inclined to self-affirmation, self-love, self-indulgence.
An imperfect way of life leads us into sin and leads us to suffering. Our task is not to avoid suffering but to accept it with gratitude and overcome the sinfulness of our being. All the holy fathers speak of the healing effect of suffering that befalls every person, it is God’s mercy, grace, medicine…
Recognizing our damaged nature is the basis of repentance, the basis of return to Christ, to a healthy nature, healed in the hypostasis of Christ. In the Church, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ are offered, cleansed and healed from sin nature, which, by partaking, we heal, treat the nature crippled by sin. The knowledge that a person gains through suffering allows them to understand that they cannot heal the sin-damaged nature by their own efforts, and therefore they come to Christ – the last, only hope, and it is there that Christianity is born, where there is a need for Christ – the Healer and Savior.
Christians must maintain an active life stance, manifested in preserving everything that Christ commanded them, so that by zealously fulfilling the commandments they recognize their weakness, poverty, and become capable of accepting in the spirit of humility the life-giving and healing Divine grace.
Therefore, our task is to not coincide with our damaged-by-sin nature and not to identify with it. A person as a personality is always non-immanent to the nature that they hypostasize. This is the mystery of hypostatic life, the mystery of the Image of God in a person. Therefore, the task of a person who goes to salvation is to renounce their own will of their nature, affected at the level of instincts, and accept the will of God. All asceticism is aimed at replacing one’s sinful will with the will of God. But it is not asceticism that heals nature. It is only a manifestation of our desire to be healed, which is a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Repentance does not lead out of the natural state, but only stops sins. The nature affected by sin is healed only in the Church in the sacrament of Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, partaking of nature healed and transformed by God in the Divine hypostasis of the Word.
P.S. Let us never forget, let us never lose sight of the principle of all ascetic struggle that we undertake to say: “I thank God with all my being for everything that He has given us.” And this action, by which all the saints attained the Kingdom of God, revealed to St. Silouan by God, sounds like this: “Keep your mind in hell (from seeing your countless sins) and do not despair (but hope in the Lord, who destroyed hell).” The thief condemned himself to hell, but in hope in God, he was the first to enter Paradise…