Nilus of Ancyra→Euthymius|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To Euthymius the Bishop.
At every season Satan is eager to set the soul amid distraction from the better things, but most of all at the time of prayer he contrives many devices and casts in countless reasonings, luring the understanding away from the matter set before it, and he prepares it to wander and to be carried aloft, so that the man may withdraw from the better thing into empty bosoms. For the evil one knows precisely that the one who prays to God undistracted will be able to accomplish the greatest things, and for this reason he strives by any plausible pretext whatever to cast down the mind. But let us, knowing this, wage war in return against our enemy; and whenever we stand for prayer, or even bend our knees, let us permit no reasoning to enter into our heart, neither white nor black, neither on the right nor on the left, neither scriptural nor unscriptural, except the supplication toward God and the fixed gaze, and the illumination and sunlight that comes from heaven upon the ruling faculty [the hegemonikon, the governing part of the soul]. Having therefore cast off every occasion, and all sluggishness, listlessness [akedia, the spiritual torpor of the monastic life], and specious pretext, let us devote ourselves soberly and fervently to the great work of prayer, which is the root of immortality.
At every season Satan is eager to set the soul amid distraction from the better things, but most of all at the time of prayer he contrives many devices and casts in countless reasonings, luring the understanding away from the matter set before it, and he prepares it to wander and to be carried aloft, so that the man may withdraw from the better thing into empty bosoms. For the evil one knows precisely that the one who prays to God undistracted will be able to accomplish the greatest things, and for this reason he strives by any plausible pretext whatever to cast down the mind. But let us, knowing this, wage war in return against our enemy; and whenever we stand for prayer, or even bend our knees, let us permit no reasoning to enter into our heart, neither white nor black, neither on the right nor on the left, neither scriptural nor unscriptural, except the supplication toward God and the fixed gaze, and the illumination and sunlight that comes from heaven upon the ruling faculty [the hegemonikon, the governing part of the soul]. Having therefore cast off every occasion, and all sluggishness, listlessness [akedia, the spiritual torpor of the monastic life], and specious pretext, let us devote ourselves soberly and fervently to the great work of prayer, which is the root of immortality.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.