your sound reasoning and the right to act. This, with God's help, is in our power, if we have strong moral and religious feelings and dispositions.

Of the sorrows, each has its own peculiarities, and against each there are its own methods; but I speak of them in general, understanding their common property – to disturb and disturb the soul, and having in general against this having in mind to offer you a remedy. This means is faith in a good Providence, which arranges the course of our life with all its accidents for the personal good of each of us, and good-natured submission to the will of God, expressed in our situation, according to which in the depths of our souls we would cry out: God's will be done! As the Lord willed, so it was and was for our good.

This good is recognized and felt differently in different persons. Some realize: it is the goodness of God that leads me to repentance; another feels: the Lord sent me this sin for my sake, in order to cleanse me from them, I bear the penance of God; a third thinks: the Lord is testing me, whether I serve Him sincerely. From the outside, those who look at the one who is subjected to sorrows may also think: this is for him – let the works of God be manifested upon him. In the soul of a grieving person, only the first three feelings are appropriate. And they are all of such a nature and strength that no matter which of them arises in the heart, each greatly calms the rising storm of sorrow and establishes peaceful complacency in the heart.

And here is a common means for you to pacify your heart, when sorrows attempt to disturb it: having revived faith in God's good Providence for you and having revived in your soul God-given obedience to the will of God, bring to your heart the thoughts mentioned above and compel it to feel that by a present sorrowful accident the Lord is either testing you, or imposing a purifying penance on you, or it moves one to repentance either in general, or privately about some forgotten deed that is defective. As soon as the heart senses any of these things, the sorrow will immediately subside, and will give it the opportunity to take in the other two feelings; yet together they will soon establish in you such peace and good humor that you will not be able not to cry out: Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever! As oil is to the waves of the sea, so are these feelings to a sorrowful heart: the waves settle down, and there is great silence.

Thus pacify the heart when it is disturbed in any degree. But if you, through long labor and spiritual feats, implant in your heart the feelings spoken of in such a way that they will fill it unceasingly, then no sorrow will disturb you, because such a mood will be for you the most effective means of protection against it. It is not that sorrowful feelings do not come up; they will approach, but at once they will retreat, like the waves of the sea from a strong cliff.

What to do when we are wounded in battleWhen you are wounded, having fallen into some sin because of your weakness or because of your bad temper (there are venial sins: an undue word has failed, you have to get angry, a bad thought flashes by, an undue desire rises, and the like), do not be faint-hearted and do not rush in vain. The first thing you need is not to dwell on yourself, do not say: how did I tolerate this and allow it?! This is the cry of proud conceit. Humble yourself, on the contrary, and, looking up to the Lord, say and feel: "What else could have been expected of me, O Lord, so weak and ill-tempered." And immediately thank Him that the matter only stopped there, confessing: "If it were not for Thy immeasurable goodness, O Lord, I would not have stopped there, but would certainly have fallen into even worse things."

However, when you confess that you feel like this, beware of allowing yourself to think carelessly and indulgently, that since you are like this, you have the right to do something unseemly. No, despite the fact that you are weak and weak, everything that is unseemly done by you is imputed to you. For everything that comes from you, by the will of the gifted, belongs to your will, and as good things are for your approval, so is evil for your disgrace. Therefore, having realized that you are bad in general, realize at the same time that you are guilty of the evil into which you have fallen in the present hour. Condemn yourself and reproach yourself, and moreover yourself alone, do not look around, looking for someone to shift your guilt on. Neither the people around you, nor the confluence of circumstances are to blame for your sin. Only your evil will is to blame. Reproach yourself.

However, do not be like those who say: "Yes, I did it, and what is the matter?" No, after realizing and reproaching yourself, having placed yourself before the unwashed truth of God, hasten to stir up repentant feelings, contrition and pain for sin, not so much because of the humiliation of yourself by sin, as because of its insult to God, Who has shown you so many mercies personally: in calling you to repentance, in the remission of former sins, in being admitted to the grace of the Sacraments, in keeping you on the good path and guiding you along it.

The deeper the crushing, the better. But no matter how great the contrition may be, and do not allow a shadow to despair of mercy. The pardon is already quite ready, and the handwriting of all sins is torn on the cross. Only the repentance and contrition of each one is expected, in order to assign to him the power of the Cross to atone for the sins of the whole world. With this hope, fall down on your face in soul and body and cry out: have mercy on me, O God, according to the commands of Your mercy – and do not cease to cry out until you feel yourself guilty and merciful, so that guilt and mercy merge into one feeling.

This grace finally descends upon everyone who repents. But he must be accompanied by a determination, sealed by a vow, not to indulge himself later, but to strictly observe and protect himself from any falls, not only great, but also small, with the addition of fervent prayer for grace-filled help for this. After such a close experience of the unreliability of one's strength and efforts, sighs will come of their own accord from the heart: "Create a pure heart in me, O God, and renew the spirit of righteousness in my womb." And may Thy good Spirit guide me to the land of righteousness.

All this – self-condemnation, contrition, a hopeful prayer for mercy, an inspiring decision to guard henceforth and a prayer for grace-filled help – must pass within you every time you sin with your eye, hearing, tongue, thought, feeling; and for a moment do not leave sin in your heart unconfessed to the Lord and not cleansed before Him by heartfelt repentance. If you fall again, do the same thing again, and even if you have to sin many times, cleanse yourself before the Lord as many times. In the evening, if possible, tell everything to your spiritual father, and if you can't tell it that same evening, tell it on occasion. Such a confession or revelation of everything to a spiritual father is the most beneficial action in the matter of our spiritual warfare.

Nothing strikes the murderous enemy so much and destroys his snares as such a way of acting. That is why he strives in every way to hinder it both internally and externally: inwardly, with thoughts and feelings, and externally, with the suggestion of various encounters and accidents. What exactly these obstacles are, you will see for yourself when you get down to business. I will only mention one thing: the enemy strives not to suggest a sin immediately as soon as a sin is noticed, but to begin the work of cleansing himself of it, but to wait a little, not a day or an hour, but a little. But only if you agree to this, he will substitute another sin, after the sin with the tongue, the sin with the eye and with some other feeling, and this sin can be involuntarily postponed, because it is necessary first to cleanse the previous one. And in this way there will be a postponement for a whole day, and sin after sin will fill the soul. In the evening, until which the work of repentant self-purification is usually postponed, nothing is seen in the soul – there is noise and confusion, and darkness from the multitude of falls. The soul is like eyes full of dust, or like water clouded by the multitude of rubbish that has invaded it. As nothing is seen, the work of repentance is completely abandoned, but at the same time the soul is left clouded and confused. Because of this, the evening prayer is out of order, and then the dreams are not good. Thus, never for a single moment postpone the inner purification, as soon as you realize what is defective behind you.

The second thing that the enemy inspires in this is not to tell the spiritual father what has happened. Do not listen, and in spite of it, reveal everything, for as much good as there is from this revelation, so is the evil, or even greater, from hiding what happens in us and with us.