Archbishop Averky addresses head on the question, “What is asceticism?” He counters the many false understandings that exist and shows that the practice of authentic asceticism is integral to the spiritual life and the path to blessed communion with God. “Archbishop Averky was one of the last giants of 20th-century Orthodoxy . . . . [He] was an Orthodox scholar in the unbroken tradition of patristic thought which has come down to us from the ancient Fathers to our own days.”  —Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), author, The Orthodox Word "I am not bold enough to pick a section that spoke to me more than the others, because it felt like they were all shouting at me, not in a bad way, but in a you can do better in your spiritual life way." —Stuart Dunn, stuartsstudy.blogspot.com Archbishop Averky (Taushev) taught and served in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Germany before being assigned in to teach at the Holy Trinity Seminary in New York. In 1960 became the abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery and was heavily involved in the formation of the seminary curriculum and the daily life of the seminarians and monks. The Struggle for Virtue Asceticism in a Modern Secular Society By Averky Taushev Holy Trinity Publications Copyright © 2014 Holy Trinity Monastery All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-88465-373-8 Contents Preface, Introduction: The Essence and Meaning of Asceticism, 1. Self-Asserting Pride and Christian Humility, 2. The Importance of Spiritual Discernment, 3. Gospel Love and Humanistic Altruism, 4. Acquiring Gospel Love, 5. Reawakening Our Conscience, 6. The Christian Understanding of Freedom, 7. Guarding the Heart Amidst the Distractions of Life, 8. Resisting Evil, 9. Waging Unseen Warfare, 10. Christian Struggle, 11. The Holy Fathers on Combating the Passions, 12. Pastoral Asceticism, Notes, Subject Index, Scripture Index, CHAPTER 1 Self-Asserting Pride and Christian Humility Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming; and is now already in the world. (1 John 4:1–3) If such a warning by the beloved disciple of Christ, the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, was necessary in apostolic times, then it is all the more timely now. For it is unlikely that at any time in human history have so many false prophets captivated people with the specter of good as now, in our times. If we approach this spirit with the standard indicated by the Apostle, then it can be shown that they "do not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," even if certain of them do not display open hostility to our Lord and Saviour. So what was the essence of the sin of Adam and Eve? It was that they questioned the all-good God the Creator and put more faith in the devil, the enemy of God, than in God, thereby breaking God's commandment and wishing to become gods themselves knowing good and evil. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. (Gen 3:1–7) Therefore, the essence of our primogenitors' sin was that they did not want to obey God, but rather desired to become gods themselves. The devil, in seducing them, communicated to them that same spirit of self-asserting pride that had been the cause of his own fall. The spirit of self-asserting human pride, and with it protest against the all-good will of God, has ever since become rooted in people's souls and has become the cause of mankind's infection with sin and sinful corruption. We can find its footprints throughout the entire history of mankind. It was precisely this spirit of self-asserting human pride that was the cause of the first war: the fratricide performed by Cain, who was envious of his brother Abel. This awful sin of fratricide led mankind to such a hopeless situation of complete depravity that the Lord had to have recours