What order does the devil keep in the conduct of battle?

spiritual with everyone and how it seduces people

Know that the devil cares about nothing else but the destruction of each of us, and that he does not wage war with everyone in the same way. In order for you to see and understand this more clearly, I will present to you five moral states of people and describe the intrigues, detours and deceptions of the enemy corresponding to them. These states are as follows: some remain in slavery to sin, and have no thought of liberation from it; others, although they think about this liberation and desire it, do nothing to achieve it; there are also those who, after being freed from the bonds of sin and acquiring virtues, fall back into sin with great moral corruption. Of the latter, some in self-deception think that, in spite of this, they are still moving towards perfection, others in carelessness abandon the path of virtue; others turn the very virtue that they have into a pretext and cause of evil for themselves.

The enemy acts on each of them, taking into account his mood.

When the devil holds someone in bondage to sin, he is primarily concerned with darkening him more and more with spiritual blindness, driving away from him every good thought that can bring him to the realization of the destructiveness of his life. And not only does he drive away from him good thoughts that could move him to repentance and turn him to the path of virtue, but instead of them he puts in evil and depraved thoughts, and immediately adjusts the improvised pretexts for his usual sin and draws him often into it or into other, more grievous sins. Because of this, the poor sinner becomes more and more darkened and blinded. This blindness takes root in him the habit and unceasing urge to sin and sin, so that he, unfortunate, drawn from the work of sin to greater blindness and from blindness to great sins, whirls as in a whirlpool, and will circle around like this all his life until death, if God's special grace does not bring him to salvation.

Whoever is in such a miserable state, if he wishes to be delivered from it, must not hesitate, as soon as a good thought comes to him, or, rather, a suggestion, calling him from darkness to light and from sin to virtue, to immediately receive it with all attention and desire, and immediately diligently set to work, calling from the depths of his heart to the generous Giver of all good: "Help me, O Lord my God, help me quickly, and leave me no longer in this darkness of sin." Let him not be weary, calling out with this or that word; but at the same time, let him seek earthly help, turning to those who know the matter for advice and guidance, how to free himself more successfully from the hostile bonds of sinful slavery that torment him. If this cannot be done immediately, let him do it as soon as the opportunity arises, without ceasing to resort to the Lord Jesus, Who was crucified for us, and to His Most-Pure Mother, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, to have mercy on him and not to deprive him of prompt and appropriate help. Let him know that in this urgency of the matter and the prompt readiness to follow the good suggestion is his victory and the overcoming of the enemy.

As the enemy keeps in his nets those who

who realized their plight

And they want to get rid of it, but they do not get down to business.

And why our good intentions are often

Those who have known the wickedness and misery of the life they live are kept in their power by the enemy for the most part by the following simple but omnipotent suggestions: "After, after; tomorrow, tomorrow." And the poor sinner, seduced by the shadow of benevolence represented by such suggestion, decides: "Tomorrow indeed; now I will finish my work, and then, with complete carelessness, I will give myself into the hands of the grace of God and unswervingly flow along the path of spiritual life; today I will do this and that, and tomorrow I will repent." This is the enemy's snare, my brother, with which he catches many and many, and holds the whole world in his hands. The reason why this snare so conveniently cuts us off is our negligence and blindness. Nothing else but negligence and blindness can explain the fact that in such an important matter, on which all our salvation and all the glory of God depends, we do not immediately take up the simplest and easiest thing, in order to say to ourselves with full determination and energy: "Now! I will begin my spiritual life now, not after; today I will repent, and not tomorrow. Now, now in my hands, and tomorrow and after in the hands of God. But even if it pleases the Lord to give me tomorrow and the day after, can I be sure that tomorrow He will find upon me this good and compelling thought of correcting my life?" And he who postpones the work of salvation is completely like such a person.

And so, if you wish to get rid of the enemy's charm and defeat the enemy, immediately take up a reliable weapon against him, immediately obey by deeds good thoughts and God's inspirations calling you to repentance, do not allow the slightest delay and do not allow yourself to say: "I have made a firm intention to repent a little later, and I will not depart from this intention." No, no, don't do that. Such decisions always turned out to be deceptive, and many, many people, relying on them, then remained unrepentant until the end of their lives for various reasons.

1) The first is that our own resolutions are not based on disbelief in ourselves and on strong hope in God. For this reason we are not alien to a proud opinion of ourselves, the immediate consequence of which is always the withdrawal from us of God's grace-filled help and at the same time an inevitable fall. From this he who resolves in himself: "Tomorrow I will certainly abandon the path of sin," always encounters the opposite – not a rebellion, but a bitter fall, and there again fall after fall. And God providentially sometimes allows this, in order to bring the presumptuous to the realization of his weakness and to induce him to seek God's help, the only reliable one, with the rejection and trampling of all hope in himself. Do you want to know, O man, when your own resolutions will be strong and trustworthy? When you do not hold any hope for yourself, and when they are based on humility and strong hope in the one God.

2) The second is that in such our decisions we have in mind mainly the beauty and brightness of virtue, and it is they that attract to themselves our will, no matter how weak and feeble it may be; and, of course, the difficult side of virtue escapes attention. But now it eludes because the desire for the beauty of virtue strongly attracts the will; Tomorrow, when the usual affairs and cares are brought in, it will no longer be so strong, although the adopted intention is still remembered. With a weakened desire, the will weakens or enters into its natural weakness, at the same time the difficult side of virtue will come forward and appear before the eyes, because the path of virtue is essentially difficult, and it is most difficult at the first step. Let him who now decided yesterday to enter this path today come to it; he will no longer have any support in himself for the fulfillment of this: the desire is not strained, the will is weakened, there are only obstacles before his eyes – both in himself, and in the order of his ordinary life, and in ordinary relations with others. And he decides: I will wait a while, gather my strength, and thus go waiting day by day, and it will not be surprising if he waits all his life. And if he had set to work yesterday, as soon as an inspiring desire to reform had come, if he had done this or that according to the demand of this desire, if he had put into practice something in his spirit, now both the desire and the will would not have been so weak as to retreat in the face of obstacles. Obstacles cannot be avoided, but with support in himself, he would overcome them, at least with difficulty. If he had spent the whole day in this overcoming, on the second they would have been much less sensitive, and on the third even less. Further and further - and he would have established himself on a good path.