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.

3) The third is that good awakenings from the sleep of sin not only come reluctantly again, having been left unfulfilled, but also when they come, they no longer produce the effect on the will that they had the first time; the will does not so quickly incline to flow in their wake, and as a result, the determination to do so, if it appears, is weak, not energetic. But if a man has been able to postpone a stronger impulse until tomorrow and then completely lose it, then the more conveniently he will act with the second, and the more conveniently with the third. And so on: the more often the fulfillment of good motives is postponed, the weaker is their effect; then it comes to the point that they become completely inactive, come and go without a trace, and finally they will cease to come. Man gives himself over to the hands of his fall; his heart hardens and begins to have an aversion to good motives. In this way, postponement becomes a direct path to final destruction.

I will also note to you that there is a delay not only when there is an inner compulsion to change a bad life for a good one, but also when someone leads a good life, namely, when someone has an opportunity to do good and he postpones it either until tomorrow, or indefinitely until another time. And to this delay applies all that has been said about the first kind of delay, and the consequences of this may be similar to those of that. Know that whoever misses an opportunity to do good is not only deprived of the fruit of the good that he would have done, but also offends God. God sends a needy person to him, and he says: "Depart after." Though he says this to a man, it is the same as he says to God, Who sent him. God will find another benefactor for him, but the one who refuses him is not unanswerable.

On the Enemy's Intrigues Against Those Who Have Entered the Good PathBut even if one has passed the first two obstacles, desires to be freed from the bonds of sin, and proceeds to do so immediately, the enemy does not abandon him here either, and changes only his tactics, and not his evil desire and hope to stumble him against the stone of some temptation and destroy him. And the Holy Fathers depict such a person being fired at from all sides: from above and below, from the right and from the left, from front and from behind – arrows are flying at him from everywhere. Arrows from above – suggestions of excesses beyond the strength of spiritual labors; arrows from below – suggestions to belittle or completely abandon such labors due to self-pity, negligence and carelessness; arrows on the right, when enemies, on account of some good undertakings and deeds, plunge into the temptation of the danger of falling; arrows on the left, when obvious enemies present temptations and lead to sin; arrows in front, when enemies tempt and confuse with thoughts of what is to come; arrows from behind, when they tempt and disturb with memories of past deeds and events. And all such tempting thoughts are attached to the soul either by an internal path or by an external one: internal, through images and representations of fantasy, imprinted in the mind mentally or through direct suggestions of evil in the heart, accompanied by the usual passionate movements; externally, through the impressions of the external senses, which are constantly flowing, as has already been said above. Our enemies have their former sinful habits and our nature, damaged in the fall, as their accomplices. Having so many ways to harm us, the enemy is not in the least embarrassed by the first failures and constantly uses one thing or another to stumble or lead astray the servant of Christ who is slipping away from his power.

The first thing for the enemy, after someone has decided to abandon evil paths and really leaves them, is to clear for himself the place of action against him, so that no one interferes with him. He succeeds in this when he inspires those who have entered the good path to act on their own, without seeking advice and guidance from the leaders inherent in the Church, for a God-pleasing life. Whoever follows this guidance and all his actions, both internal and external, trusts to the reasoning of his leaders, in parishes – lay priests, and in monasteries – experienced elders – there is no access to him to the enemy. Whatever he suggests, an experienced eye will immediately see where he is aiming, and will warn his pet. Thus all his intrigues are ruined. And whoever recoils from his leaders, he will immediately circle and lead him astray. There are many possibilities that do not seem bad. And he inspires them. An inexperienced beginner follows them and falls into an ambush, where he is exposed to great dangers or completely dies.

The second thing that the enemy arranges is to leave the newcomer not only without guidance, but also without help. He who has decided to do without advice and guidance in his life soon passes by himself to the realization of the uselessness of outside help in the performance of his affairs and the maintenance of God-pleasing orders. But the enemy hastens this transition by hiding himself and not attacking the newcomer, who, feeling such freedom and privilege, begins to dream that this good state is the fruit of his own efforts, and as a result rests on them and in his prayers for help from above speaks as if only through clenched teeth, only because it is written so in prayers. Help is not sought and does not come, and thus the newcomer is left alone, with only his own strength. And it is already easy for an enemy to cope with such an enemy.

The consequence of such self-deception is for some that they rush into excessive feats that are not in their strength and not in time. The strong excitement of energy by presumptuousness gives them for the first time the strength to prolong such feats for some time; then their strength is exhausted and they no longer find them in themselves enough to maintain the most moderate feats, and often they refuse even these. Others, inflaming their self-active energy more and more, reach such self-confidence that they consider everything possible for themselves. In this excited state, they take pernicious steps: they throw themselves into dry wells or from the cliffs where they live in a cave, refuse food altogether, and so on. All this is arranged by the enemy unnoticed by those who are deceived.

For others, the consequence of self-seduction, attributing their successes to themselves, is that they give themselves the right to various indulgences and benefits. There is such a charm that when something new is introduced into a person's life, as, for example, in the case of a repentant, then the days seem to be months, and the weeks seem to be years. Because of this, the enemy easily hammers dreams into the head of one who has worked a little in the order of a new life: how much I have worked, how long I have fasted, how many times I have not slept at night, and so on. You can relax a little. "Rest," the enemy explains, "give rest to the flesh; you can have a little fun." As soon as an inexperienced newcomer agrees to this, he will receive privileges after privileges, until at last all the orders of a God-pleasing life are upset, and he descends into the same life that he left behind, and begins to live again in negligence and carelessness, through the sleeves, as they say.