Overcoming the Passions

The Elder placed great emphasis on the need of becoming aware of your "passions" and proceeding to struggle to overcome them, to free yourself from them to attain passionlessness, which means purity. This high spiritual state can only be attained, he stresses, by persistent struggle and Divine grace.

"Passion" (pathos) in Orthodox Patristic writings, is a term used in two senses: (a) to denote bad thoughts charged with emotion, and (b) vices (kakiai), that is, such thoughts become habits, settled dispositions of the soul, bad traits of character. All the "passions" are viewed by Father Joseph as diseases of the soul in need of therapy. Removing them from the soul is a process he calls - as do the Holy Fathers of the past - purification. This restores the soul to a state of health and peace. "The more you are purified from the passions, the more peace you have, the wiser you are, the more you understand God" (Letter 65).



Dr. Constantine Cavarnos
"Prolegomena" to Monastic Wisdom: The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast