Extract from http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/fsr_84.

aspx (From Father Seraphim Rose: His

Life and Works (Platina, CA: St. Herman Press), pp. 843-852.)
In some of Fr. Seraphims pastoral letters we also find guidance on the struggle against fleshly
sins. To one person he wrote:
About carnal warfare when bodily labors are impossible or difficult, St. Abba Barsanuphius
says: Flee quickly to the Prayer of Jesus, and you will find repose; pray ceaselessly, saying,
Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from shameful passions.** [18]
To another person, who was lamenting over his own weakness and was ashamed to mention
sexual falls to a parish priest in confession, Fr. Seraphim exhorted:
Do not be afraid to confess the fleshly sins. Do you think you are so holy? God allows you to
fall in order to humble you. Get up and walk in fear and trembling. Struggle against them, but do
not despair, no matter what happens. Strength in Orthodox firmness comes very gradually; what
you do every day helps build it up; and if you fall, humility and self-awareness build it up. [19]
And to yet another person:
Your battle with demonic fornication is not as unusual as you may think. This passion has
become very strong in our evil timesthe air is saturated with it; and the demons take advantage
of this to attack you in a very vulnerable spot. Every battle with passions also involves demons,
who give almost unnoticeable suggestions to trigger the passions and otherwise cooperate in
arousing them. But human imagination also enters in here, and it is unwise to distinguish exactly
where our passions and imagination leave off and demonic activity beginsyou should just
continue fighting.
That the demons attack you in dreams is a sign of progressit means they are retreating,
seeing that you are resisting conscious sin. God allows this so that you will continue fighting.
Often this demon goes away altogether for a while, and one can have a false sense of security
that one is above this passion; but all the Holy Fathers warn that one cannot consider this
passion conquered before the grave. Continue your struggle and take refuge in humility, seeing
what base sins you are capable of and how you are lost without the constant help of God Who
calls you to a life above these sins. [20]
It can be seen from these letters that Fr. Seraphim was gentle and encouraging with those of his
spiritual children who were truly struggling with sexual sin. With those who were giving in to such
sin and then justifying and rationalizing it, however, Fr. Seraphim took a different approach
altogether. In the following letter, to a young man who was leading unwary souls into unnatural
sexual sin while thinking to evangelize them, Fr. Seraphim did not mince words:
My child, you are deceiving yourself and going the way of perdition. I will not be falsely kind
and hide this fact from you. You talk about helping others, but you are leading them to perdition.
Do you know that by preaching the Faith to and then sinning with him, you have
inoculated him against Christ? And now you think you are going to save ?
Wake up, my child, if you still can. You have detected a distance between us that you do not
understand. That is the distance you yourself have placed by choosing your own way and
rejecting everyone who has tried to guide you. It is the same distance which later on, or even
now, you will feel with Vladika Nektary and with all true Orthodox Christians, and then with Holy
Orthodoxy itself. You justify yourself to yourself with the argument that you are somehow
special. Your human problems are too much for you and must be allowed to develop themselves
out before you can really choose Christ. No, my child, you are not speciala thousand crazy
converts have already gone that way, and you are joining them.

Forgive my harsh words. I speak them because I really love you and do not wish you to be lost.
I do not cease to pray for my erring child. I will gladly suffer with you and for you, but it will do
you no good unless you give up your own understanding of how to live.
This last weekend we were visited by a zealous priest from the East Coast. What a deep
fellow-feeling between us, based on commitment and zeal and deep sufferingto all of which you
will remain a stranger as long as you trust yourself.
May God save you from perdition.
I am praying for the unenlightened . Do not deceive him further. [21]
Fr. Seraphims Patristic understanding of the place of sex in the creation, which we have
discussed earlier, enabled him to help others put sex in the proper perspective. To one of his
spiritual children, who was married and had children, he wrote:
The widespread confusion on this whole issue seems to come from a failure to understand the
real Orthodox teaching on sexualityit is not holy, but neither is it evil. The Lives of Saints
alone, without any Patristic treatises, should teach us the Orthodox position: that sexual union,
while blessed by the Church and fulfilling a commandment of the Creator, is still a part of mans
animal nature and is, in fallen humanity, inevitably bound up with sin. This should not shock us if
we stop to think that such a necessary thing as eating is also almost invariably bound up with sin
who of us is perfectly continent in food and drink, the thorough master of his belly? Sin is not a
category of specific acts such that, if we refrain from them, we become sinlessbut rather a
kind of web which ensnares us and from which we can never really get free in this life. The more
deeply one lives Orthodoxy, the more sinful he feels himself to bebecause he sees more clearly
this web with which his life is intertwined; the person, thus, who commits fewer sins feels himself
to be more sinful than one who commits more!
The Fathers state specifically, by the way, that Adam and Eve did not have sexual union (nor,
of course, eat meat) in Paradise. I believe Thomas Aquinas says that they didwhich would
accord with the Roman Catholic doctrine of human nature.
All of this should one day be written out and printed, with abundant illustrations from the Holy
Fathers and Lives of Saintstogether with the whole question of sexualityabortion, natural and
unnatural sins, pornography, homosexuality, etc. With Scriptural and Patristic sources, this could
be done carefully and without offensiveness, but clearly.
Enough on this subject; you are correct, by the way, that it is better for such things to be printed
by laymen than monks! [22]
Again drawing from the Holy Fathers, Fr. Seraphim counseled his spiritual children not to trust in
or get carried away by their imagination, especially in prayer. Fr. Alexey Young recalls how, when
he was still a Roman Catholic preparing to become Orthodox, he was given an important lesson
by Fr. Seraphim: I asked Fr. Seraphim about meditation, which my wife and I, still under the
influence of our Roman Catholic background, had made part of our regular routine of morning
prayer. We did not yet realize that the Orthodox understanding of meditation is quite different from
the Western Christian view. In conversation, Fr. Seraphim explained that the use of imagination in
Western spiritual systems of meditationviz., while saying the Rosary, reciting the Stations of the
Cross, or doing the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, etc.was not compatible with
Orthodox spirituality and was forbidden because imagination came into use only after the fall of
Adam and Eve; it is one of the lowest functions of the soul and the favorite playground of the
devil, who can and does use human imagination in order to deceive and mislead even wellmeaning people. [23]
In a similar way, Fr. Seraphim warned against placing absolute trust in emotions. Fr. Alexey

Young remembers when Fathers Seraphim and Herman visited the chapel in Etna for the first
time: The fathers, seeing how moved we were [by the service], cautioned us not to let our
emotions get too caught up by the beauty of the service, explaining to us that emotions, like
imagination, are a function of fallen human nature and must therefore be treated with great
caution. [24]....