16) If you are condemned by your conscience as a contempt of God's commandments, and if you stand absent-mindedly at prayer, when you could stand without distraction, then do not dare to stand before God, lest your prayer turn into sin. If you try, but do not have time to pray without distraction, then force yourself as much as you can, and continue to stand before God, turning your mind to Him and gathering it within yourself, and God will forgive you; for it was not out of neglect, but because of weakness, that thou hadst not the strength to stand before God as thou should. Therefore, if you thus compel yourself to every good work, do not cease to ask until you receive what you ask, but patiently push at His door, asking for what you ask. "For whosoever, it is said, asketh receiveth, and seeketh findeth, and to him that interpreteth it shall be opened" (Luke 11:10). For what else do you desire to be vouchsafed, if not the only salvation in God? (5, 386).

17) But you say, "I have asked many times, and I have not received what I asked." "Without a doubt, you did not receive because you asked badly, with unbelief and absent-mindedness, or because you asked for something that was not useful to you. And if he asked for useful things, he did not have constancy. For it is written: "In your patience gain your souls" (Luke 21:19), and "He who endures to the end will be saved" (Matt. 10:22). [5, 388].

(18) God knows the heart of those who pray. Wherefore thou sayest, What need hath God of our petition? Does He not know what we need? Therefore, what need is there for a petition? "God knows what we need, and generously gives all bodily things for our enjoyment, even before our petitions; being good, He rains on the just and the unjust, and His sun shines on the evil and the good" (Matt. 5:46). "But faith, virtue worthy of this name, the kingdom of heaven, if you do not ask with difficulty and much patience, you will not receive, because you must first desire, but if you wish to seek actively in faith and patience, using everything on your part, so that your own conscience does not condemn you in anything, as if you were asking either negligently or lazily; and then you will receive it, if it pleases God. For He knows better than you what is good for you. (Also).

19) And it may be that He is slow to grant you what you ask for, so that you may be more inseparable before Him, and so that you, having learned what the gift of God is (how difficult it is to obtain), keep it with fear. For everything that a man acquires with much difficulty, he tries to preserve, so that, having lost it, he will not lose much of his labor, and having rejected the grace of God, he will not become unworthy of eternal life. Therefore, do not be faint-hearted, if you do not receive what you ask for soon. For if the good Lord had seen that you, having soon received a gift, would not lose it, then he would have been ready to grant it even before your request. And now, out of care for you, He does this (i.e., He does not give). For if he who accepted a talent and kept it intact is condemned for not putting it into circulation; then how much more will he be condemned who loses it? (5, 389).

(20) Therefore, knowing this, whether we receive it sooner or more slowly, let us be grateful to the Lord: for whatever the Lord does is for our salvation: only let you not cease your petitions out of faint-heartedness. For this is why the Lord spoke the parable of the widow, who by her persistence bowed down the wicked judge, in order to teach us, by her perseverance, to obtain according to her petitions. In this our faith and love for God are manifested, when, even if we do not receive it quickly, we remain grateful to Him. Let us always thank Him, so that we may become worthy to be worthy of His eternal blessings. [Ibid.].

21) First of all, we must restrain the thought by all means, establishing a sober surveillance of the mind over it, so as not to allow the soul to indulge in unbridled strivings for the attraction of the body. As bodily sight is in the eye, so the eye of the soul is in the mind innate to it.

When the soul, observing its mental power in sobriety and its proper deeds, is established in the contemplations described by all, then it will strongly direct its disposition and its aspirations to that which is right and righteous, beautiful and peaceful. As soon as it ceases to direct its mind to grief and to delve into proper contemplation, then the bodily passions, like dogs that have pushed away the taskmaster, immediately rise up with force and attack the soul, and each passion intensifies to torment it. When the soul makes its contemplative and rational power always awake, it lulls the bodily passions in two ways, i.e., by being occupied with the contemplation of the best and kindred, and by supervising the serenity of the body, it chastes and calms its passions. If, having loved laziness, he leaves the contemplative power in inactivity, then the bodily passions easily draw the soul to their strivings and actions [5, 390-92].

22)

But when the devil attempts to slander and exerts himself intensely into the silent and peaceful soul to let in his thoughts, like kindled arrows, in order to suddenly burn it, to make it hold his thoughts on them longer and more irresistibly: then, repelling and preventing such attacks with intense attention and sobriety, like a wrestler who manages to avoid a blow by keen observation and agility of bodily movements, it is necessary to give it over to prayer and invocation, all things are lifted from above, and the cessation of the battle and the deflection of arrows. This is what Paul teaches us, saying: "Over all these take up the shield of faith, in which ye shall be able to quench all the arrows of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16).

If such violence of thoughts continues, because of the inexorability of the one who is at war with us; then, even in this case, we should not fall into despair, and should not abandon the podvig halfway through the work, but patiently remain in prayer until God, seeing our firmness, illumines us with the grace of the Spirit, which puts the slander to flight, purifies and fills our minds with divine light, and gives our thoughts the strength to serve God in undisturbed silence [5: 424-6].

23) By nature we have a desire for the beautiful. "But what is more wondrous than God's beauty?" What image is more pleasant than God's splendor? What desire of the soul is so alive and irrepressible as the desire engendered by God in the soul, cleansed of all evil, which with true disposition says: "I am wounded by love" (Pes. 2:5)? Truly ineffable and indescribable are the lightning-like splendor of God's beauty; neither a word can express them, nor can the ear contain them. Whether we call the splendor of Lucifer, or the brightness of the moon, or the radiance of the sun, all this is unworthy to reveal even a small semblance of the glory of God, and in comparison with the true Light it is farther from Him than the deep night and the most terrible darkness are from the clarity of the noonday. If this beauty, invisible to the bodily eyes, and comprehensible only to the soul and thought, illumined one of the saints, and left in him an irrepressible wound of love, then, burdened by this life, they said: "Alas for me, for my sojourn shall continue" (Psalm 119:5), "When shall I come, and appear before the face of God" (Psalm 41:3)? "My soul is thirsty for the mighty God" (Psalm 41:3). So many were irrepressible in their striving for God those whose souls were touched by divine desire. Because of their insatiable desire to contemplate the Divine goodness, they prayed that the vision of God's beauty would extend to all eternity (Psalm 21:4). [5, 100—1].

24) By nature we have love and affection for benefactors and are ready to do any work in order to repay the good deed done to us. But what word can depict God's gifts? They are such in multitude that they exceed every number, so great and important in qualities that even one is sufficient to oblige us to all gratitude to the Giver. I will keep silent about those of them, which, although in themselves excessive in grandeur and attractiveness, nevertheless surpassed by the luminosity of those as large as the stars by the radiance of the sun's rays, do not so clearly show their beneficence. For there is no time, leaving the most excellent, to measure the goodness of the Benefactor by His lesser gifts. Therefore, let the rising of the sun, the rotation of the moon, the dissolution of the air, the changes of the yearly changes, the water from the clouds, the water from the earth, the sea itself, and all the earth that is born of the earth, that dwells in the waters, the generations of living creatures in the air, the thousand differences between animals, all that is assigned to the service of our life, be silenced. "But one thing, even if one wants to, cannot be avoided, one thing it is even absolutely impossible for one who has a sound mind and a word to remain silent about — namely, that God — having created man in His image and likeness, having vouchsafed knowledge of Himself, adorning him before all animals with the gift of speech, allowing him to enjoy the immeasurable beauties of paradise, making him a prince over all that is on earth, And after he had been caught up by the serpent, he fell into sin, and through sin into death, and into all that is worthy of death, he did not despise it, but first gave it the law, and appointed angels to protect it and care for it, sent prophets to rebuke its iniquity, and teach virtue to rebuke it, and cut short vicious desires with threats, and stirred up zeal for good works with promises,  And then, when we proved incorrigible even with all such aids, He deigned to call us out of death and to revive us in our Lord Jesus Christ by a kind of dispensation. For He, "in the image of God, was not equal to God in the rapture, but made Himself small, and took the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:6), took upon Himself our infirmities, bore sicknesses, was wounded for us, that we might be "healed by His wound" (Isaiah 58:5), "redeemed us from the oath, having been cursed for us" (Gal. 3:13), endured the most shameful death, that He might lead us to a glorious life, and He was not satisfied with this, but also granted us the dignity of communion of the Divine, prepared eternal repose, the greatness of consolations exceeding all human thought. — "What shall we repay the Lord for all, which He will repay us" (Psalm 115:5)? "When I bring all this to my thoughts, then (I will reveal myself in my weakness) I come into a kind of horror and terrible frenzy from fear lest, through inattention of the mind or because of vain occupations, falling away from the love of God, I may once become a reproach to Christ. For he who now deceives us, and with vile baits in every way tries to make us forget the Benefactor to the destruction of our souls, then this forgetfulness of ours will turn into a reproach to the Lord, boasting of our disobedience and our apostasy; for he did not create us and did not die for us, yet he had us as his followers in disobedience and negligence about the commandments of God. This reproach to the Lord and this boasting of the enemy seem to me heavier than the torments of Gehenna — to serve as an excuse for the enemy of Christ to exalt himself before Him Who died for us and rose again [5: 102-4].

25) It is necessary to "guard one's heart with all guarding" (Proverbs 4:23), so as not to lose the thought of God, and not to defile the remembrance of His miracles with vain notions, but to carry the holy thought of God, imprinted in our souls by constant and pure remembrance, as an indelible seal. For in this way we acquire love for God, which both arouses us to fulfill the commandments of the Lord, and at the same time it is again observed by them, becoming uninterrupted and unshakable [5, 109].

26) In every matter that lies before us, we must set the will of Him Who commanded us as a goal, and direct our thoroughness according to it, as the Lord says of Himself: "I came down from heaven, not that I should do My will, but the will of the Father who sent me" (John 6:38). For as the arts necessary in life, having assumed certain goals inherent in them, private actions are directed towards them; thus, since there is one limit and one rule to our deeds – to fulfill the commandments pleasing to God, then there is no other way to succeed with accuracy in the deed than by doing it according to the will of Him who gave the commandments. And with strict thoroughness to do the work according to the will of God, it will be possible through remembrance to enter into unity with God. A Christian must consider every action, unimportant and important, in accordance with the will of God, and at the same time keep the thought of Him Who commanded us to act in this way. And whoever violates the accuracy of the commandment in his deeds obviously has little remembrance of God. "Therefore, remembering the words of Him Who said: "I do not fill the heavens and the earth" (Jeremiah 23:24), and again: "I am God, and not God from afar" (---23), it is necessary to do every deed as if it were done in the eyes of the Lord, and to formulate every thought as if the Lord were edifying it. In this case, there will be eternal fear, and love will be perfected [5, 109-11].