Understanding of Delusion among the Holy Fathers

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) (1807-1867) clearly explained the teaching of the Holy Fathers about delusion for the modern readers. This teaching is summarized in the article about St. Ignatius in the Orthodox Encyclopedia as follows:

St. Ignatius believed that the main danger in the spiritual life is falling into delusion. The saint devoted large portion of his works to analysis of this phenomenon. By definition of St. Ignatius, "delusion is the wounding of human nature by falsehood" (On the Jesus Prayer: Conversation of an elder with a disciple // Complete set of works Vol. 1. P. 212). The devil used lies to tempt Adam and Eve already in the Paradise. Progenitors of the human race considered false words of the tempter to be true and doubted the words of God. As a result, they broke the commandment given by God and fell away from the source of life. Being affected by sin, human nature in the descendants of Adam and Eve was more eager to the evil than to the good, taking pleasure from communicating with the evil. Such deception is caused by the fact that the strength of the human soul - will, feeling, mind - are perverted by sin. "We are born such”, St. Ignatius said, “We can not be others: because all of us, without exception, are in a state of self-delusion and demonic deception" (Ibid, pp. 213). Lord Jesus Christ saved people from this deception, which all the mankind succumbed to. Lord Jesus, who himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14: 6) proclaimed this truth to the world. The freedom is given to persons to obey either God or the devil that tempts each person. "He is trying to seduce and deceive us, basing on our state of self-delusion; he sets in motion our passions - these painful craving; he makes their adverse claims look like plausibility, increasingly inclines us to the satisfaction of the passions"(Ibid, pp. 214). Those who do not resist the temptation using the teachings of the Gospel, according to St. Ignatius, become totally subordinate to the devil and go from self-deception to the state of demonic delusion.

Patriarch Alexy II about False Healers

Patriarch Alexy II

From an interview for "Profile" journal, 2000.

Your Holiness, our society today is simply sick with interest to various kinds of folk healers. How justified is the sharply negative attitude of the Church to healing, when you consider that many of the healers are religious? It is known, for example, that Gregory Rasputin successfully treated Tsarevich Alexei. Many saints possessed the gift of healing. Is it possible today to separate the orthodox healers from charlatans?

Alexy II: Yes, many saints healed –with the prayer in the first place. They also helped the sick with spiritual advice, because very often our illnesses come from the sins, from poor lifestyle choices. Similarly, there are now pastors and laity sometimes endowed with the gift of prayer for the sick and the gift of instruction. However, the phenomenon of healing must be approached very cautiously. If there is magic, there is any magical manipulation with icons, crosses, pictures, we usually face charlatanry abusing the authority of the Orthodox Church that has unlimited confidence. As a result, people may initially feel some relief, and then even more suffer spiritually and physically.

70-years Old Ascetic Fell into Fornication and was not Able to Confess it

Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman). "The good part." From the conversation about self-pity and overconfidence.

Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman)

Once I read the book of Archbishop Anthony (Golynsky-Mihailovsky) about the Jesus prayer. This interesting book is supplemented with short memories about the author. He suffered a great hardship, for many years he was in jail, he had several sentences in prison camps, but at the same time he was an ascetic: first, he prayed a lot with Jesus prayer; secondly, every day he read daily liturgical round, no matter what the circumstances were, even on the road. And he forced his spiritual children to do the same, and that is besides praying by beads. He died very hard, and he explained the cause of it. One day, a woman came to him and confessed her sin and the sin of her confessor. She sinned with her spiritual father, who was then nearly seventy years old! And before that, he was known as a famous ascetic and faster. He did not dare to confess this, and already dying, asked her to repent for him. This woman begged Bishop Anthony so much, that he could not resist and took this sin over him, and that’s why he died so hard. Just imagine, if a seventy-year-old person after the ascetic life fell into fornication, why thirty-year-old guys think that they are safe?! It is not known how the rest of the life will come about and what will happen next, what temptations and trials he will meet. Today, the devil does not touch you, because, may be, you do not touch him, but tomorrow you pray a little, and this may cause battle – you will want to do the same as Pygmalion. So you should not go into premature excessive calm and think that everything is in order. Overconfidence makes man think that if he lives in security and relatively quiet for some time, by the grace of God, so it always will be like this. In fact, this conclusion is totally groundless.

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