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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 289: What Shall He Do Who Having Repented of a Sin Falls Again into the Same Sin?…

That he who has once repented commits again the same sin is a proof that he has not purged away the prime cause of that sin, so that from it as from a root the same growth comes again necessarily. For just as, if a man should wish to cut off the branches of a tree leaving the root, the root remaining produces the same results once more in no less degree, so since certain sins have not their beginning in themselves but grow out of others it is altogether necessary that he who wishes to be clean from them should remove the first causes of those sins. For example, strife and envy are not self-originated but grow from the root of love of glory. For aiming at glory in the eyes of men one quarrels with him who has a high reputation and envies him who has a reputation superior to his own. If then a man who has once owned his fault of envy or strife falls into the same again, let him recognise the prime cause of his envy or strife, namely the love of glory which is the underlying disease he is suffering from. And he ought to heal this disease of love of glory by the opposite treatment of exercises of humility—to occupy oneself in mean things is an exercise in humility—in order that having acquired thus the disposition of humility he may no longer fall away into the growths of love of glory of which we have been speaking. And the same applies to each of such sins.