Field: Cultivating Salvation (Complete Works of Saint Ignatius Brianch) by Ignatius Brianchaninov

Author:Ignatius Brianchaninov [Brianchaninov, Ignatius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780884654537
Publisher: Holy Trinity Publications
Published: 2016-11-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

On Patience

“The house of the soul is patience, because the soul abides in it. The food of the soul is humility, because the soul is fed by it.”1

Exactly! Being fed by the holy food of humility, one can remain in the holy habitation of patience. When such food is in short supply, the soul leaves the habitation of patience. Like a fierce wind, confusion takes the soul away and spins it out of control. Like waves, various passionate thoughts and feelings arise in it, drowning it in the depths of foolish and sinful thoughts, fantasies, words, and deeds. The soul becomes paralyzed, depressed, and often comes close to the abysses of deadly despair and total catastrophe.

Do you want to remain constantly in the holy habitation of patience? You must stock up on the food necessary for such a long stay—you must acquire and multiply within yourself thoughts and feelings of humility. The kind of humility that prepares one for the patient bearing of sorrows even before their coming, and helps one patiently withstand the attack of sufferings is called self-accusation by the Holy Fathers.

Self-accusation is simply blaming oneself for one’s sinfulness, which is common to all men and to you in particular. At the same time, it is useful to remember and list all one’s sins against God’s law, except those of a carnal nature because remembrance of such sins is expressly forbidden by the Fathers since such memories can renew the feeling and enjoyment of the sin in the person.2

Self-accusation is true monastic work, it is the prayer of the heart, which counteracts and stands against the sickly state of our fallen nature due to which all people, even the most obvious sinners, try to make themselves out to be righteous and to prove their righteousness through all possible scheming. Self-accusation is violence against the fallen nature, as are prayer and other ascetic labors, through which “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence,” and through which “the violent take it by force.”3

In the beginning, self-accusation is done mechanically; that is, it is pronounced by the tongue without any accompanying feeling in the heart, and sometimes in direct opposition to the heart’s disposition. Later, little by little, the heart begins to be attracted by the words of self-accusation. Finally, self-accusation will be pronounced with the whole soul, with a strong sense of sorrow. It will hide others’ deficiencies and sins from our eyes, it will reconcile us with all people and all circumstances, it will unite all our scattered thoughts to the doing of repentance, it will give attentive prayer, full of compunction, and it will inspire and arm us with the insurmountable strength of patience.

All the prayers of the Orthodox Church are filled with the humble thoughts of self-accusation. But monks further allot special time every day for practice in self-accusation. They try, with its help, to convince themselves that they are sinners. The fallen nature does not want to believe this, does not want such knowledge to become assumed.

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