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Saint Sophrony of Essex speaks to us
The beginning of the spiritual life is the beginning of the struggle with passions. To conquer passions is the hardest work. Dispassion stands above the gift of miracle-working. And passions are conquered through a long, fierce, uninterrupted struggle, day and night, with the co-working of grace. The righteous struggle with passions is taught to us by the Holy Fathers. But you have not yet known your passions, nor the struggle with them; for if you had known them, you would have known what to do everywhere and in all situations, and the thought would not come to you: 'Why am I here or there? What am I doing here?'. Even buried underground you would find something to do.
With prayer and with the fear of God, consider the question: in what does true, and not imaginary, spiritual life consist? Living in the body, we cannot continuously abide in such grace as to feel ourselves immortal, victorious over death, resurrected before dying. We must know when we are with God and when we move away from Him; we must know what we have to do each day to remain in God, to draw near to Him. May God grant you to understand that, when we are with our mind in our heart in Prayer, in the remembrance of God, this is the gift of God's grace, the earnest of the future life outside of materiality.
'God is Spirit' (John 4:24), and His service is spiritual, that is, alien to all material things. And for you, for now, it is best to know that, when we humble ourselves, when we truly repent, when we have humility, then, without even understanding, we dwell in the inner man – then we are in truth, in God. And conversely, when we scatter our mind, it is from the working of vainglory, from forgetfulness and from ignorance, and then we move away from God.
Often I ask the Lord and the Mother of God to have mercy on me for your prayers, and now I ask you to bless me with love.