A Priest was Suspended for Excessive Asceticism

From the memoirs of Hegumen Nikon (Vorobyov).

Hegumen Nikon (Vorobyov) (1894 - 7.9.1963)

“I began serving as a priest, and the better I thought I served, the more my self-esteem grew deep down. Spiritual matters are not so simple. To know what's going on deep down, you need to be very attentive and pray a lot, with your own personal prayer. So, one time, an idea came to me, perhaps from the enemy. I began doing a hundred prostrations with the Jesus Prayer in the evening, after evening prayers—perhaps until two o'clock. Now I'm saying all this, not to boast, but so you understand a little. And in the morning, before the service, I had to do another hundred prostrations, get up at four o'clock, and do them. So what? Was it good for me? The nuns saw it from the outside—they're curious people. But the Lord saw that I was doing the devil's work, not God's. And so, I had a conflict with Father Raphael. And I not only wasn't rewarded in some way, I was expelled from the priesthood, banned from serving (the ban was imposed by Bishop Onisifor of Kaluga – ed.). This is the judgment of God and the judgment of man. Of course, it was the power of God that expelled me, and it also reinstated me. But one might have thought I suffered for some good deed, for my exploits. But the Lord made it clear that this was demonic, that it was vanity, a self-importance: "Look, I'm a priest, I serve all the time, I come home—prayers, reading the Word of God, and even though I'm not young anymore, almost 55, I make a hundred prostrations in the evening, a hundred prostrations in the morning—with attention! This is how complex the spiritual matters are."

Source 

If You Teach, Then Don’t Say That It Is From Your Own Experience

Hegumen Nikon (Vorobiev) (1894 - 7.9.1963)

Hegumen Nikon (Vorobiev). "Unpublished letters".

Don’t lecture anyone, and if you see someone in need of spiritual help and feel that you could help at least a little, then talk about spiritual things as if you had read or heard this and that from knowledgeable people, and not as if from your own experience or knowledge. It will be easier for you, and you will block the demon’s access to you through vanity. Do you understand this idea?

Source

Most of the Ascetics Are Temporarily or Permanently in Delusion

Letters of  Hegumen Nikon (Vorobyov) to Spiritual Children.

Letter 132

Dear ... !

10 days have already passed since I received your letter, but I didn’t set out to respond.

On your feelings about Bright Matins, I would say that all things work together for good to those who love God. The Holy Fathers say that the kingdom of God does not come with observation. When we will expect the spiritual joys - then we can just (and often it is so) not get them. The right disposition of the soul is to consider yourself unworthy of any spiritual consolation.

Moreover, Venerable John Climacus says, "Drive off with lowly hand every passing joy as something of which you are unworthy, for if you let it in, you may be admitting a wolf instead of a shepherd". This idea is expressed in different forms by all of the Holy Fathers. All people are easily inclined to every sin, and especially to those no less harmful than gross. No one can notice and overcome everything by one’s own forces, only realization of one’s infirmity, poverty, sinfulness, irredeemable indebtedness to God, and hence the incessant cry of the heart (heart is broken  and subsequently contrite), which all the Saints of God had - this is the right spiritual disposition, protecting people from fall, leading to spiritual gifts and protecting these gifts, if they are granted. The ascetic, having no cry of the heart, is in spiritual delusion, i. e. false disposition, and if he does not improve, he may fall into apparent demonic delusion and perish. In our time, all this happens implicitly, but it happens and most [1] of the ascetics are temporarily or permanently in delusion. This matter is rather subtle.

I'm sorry to tell you this, maybe at the wrong time. It scarcely concerns laymen (although, in some respect, of course, it concerns them, but in a simpler form).

So you have overcome your grief and resentment at the chief, and maybe you have also understood that you were properly deprived of the consolation by the judgment of God, to look deeper into yourself and become humble. The success of spiritual life is not measured by spiritual consolations which may be from the Devil as well, but by the depth of humility.

How are you? Forgive me if I wrote poorly, but I assure the correctness. I will not multiply words any longer, hoping to talk to you personally.

Respectfully N.
18/V-49

[1] Translator's note: depending on the stress in the original Russian word, it can be translated also as “large part”, but “most” is closer to the general sense of delusion which “is the state of all men without exception” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov).

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