One should not desire too strongly to be free from the attack of afflictions, but should wholly abandon oneself to God’s will

From “Unseen Warfare” by Ss. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Theophan the Recluse

Chap 43. One should not desire too strongly to be free from the attack of afflictions, but should

wholly abandon oneself to God’s will

If you are enduring some affliction with thankfulness, pay good heed, lest your enemy succeeds in tempting you, or your self-love conceives a desire to be rid of it. For then you will suffer a double loss. The first is that, although the appearance of such a desire and your consenting to it does not immediately rob you of the virtue of patience, it does greatly undermine it. Therefore, when desire to be free of the affliction sent to you is not fulfilled, your patience gradually weakens and finally brings you to a state of impatience. The second is that from that moment your patience becomes forced, whereas God loves and rewards what is given freely. Therefore, from that moment, although you will still have to endure, for the mere desire to be rid of afflictions does not rid one of them, your endurance will be unrewarded. God will reward you for enduring your affliction for the time you have endured it with a good heart, not seeking deliverance. But from the moment this desire came to you, God will grant you no reward for your unwilling endurance. But if you stifle and repel the desire to be free from your affliction, as soon as it presents itself, and abandon yourself entirely to the benevolent will of God, proclaiming your readiness to suffer even a hundred times greater sorrows, should God wish to send them to you, then, even if your present suffering lasts only an hour or less, God will accept it as of the longest duration and will reward you correspondingly.

Do the same in all other cases—do not give way to your desires, but keep a tight rein on them, directing them exclusively to one chief aim—to remain within God’s will and to proceed in accordance with God’s will. For then your desires will all be good and righteous, and you will remain calm in every trial, finding peace in God’s will. If you believe with all sincerity that nothing can happen to you except by God’s will, and if you have no other desire but to be actively doing God’s will, it is self-evident that no matter what happens to you, you will always have only what you desire.

When I say that nothing can happen to you except by God’s will, I mean the afflictions and privations, which God sends to admonish and teach us or to punish us for our sins, but I do not mean your own or other people’s sins themselves, since God does not wish sins. These trials are salutary for us and are rightly called a saving cross, which He often imposes on His best beloved and on those who strive to please Him, and the bearing of which is especially welcome to Him.

And when I said: do not wish to be rid of afflictions, it must be rightly understood in the sense of submission to God’s will. We cannot help wishing to be free of sorrows, for God Himself placed in our nature the desire for well-being, and so included in the prayer He Himself gave us the request: ‘Lead us not into temptation ‘, which we repeat several times a day. If after this prayer, which God is sure to hear. He sends us sorrow, it is clearly His special will, to which we, His creatures, conscious of our duty to obey Him in everything, should submit with a good heart and endure our trial as something essential to your and my salvation. Also, in repeating the prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation’, mean by it: “Not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. xxvi. 39), imitating our Savior. In other words, say this prayer, not because you abhor temptations and want to avoid them at all costs, but only because the Lord commanded us to pray thus, keeping in the soul a complete readiness to accept with a good heart all that God pleases to send us, and refusing to pander to the self-loving desire for uninterrupted well-being, which is impossible on earth, since it belongs to the future eternal life.