Saint John Climacus. "The Ladder of Divine Ascent". Step 26.
Demons and passions quit the soul
entirely or for some length of time. No one can deny that. However, the
reasons for such a departure are known to very few.
Some of the faithful and even of the
unfaithful have found themselves in the position of being bereft of all
passions except one, and that one proved so overwhelming an evil that it
took the place of all the others and was so devastating that it could
lead to damnation.
The material of the passions is done
away with when consumed by divine fire. It is uprooted, and all evil
urges retire from the soul unless the man attracts them back again by
his worldly habits and by his laziness.
Demons leave us alone so as to make us
careless, then pounce on our miserable souls. And those beasts have
another trick, of which I am aware; namely, to depart when the soul has
become thoroughly imbued with the habits of evil, when it has turned
into its оwn betrayer and enemy. It is rather like what happens to
infants weaned from the mother's breast, who suck their fingers because
the habit has taken hold of them.
There is a fifth kind of dispassion. It
comes from great simplicity and from admirable innocence. "To such is
help rightly given by the God Who saves the upright of heart" (Ps. 7:11)
and Who rids them of ill evil without their perceiving it. They are
like infants who when undressed have no realization of the fact that
they are naked.
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