It is always possible to make a new start by means of repentance.
‘You fell,’ it is written, ‘now arise’ (cf. Prov. 24:16). And if you fall again, then rise again, without despairing at all of your salvation, no matter what happens.
So long as you do not surrender yourself willingly to the enemy, your patient endurance, combined with self-reproach, will suffice for your salvation.
‘For at one time we ourselves went astray in our folly and disobedience’, says St Paul. ‘…Yet He saved us, not because of any good things we had done, but in His mercy’ (Tit. 3:3,5).
So do not despair in any way, ignoring God’s help, for He can do whatever He wishes.
On the contrary, place your hope in Him and He will do one of these things: either through trials and temptations, or in some other way which He alone knows.
He will bring about your restoration; or He will accept your patient endurance and humility in the place of works; or because of your hope He will act lovingly towards you in some other way of which you are not aware, and so will save your shackled soul.
[...] We ought all of us always to give thanks to God for both the universal and the particular gifts of soul and body that He bestows on us.
[...] Better than them all, however, is the patient endurance of afflictions; and he who has been found worthy of this great gift should give thanks to God in that he has been all the more blessed.
For he has become an imitator of Christ, of His holy apostles, and of the martyrs and saints.
He has received from God great strength and spiritual knowledge, so that he may voluntarily abstain from pleasure and may readily embrace hardship through the eradication of his own will and his rejection of unholy thoughts, and may thus always do and think what is in accordance with God’s will.
Those who have been found worthy of using things as they ought to be used should in all humility give heartfelt thanks to God, for by His grace they have been freed from what is contrary to nature and from the transgression of the commandments.
We, however…should tremble and in all gratitude should give heartfelt thanks to our Benefactor, astonished at His unutterable forbearance, though we have disobeyed His commandments, misused His creation and rejected His gifts.
He endures our ingratitude and does not cease to confer His blessings on us, waiting until our last breath for our conversion and repentance.
Peter of Damascus (?12th Century): A Treasury of Divine Knowledge Text from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 3 (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979ff), pp. 170-173.
