Fighting the Passions

​“Fight all your battles with Prayer and you shall always win.”
Archbishop Makarios of Australia

Continuing our discussion earlier from my earlier blog on Prayer, which I ask you read as much as this one, let us now talk about fighting the passions. The passions are saturated by our senses, they control how we react and how we interact with everything in our surroundings. Food for example is something we all crave. We need food to help us produce energy and for our general well being. When we deny ourselves food, often times we become angry and frustrated. This, too, is a passion because we become unlike Christ.  We become enraged because we want what we want and seek our own pleasure. Food becomes for us an idol. By fasting we free ourselves from the desire of food, from the very need for food. Food no longer becomes entertainment and distraction from God, but rather a means of nourishment and strength. Likewise when we pray we empty ourselves of our desires and fill ourselves with God’s will and God’s desires. The Passions enslave us to our earthly desires, our earthly bodies. The Passions cause us to reject God and reject the very power that has the authority to set us free. We become haughty, proud and we lose the humility that God requires from us. The passions separate us from the love of God which we as Christians desire above all other things. When we fight the passions, through prayer, through fasting, through attending of the divine services, we lose all of our own thoughts and enter into the divine mystery of theosis and uniting our wills with God. Without training and practice we lose control, just like baby that you raise needs training and teaching before it can grow up and take care of itself. It is cliché, unfortunately among the Orthodox to say, be constantly vigilant and on guard watching and praying at all hours of the day. However that is the most important part of fighting the passions. Watching what we say, do, eat and act all play a part in taming ourselves and living the life that God has for us. Everything good is of God. Nothing that is false or detrimental to us is from God. So when we choose to go against that which God has for us, we reject this goodness that if only we surrendered freely we would receive in over abundance. No, we won’t receive a brand new house, a new Mercedes, a job promotion, or large sums of money. If God wills it, that it is good for us, and for our salvation, then by all means, yes we will receive those things as blessings from God.  But by fighting the passions we accept that God is the Lord of our lives, that God in his divine providence knows far more what is better and what is profitable for our souls. Only then can we become true Christians and become servants of the Word. 

Amen.