Striving for Knowledge of God

David Balfour arrived at St Panteleimon monastery by boat in 1932, and the first to meet him on the shore was St Silouan, who accompanied him to the monastery. All the way, as St Silouan recounted later on, he felt a wish to tell Balfour: ‘Pray, and the Lord will enlighten you’. He did not dare to pronounce such words, but the desire to tell Balfour did not leave him – indeed, it became stronger. Then St Silouan, having understood the will of God, decided even to invite Balfour to his cell, where he told him: ‘God has informed me to tell you: “Pray and the Lord will enlighten you.”’ For Balfour, who for a long time was tormented with indecisiveness which he wanted to resolve by thorough logical reflection, these simple words were a revelation.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Foreword (p. 30)

I remember that when you returned to the monastery after your pilgrimage around the Holy Mountain, I told you many times that our life is a Cross. In my first letter, I also wrote to you on this subject, and now I repeat that we preach nothing else than the Cross, and if we call someone to walk alongside us, it can only be towards the Cross, reckoning that this will mean for each one of us immense and incomparable glory. When the Lord visits the soul, then the Cross becomes light to carry, and sometimes even ineffably sweet; but when of His goodness He abandons the soul to difficulties and illnesses, we should recognize that we are being blessed by the hope of still greater glory.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Letter 2 (p. 53)

Forgive me, I am saying this to you to put you on guard, out of love for you. The Catholics, according to what I have heard, suffer precisely from these defects. That is why one observes among them cases of stigmata and sensory visions (or rather, apparitions). Apart from this, some people confuse the spiritual and the psychological, not understanding anything about the first, that is, about spiritual weeping, and they take these tears for psychological tears, and condemn them. May the Lord grant you’ to know true (not illusory) prayer of the heart, and spiritual weeping.

Believe me, my dear Father, that if I permit myself on occasion to use the terms ‘Catholics’, or ‘Catholic’, or ‘Catholicism’ to point out their insufficiencies or their errors, I will not be doing this in order to denigrate them – may the Lord preserve me from that! – but solely to tell you in simplicity and openly, whenever it seems needed, where they do not have the truth. In the present case, I can tell you that your soul should no longer be troubled by observing a notable superiority of Catholicism over the Orthodox Church as far as exterior organisation and rules of discipline are concerned, for this is ‘of the earth’. Likewise, do not allow yourself to be deceived by the fact that at the present time, the Orthodox Church is indeed crucified – this is the threshold of heaven.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Letter 5 (p. 80, 74)

You must give more attention, both now and in the future, to spiritual life, to the practice of the commandments, to vigilance, to prayer, to reading the patristic ascetic works accepted by the Orthodox Church, and you will see that in the measure that your soul is enriched with these things, your mind too will gradually begin to acquire greater strength and clarity – in its thinking about God, in prayer, and even in theology and understanding of the Scriptures.

The beginning of spiritual life is the beginning of the struggle against the passions. Overcoming the passions is an extremely laborious task. This victory is more glorious than any other. Freedom from passions is higher than the gift of working miracles. Passions are overcome by long, persistent, hard, and unceasing struggle, day and night, together with the co-operation of grace. The right way to struggle against the passions is taught us by the holy Fathers.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Letter 6 (p. 93)

Here we come face to face with one of the most difficult questions of spiritual life, which is a stumbling-block for the great majority of the wise of this world. … Faith is difficult for someone who is used to living according to his reasoning. But we should be aware, having examined ourselves with attention, that the human intellect is extremely limited and incapable by itself of penetrating the mysteries of God. What comes first is faith, which is incomparably finer, more perfect and more boundless than the intellect. Only later, with spiritual experience, man reaches the stage where he begins to understand truth with his mind as well. It is impossible to explain this to someone as long as he does not know spiritual life by experience. So even the divine Gregory of Sinai says that the truth is known by the spirit. There is a grace-given feeling of it, and the understanding of it and its expression in words are a consequence of this grace-given feeling.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Letter 6 (p. 96-97)

A true ascetic of Christ, in order to escape hell, makes this life a hell, and he constantly brings himself down to hell in his consciousness, with as much strength as he has for this. Even were he to perform miracles he says to himself, ‘I am a wretched man. In truth I am worse than all others, the most sinful of all. Every one will be saved — only I shall perish. Very shortly death will come and my miserable soul will go down for ever to the unspeakable torments of hell.’ And thus he stays as it were on the brink of despair, as much as his soul’s strength allows.

— Excerpt from: Striving for Knowledge of God (Correspondence with David Balfour) • Letter 7 (p. 115)