{"id":11196,"date":"2022-05-15T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=11196"},"modified":"2022-04-30T21:01:53","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T01:01:53","slug":"elder-st-porphyrios-on-attaining-natural-holiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=11196","title":{"rendered":"Elder St Porphyrios on Attaining Natural Holiness\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Your most intense effort should be how you will encounter Christ, how you will be united to Him and how you will keep Him in your heart. Forget about all your weaknesses so that the adverse spirit does not<\/p>\n<p>realize what is going on and grab you and pin you down and cause you grief. Make no effort to free yourself from these weaknesses. Make your<\/p>\n<p>struggle with calmness and simplicity, without contortion and anxiety&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t say: \u2018Now I\u2019ll force myself and I\u2019ll pray to acquire love and become good.\u2019 It is not profitable to afflict yourself to become good. In this way your negative response will be worse&#8230;everything should be done in a\u00a0 natural way, calmly and freely.\u00a0\u00a0 Nor should you pray, \u20180 God free me from my anger, my sorrow, etc.\u2019 It is not good to pray about or think<\/p>\n<p>about the specific passion; something happens in our soul and we become even more enmeshed in the passion. Attack your passion head on and you\u2019ll see how strongly it will entwine you and grip you and you won\u2019t be able to do anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Wounded by Love<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11197\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/im-211x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"211\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/im-211x300.jpg 211w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/im.jpg 562w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your most intense effort should be how you will encounter Christ, how you will be united to Him and how you will keep Him in your heart. Forget about all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11198,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11196\/revisions\/11198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}