“There once lived in the city, it was said, a young man who committed many and frightful sins. However, this young man was piercingly censured by his conscience, on account of his manifold sins, and, with the help of God, came to repentance. Under the power of repentance, he went to a cemetery, where he established himself in one of the tombs and lamented for his former life, falling down with his face to the earth and continually groaning from the depths of his heart.
“When he had passed a week in this state of unrelenting and persistent repentance, demons, who had before brought his life to destruction, gathered around one night making noise and shouting: ‘Who is this impious man, who used to pass his time in lustful things and immorality and now wants us to think that he is sober and a doer of good deeds? And he wants to be a Christian and become virtuous, now that he can no longer have fun and fulfill his pleasures? What good can he expect in his life, since he is filled with our evils?
“’Hey you! Will you not get up from there at all? Will you not come with us to your customary places of sin and depravity? Fallen women and wine await you; will you not come to indulge your desires? After all the sins that you have committed up to this day, all hope for salvation is lost to you, and therefore, O struggler, you will only march on full speed to your damnation if you continue killing yourself this way. Why are you so intent and in such a hurry to be damned? Whatever transgression that there is, you committed it; together with us, you fell to every sin. Yet now you dare to flee our company? Do you not agree? Will you not go along with our offers?’
“Meanwhile, however, the young man persisted in the sorrow of repentance and, appearing not to hear the exhortations of the demons, did not answer them at all. So the demons, seeing that they had accomplished nothing with their words, fell upon him, beat him cruelly, and, when they had wounded him all over, left him half-dead. But still the youth remained immovable in his place, groaning, and steadfast in his obdurate repentance.
“During this time, the young man’s relatives sought him out, finally finding him. Having learned the reason for his appearance— that is, of the brazen attack of the demons--, they tried to take him with them to their home. He, however, refused to abandon the place of his repentance.
“The following night, the demons again attacked him and tormented him even more greatly. His relatives visited him for a second time, though without persuading him to leave his place of punishment and follow them. To their proposals on the matter, he answered patiently and with resignation:
“’Do not pressure me. I prefer to die than to return to my former prodigal life.’
“The third night he almost died from the cruel torments of the demons, who attacked him with greater severity than all of the other times.
“After that, the demons, having accomplished nothing with their threats and torments—for the young man would not change his mind at any scare tactic--, departed and left him alone.
“Fleeing from him, they cried madly:
“’He conquered us! He conquered us! He conquered us!’
“From that time on, nothing bad happened to the youth; rather, with a clean conscience he came realize every virtue. Until the end of his life, he remained in the tomb, which he made his hermitage, coming to be honored by God with the gifts of miraculous doings.”
(The Evergetinos: A Complete Text, Vol. 1 of the First Book, pp. 17-19)
***
The young man in the story recognized that keeping our repentance is an act of determination. Despite the demons’ temptations to both sin and to despair, and despite his family’s well-intentioned pleas to come to the ‘safety’ of home, ‘he, however, refused to abandon the place of his repentance’. He preferred to die than return to his sin.
For him, the place of his repentance was a cemetery. For us, it is firstly a place in our heart. While it is often necessary and always beneficial to have a physical place to go that we might practice our repentance in prayer and silence, this is not a substitute for that keen awareness and watchfulness we must have in our heart. Following the young man’s example, we must regard our heart as a cemetery, where we are putting to death our sinful ways, where temptations fall on deaf ears, where we await our resurrection in Christ. Repentance requires perseverance. We expect immediate gratification: ‘I have said I’m sorry, why isn’t everything okay now? I said I don’t want to sin, why aren’t all the temptations taken away?’
Repentance requires perseverance. Perseverance requires watchfulness. We must expect our time of repentance to be a long, drawn-out battle waged against those opposing us: the demons, our own sinful inclinations and passionate habits, our old acquaintances in immorality.
We are engaged in spiritual warfare. The demons do not see our choice of being Christians as a matter of life-style preferences, of aesthetic inclinations, of social standing, etc. Why do we? The demons understand that every one of us claiming to be a follower of Christ is their mortal enemy. They will attack us by tempting us into further sin, by suggesting we are too sinful ever to become holy so why try, by backing off and letting someone come suggest an easier, relaxed life instead of the repentance we are seeking. These are the three kinds of attacks, the three temptations, we experience during our repentance: 1) the temptation to sin, 2) the temptation to despair, 3) the temptation to relax our efforts, to let down our guard, to go back to the way things were.
We might think, ‘How can I focus on this when I have XYZ to take care of?’ But we must recognize that it is in XYZ that the demons practice their guerilla warfare. They do not give formal announcements of war; they attack while you are doing the laundry, while you are with that client, while you are teaching your child, while you are having that difficult talk with your spouse, etc.
They will attack us, and they will beat up on us. We will survive everything only through perseverance. But what are we actually doing while we persevere? What are we persevering at?
We are clinging to God. We are holding tight to that desire to be rid of our sin and to His promise to save us from it and make us holy. We are acknowledging our weakness and His strength and we are beseeching Him to fight for us because we know only He can win our spiritual warfare for us. We are praying. We are fasting. We are saying to ourselves over and over again, ‘I want God above all else’. Our prayer is, ‘O, God, you know I cannot do anything but sin except by your grace. Have mercy on me! Be Who You say You are!’ Like the dead, who have cast all they are and have into the grave, like the young man who made his abode in the cemetery, we cast all we are and have into the cemetery of our own heart, where there is nothing except us and God. And we stay there.
If we do, then, like the young man, we will eventually find that the demons have exhausted all attempts at dissuading us from our repentance, that God has brought us through. And then we can begin the real work of realizing every virtue. But even then, we must follow the young man’s example: “Until the end of his life, he remained in the tomb, which he made his hermitage, coming to be honored by God with the gifts of miraculous doings”.
-Fr. Matthew
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